The image above encapsulates the competing sensations and feelings I experienced on my recent, annual, winter, solo car trip to the Outer Banks of North Carolina. There’s the exquisite peacefulness of staying in a remote, ocean-front cottage where I’m surrounded by sand and water. But there’s also a rift in solidity that exists here at the bottom end of a thin ribbon of barrier island that makes up this part of OBX. A rumbling of not only the pounding waves that crash against the pilings of my deck at high tide, but also an exciting tension in my mind as I start to tackle the concepts and themes of my new novel.