Guest Blogger Cindy Carroll

I'm very pleased to have Cindy Carroll here today, reporting on her own travels. She's the author of REFLECTIONS, very newly released! We have a technical background, IT, in common. We programmers seem to like to bust out in fiction. Read on about her road trips.
(REFLECTIONS can be purchased at Amazon and Kobo.)

Road trip – destination unknown

I love road trips. There's something about being on the road on your way somewhere interesting. The journey is just as much part of the vacation as the destination. I had always planned road trips. I didn't like not having a plan. I needed to know where exactly I was going. What route I was going to use to get there. Where I would stop along the way, if I needed to stop at all.

Then I met a guy who was a little more spontaneous than I was. When we both had a few days off work he wanted to go on a road trip. I said, "Great! Where are we going?" And his answer, "Wherever. Let's just point the car east and drive." At first I was appalled. No plan? No idea where we were going? Then I thought why not? We were in no rush. Maybe it would be freeing just getting in the car and driving.

We weren't completely without a plan. We made sure we had our bathing suits in case we stopped somewhere with a pool. We had a GPS so at least we wouldn't get lost. I made sure I had my cell phone charger but this was before smart phones. So we couldn't search the internet while on the road looking for places to stay. When we got tired we got off the highway and found a hotel to stay in. Driving without a plan turned out great. We discovered Ganaqoue, Ontario. A picturesque town near The Thousand Islands.

A road trip didn't turn out quite as well for the characters in my short story Reflections. They went without a plan with the intention of stopping along the way whenever they needed a break. But they stop at a cursed inn and end up fighting for their lives.

What about you? Are you a planner when it comes to road trips? Do you like them? Hate them?

About Cindy:  Cindy Carroll is a member of Sisters in Crime and a graduate of Hal Croasmun’s screenwriting ProSeries. Her interviews with writers of CSI and Flashpoint appeared in The Rewrit, the Scriptscene newsletter, the screenwriting Chapter of RWA. She writes screenplays, thrillers, and paranormals, occasionally exploring an erotic twist. A background in banking and IT doesn’t allow much in the way of excitement so she turns to writing stories that are a little dark and usually have a dead body. When she’s not writing you can usually find her on Twitter.

Check out her website: http://www.cindycarroll.com
Follow her on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/CindyPCarroll

Find her on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/AuthorCindyCarroll