A Clean, Well-Lighted Place, Overseas.

Guanabo

The coche de caballo dropped us off after a morning at the beach. The house in Guanabo, Cuba was a few miles west of the stylish beaches of Santa Maria del Mar and the city of Havana. My twin grandsons were put down for a siesta. With August temperatures in the mid nineties, and high humidity, the air-conditioned house lured everybody inside.

I, on the other hand, sat on a wooden chair on the veranda, my iPad and its folding keyboard on a card table before me. I started typing:

Fall turned to winter very quickly in 1957. One day the weather was clear and cool, the next it was windy and cold, and on the third day the skies turned dark gray, and a full gale was plastering snow on the docks, ships, and buildings of the Navy base.

Working on the first volume of my memoirs, it felt ironic to be describing a blizzard in Newfoundland as I sat sweltering in the tropical heat of the Cuban coast. A sea breeze stirred the palm fronds overhead, I took a swig of my Crystal beer, and re-lit my Montecristo.

I’ve written in longhand notebooks in my room in The Imperial Hotel in New Delhi.

New Delhi

I got some good work done in an apartment above Rue du Temple in Paris.

Paris

Sitting in the shaded patio of a thatched roof casa in Todos Santos, Mexico, I wrote a chapter about my grandparents and the oil rush on the Osage Indian Reservation, in the Roaring Twenties.

Todos Santos

Although I’v been able to write in some beautiful places, all any writer needs is A Clean, Well-Lighted Place, as described by Hemingway. To see what I’ve come up with, check out my books. Just click on one below to find out more.