Yes, I’m there. Are you? So far, I kind of like it.
I came to facebook very late, so it’s fun to be getting in early on this one.
And I just made a great discovery about Google+: We are allowed to edit our comments! Because when I notice that I’ve mixed up “too” and “two,” the writer in me really, really wants to fix it.
Find me here:
https://plus.google.com/104581817429922319534
It’s not a pretty link, but it’s me.
Starting today, my books are available at a new outlet, Book View Café.
Book View Café is a professional authors cooperative offering DRM free ebooks in multiple formats to readers around the world. You’ll find my books in both epub and mobi formats.
If you’ve got a Kindle, the mobi format will work for you. You can email the book to your Kindle, which is what I do, or hook the Kindle to your computer to transfer the file.
Epub format works for the Nook reader, and I believe for other devices too.
Note to readers outside the “Amazon countries”–BVC is the perfect outlet for you, because there is no price mark up. Ebooks are available at the same price no matter where you live.
Today only three of my books are available at BVC. They are The Bohr Maker, Memory, and The Dread Hammer.
Next to go up will be Deception Well and Vast, and the other books will follow.
TODAY ONLY: Check out the front page of Book View Café for a chance to win a free ebook of The Bohr Maker.
And check out the other authors at Book View Café too!
Just out from Book View Café: Chris Dolley’s An Unsafe Pair of Hands is a quirky murder mystery set in rural England charting the descent and rise of a detective on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
Peter Shand is the ‘safe pair of hands’ – a high-flying police administrator seconded to a quiet rural CID team to gain the operational experience he needs for promotion. On his second day he’s thrust into a high-profile murder case. A woman’s body is discovered in an old stone circle – with another woman buried alive beneath her.
The pressure on Shand is enormous. The case is baffling. There appears to be no link between the two crimes. The media is clamouring for answers. And Shand’s convinced his wife is having an affair with someone called Gabriel. Which just happens to be the name of the two chief suspects. Both are womanisers, and both produce a mystery woman – who sounds suspiciously like Shand’s wife – as their alibi, The pressure builds. Shand can’t sleep, a local journalist is out to discredit him, his wife is about to be dragged into the case and then, goaded at a press conference about lack of progress, he invents a lead. And keeps on lying – to the press, his boss, his team – telling himself that he’ll solve the case before anyone finds out.
And then a second murder occurs. And had there been a third?
Shand begins to doubt his ability. He’s desperate, increasingly unpredictable, pursued by an amorous psychic, and unjustly gaining a reputation for arresting livestock.
What’s going to break first? The case, or Shand?
Chris Dolley has been a computer consultant, a pioneer computer games designer, an amateur detective and once, as a teenager, freed a small country. Now he lives with his wife and a large collection of animals on a farm they renovated in the Normandy-Maine Regional Park.
Bucket List: a list of dumb things you decide you’ll do before you die.
Yesterday’s great adventure was a bucket list item: a day hike from Haleakala National Park’s crater rim visitor center, elevation 9,750-feet, to the Kaupo Trailhead, 17+ miles away, at an elevation of 950-feet.
Yes, it was all downhill, and yes, downhill is really, really hard after the first ten miles.
Here, at the start: my husband Ron and I, prepared for high-elevation sun. It’s 9:30am:
Point zero: initiate
This is the first half of where we’re going:
Stage 1 complete: We’ve descended a little over 3000′ and reached the crater floor. Photo shows the next segment, a flat stretch to Kapalaoa Cabin:
Stage 2 complete: That’s me outside of Kapalaoa Cabin, with the trail continuing behind me. Seven miles done so far. It’s 11:30am.
Stage 3 complete: Ron and I at the Paliku trail junction. We’ve seen four other people since the end of Stage 1. Two we met at this junction: a couple of young men who “touched the ocean” then headed uphill, making for the summit. At this point they were beginning to question their own judgment, but I’m sure they finished before we did.
We’ve done ten miles so far. Now the great descent begins. We will see no other people until our son picks us up at Kaupo Ranch.
Stage 4: the descent through Kaupo Gap, from Paliku to the park boundary. Here’s a look at where we’re going, though this photo does nothing to show the incredible beauty of this area:
Kaupo Gap is my favorite area of the park. It’s gorgeous, with a native forest that’s recovering nicely since the goats were eradicated from park lands. It’s also incredibly hard to get to, being a ten-mile hike from the visitor center, or a six to eight mile hike up the gap on a horribly steep trail in bad condition–and of course getting there is only half the story. You have to get out again.
We’ve got a ways to go yet:
Stage 5: the descent through the cow pastures. We’ve done about 14 miles so far. There’s a fence at the boundary between the park and Kaupo Ranch. The contrast between grazed and protected lands is, of course, profound. From now on, it’s cattle pastures:
We’ve got “only” three or four miles left to go, but we are not almost there by any means. This is by far the hardest part of the hike. The terrain is steep, we’re walking on a ranch road with treacherous sections covered with rolling rock, and our downhill muscles and joints have begun to take serious notice of the abuse. Our destination looks disturbingly far away:
I put my camera away and focused on getting down without twisting an ankle.
The last adventure of the day was wading through a herd of sixty-plus agitated cattle milling around the trailhead gate. Most were cows and calves. One was a bull. I was terrified. But they stood between us and the car, so we forged ahead and got through without incident. It was around 6:30pm, and our darling son had just arrived to pick us up.
Here’s a rough map of the day’s trek:
It was an interesting and challenging day, and we get to check an item off the bucket list, but in all honesty, I’m not feeling any compulsion to ever do it again!
…and in a fortuitous coincidence, I’ve just republished my short story Hooks, Nets, and Time, a near-feature thriller involving sharks, both traditional and human, and the practice of shark finning.
Shark fins are the key ingredient in the luxury dish shark-fin soup. Fins are harvested by hooking or netting sharks, cutting off their fins, and tossing the carcasses back into the ocean. Why isn’t the whole shark used? No idea. Here’s the article in the Honolulu Staradvertiser.
In Hooks, Nets, and Time the shark fin harvest is self-sustaining, but the hazards are real. Here’s the quick description:
Zayder works alone, tending the shark pen on an isolated ocean platform. A good job is hard to come by, so when his boss, Mr. Ryan, comes to visit he asks no questions, just drinks the cordial he’s offered and turns in early. But when Mr. Ryan’s plans go awry, it’s much too late for Zayder to close his eyes.
Hooks, Nets, and Time was originally published in August 1997 in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. It’s now a 99¢ short story. Here are the links:
Amazon USA
Amazon UK (£0.71)
Barnes & Noble
We ventured out to Lahaina on the west side today. It seems to me the last time we made the trek–not all that long ago–the hills were still charred from the last wildfire. Evidently, spring rains have produced a new crop of tinder dry summer grass:
In the photo below, Haleakala volcano’s green slope rises beyond the dry coast of West Maui. I’m guessing the green band is roughly 3000 to 3500 feet above sea level on this 10,000-foot mountain.
