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.

As she arrived on the other side of the puddle she stopped and turned, using those exquisite eyes to search the forest shadows on both sides of the road. She stared directly at Smoke’s hiding place, but still she didn’t see him.

Next, she looked back the way she’d come. She held her breath, the better to listen. Smoke held his breath and listened too, but there was only the sound of a breeze rustling the tree tops. Her pursuers were drawing close, but they had not caught her yet.

She set out again, renewing her frantic pace, but she had not gone ten paces when Smoke stepped out onto the path behind her. He allowed the leaves to rustle, and she whirled around as if she’d heard the growling of a wolf.

Smoke grinned. She was a pretty thing. “Here you are alone,” he observed.

–From The Dread Hammer by Trey Shiels

“. . . great action . . . fun and sexy.”

Ebook Edition:
Amazon.com USA
Amazon UK
Barnes & Noble

Print Edition:
Amazon USA
Barnes & Noble
Powell’s Books

My own Book View Café launch comes next week, but this week belongs to best-selling fantasy, science fiction, and thriller author Gregory Frost.

Look for his novel Lyrec, premiering this week exclusively at Book View Cafe. Lyrec is Greg’s bestselling first novel, back in print for the first time in 25 years. Epub and mobi samples are available for free download.

Book View Café is a professional authors cooperative offering DRM free ebooks in multiple formats to readers around the world, in a variety of genres including mystery, romance, fantasy, and science fiction. Check it out!

My home town newspaper, The Maui News published an article in today’s Sunday paper on my writing and on my latest novel, The Dread Hammer. Go take a look! It’s a truly nice write-up, with the title “The Magic of Fantasy.”

Side note–the article talks about research. A lot of fantasy writers do a A LOT of research for every book–probably more than I’ve ever done for any one science fiction novel. The Dread Hammer, being the sort of story it is, simply didn’t require a lot of background work, which was a big factor in helping me move forward with it.

Update: Just wanted to share the graphic from the newspaper’s print version. Forgive the terrible photo quality. This is a lovely and very creative spread by the newspaper’s graphic artist.

Sample the ebook here:
Amazon.com USA
Amazon UK
Barnes & Noble

Or find the print version here:
Amazon USA
Barnes & Noble
Powell’s Books

My how things change.

If you’re following the evolution of self-publishing, or if you’re into romance novels–or maybe it’s erotica?–you’re probably familiar with the latest “hot” book cover. There are subtle variations of course, but the basic idea is to display a man’s unclothed and well-developed chest. He is only seen from neck to waist. There is no head, no face, no personality. ***He’s a pure sex object–assuming you find anonymity attractive.

According to Wikipedia “Objectification is an attitude that regards a person as a commodity or as an object for use, with insufficient regard for a person’s personality or sentience.”

I grew up in the seventies when women were frequently and emphatically speaking out against sexual objectification. From what I remember, if you’d tried something like that with a woman–we’ll allow her a bikini top, but otherwise let’s imagine her featured on a book cover, shown only from neck to waist, her large breasts well-exposed, and no head showing, no face, no personality–well, I can hear the outcry ringing down through the decades.

I still don’t see women “featured” like this, but there are many such covers objectifying men. Having grown up in the seventies I personally find it rather embarrassing, not for the sexual connotations, but for the de-personalization. The cover type is so common though, I can only assume these books sell quite well.

*** I link to this particular book only because it happened to show up in my facebook feed today. And the cover certainly caught my eye!

The work-in-progress has reached the point where I’m holding quite a few plot threads in my metaphorical hands while trying to decide just how to weave them together as I approach the story’s climax. Each plot thread needs to make sense all the way up to the big event at the end. Each character needs to have something logical, meaningful, and interesting to do. It all can’t be too obvious and it can’t happen too easily. At the same time I must resist introducing anymore complexities or characters than those I’m already dealing with. The goal is to wind it up, not wind it out through more and more pages.

Over the last couple days I’ve been writing bits and pieces of narrative and dialog, trying to figure out what everyone’s doing, and how all their little events, conflicts, needs, and desires fit together. I’m getting closer, but this would be a really good time for my subconscious to present me with an “Ah ha!” moment that sends he on a long, exhausting writing binge.

Then again, I’m exhausted right now from just thinking about it.

“Name?” the majordomo program asked.

Nikko, who was in truth only a program himself, a modern ghost, an electronic entity copied from the mind of his original self, had little patience for Dull Intelligences. “The name’s Nikko,” he growled. “Rhymes with psycho. Nikko Jiang-Tibayan. I’ve only been here a hundred times you decrepit excuse for a secretary.”

He could hear Kirstin laughing, somewhere over the electronic horizon, a dim sound in the majordomo’s limited sensorial world. “Are you going to admit me or not?” he snapped.

“Of course, sir. The lady is expecting you.”

Amazon.com USA
Amazon UK
Barnes & Noble

Winner of the 1996 Locus Award for Best First Novel

Living in the Uttermost West, we operate on Hawaiian Standard Time (HST). Since we don’t do daylight savings in Hawaii, we are five hours behind the eastern USA in the winter, and six hours behind in the summer. The time difference with the west coast is two and three hours, depending on the season.

We are, for practical purposes, the last. There is another time zone beyond us, though I’m not sure if anyone lives there. Move just a little bit farther west and you cross the International Date Line and jump a day ahead.

One drawback of living here is when government or corporate reps forget there is a time difference and call at 5:30 in the morning. Business people will often have to be up for conference calls at 5:00am. And I’ve always thought stock traders must be challenged when they have to get up everyday at 3:30am for market opening.

One cool thing about living here that I’ve only recently become aware of is that our day overlaps in interesting ways with the days of other people around the world–something that’s become obvious to me by using twitter.

By the time I get up in the morning, generally around 6am, my twitter streams are full because people in the mainland USA have been awake for hours. It’s midday on the east coast and things are slowing down a bit. The Brits will soon be winding up their day.

Activity is pretty steady for hours after that. Very distracting! But towards evening here things can get very quiet as the mainland USA winds down. People from Hawaii seem to post a lot at this time. Ultimately, the Brits start showing up again. I follow a couple people in southeast Asia, but not closely enough that I’ve figured out their schedules yet.

Anyway, I enjoy the daily rhythm. And yes, I spend too much time online.