According to Wikipedia…

Obon (お盆?) or just Bon (盆?) is a Japanese Buddhist custom to honor the departed (deceased) spirits of one’s ancestors.

On Maui the season of “Bon Dances” runs from late June through the first week of August. As the weeks pass, the festival moves from church to church, ending at the Buddhist church in my district of Kula. It’s a community festival, fun and upbeat, open and welcoming to everyone. We like to check in most years.

Services are held early. The cemetery is decorated with lanterns, and incense is provided at the shrines. The dance begins at nightfall, and there’s always a packed audience and lots of participants, some in full traditional dress, and some in street clothes. The music is recorded, but the taiko drumming is live, which makes all the difference.

Oh yes, the food is good too. It’s sold as a fundraiser, so we generally come home with a full bag of chow fun and extras.

Photos were taken tonight, August 6, and the weather was perfect.

Look what came yesterday:

That’s the proof copy of the new Mythic Island Press LLC print edition of Deception Well, next to The Bohr Maker. Both enjoy Bruce Jensen’s terrific cover art.

I’ll look at the proof in more detail later today, but so far, it looks good, which means that Barnes & Noble, at least, should have it available online by next week. Amazon is more problematical, but that’s for another blog post.

It’s not at all clear that the time, money, and effort spent to put The Nanotech Succession books back into print will prove financially worthwhile, but it’s definitely emotionally satisfying. Vast will be next, likely as a September book.

Someone in my twitter stream–I don’t know who–posted this Ernest Hemingway quote this morning…

“All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.”

…and my first gut response was– “Shit.” That’s the truest sentence I know. At which point I literally laughed out loud, realizing I may have ventured a little too far toward cynical.

For some reason this incident has remained stuck in my head all day, so to exorcise it, I’ll offer instead an even more perfect sentence, not written by me, but by Hemingway himself:

“Isn’t it pretty to think so.”

It’s a stealth weapon. Its attacks are rare and random. It generally strikes once and is gone. It’s never seen.

Case History: I will feel a sudden, slight prick, generally under clothing, and discover a fresh “bug” bite, but with nothing there that could have caused the bite. The bite will swell into a hard, mildly itchy lump, and will often develop a red halo an inch and a half or more across. If that’s an infection, this little nasty has some very dirty jaws.

Additional Details: There is only one bite. Months, even years, separate repeat occurrences. Geography doesn’t seem to matter. The last time this happened was nine months ago in an air-conditioned hotel room in Palm Desert, California.

Occam’s Razor suggests the assailant is a naturally evolved arthropod—either insect or arachnid—but exactly what it is, I still have no idea.

It’s not a mosquito. I hardly react to those and they don’t get under clothes.

It’s probably not a bedbug or a flea, because they don’t bite just once and then disappear.

I’m guessing it’s a spider, probably a tiny, newly hatched one. I’d really like to know what it is though. I’d like to see it. So I can smash it.

Deep down, I’m not a very nice person.

The stars aligned, the Gods willed it, and suddenly the husband and I found ourselves with a Blue-ray capable Playstation, a young man who could show us how to use it, and a set of Battlestar Galactica Blue-ray DVDs in hand.

We both had vague memories of the nothing-to-brag-about 1970s version of BSG, but neither of us had seen any episodes from the “new” series. So we set out to watch the four (or is it 4.5?) seasons. We finished the series a few nights ago. I’m assuming just about everybody else out there has seen the series, but if not, BE WARNED: there are lots of spoilers after the jump!!

Here are the more memorable comments made as the series progressed:
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I’ve never tried writing flash fiction. Until very recently I didn’t even know what it was, but now that I do, I find the concept fascinating.

A full story concept needs a beginning, middle, and end, along with a story problem and character change. Every time I sit down to develop a story, I feel challenged to come up with all these elements, even at novel length. So I’m fascinated by the ability to accomplish all of this in an ultra short story.

This week, Book View Café releases a collection of flash fiction, Flashes of Illumination by our own Nancy Jane Moore. Here’s the background:

Nancy Jane Moore wrote her first flash fiction many years ago when every one in her writing group decided to enter a contest for one-page stories. None of them won, but she got hooked and has been writing short-shorts ever since. Her first project for Book View Café was posting a free flash fiction every week for a year. Some were reprints, others older stories that needed one more revision, but quite a few were written in the week they went up. This 52-story collection includes most of those stories and a few new ones as well.

Nancy Jane Moore’s other books include the collection Conscientious Inconsistencies and the novella Changeling. Her short fiction has appeared in a number of magazines and anthologies, including the two volumes of The Shadow Conspiracy. She is a founding member of Book View Café and lives in Austin.

Mostly, I don’t go to the beach. I grew up on the north shore of Oahu, in a rented house right on the beach, and in those days I went swimming almost every day. These days, the only time I get to the beach is when my nephews come to visit. It’s the perfect excuse to spend time doing the fun things in life.

Here are a few pictures of where we’ve been:

Big Beach, at Makena State Park, South Maui. This is one of the most beautiful beaches in the world, I'm sure. The shorebreak is fun, but dangerous, with waves that love to slam you down on the sand. Islands in the background are Kaho`olawe on the left, and Molokini on the right.

Looking uphill from Big Beach, toward Ulupalakua on Haleakala volcano. Makena is one of the few glorious beaches without nearby development.

Flemings Beach Park in West Maui isn't as scenic as Makena, but the waves are kinder. We all had a lot of fun playing in the shorebreak.

Twin Falls, on Maui's north shore is at the end of a private road where visitors are allowed to hike and enjoy the waterfall and pool. The water is murky and cool, but not terribly cold. This was a great break after too-much-sun at the beaches.

We also had an afternoon at Kanaha Beach Park on the northside, but I don’t have any photos of that.

And now that my “staycation” is over, it’s back to trying to figure out how to make a living in this writing business.