Marylee MacDonald Day 5

MONTPELIER TOMORROW is a novel for mothers who would do anything to protect their children from
harm. As a mother struggles to lighten her daughter’s burdens, she discovers that her daughter wishes
she’d just go home.

“Marylee MacDonald has brought into the light what it is to be a caregiver. The family dynamics are spot
on. Having been there it brought a lot of what happened back. This book is a must read for anyone that
is a caregiver or knows someone that is or was.”—Kerry Avery, 5-star Amazon review
Click here for more on this novel: http://bit.ly/13N9bdR

Where do you gather most of the inspiration for your work?

Childhood is one place I go for inspiration. A child’s feelings are so sharp and unedited. That’s what I
want to capture in a story: the heart connection.

The second place I go is to my notebooks. Like most writers, I carry a notebook and am constantly
eavesdropping or observing things around me. Periodically, I flip back through my notebooks and see if
something strikes me. It’s like a match and flint.

A third source of inspiration is just the flotsam that drifts onto my beach. I get fixated on some topic and
can’t let it go. That could be a single story, a setting, or a whole novel. Right now, I’m fixated on a 16-
year-old artist named Alexandre Jean Noël who went as a draftsman to Baja California in 1769. My next
novel, THE VERMILLION SEA, will be historical fiction about this young man. He dropped out of art
school in Paris and went off to seek his fortune, only to find himself marooned in San Jose del Cabo with
a typhus epidemic raging. You can read more about that project on my  Authors' Guild website.

After writing MONTPELIER TOMORROW, a novel in which Colleen spends most of her time within the
for walls of her daughter’s house, I wanted to go on an adventure. THE VERMILLION SEA is the result of
that desire, and I’ve had my own adventures prowling the archives in France, Spain, and Portugal.

Do you have any other interesting hobbies, pets or stories you would like to share?

I like to go birdwatching, but I am not very good at it because I don’t go out often enough. I have
tremendous admiration for people who can recognize birdcalls or who can identify a bird in flight.

Favorite places to travel or visit?

Well, any time I can spend with my kids or grandkids is precious time, indeed. Three years ago I went
with a contingent of them to Barcelona. They had all begun to study Spanish, and I think it was kind of a
revelation to them that I spoke Spanish and that learning a language might prove useful.  I also have fun
making videos of places I’ve traveled. This is one I made of Venice. That time I was on a trip with my son
Ted and his family: Veni, Vidi, Venice . The title of the video is a play on Caesar’s words, “I came, I saw, I
conquered.”