I’m a terrible blogger. I know it. You know it. The thing is, I have a rather mundane life. I could write about my latest adventures doing the laundry, or about how there’s a kid who bags groceries at my local store who looks exactly like Brent Corrigan, but really, I can’t imagine anybody cares too much.

This week, however, I’m in Florida, so I thought I’d share a bit about our vacation so far.

Last year when my family and I went on the Writing on the Waves cruise with Lynn Flewelling, we booked a couple of nights in Florida first. I picked a hotel at random that was inexpensive, offered free internet access, and was close to the cruise ship docks. Where we ended up was Cocoa Beach.

Now, I should back up and tell you that in general, the ocean scares me to death. It’s big and powerful and just plain scary. I’ve been to beaches in LA, San Diego, Oregon, Alaska, and Hawaii, and they’ve all freaked me out just a bit. Also, with the exception of Hawaii, they’ve pretty much all been cold. And I don’t mean you step into the water and think, “Oh, that’s refreshing.” I mean, ice fucking cold! So imagine my surprise last year when we walked out into the Florida surf, and the water was warm! What a pleasant surprise. Also, the beach here has a long, slow slope out into the surf. The waves are low and gentle, and I’m sure surfers would be bored to death, but for a person with a slight ocean phobia, it’s perfect.

We only had one day here last year, and we’ve been saying ever since that we needed to come back, and so this year we did. Later this week, we’ll spend a couple of days in Orlando. We’re skipping Disney World this year, but we will go to Universal Studios. My daughter wants to see Seuss Landing, and I’m dying to see The Wizarding World of Harry Potter. But first, we have several days doing nothing but hanging out on the beach.

I’ve been terribly lax about taking photos, so I’ll have to swipe some from the internet.

We’re staying again in the hotel we stayed in last year. It’s not fancy. No pool, no gym, no restaurants, no room service. Just a room. That’s all. But from our window, I can see the ocean, and more importantly, it’s about a two minute walk to the beach. We seem to be on a stretch of the beach that’s between resorts, and there aren’t many people around us. The beach looks exactly like this:

That’s about the size of the crowds here, too. My kid has been body-boarding non-stop. I’ve done a bit of it, too, and my hubby has been building sand castles.

Yesterday, we ventured down to Cocoa Beach Pier. Word to the wise: if you’re ever in this area, avoid this tourist-trap nightmare like the fucking plague it is. It’s $10 to park, or you can use the metered parking (a quarter will buy you a whole ten minutes). The thing is, from the outside, you really can’t tell what you’re paying to see. As somebody who pumped $1.50 into a meter (and only used half of it) let me assure you, there’s NOTHING to see at all. There’s a restaurant, and another bar/restaurants about halfway down the pier (it can be seen on the right hand edge of the photo below, hanging sort of unevenly out over the surf). There are exactly two gift shops, both about the size of my living room. (One of them sells dried alligator heads, which I find disgusting on multiple levels.) After the second restaurant, you’ll come to a desk where you have to pay $1 per person just to walk to the end of the pier. I think there’s a tiki bar down there, but frankly, I wasn’t about to give them $3 just so we could walk another twenty feet. Of course, there’s also a beach there. It looks like this:

I’m sure I’m just antisocial, but I don’t get it. You can pay good money to hang out on this overcrowded beach, or you can go a mile downshore and visit a beach that looks like this for FREE.

Needless to say, we will NOT be going back to Cocoa Beach Pier.

I did also discover Historic Cocoa Village. I couldn’t find a good photo, but it’s basically a cute little downtown shopping district. I only had a few minutes there, but I really want to go back. I may go later today while my hubby and child hang at the beach.

Since I’m here, I’ll give you a quick writing update. There’s not much to say. Between Sinners and Saints is now available in ebook, on Kindle, and in paperback. Song of Oestend will be released by Total E-Bound on August 22nd. My space pirates are finished, but I haven’t sent them to a publisher yet. I may do that when I get back. Or maybe not. There is a possibly a new development with this which I’m not sure I can divulge. (Wow, wasn’t that mysterious?) Other than that, I have absolutely nothing going on at the moment. My mind is blank. It’s a bit alarming, actually, but I hope to get back in the saddle after this vacation.

And speaking of vacations, it’s time I returned to mine. It’s 9:00, and my daughter is chomping at the bit to get back in the water. I’ll try to post again at the end of the trip. Hopefully I’ll at least have some pictures of Harry Potter-Land to share.

Have a great week!