Visit The Beach With Dani Collins
Author of Seduced Into The Greek’s World, Jun 2015

I live in what some people call cottage country, or lake country. It’s not even an incorporated town. It’s just a rural pocket of British Columbia named after our main attraction, Christina Lake. The year round population of fifteen hundred swells to five thousand between May and September. Snowbirds come back and vacation homes are opened up, boats start dragging water skiers and the traffic becomes unbearable.

By ‘unbearable,’ I mean I sometimes have to wait for up to five cars, yes five, before I can turn left onto the highway. At the grocery store, there might be a queue. And it might contain people I don’t know. The cashier might not have time to chat because tourists are waiting behind me. It’s a trial!

We locals live for our summers, anticipating it all through blustery November, snowy December, and biting January. Our spring thunderstorms finally wrap up, the heat and glorious sunshine arrives…and so does the rest of the world. Wistful sigh. We really hate to share.

Fortunately we have an amazing lake to help us keep our cool.

I live in walking distance to this view, and here’s a fun fact. About three years before we moved here, we brought our kids for a day trip. We were vacationing about two hours away and we’d always wanted to see this area. I remember looking around, wondering what it would be like to live in such a beautiful place, never imagining I’d actually wind up here. Now here we are, ten years in.

Reading on the sand, in the sun, is about the best thing ever, right? (Unless it’s napping on the beach in the shade.) But I do love to read between swims and my beach tote always has a couple of romances in it, usually written by my fellow Presents/Modern authors along with, yes!, a notebook for all my genius ideas.

I’m spoiled by choice here, with many great places to relax through the summer. I often drive over to this little beach:

It’s small and gets crowded in the summer (by ‘crowded,’ I mean there might be forty people here in the middle of the day) but I like it because the water gets deep really fast. I can’t waffle about getting wet. Sometimes if I have to wade out too far, I lose my nerve.

Thanks for joining me at the beach today! I’ll leave you with this shot I took while out for my evening walk a few days ago:

Dani’s SummerSizzler is Seduced Into The Greek’s World, where Canadian Natalie Adams is dreaming of a fling while she’s away from home and infamous playboy Demitri Makricosta fulfills all of her fantasies—never imagining his new mistress is a mom! Read our #SummerSizzler Saucy Extract here.

By The Mills & Boon team