Jessica Grace Coleman

Welcome to the Travel Transformation Podcast, where we talk all things travel and all things transformation. My name is Jessica Grace Coleman, and I'm your host, and today I'm talking to author Leigh Lincoln.

Leigh has spent the better part of her last 30 years involved in homeless and poverty advocacy. Her novel, Road Home, was born out of this work. She wanted to make people think about their lives and how they live, but most importantly, about how they treat others and how they want to be treated. 

Her other novels – Road to Freedom, Finding the Real Road, and The Road West – look at how our lives don't always follow the path we choose, but yet somehow we must pick up the broken pieces and move on. How we grow and where our strength comes from is what's most important. 

She loves to inspire others to find their voice, explore the world, and never be left out of the conversation. Her passion lies in crafting inspiring novels that impact readers on a deep emotional level. Through her storytelling, she aims to inspire, uplift, and provoke thoughtful conversations. 

In this episode, we discuss her book series and how she accidentally wrote her first book, the way she's incorporated her travels into the stories she writes, and how she uses her platform as an author to help the homeless. 

Now, I love talking about all things travel and all things writing, so let's get straight to the interview!

Hi, Leigh, welcome to the podcast. How are you doing today?

Leigh Lincoln

I am doing great. How about you?

Jessica Grace Coleman

Oh, yeah, I'm good, thank you. So, just to begin with, please can you give me and our listeners a bit of background information about you, where you're from, what you do, and a little bit about your story so far?

Leigh Lincoln

I am Leigh Lincoln and I am from the United States. I live in the south now, but I originally am from out west, and I am the author of four inspirational novels.

Jessica Grace Coleman

Amazing. And I can see them on your screen, so that's really cool. And it's the Broken Road series. Can you tell me about this? What are the books in the series and what are they about?

Leigh Lincoln

So the first book, Road Home, is about a homeless hitchhiker who kind of wanders all over the United States. And then she hits a point where she needs to share her story and figure out where she went wrong. And each book has a character who hits a point where they need to share their story and figure out what goes wrong. So that's kind of the theme of each book. 

But Road to Freedom is about a man who's dying of cancer, and he takes his new bride to Cuba and Spain, where he's lived before, and then he shares his story. Then Finding the Real Road is about a woman with a really bad marriage, and so she travels from out west to down south and shares her story about where she went wrong and why it took her so long to get the divorce that she really badly needed. 

And then my final one, The Road West, is about an elderly woman who had a moment of indiscretion in her youth where she almost had an affair, and now a stranger knocks on her door and gets her to share her story. So you see Cuba and Spain, Italy, and New York in that one. So all of them have various different places because every character has a physical, emotional, and spiritual journey that they're on.

Jessica Grace Coleman

Wow, great. That sounds amazing. So I'm going to ask about the places in a bit, but can you tell me what made you want to be an author in the first place? Have you always been into reading and writing?

Leigh Lincoln

I've always been into reading. I read a ton. I read 300-500 books a year. I binge-read, not binge-watch. I'm one of those people. Yeah, but my first book, Road Home, I wrote purely by accident. I didn't mean to write a book. I was journaling out my frustrations because people weren't listening to me. And then I accidentally wrote a book. So that was a happy accident. 

Jessica Grace Coleman

I've never heard anyone say they accidentally wrote a book, so that's amazing. Wow, you read a lot. I mean, I love reading too, but 300 to 500 books a year, that's incredible. I know this is the worst question ever, but do you have a favourite book or a favourite author, or several favourite books or any recommendations you want to give?

Leigh Lincoln

Well, I really like the old-school books like Hemingway and Steinbeck. I'm really old school. It might be my age, but maybe because they're so literary and so in-depth, and a lot of books now are kind of fluffy. And so that may just be my personal preference, but I really like some of those old-school books. And of course, Hemingway has attracted me because some of the places he writes about – Spain and Cuba – hey, connection here. You get the connection? 

Jessica Grace Coleman

Yeah, I was going to ask about that because you say that you do all the research for your novels in person. So that means travelling to places like Cuba, Spain, and all over America. So do you like travelling anyway? Have you always been travelling? And if you're doing this as research for a novel, how do you approach a trip? Do you have specific things you do? Do you take notes or do you just go and then use it in your books afterwards?

Leigh Lincoln

What I do is I just go and let myself get immersed in somewhere and just really get to understand where I am. So, for example, when I was in Gran Canaria in Spain, I took a wawa – which is a bus – high up into the mountains into this little town called Teror. And I found this little local festival. They had people in costume doing their native dances and their native music, and they had all the local foods and all this beautiful artwork for sale. And I just immersed myself in the local culture for a day. 

And it was just such a beautiful experience that when I wrote my book, Road to Freedom, I just felt it had to be included. So I put my characters into that situation. I wrote all about this whole experience of the wawa and everything. So you actually feel like you are there in this whole crazy experience that I myself have had, because I want my readers to go on the same journeys I've been on. 

I approach research very differently. I have an idea of where I want my characters to go, and then I go there and I find experiences. I don't go looking for an experience. I go find an experience. And sometimes I do need very specific information. Like, I was looking for very specific information about some of the things that happened during Castro's reign and during Franco's reign. So sometimes I need some very specific information, but sometimes I just want the ambience of what's going on around me.

And sometimes getting lost is just a beautiful, beautiful thing. I love just getting lost and just talking to the locals and just getting to know them and getting to know what makes them tick and what they love about wherever they live.

Jessica Grace Coleman

And I was going to ask you about that because you mentioned a time you got lost in Rome, which led to something... Can you tell me about that?

Leigh Lincoln

Yeah, I got lost in Rome one time. I got lost in Rome and ended up in this little back alley. It was a dead-end alley, and I was going to have to turn around, but there was a bunch of little school kids in the alley, and they were like, what are you looking for? Because clearly you've made a wrong turn, right? So we're talking to these kids, and they were like, well, as long as you're here, just join our group for a little bit, because we're about to go in and see this, and it's closed to the public, but you can just pretend you're with us and go in here. And we're like, okay, I don't know what you're talking about because I don't speak Italian… their English wasn't great because, right, they're kids? 

So we went in, and it was an archaeology site. They were renovating what had at one point been a church, but it had been turned into a school and later a private home. And so then they were slowly unravelling all the layers of centuries of work that had been done on this building to bring it back to the church that it originally was. So, as the archaeologists were peeling back the layers, you could see all the different things that had gone on. And this was closed to the public. They were letting the kids see it because of the history aspect of it. And these were Italian kids, right, in Rome. And we got to see this as Americans, even though we shouldn't have. All because I got lost. 

So, yeah, it was absolutely amazing, them talking about the whole history of that particular little neighbourhood in Rome, because, of course, they were trying to explain this to school kids, right? So I got to see something and hear something that very few will ever get to see, hear, and experience, all because I was willing to just throw up the map and get lost. It was beautiful and amazing and just so rare and unique. 

And I think this is one of the problems with Americans. Americans are really stuck on ‘we have to be part of a group. We have to follow the map.’ And I'm not like that at all. I refuse to be one of those who are stuck looking at a map. And I see them all the time when I go to Europe, they're everywhere. They're on every corner. I've got my map. Where am I?

Jessica Grace Coleman

Yeah, I totally agree with that. I love how you stumbled upon that. That's a great thing to stumble upon. And, yeah, the map thing as well. I love going to a place. I always have a list of things I want to visit so I don't miss out, but then I love just wandering around on my own and seeing where I end up. Because you're right, there are so many places that I wouldn't even know existed because they're not listed on the top ten things to do on TripAdvisor or whatever. Or, like, beautiful buildings that I would never have seen or cute little cafes or something that you stumble upon. So I love doing that, and I love that story. Has that made it into any of your books? The archaeological stuff?

Leigh Lincoln

That hasn't yet. But the other thing that I accidentally found when I got lost in Rome… there was another little alley I was wandering down by accident. I keep finding these weird little alleys, I'm just saying! I was walking down this alley and all of a sudden the church bells started to ring in Rome, and the way the alley was lined with stones, the bells just crescendoed off the alley. And it was just this moment where you could literally hear the bells in your soul, the way it was ringing. It was just this beautiful, beautiful moment. 

And it's really hard to describe, and I described it as well as I could in my book, The Road West, because it's just this beautiful moment of… you're just completely surrounded by those bells chiming because of the way they echoed off the walls. And it was just absolutely amazing. 

And after it was over, I wondered how many people had heard this throughout the centuries, throughout history. Because if you happen to be walking down that alley at the right moment in time, this is what you hear. It just crescendoed off those walls. It was so beautiful. And yeah, bells can be really loud when you're standing right next to them! It was just so magical the way it echoed. And I was the only one just standing. Everybody else in the alley just kept going about their business, right? Because this was a daily thing for them. This was like, oh, no big deal. This is my town. Yeah, I need to get to work, right? But for me, I just stopped and I just listened because it's just so beautiful. 

And this is another thing that most Americans are going to miss, because A, they're probably not going to be going down some sketchy alley anyway, and B, alleys aren't ever on a map. It was haunting. It was so beautiful. It was just absolutely amazing. And that did make it into The Road West, because there was a moment in that book where it fit so perfectly with the character that I was like, oh, I can totally use this.

Jessica Grace Coleman

That's amazing; I love that. I talk about magical movie moments a lot in my content, that you often get when travelling. And that is just the perfect example of it as well. You can just imagine that you're in a scene in a movie and this magical thing happens and no one else is paying attention to it, but you actually just stop and be in the moment and be present and take it in and yeah, I can just imagine it the way you were describing it. So I'm glad that made it into your book that's really cool. 

Now, you said you wrote the first book by accident, but for the other books, do you have a process? Do you use any kind of software? Do you write so many words a day, or do you go on sprints? How do you do it?

Leigh Lincoln

I try to write between 3000 and 8000 words a day. Sometimes I hit as many as ten. But part of the reason I do so many – because that sounds like I can write a book, like, in five days, right – is because I throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks. So for me to write a 60,000-word book, that means I'm actually writing, like, 300,000 words, because half of what I write is absolute garbage and a third of what I write is sort of okay, but probably is going to get thrown out in the end. And then there's this little nugget in there that my editor is like, okay, we can clean this up a bit and tweak it and make this great.

Jessica Grace Coleman

Yeah, I totally relate to that. I'm a writer as well, and I do the same thing. I always think it doesn't matter… it's the first draft, it doesn't matter if it's rubbish. Most first drafts are just to get it on the paper. Because the worst thing is looking at a blank page and just not being able to start. So even if you're starting with absolute rubbish, just get it down there. You can edit later. It's all like the ‘right drunk, edit sober’ as well. It doesn't matter how bad it is the first time. You can sort it out afterwards. Definitely.

Leigh Lincoln

Yeah. So a lot of people, when they hear my word count, they're like, wait, you only do a book a year? How do you do that when your word count’s that high? And I'm like, yeah, because you're not understanding how much garbage is on the page. 

Jessica Grace Coleman

Yeah, and how much time it takes to edit it down to something that makes sense.

Leigh Lincoln

Yeah. To get it down to that tiny little nugget that's in the middle of all the craziness. 

Jessica Grace Coleman

Definitely relating hard with that. We mentioned travel a bit there. Have you always been into travel? 

Leigh Lincoln

Yeah, when I was a kid, my parents travelled a ton. I didn't travel quite as much when I was a single mother, as it was pretty limited. And now that I'm an empty nester and my kid is on his own again, I am just having so much fun just wandering the world and just getting out there and living my life. Not that I am saying it was bad being a mother! But I just say I have way less responsibilities now, and so I can just get out there and do whatever I want and it's just so freeing and just so fun. There's something about travel, and I think this is another thing a lot of Americans miss. I've read somewhere that less than 20% of Americans even have a passport.

Jessica Grace Coleman

Yeah, I've heard similar statistics.

Leigh Lincoln

I think we really need more of us to just get out there and wander the world. There's so much to see and so much to do and yeah, it's great that I've got a few people reading my books and going, oh, I would love to someday visit blah blah, blah. But don't just think about it. Go do it. And I'm having the time of my life. I've been to Greece, which so far hasn't made it into a book, but it totally needs to. But yeah, I've been all over and I just love it. But even as a kid, I travelled a lot. I was a foreign exchange student in Germany as a kid and I wandered around Canada and all over the United States with my parents. So I just always loved to travel. It's just always kind of been my thing.

Jessica Grace Coleman

Nice. And how was the foreign exchange then? How old were you and where in Germany did you go?

Leigh Lincoln

I went to a small town outside of Hamburg and I loved it. The family was amazing and it was a wonderful experience. And that's another thing I think every kid should do: be a foreign exchange student when they're in high school. I was in high school. I do think every kid should have that experience, even if it's just the summer program. Spend a couple of months over there with family, get to see that we're all people, we're all the same. It doesn't matter what side of the planet you're on. 

Like I said, the family I stayed with, they were absolutely beautiful and amazing and I had so much fun. And of course that was when Germany was two countries and so they actually got to take me to East Germany to visit their family and we had to get special permission, of course, because I was an American, and it was a real eye opener for me as an American back then. 

And there are a whole lot of issues going on now, but if you start young, getting to see some of these experiences versus going as an adult… I know I've talked to other people my age who are just amazed how often I go to Europe and they're like, oh, you're older, you should be slowing down. And I'm like, even at this age we should be travelling. I don't believe that there's any time to stop travelling. We need to start young and just keep going because there's something about travel that just lights up your soul and makes you be a different person, and you see things that you can incorporate into your life. 

Americans don't slow down. We don't sit and enjoy a meal, whereas you go to Spain and they'll sit and people-watch, sitting on a patio after dinner for like four hours, and nobody looks twice. If you're doing that at a restaurant in America, they're going to be telling you to leave their restaurant after half an hour, right? We have very different cultures and we need to learn these things and we need to see how other people are and not just think ‘my little corner of the universe is the only place that's perfect.’

Jessica Grace Coleman

I totally agree with all of that. And when you mentioned about Spain, it made me laugh because I've been to Spain the past couple of springs and it's exactly the same. I'm so used to rushing around, hardly taking any time to have dinner. And there you would just sit and have… I was in a coliving, and we'd have family dinners, and our dinners would just be like four hours, five hours, everyone would be drinking wine, just talking, just chilling. And I'd just be going, I've got work to do. I really shouldn't just be sitting here! But then you're like, well, why not? This is great. And it just shows you that there are different ways of doing things.

Leigh Lincoln

Oh yeah, and Spain is one of my favourite countries for that reason. They have such a relaxed lifestyle. I mean, shops close for a couple of hours in the middle of the afternoon everywhere, and they have these huge relaxing dinners. And if you're by yourself or you're in a small group, they'll just pull you over to the table next to you and draw you into the conversation. ‘Oh no, there's only two of you? Oh no, come over with us. That's too small. You need to be part of this big group. What's going on in your life?’ They have this huge different culture and it's loud and it's wonderful and it's community. And even if you're not part of their community, that doesn't matter. And that's one of the things I love about Spain, is everyone's family. And whether you're family or not doesn't even really matter.

Jessica Grace Coleman

Yeah, totally agree. That's great. You mentioned before about how everyone should do a foreign exchange if they can, and I think that's so true. If you can either go on an exchange or, like you say, a summer program or something when you're a teenager, that just sews the seed for the travel bug, and it will hit you and you will want to keep doing it. And like you say, it just shows you what other people in the world are like and that they're similar to you. And also it shows you what you're capable of if you don't ever think, oh, I could solo travel to this country or something. Like if you go on exchange, you're like, actually it's not too bad, I could do this. And it shows you how accessible travel actually is when you start thinking about it. So I love that.

You mentioned you went to Cuba, which I've never been to. Can you tell me a bit about Cuba, what you liked about it?

Leigh Lincoln

It's very different. It depends on where you go. Because in Havana, they try really hard to keep certain areas okay for tourists. But the country itself is extremely impoverished and so everyday people have nothing. I know quite a bit about Cuban immigrants for various reasons, and they try to bring stuff to Cuba all the time so that their family has things, because otherwise they'd have nothing. So it really kind of depends on where you go in Cuba. 

But Cuba is very different. And there are people in Cuba that literally their only source of income is pickpocketing from tourists. So you have to be really careful where you are at all times and be presently aware of what's going on around you. I'm not saying it's unsafe, but I am saying it's because of the government situation there. You do need to make sure you stay with a group or with someone who is from that country that you trust. 

Because of the situation, there are a lot of restrictions, and it is what it is. And I think it will never change because that government just doesn't seem to want to let go of that country, unfortunately, which is a real shame, because there are some absolutely amazingly beautiful people in Cuba who are just lovely, and they have some of the most beautiful beaches in the world, like the black sand beaches. And it's an amazing place.

Unfortunately, because of the situation that the government has created, it's sad, and it is what it is, and you as a tourist cannot change it. But one thing I do caution people is to realise that when you're going as a tourist, you are putting money into the hands of the government, not into the hands of the people.

Jessica Grace Coleman

Yeah, that's something to be aware of, definitely. And Cuba made it into one of your books, did you say? 

Leigh Lincoln

It has made it into two – Road to Freedom just mentioned Cuba as well as Road West. Both of them discussed Cuba before Castro and a little bit about trying to defect, because both of them have characters who defect from Cuba. I have lots of friends that live here in the United States that are from Cuba. Some of them defected. Some of them were able to get out through other means. I know lots of Cuban immigrants. That is a very difficult situation because, again, some of them still have family in Cuba that are unable to get out. 

Jessica Grace Coleman

Yeah. Now, I know some of the proceeds from your novels go to homeless charities, and you spent the better part of the last 30 years involved in homeless and poverty advocacy. So can you tell me about that and why you're so passionate about helping the homeless? 

Leigh Lincoln

Well, it was something I just always felt led to do, and even as a teenager, I was helping homeless people, so it just always was something I did. And when I wrote the first book, again, I did it purely by accident, and it's about a homeless woman. I was never going to write more than one book because, again, it was an accident. And so I thought I'll raise some money for charity and it'll be a good thing. 

So I continue to do that with all of my books – give money to charity. It's just one of my big heartfelt things, trying to get people some dignity in life and help them get into their first home, and not ending up on the streets in the first place. There are a lot of ways to help, and so that's something I continue to do. And now that I've written four books, I have a much bigger platform than when I was just a volunteer at a soup kitchen or a homeless shelter. And it's been really wonderful what I've been able to do with being an author.

Jessica Grace Coleman

I love that. I love how you've combined two passions, helping the homeless and writing, and put them together. That's really cool. Okay, so I believe that if people sign up for your newsletter, they can get a free short story. So where can they go if they want to get this? 

Leigh Lincoln

My website, which is leighlincolnnauthor.com, and Leigh is spelled L-E-I-G-H. And then author@leighlincolnauthor.com. 

Jessica Grace Coleman

Great! And just before we go, what would you say is the biggest lesson or lessons you've learned either through travel or through writing your books?

Leigh Lincoln

I would think the biggest lesson is just to be yourself, no matter where you are, because you are unique. And just go live your life and make every moment count. And every life is precious and unique and it doesn't matter whether you're travelling, whether you're writing, whether you're doing your job, whatever it is, just be you. So often we don't allow ourselves to be what makes us unique.

Jessica Grace Coleman

Yeah, totally agree with that. And like you said earlier, when you're travelling, you can become this completely different person as well that you never knew was in there, which I always find interesting when you're travelling, going to new places, meeting new people, and trying new things. So, yeah, definitely agree with that. Okay, so you mentioned your website there, but is there anywhere else people can find and follow you online?

Leigh Lincoln

You can find me on Facebook really easily. Leigh Lincoln author, just look that up on Facebook. You can find my page, and there are various weird pictures from various places around the world.

Jessica Grace Coleman

Great! And I'll put the links to your website and Facebook in the show notes as well. Well, that's it! Thank you so much for coming on and talking about your books. I'm going to have to go and check them out now. Thank you for coming on today.

Leigh Lincoln

Thanks for having me. I really enjoyed it. 

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