"Where Islands Are" is about a couple living their dream after raising a family and seeing all their children grown and off to make their own mark on the world. They sell their home in Kentucky, buy a sailboat and move to Key West to live onboard their boat, The Island Girl. Years spent dreaming are becoming reality as they walk the beaches, make love underneath a full moon in the warm ocean. Everything is new and intoxicating to them as they find their way along Duval Street and to Malory Square and the Sunset Festival while waiting for their boat to arrive from Lake Erie. As they wait on their boat, they decide to hire a charter boat to take them out into the Gulf Stream fishing and end up with a young hard drinking egotistical captain with a love for the ladies and lives life by some very off the wall rules. "I yelled, "Permission to come aboard?" He said, "Stay off my goddamn boat," as he made his way to us holding a water hose. He said, "Turn your shoes up and I'll wash them off. I want no sand, shit or assholes in my boat." Once The Island Girl arrives in Key West, there is a spat between the captain that sailed The Island Girl to Key West and the young fishing charter Captain. "About then, Captain Jack showed up saying, "I want to check out The Island Girl for myself. I've already surmised you've a turd of a captain, there mate." The captain looked from me to Jack and back to me searching for an answer he didn't find. Jack looked at him and then to me and said, "He must be English, by that I mean British. America does not breed such snobs and most snobs like this candy ass certainly veer wide of Key West. I think because they fear having fun. The English are a queer bunch as sailors go. Just look at how he dresses. He looks like a crew boy from that old TV show!" I didn't know what to say, so I introduced Captain Jack to my captain who looked him up and down and said in a British accent, "What a bum. Such heathens should have never been let out of Botany Bay!" Jack did look a little rough as he scratched his chin whiskers. He did need a shave and reeked of stale booze as he stood there wearing only a pair of shorts. After a moment jack said," Fuckin' limey." Then turned to me and said, "How much of this shit you going to take before I whip his ass?" The young captain, in the end, hires on to sail The Island Girl to Caribbean ports of call. The Young Captain enjoys his rum and women almost as deeply as his love of the sea. He sweet-talks a pair of beauties into joining the crew while anchored off Little Cayman and the party is on. The couple loves every moment on the sea and gets a kick out of the Young Captain's outlandish behaviors with his girls and with his philosophy of life. There is never a dull moment, nor a lack of caring for one another between the couple while the blue Caribbean waters steal their hearts as they grow deeper in love with each other and the sea. After a while at sea, they develop an admiration for their captain's style and view of the world. "The one thing I was sure of, there's worse fates than being on a sailboat in the middle of the Caribbean late at night, making love to a special lady while listening to the sounds of Skynyrd as waves gurgle and roll against the hull. The smell of the open sea and the salt that crystallizes on skin no matter how many showers you take is intoxicating to lovers. I whispered, "I wished this forever." She said, "Me too, baby." "Where Islands Are," is a tropical fruit drink for the eyes, heart and soul with individualism to make the reader smile and involuntarily reach for a lover's hand.
About the Author: I was was born in 1955 in the little town of Frenchburg, in Eastern Kentucky, grew-up in Salt Lick, Kentucky, where I was raised fishing and camping on the Licking River, a narrow stream that meanders between the hills and through the valleys near my home. Most of every summer of my youth was spent on the riverbank running trotlines and setting bank poles. The odor of tent tarpaulin, campfire smoke and river water seeped into my senses and memories far too deep to ever be removed. I have been married to the love of my life, Elsa for thirty-five years and we raised five children, four sons and one daughter surrounded by the same tall hills that grabbed my great, great, great, grandfather and held him with their magical beauty. I attended Morehead State University where creative writing quickly overshadowed all other studies nullifying other academic desires. At Morehead State, I had the opportunity to study writing under a very special group of professors that became my friends from the beginning. My first trip to the islands stirred my mind and created a desire to live among palm trees and white sandy beaches. I have visited most of the Keys of south Florida and a few other islands and have fallen in love with island time. My first novel, "Where Islands Are" came from numerous encounters with those knowing no other way but "Island Time." It is a love story from every angle dipped with the humor I encountered on the islands, some of which, I unintentionally created, apparently because of my own somewhat different take on living life.