Galaxies is a beautiful publication, very nicely designed and put together, and I’m honored to appear there. Sadly, my forebears stopped speaking French long, long ago and I’ve never taken it on myself to learn, so I can’t read a word of it.

In closing, a note to all you budding novelists out there—try to publish a few short stories, because down the line someone, somewhere will ask to re-publish one as a means to introduce a new set of readers to your work. I’ve only ever written a handful myself, but they’re nice to have around.

The Galaxies cover and first page of the dossier.

My best guess is I saw a star or planet in near alignment with a more distant star, and the flickering was a result of refraction as it sank lower behind the humid atmosphere. But I’m not good at reading star charts and would appreciate further thoughts.

This was between 10pm and 10:30pm HST, August 18. Approx lat/long 20.90 156.43

Kapalaoa Cabin, aka “The First Cabin” is located in Haleakala National Park, six miles in from Haleakala Crater rim. The trail starts at around 9800’ and descends to 7200’, with most of the descent in the first half of the hike. I’ve hiked in to and out from Kapalaoa Cabin many times, but never on the same day, so I figured, Why not?

It would give me a chance to take some pictures, and to try out the concept of hiking with two hiking poles.

I’ll admit that in my foolish youth I looked down on hiking poles—until a few years ago when a friend loaned me one on a long downhill slog. I was amazed at the difference it made and I’ve often used one since. But I never tried hiking with two poles.

The first thing I found out is that I cannot hike with a pole in each hand and a camera around my neck. I’ll have to look for a chest pack or something, because I can’t stand the camera banging against me. So I put one of the poles away until I got to the last, and roughest, part of the descent. At that point the camera went into the pack and I set out with both poles in hand.

By this time the husband was far ahead, since I’d been stopping to take pictures. So I set out at full speed—and with the help of those two poles I’m fairly sure I set personal records for the last leg of the descent, and for crossing the cinder flats that follow. Walking a trail through dry cinder is like walking through dry sand. The poles proved surprisingly useful in this situation, since they provided a solid point to push off.

We offloaded the supplies, and hiked out with little more than water and snacks in the packs. Overall, the trip went well—and today I have a good excuse not to work out!

Looking down Sliding Sands Trail from near the top. The trail follows the foot of the crater wall on the right of the photo.

The cinder flats, after the initial steep descent from the crater rim. This photo shows bracken fern on either side of the trail, but the fern soon gives way to a barren cinder area.

Kapalaoa Cabin, built in the 1930s by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC).

Oh yeah, we have to climb out again! This is a view of Sliding Sands Trail as it ascends to the crater rim.

The re-write turned out to be a stuttering, sputtering process, with periods of productivity interrupted by long periods of nothing much getting done. But late in the game things finally started to click. I was suddenly immersed in the process, and completely neglected my other projects, with the happy result that Draft 3 was finally finished yesterday.

Hoorah!

The next step is to send it to a few test readers, to see what sort of reaction it gets. I’ll confess I’m nervous. The last two drafts didn’t fare too well. Let’s hope this one does better!

In the meantime, I get to start something new.

What was going on? Had I been transported to the Island of Dr. Moreau? Was someone in the neighborhood doing weird experiments on the local bird life? Please tell me that is not really the head of a black finch transplanted onto the body of a cardinal . . . .

A Google search soon informed me I wasn’t the only one who had seen such a sight and wondered about it. The bird in question is definitely a cardinal, but it’s a bald cardinal, with no feathers on its head.

Opinions on what causes cardinals to lose all their head feathers are mixed, but most seem to involve mites and seasonal molting. It is agreed the condition generally takes place after the breeding season, that it isn’t permanent, and that the feathers grow back.

I have to say though, that a cardinal with a head as bald as a vulture’s is a rather disturbing sight.

Then I picked up a terrific book called Younger Next Year by Chris Crowley and Henry S. Lodge, M.D., which can be summarized thus: “Exercise hard one hour a day, six days a week and don’t eat crap.” So together my husband and I cut down on the crap and started working out more, and lo, I dropped a couple more pounds.

Shortly thereafter we embarked on a deliberately low-fat diet, while continuing the exercise regimen, and after a few months I stepped on a scale and laughed, knowing the damn thing was broken. But a second scale concurred exactly with the first. Those twelve pounds I wasn’t worried about losing? They had just gone away.

I credit it to the diet.** Our focus is on low-fat and high fiber/whole grain, and for myself, I think the food is great. I don’t feel like I’m suffering or deprived, but I will concede it’s challenging to eat out and still stick to the rules. Also, meal prep can take longer, but not all that much longer.

It works for me. Just thought I’d share.

** When I say “diet” I mean “what I typically eat” and definitely not “going on a diet.”

A few weeks ago I picked up a new CD by The Black Keys. I was rather amused to open it and see that the back of the CD was utterly black. I held it up to the light. I looked around the inner rim. Nope. No writing. No song titles. Nothing. Okay, well I guess this is novel, post-modern, whatever.

So I finally popped it into the iMac this morning, imported the songs into iTunes, and popped it out again. To my *shock* the back of the CD was now gray, with all the usual sorts of black writing on it. Oh cool! I thought. First-use reveals the writing!

But as I sit here the CD, warmed up a bit in the drive, is cooling off and the impenetrable black finish is returning, flowing in slowly from the outer perimeter. I’m entertained.

Maybe this is an old trick to you more worldly types. Then again, you more worldly types don’t buy CDs anymore, do you?

Titles can just be seen behind the black finish.

* The tech doesn’t have to be explained. The script successfully handles lots of tricky concepts, but says not one word (that I can recall) about how the architecture of shared dreams is communicated, and that’s okay. I don’t need to know. I just need the “What if”—what if we could do this. Coming from a hard science fiction background, this was enlightening.

* World building isn’t always necessary. So far as I could tell, the story was set in the present, in the world we live in, except that this dream technology exists. There’s no attempt to extrapolate what the world might look like ten or fifteen years hence when this technology is maturing, or to explore what other effects it might have on society. The story is tightly focused on itself and not at all interested in the world at large, which works great in this movie.

And a minor bonus lesson:

* Titles are tricky. I love one word titles, but “Inception” was hard to get my head around. Exception? Incision? Invictus? What the hell was it again?

If you can remember the title, go see it, and let me know what you think.

The subject came to mind after reading the blog of a fellow Maui writer, Toby Neal:

At the time I listened to this lecture I’d begun Hawaiian Orchid and was about halfway through it. I was stalled, losing interest and faith I could finish it, and out of ideas. But I wrote a question on a 3X5 card: “Who’s the bad guy?”

It wasn’t two hours later when I had the answer! I ran to my computer and feverishly typed out the entire showdown scene. I’d never been so galvanized. But it was way too soon in the book, so I began writing down other questions, or even just the glimmer of an idea, like, “Gunfight Scene” which I thought would be cool to have but had no idea how to do, write, or work in. The ‘answers’ would appear, almost like magic.

I like the sound of this technique and I intend to try it out sometime soon. The method I’ve used is similar but it’s a step closer to traditional brainstorming. Very simply, it involves sitting down with a pen and paper and writing down questions about the story and the characters, and then trying to answer them. Absurd answers are fine, so long as they are answers. Oh yes–and the pen keeps moving. Try not to stop writing. This is where it becomes the same as traditional brainstorming. The big difference is that instead of writing anything that comes to mind, the mind should stay focused on story problems. If answers aren’t coming to the question just asked, try asking different questions!

This technique doesn’t always work, but when it does, it works really really well. I don’t think I could have written my early novels without it.

Oh–and despite often-heard opinions to the contrary, typing works just as well as handwriting for me–sometimes better.

The characters will remain the same, as will the location and even the ultimate result, but the details of how it all happens–just about every part of that will need to change.

At first I was extremely annoyed. But then I drew up a list of all the plot elements that now need to be included and it turned out that there was a lot to work with. Next I went on a long walk. I don’t usually get ideas while walking or working in the garden and such, but sometimes it helps, and this was one of those times. Short scenes started coming to mind, events, motivations . . . I even called home a couple times to leave some ideas on the answering machine so I wouldn’t forget them. I’m feeling better about it now. I’m even starting to think I could have a much better ending this time around.