First, a disclaimer.  I am very good at a lot of things.  I remain calm in crisis, am willing to try new things (albeit grudgingly) and can play the piano.  I have a degree in Art and English and  I know a lot about baking cookies.  I’m even up to date on my family scrapbooking!  My point here is that I can hold my own in many different situations.

But…

I am bad at directions.  I believe I was born this way.  I believe diligent work can help improve my everyday directional life, but I know to my very core that my directional intuition will always be suspect.  I don’t know why directions get me so mixed up – I am a visual person, I am a smart person.   And yet, as soon as something involves directions I will 100% make wacky weird wrong assumptions.

I once got lost going to my local market.  There are three parallel N/S streets I knew it must be one of them.  And yet, though I tried two of the several times I refused to believe it was on that one that it actually was on and never made it there – went to a market slightly farther away.

No matter how much mobile phones/tablets destroy society I will always love them because without the maps app on my phone I would probably have long since become permanently lost; forced to restart my life twenty minutes from home, never knowing how to get back.

Which is why it is beyond ironic when one of our beta readers suggested we draw a little map of Bath to insert into our book, The Particular Charm of Miss Jane Austen , that I was the one most qualified to do it.

Is Cass bad at directions you ask? NO. Not at all.  But she’s unfamiliar with photoshop which is where we knew we’d end up needing to make it all work together considering our timeline and the lateness of the hour that the idea was given to us.

I shouldn’t get all the credit however as, despite the internet’s help and Cass sending me three emails, I could not for the life of me get the 4 Sydney Place map marker in the right spot.  At one point, Cass (who KNOWS of my directional disability) was wondering if I was doing it on purpose to get out of doing the map at all!  Hint: I wasn’t.

SO yes, this map of Bath will be in our book, highlighting some of the sights of Bath and some of the locations important to our characters.  Some of these references are relevant only in the book, so don’t take anything too seriously. Also, do remember it was made by me (a person that when I am in Bath cannot move more than a window’s length before getting lost since all the buildings look the same and I don’t want to spend a million dollars on my cellphone data plan so I don’t have my maps app open!) so don’t count on it’s accuracy in a life or death situation.

We are happy to be sharing it online since it will likely be too small to read in the actual printed copy!!