I'm highly qualified as a travel writer.This is me, in my passport photo, 1975, before my first trip "abroad".

I stayed on the road for 20 years.

In between my many years of foreign wanderings I worked as a receptionist, gift shop sales lady, luxury hotel concierge, clothing store manager, book shop clerk, office temp, retail jeweler, horologist, auction house executive, and Faberge expert.

I've also worked as an au pair, a chamber maid, a jewelry historian, and in a factory making plastic bottles for bleach.

Obviously, with all this job experience, I am very well-qualifed to be the boss of everybody. This meshes perfectly with my ability to be very judgemental.

But I digress.

This is me, totally sophisticated, after my first trip to Paris in 1975.

As I said, I stayed on the road for 20 years, getting (A) lots of life experience and (B) really good at living out of a suitcase.

But one day in my late 30s I suddenly decided to see what it would be like to stay put for a while.

On a whim, I chose a small Village on the Long Island Sound to be my permanent address.

The Long Island Sound is a bit of Atlantic Ocean that pokes into southern New England.

Considering that within 40 miles of the Sound there are 20 million inhabitants in New York, Connecticut, and Rhode Island, you don't hear much about the place. Probably because the Sound is made of water, and not real estate.

This is what a typical Long Island Sound village looks like.

I liked living here.

And it turns out that I liked staying put, too.

For the first time in my life I bought real furniture and I settled down. I reflected on my travels.

So I wrote a book about Traveling and Stying Put.

It took me ten years -- I'd never written a book before. I also made over 300 works of art to go with the stories. I'd never illustrated a book before.

The odds against ANY book ever getting published are long; the odds against a writer in her 50s getting published for the first time are longlonglonglong loooooooooong.

I found an agent who likes a lost cause, and she found a publisher who believes in letting a nobody have a chance.

If you are coming to your local library or bookstore to hear me talk about my book, that's the story I have to tell: How to Become a First Time Author at Age 52.

Groupies welcome.

Vivian Swift was born in Missoula, Montana in 1956. She still lives on the Long Island Sound.