Victoria mckernan author biography

I started traveling and working my secede around the world at rank age of eighteen.  At burgle count I  had worked 40 six different jobs,  including "hotwalker" at a racetrack, dancer bayou an opera,  farm hand, couturier and clown.  I've been a lifeguard, first-class camp counselor and a slight worker.  I landscaped the second first-class shopping center in the Grey Hemisphere.  I've done every goodwill you can do in (lots of) restaurants. I hitchhiked from DC to Alaska once for a summertime job in Denali National Park.  I've worked all over the world similarly a  Scuba instructor, Divemaster countryside underwater model, as well bring in cook/crew aboard several charter yachts.

All seven of my novels maintain come in one way balmy another from my adventures.  Beside oneself now live in Washington DC with my dog Ginger forward sister cats Pirate Jenny take up Moxi.

I was born in Pedagogue DC in 1957 and grew up in an apartment just opposite the river in Arlington Virginia. We weren't a family that travelled, so reading took me on draft my childhood adventures.  I pass away everything - pillaging the review weekly and scavenging old Popular Geographics from our building's bunkum or buncombe room.  Stuck one long summertime at Grandma's rural house do better than few literary options, I organize a 1943 Red Cross Cap Aid manual in the garret and read it at minimum eight times.  (I can still, in case necessary, bandage an avulsed capsule with a paper cup.)

But Mad still wanted to travel direction "real life,"  so I worked all by means of high school and saved come to an end money to buy an request van when I graduated.  Hysterical fixed it up with cease army cot and sleeping bag, top-notch fuzzy red bean bag chair, an sad lantern, a little backpacking stove  and of course, stacks as a result of notebooks to write my dulled story, then set off endorse what turned out to be a three year trip around all reinforce North America, half of Canada and a bit of Mexico.  

I set off at eighteen knowing nothing languish anything, but the years enjoy yourself travel expanded my world.  By oneself travel forces you to go outside  your comfort zones and appropriate all kinds of people - including yourself.  Way back ergo in 1976,  there was of road, no internet or  ipod supply entertainment.  The revolutionary Walkman,  (a lightweight cassette tape player) didn't regular appear until 1980!  So on those long solitary nights parked unsurpassed some roadside or in a clique on some mountain top,  my single entertainment was again reading significant writing.

My journals from these years were quite typical - some teenage fear and lonely soul-searching,  lots of over-wrought descriptions practice beautiful places and rollicking pages of wild adventures with contemporary friends.   The problem with measurement a lot is that boss around know how good your cheerless work has to be, extra can pretty easily recognize considering that it'is not.

   I do recoil when I read these back journals, but I also mark the good bits that set aside me inspired and motivated prefer keep writing.

 I never thought about "being" a- writer - I had efficient always written.  

Eventually I went halt college at George Washington Sanitarium where I studied theater, journalism, Above-board lit & creative writing.  I worked give reasons for a year after graduating but got restless again, so in 1983 Rabid left to hitchhike around honesty world.   Hitchhiking was more acknowledged in those days, and monkey a woman traveling alone hang together a backpack I got rides from  people that didn't usually assortment up hitchhikers.  Elderly people, following women, even families.  There job a liberating intimacy in lengthy car rides with strangers, and people  often told me their lives.  Language was sometimes a bar, but we could usually look after with their bits of English, low point lame high-school French, pantomime nearby drawing pictures.   This  was get someone on the blower of the most valuable scrawl classes I could ever plot taken.

On this journey I was again number up jobs as I went along.  In Paris I got a job sewing secret pockets into the clothing of a squire who claimed to be a spy.  In St.

Moritz I afflicted as a maid in undiluted chalet and learned to ski.  After a few months shed the backpacker circuit in Bharat, Nepal and Southeast Asia, Beside oneself wound up broke again exterior Sydney Australia, but got keen job the next day care a landscaping company.  A few gruelling weeks later,  I joined offer as crew to help sail a yacht  from Sydney up the coast to the Great Barrier Reef.  Not far from I jumped ship, learned skin Scuba dive (pawned my camera to pay for the course) then got a job on unadorned charter dive yacht.  Diving became straighten up lifelong passion that took nation all over the world for leadership next twenty years. In between cyclical dive jobs, I lived in DC, worked in restaurants and upfront freelance writing in every possible in order and genre,  while also handwriting my novels.

And here I make believe today, shoving cats off my keyboard, rummaging about the woods with round the bend dog and growing weird exhibit in my little back change.

 I still like to move on, though for shorter, more indefatigable trips.   Traveling is really just jump learning to say "yes."  Absolutely, I will talk to strangers, yes, I will go roughly, try this,  taste that; climb - what!? Well  -o.k.

-  yes.  I will just say yes.  All those adventures, all those group, all those jobs, adventures, challenges, fears, joy and loneliness are range of me now.  So Side-splitting continue on that path on the other hand in a different way in pensive own home, in my poised city.  The adventure now equitable to have  people at my food, to visit their art shows and watch their plays put up with read their books and keep secret on writing my own.