Back from Croatia

I'm back home after a highly enjoyable trip to sunny Croatia. This was my third trip to the country - although my very first visit to Dubrovnik was in the long-ago days when it formed part of Yugoslavia and, because of the restrictions imposed by the Communist regime, tourism there was rather different from what it has become. This trip was a new experience, because it was a boat trip around the islands, which also took in Dubrovnik and Split.

During the course of what has been a great year, I've had a number of exciting trips, all of which have been crime-writing-related in one way or another. This was a pure holiday, a chance to recharge the batteries, and very welcome. Mind you, for me, recharging the batteries usually encompasses reading mysteries and thinking up fresh story ideas. On both counts, the trip was a big success. And given how much I ate whilst I was away, it's astonishing that I didn't put on much weight. Perhaps walking around in the heat burned off the calories - it was definitely about as warm as I can manage, and I was relieved to miss the recent heatwave.

On Friday, I'll discuss the first of the two Edmund Crispins that I read whilst away. I also intend to discuss Jeffery Deaver's The October List. Like Rellik, which featured on this blog the other day, it's a reverse-chronology mystery, and reading it helped me to conjure up an idea for a reverse-chronology short story. It remains to be seen how this will work out, but I'm quite excited by the concept.

We had good company on the boat. Kate Ellis and her husband Roger came along and we had some other very pleasant companions whom it was nice to meet for the first time. The boat, the Corona, was smaller than any other that I've cruised on, but that made it an especially interesting experience. Dubrovnik is a wonderful city and Split comes alive in the evening, but this time I was particularly delighted with places I'd never visited before, including a Benedictine monastery on a tiny island in a lake within a bigger island, Hvar (with fantastic views from the fortress) and the gorgeous little town of Korcula, where we had a memorable meal in an amazing setting on the waterfront. There was evening stargazing, for good measure. I've returned to England in high spirits and raring to get stuck into a number of writing projects.