When Vacations Go Wrong: A Guest Post From Diary of a Wimpy Kid Author Jeff Kinney

Almost everything that happens to Greg Heffley, the hero of my Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, happened to me as a kid in some shape or form. It’s all gone through the fiction blender on the highest setting, but the lowlights of Greg’s life are basically my own.
This is especially true for vacations. When a pig runs amok in the Heffleys’ minivan while the family rumbles down a busy highway in The Long Haul, that’s a funhouse mirror reflection of my family, circa 1975, in a station wagon, with a rabbit as the animal in question. Later in the same book, a flock of seagulls invades the Heffleys’ van. There’s nothing like being stuck inside a vehicle with panicked animals, and I know, because in reality, the seagulls were a bushel of live crabs that cut their way out of their paper bags and scrambled across the floor, snipping at our ankles. It’s possible the reason I change things around for my books is because the real-life experiences are too raw in my memory.

I’ve just finished writing The Getaway, which is one big island vacation gone terribly wrong. This time, I couldn’t draw on my childhood experiences, because a trip like the one the Heffleys take would’ve been out of bounds for my family, financially speaking. So this book is drawn from more recent memories of when I went on an island getaway with my friends in our post-college days.
The trip was filled with perilous situations… cab rides at 70 MPH down one-lane roads, almost-robberies and other unsavory experiences. But the most vivid memory from that trip came on the last day, when the three of us used what money we had left and bought day-passes for an all-inclusive resort. We tried a little of everything… trapeze lessons, tennis, volleyball… but we couldn’t find our stride. The day wasn’t living up to expectations, especially given the expense.
As our day passes were set to expire, we tried one last activity… windsurfing. It was harder than it looked, but we were motivated to get our windsurfers upright and out of the shallow water since the seabed was littered with sea urchins. One of my friends finally had success, and when the wind caught his sail, he shot across the water. I was right on his tail.

Before long, my friend crashed his windsurfer, and lost his Coke-bottle prescription glasses in the water. While he went to get something to help us find the glasses (snorkels and masks? scuba gear?) I held the spot, so as not to lose the place where my friend’s glasses were likely sitting on the ocean floor, below. That’s when I noticed the people on the beach, who all seemed to be looking my way.
Turns out I was floating just off-shore of the resort’s notorious “clothing optional” beach, and the sunbathers there weren’t happy to see a clothed intruder, bobbing just off shore . There was a lot of pointing and shouting and red faces. But I couldn’t abandon my spot, or my friend wouldn’t be able to see for the rest of the trip.
 So I swallowed my pride and held my ground. In The Getaway, Greg relives my nightmare, and my mortification. Of course, it’s all gone through the fiction blender.
The B&N Exclusive Edition of The Getaway is on B&N bookshelves November 7!