OK, the first blog comes from New Zealand.  Rotorua, New Zealand.  I'm sitting at a worn old desk in a 4th floor room overlooking a geyser and mudpot field.  Never planned to go to New Zealand, but it's on the way to Tonga, which I have planned to go to, obviously.

I'm headed to Tonga tomorrow night so I can finish up the field research for the historical novel I've been working on for several years.  Actually, it was a nonfiction book to begin with, but my editors have encouraged me to recast it as a historical novel.  I resisted their suggetions for too long, and when I finally started working on the fictional version, I enjoyed it much more than I thought I did.

The working title for this novel is ENGLISH PIRATE TONGAN PRINCE, and I'm going to Tonga so I can finish the second part of the novel.  Tonga, if you didn't know, is in the South Pacific, about 1000 miles north of New Zealand.  Captain James Cook landed there in the 1770s and named the island chain "The Friendly Isles" because of the kind treatment he had received there.  He had no way of knowing that the islands would be anything but friendly to the people who followed Cook there.  Including the person on whom my book is based.

Anyway, I'm excited to see Tonga.  I'll be on a couple islands in the central chain, the Ha'apai Group: Lifuka and Foa.  More on that later.