Walks in the Woods

I had grand plans today for a nice walk in the woods. The weather is lovely, and I even picked up sandwich materials on the way to ballet last night. But I woke up with allergies run amok, and walking in the woods might not be the brightest thing ever to do when I have a choir rehearsal in the morning to gear up for Christmas. I think I will make a library run this afternoon because a book I requested is in and it's supposed to be a cold, rainy Sunday.

So in lieu of a walk in the woods, here are some more images from last weekend's walking in the woods.

Here's one of the more interesting bits of one of the hiking "paths." I have to use the term loosely because there was no real path. You just looked for the red marks on the trees and made your own way from mark to mark.


And here's my full dose of fall colors, taken from right behind my room. The view was north-northeast, but the setting sun hit the opposite hill and really lit it up. Just about everyone staying at the lodge was out there taking pictures of this.


Then on the second day's hike, see those rocks on the hill on the other side of the lake?


Here's the view from on top of them. I had to walk all the way around the lake and up the hill to get there.

On the Trails

I'm now home from vacation. I had a wonderful time, but I kind of failed in the "resting and relaxing" plan to come home refreshed instead of tired. But I think I'm mentally refreshed and it's a good kind of physical tiredness. I did a lot of hiking, probably too much, and not necessarily by plan.

There are marked trails throughout this state park, but the trails aren't necessarily improved, with an obvious path. In places, there are just marks on trees, and how you get from one to the other is up to you. So you reach one marker and look for the next marker before setting off. They haven't really updated the markers that much in a while, and in a few places the markers are wrong and haven't been corrected. That's what happened to me on Friday's hike. There was a spot where I really should have turned left, but there were markers for that trail going right and I guess I looked to my right first, where there was what looked like an obvious path. But after a while the markers changed color, indicating that it was an equestrian trail rather than a hiking trail. I tried retracing my steps, but apparently there were multiple equestrian trails and I must have got onto a different one. The equestrian trails weren't on the hiking trail map. Thanks to GPS and the compass in my phone, I found a trail heading in the direction I needed to go, so I walked about three miles more than I planned. I then bought a map of the equestrian trails, just in case. It was actually a rather pleasant hike. It was just hard to enjoy during the time when I wasn't entirely sure where I was or where I was going. And there was some fun in crossing the various creeks because that's not an issue for horses, but the water would have been ankle deep on me. Fortunately, there were stepping stones and I have very good balance.

That afternoon, I took a guided tour of some of the caves in the park, and the naturalist leading the tour said that he and one of the other guys are about to do an overhaul of the trails. Just before talking to me, the other naturalist had sent him some photos of the bad markers on the trail I'd just been on, saying someone was likely to make the same mistake I did.

I got in a little reading on the porch that evening and did some relaxing. Which was good because the next hike was very strenuous -- up a mountain. I'd planned to take one of the cut-offs to not do the whole trail because the trail isn't a loop. Except the cut-off wasn't marked and wasn't an obvious trail, so I walked a bit longer than I planned and still had to walk back to where I'd parked (and I was so glad I'd driven to the trailhead instead of walking. It was only about a mile, but that mile would have killed me at that point). So I ended up doing about 8 miles that day. I really enjoyed the first four or so. The last two miles of the hike were okay. The two miles back to my car were on flat surface, so they were easy, but they weren't pleasant. When I passed the camp for people who brought their horses, I was tempted to ask for a lift.

But overall, I still had fun. It was the rare case of the reality being even better and more fun than what I'd imagined. This state park isn't that far away -- about a 4-hour drive -- so I'll have to do this more often. It's a quick trip to be in the mountains. People in Colorado would pat them on the head and say how adorable to call these mountains, and I'm not sure where you draw the line between "hill" and "mountain," but these are technically mountains, and they're the kind I like, where you can walk to the top without special gear, and there's no timber line, so there are trees all the way to the top. They're gentle, friendly mountains. So while "Ski Oklahoma" isn't going to happen, they're what I want in mountains, and they're conveniently close.

On my next trip, I may have to do a trail ride and let the horses do the walking. I'll also allow myself a lot more time to just enjoy sitting at the lodge. Saturday evening, I was sitting on the porch, looking at the colorful leaves, feeling the slight chill in the fall air, eating snickerdoodles, smelling the wood smoke from nearby campfires, and listening to the geese flying overhead, and it was all stuff that said "fall" to me for every sense.

Vacation!

I'm now on vacation! I spent most of yesterday driving, and by doing so I managed to miss all the bad weather. I got out of the Dallas area before the morning rain hit and had only about a five-minute patch of needing windshield wipers along the way. I had a few spots of mist while driving down major roads, and then I got off onto the scenic route through the mountains, where the mist came a little lower to ground level.

And then I hit one of the higher mountain scenic routes, up in the mountains instead of winding around the base, and there the mist got a little more intense. Like this, where it looks like the mountain is on fire between the fall colors in the trees and the strategically placed wisps of mist.


It got a lot more intense from there, where the fog was really dense. I was navigating by the stripes on the road, and all I could see were the trees right beside the road. It was rather eerie and beautiful, and iTunes cooperated by providing just the right soundtrack. Loreena McKennitt's "Dante's Prayer," the one that starts with the Russian choir, is just the thing for driving through dense fog.

And then the fog cleared a bit as I got to the other side, and it was almost sunny.


I want to make that drive again in better weather because it was gorgeous. There were a few spots where hiking trails crossed the road, so I need to look into hiking venues there. The problem is that there don't seem to be too many places to stay anywhere nearby.

I had lunch at a cute little restaurant in a restored passenger train car (amazing fried chicken, the house specialty) and made it to the state park where I'm staying right at check in. I'd just unloaded my car when the afternoon storm hit. We got some wind, lots of rain, and some spectacular lightning (especially so seen from the top of a mountain). Now it's cool and clear. This is the view from my room's porch, where I had breakfast.


And now it's time to hit the hiking trails. There's a tour of the nearby caves this afternoon that I plan to take. Otherwise, I'm just enjoying the peace. It's weird not to hear any road noise at all. I live on a major street, so it's just a part of the background, but I'm so far removed from anything other than the drive up to the lodge that I can't hear anything -- and I think I had the entire lodge to myself last night, unless someone else got in after I got the car unloaded. Mine was the only car in the lot.

(The wi-fi is slow, so I did "web-sized" versions of the photos)

A Catch-up Round-up

I have a title! Book 3 in the Fairy Tale series, now known as A Kind of Magic, will be arriving November 24 (tentatively -- depends on Audible). The cover art is done, so I should soon have a cover to share. The fun thing is that it takes place around the time of the release date. It's not quite full-on Christmassy -- it happens before Thanksgiving, but the production of The Nutcracker starts during the book, and there's already Christmas stuff out.

This may mean that the next book will be a full-on Christmas book, so maybe I'll plan for that release date next year. Assuming I get the book written by then. I need to write another Rebel Mechanics book in the meantime.

I guess that since I had to go straight from getting home from the convention to working on the book, I'm now having my post-convention recovery period. I've been mostly useless the last couple of days, though I did do some FenCon PR work. I got sidetracked into hypothetical vacation planning. That involved going to various travel and tourism sites, searching for what I wanted, then checking the review sites. It seems that what I really wanted doesn't exist. I wanted to do a road trip to the minor mountains in eastern Oklahoma/western Arkansas, and I wanted a hotel like the one I had near Hot Springs last year, where I had a balcony overlooking the lake. My favorite part of the trip was getting up in the morning and drinking tea on the balcony. But it seems that no hotel like that exists in the places where I was looking. I came up with a few alternate possible plans, but then I got a tip from a friend about a place to go that looks like it might fit the bill for a quiet getaway. Now I'll do more research.

In choir news, I did put myself forward for that Requiem solo, and the director came up with an interesting way to deal with it, since there were multiple people wanting it. It's divided into multiple pieces, separated by choir parts, and he's giving the different pieces to different people. I got the middle part that's my favorite part of it, anyway, and I don't have to worry about the really high notes. My writer brain has kicked in, and I already have a narrative for it in my head that suddenly makes the piece make more sense this way. If it's one person doing the solo, it's just the one person offering the prayer at what essentially sounds like a mass funeral (one of the repeated lines translates to "grant them rest eternal"), though since we're doing it for All Souls Day, I suppose it's about all the people who've gone on before us. But with multiple people, I'm picturing a number of people in a cathedral, all praying, and then the spotlight falls on one person offering her prayer, goes back to the crowd, then falls on another person. The different pieces of the solo all have a different tone, so you can imagine them being sung by different characters.

I may get a story out of this.

And in other news, I found this list of inspiring real-life geeks
, and would you believe who's on it? Yeah, I'm listed among people like JK Rowling. Kind of cool.

While I have stuff to do in the next couple of days, I think I'm going to treat the time up to (and including) Labor Day as a quasi-holiday, with the weekend itself being real holiday. Then I'm going to hit the ground running afterward and really try to be diligent and productive. I need to make a conscious effort to do more promotion, and I need to do a better job of staying on top of the writing. I have too many stories in my head that need to be let out. My pastor's sermon series lately has been based on the "first things first" concept -- that illustration where if you fill a jar with water, sand, and pebbles, you can't fit any rocks in, but if you put the big rocks in first, then add pebbles, sand, and water, you can actually fit more in the same jar -- and I've realized I need to do a better job of focusing on my priorities.

What I Did on My Vacation

I'm back from vacation, and I did actually manage a restful, relaxing time so that I came home refreshed and almost eager to dive back into work. Now that I'm home, I can reveal that I went to Hot Springs, Arkansas.

But first, I spent some time getting into vacation mode at home and getting ready. I got out the sewing machine I got for Christmas and did some sewing because I thought engaging in other forms of creativity would be a good mental change of pace. I used to sew when I was a kid and even had my own machine, but I haven't done anything but hand work in years. I decided to start with something simple and made a nightgown. I've been looking for a long, long-sleeved gown that wasn't flannel. During the transitional times of year, I want something covering but not heavy. But I can't seem to find anything like that. I even had trouble finding a pattern that was what I wanted. Where I finally found it was in the costume section, so now I suppose I have an Official Gothic Novel Heroine nightgown -- a white, floaty thing. If I ever need to flee a spooky castle in the middle of the night, I will have the right thing to wear. It turned out to be very comfortable for sleeping and lounging around, just the right weight for the weather.

Sunday I did something wild and crazy and went to Starbucks (or as the people at church call it, St. Arbuck's) between services with some of the other people in the ensemble I sang with. Usually I hide in the choir room, drink tea and read the newspaper, but I was social for a change.

After a couple of days of shopping (new tires, new jeans) and preparation, I hit the road on Wednesday. It turned out to be a longer drive than I anticipated, the kind where it takes all day to get there and you're tired when you arrive, so I don't know if this will go on my list of relaxing getaways, but there was nice scenery, especially once I got off the freeway and headed into the mountains. I was hoping for more fall color, but even as I got into the foothills of the mountains, it was mostly green with some bits of red and yellow. I had a hotel on a nearby lake, with a lakeview room with balcony, and one of the first things I did when I arrived was get some takeout catfish and eat dinner while looking at the lake. I was facing east, so I got up the next morning hoping to see the sun rise over the lake. Instead, everything was wrapped up in fog. I sat on the balcony with some hot tea and watched the fog lift as the sun rose higher.

After the fog was gone, I went into Hot Springs itself, did a stroll down Bathhouse Row to the visitor center to get a hiking trail map, and then I drove part of the way up Hot Springs Mountain to a trailhead and spent a few hours hiking around the mountain. There were some great trails that were rather strenuous, but at the top the views were lovely. It's only a "mountain" for this part of the world and people from Colorado would point and laugh, but it's more elevation than I'm used to hiking. I don't have a camera that really enables selfies, but here's my attempt at getting a picture of me near the top of the mountain with the view behind me.

Then I went back to my hotel and collapsed. Friday, there were several things I'd thought about doing, but I was tired and a bit sore, and I didn't really want to drive anywhere. So, I took advantage of that balcony and just sat and looked at the lake and read. This was the view from my balcony, so you can see why I enjoyed just sitting there all day.

And then on Saturday I made the drive home, just in time to change gears entirely and go to a Halloween party. If only I'd had that little blue box for travel. It would cut out all that tedious driving.

Now to get back to work. I've got a lot of business stuff to deal with, and then I need to start work on a new book.

The Fantasy Island Experience

I made pretty good progress on the latest round of revisions. No matter how many times I've read something, I still find things that need to be changed. On the other hand, I had some things in mind that I felt like I needed to fix, and when I got to those parts, I realized that what I thought I needed to add was already there.

Lately, I've been watching syndicated cable reruns of the original CSI. I'd never really watched it before -- it was one of those shows where it had been on for years, but I didn't believe there was more than one episode because every time I managed to catch even a part of an episode, it was always the same episode -- but there are only so many times you can watch the same reruns of NCIS, and crime procedurals make some of the best background noise for house cleaning and other unpleasant tasks that require some distraction to make them palatable, so now I have a decade of episodes I haven't seen of this show.

Anyway, a few days ago I caught an episode in which they were tracking down what a murder victim had done on the night leading up to his death. They found that his boss had given him a trip to Las Vegas as a reward, so he got a nice hotel room on the company credit card. Then when he was drinking in the hotel bar, a gorgeous blonde started talking to him. She spilled her drink on him and then insisted on buying him a new (expensive, designer) outfit. Then they went to another place in her Ferrari to go shoot some pool, he got into a game with another guy at the pool hall, and won ten grand. He got to drive the Ferrari on the way back to the hotel, and the guy he'd beat at pool tried to race him in his Corvette, but the Ferrari won. It was like the ultimate vacation fantasy come true -- and that's what it turned out to be. His boss had given him the additional gift of a carefully orchestrated fantasy based on his interests, and it had all been scripted and set up. He liked to play pool and thought he was pretty good, and he was into auto racing and fast cars, so a hot girl who played pool and drove a Ferrari would have been right out of his dreams, and then winning a high-stakes game of pool and a road race made it even better. Unfortunately, the guy didn't realize it was fake, really fell for the girl, and then got himself killed when he went to threaten the guy she'd claimed was her abusive ex that she needed to escape from (letting him feel protective and chivalrous was part of the fantasy). Oops.

But that got me started thinking that it would be really cool if you could actually get that Fantasy Island experience (without the murder, of course), though I suppose it would have to be a gift for it to really work, as arranging your own fantasy would mean you knew it wasn't real, and that would take all the fun out of it. Of course, that got me started thinking about what kind of perfect, "best vacation ever!" someone could arrange for me (and no, I'm not hinting here). I don't really have any dream or fantasy that's the sort of thing that someone could arrange for me in a way that I'd believe it. I want to be a bestselling author, but I wouldn't want a fake book tour with red carpet treatment and people paid to pretend to be fans. I'm not so self-deluded as to think I could somehow luck into being a ballerina, and I'm the slow-build type when it comes to relationships, so a vacation fling wouldn't work for me because I wouldn't have time to get into a comfort zone with a man before it was time to go home.

My vacation fantasies are pretty simple. It would be cool to show up at the airport and be told, "Oops, the flight's overbooked. I guess we'll have to put you in first class." And then to show up at the hotel and be told, "Oops, the hotel's overbooked, so we'll have to give you a concierge suite with a jacuzzi and a balcony with a scenic view, and we'll send up a bottle of champagne for the inconvenience." I like traveling alone, but the one thing I dislike about it is that I hate eating in restaurants alone, so I generally miss out on a lot of the culinary opportunities of travel. I'll often just get some takeout and go back to my hotel room. So it might be nice to run into someone interesting while touring something, strike up a conversation, and then suggest that we continue the conversation over dinner. If we're going farther into fantasy territory, I love ballroom dancing, but people tend to go to dancing-like venues as couples, so if you go alone, you don't get to dance, and it might be nice to find someone to go dancing with or to go someplace just to listen to the music and be asked to dance by someone who knew what he was doing. If we're going into real Fantasy Island territory, then it would be cool to end up singing with a jazz band.

But the funny thing is, I've done all those things, and they weren't arranged (as far as I know). I got the surprise first-class upgrade when a flight back from a conference in Chicago was canceled due to mechanical problems, and instead of standing at the gate and screaming at the agents, I called the reservations number to get rebooked and was friendly and polite and demonstrated a sense of humor with the agent. I didn't even realize that he'd rebooked me onto the next flight in first class until they started calling row numbers for boarding. Unfortunately, that's a really short flight, so I didn't get to take advantage of the full first-class experience. The hotel upgrade wasn't a surprise, since it happened because I had something bad happen on a previous stay, and they said when I came back they'd upgrade me, but I did get the suite with jacuzzi, and they did send a bottle of wine (no champagne, alas). As for meeting people while touring and continuing the conversation elsewhere, I do that all the time. That's one of the reasons I like traveling alone, that I'm more open to meeting new people that way. It's mostly been lunch we end up doing, and it's usually been groups of women I fall in with instead of handsome men, but to be honest, I think I'd be a little leery of going to dinner with a man I've only just met in a strange city. I've been asked to dance when I've been listening to music in a hotel bar, though they haven't been very good dancers. And I've even sung with a jazz band. On a trip to New Orleans, I was having lunch at a patio cafe with a jazz band, and I requested a song. I think the bandleader was picking on me when he said I had to sing it, and then when I did and he realized I could really sing, he made me sit in for a while, and the audience made requests. It was more of a Dixieland band than a swanky piano trio or big band, but still, I got to be the girl singer for a jazz band in the French Quarter.

I don't know if this means that my fantasies are way too modest or that I'm just good at making my own dreams happen. Most of these things come about because I'm nice and friendly and pay attention to people. I get good service because I try to be the kind of person people want to do nice things for, and I meet interesting people and get to do cool things because I act like those people are interesting and I appreciate what they do. So I guess I don't need some big-bucks fantasy concierge service to make good things happen to me, which should mean things are less likely to go wrong and end in murder.

The Traveler Returns

I am now home from my travels and trying to get caught up. This was the longest I've been away from home in more than ten years. I do love to travel and see new places, but I also love my home and am quite the homebody. When I get home, I just want to hug my house. It was so lovely last night to use my own shower and sleep in my own bed, to have my sofa and my TV and my kitchen. It was probably more intense this time because I'd just spent more than 24 hours on a train, so not only did I have all of the above, but those things weren't constantly moving and shaking. It was several hours after I got home before it stopped feeling like I was still on a train.

So, first the convention. I don't think I acted too much like a raving fangirl when I met Katherine Kurtz, and I think I played it moderately cool when I ended up sitting next to her at the big, mass booksigning. I got her autograph on a book I'd brought, and then she actually picked up one of my books and flipped through it, which caused a major internal meltdown, of the "Yikes! Katherine Kurtz is reading one of my books!" variety. Wouldn't you know, it didn't occur to me to get a photo with her. After the signing, I did hang out with her a bit because we went together to watch the boat races at the hotel pool. They had a competition for building a working, self-propelled boat out of a milk carton. Mostly though, I ended up spending a lot of the convention chatting with her husband, who was very interesting. We had some similar things in our background, and we'd read some of the same books, so there was a lot of conversational fodder. One fun bit of news: Deryni Rising is under development for film (which I think means it's at about the same status level as the Enchanted, Inc. movie -- option and script).

I was surprised by how many people I knew at the con, but there were people I knew from Worldcon a couple of years ago and others who seem to overlap with the regional cons I usually attend. I also met some interesting new people. For instance, I spent much of Sunday afternoon chatting with Carol Berg.

I got to do some sightseeing around Denver on Monday and even got to go up into the mountains a little, where it was very cold. Then it was off to Chicago by train. The thing I liked most about the train trip, aside from seeing the country in a different way than you do by car, was that for meals in the dining car, they put you at tables with other people, so you meet some really interesting people along the way. I thought Iowa, at least the part we went through, was absolutely beautiful. The fall colors were going strong, and there were all these farms with the white farmhouses and red barns, like a picture on one of those scenic jigsaw puzzles. And then all the little towns we went through were very picturesque.

We missed the storms in Chicago, thanks to the train being a couple of hours behind schedule (I think for some of it, they deliberately slowed down to miss the storms), then after a night at a hotel (a bed that didn't move and shake!), it was time for the train back home. We saw St. Louis at night and got a great view of the arch. Then the next morning, my favorite part of the trip was a part that was unscheduled. There was a problem on the tracks ahead, so we got a detour on a freight line through northeast Texas, on a track that was pretty far from the road a lot of the way. It was like we were tunneling through a forest. I sat in the observation car and just stared out the window. Then it was fun for me to be on the train tracks that parallel the highway I drive to visit my parents because I was seeing a lot of the familiar landmarks, but from a different perspective. The area near where my parents live was probably my favorite scenery of the entire trip. It really is a beautiful part of the country.

While I was in Denver, I met with my agent, and she really liked the project I'd been putting together. Now I have some work to do to get it ready for submission, so I have an excuse to hide in my cave for a while. I've already talked myself out of going grocery shopping today because I can survive until tomorrow, when I have to go out for a dance class, anyway, but I do need to go to the library to get a reference book for all this work I have to do, so I can't be a total recluse, even if I do love my house.

Introducing Fall Fest

I had a minor epiphany this morning. It was lovely, crisp and cool, so I decided to bake scones for breakfast. Then I thought it would be nice to have breakfast on the patio. But that was one of the things I have planned for my hypothetical "staycation" that I'm thinking of taking this fall, and I'm not really ready for vacation yet. And then I had to wonder where these rules came from. Who said that eating on the patio is only a vacation thing?

I think when it comes to stuff like this, my procrastination tendencies collide with my perfectionism tendencies and my fondness for anticipation to create a big, unholy mess. I do like having something to look forward to, and if I'm going to vacation by staying at home and relaxing, then I do need to have different things to make the vacation special. But on the other hand, if I keep waiting for the stars to align and for things to be perfect, I'll never actually take that vacation. Meanwhile, there's something to be said for ordinary pleasures, little things that can make any day a little more special. Like, say, starting the day by having tea and scones on the patio on a cool, sunny morning.

I think some of that procrastination/anticipation thing is a legacy of my grandmother, who was fond of keeping things "for good." That is, some things were too special to be used for ordinary occasions, so they were set aside for special occasions, and that meant they were never actually used because no occasion was deemed special enough. I do have a few things like that, but with me, it's mostly actions and experiences that I want to save for some special time when I have something to celebrate instead of "wasting" them on an ordinary day. And that means I never actually do all these things. I set up all these conditions for this perfect hypothetical stay-at-home vacation, then those conditions are never met, and so it doesn't really happen, or if I make it happen, it's kind of half-hearted because I don't do most of the stuff I had planned.

So, I have decided to rethink the fall vacation. I am hereby declaring Fall Fest. Since I'm not on an urgent deadline at the moment and can be flexible about most of my workload (aside from weekly deadlines for medical school stuff), I am going to enjoy my favorite season as it comes. Fall in Texas can be fleeting or sporadic, so when it's a perfect day for something I want to do, I will give myself permission to declare a spontaneous vacation day and do it. That's the nice thing about being self-employed. Back when I had a regular job, I used to wish I could call in on vacation on those perfect days that would be wasted in an office. If I didn't have anything scheduled, why not? But vacations had to be planned in advance. Working for myself, I can declare vacation whenever I want. I can eat breakfast on the patio on a cool, crisp morning. If it's one of those sparkling, not-too-warm/not-too-cool days, I can pack a picnic in my backpack and walk down to the riverfront for a picnic (and bring paper and a pen because I think better alongside moving water). If I notice the butterflies flying, I can run across the street to the butterfly park and watch them. If it's a cool, rainy day, I can curl up with a book and a pot of tea. I don't have to wait for a designated vacation time to do all the fun things I want to do at this time of year. And on other days or at other times of the day, I can work. This is probably better for my productivity than taking a week off. I'm in an idea-generation mode anyway, so getting out and living life is what I need right now to help me think.

Meanwhile, I need to decide if I'm going to Worldcon next year. The registration price goes up this week. It's in Reno, which isn't one of my favorite places, but it's not like there's much sightseeing going on during a convention. I have no idea what will be going on with my career by that time, whether I'll need to be promoting or whether I should be in cave mode. I suppose I could register, and then transfer the membership if I change my mind.

The Hypothetical Vacation Almost Happens

I'm back from my whirlwind trip to San Antonio. That was my primary destination plan for that hypothetical relaxing vacation I was mentally planning a couple of years ago, and it turned out that the hotel for this trip was my planned "splurge" hotel for my hypothetical vacation. I also got to do most of the items on my hypothetical vacation agenda -- I wandered the Riverwalk, ate Mexican food, visited the Alamo and even took the river boat tour. I did come home exhausted, but I think that was mostly from two travel days in a row and two early mornings (for me) in a row. If I stayed two nights so that there was a day without travel and if I managed to schedule flights so that I wasn't having to get up so early in the morning or come home late in the evening, it might work as a relaxing vacation. There's just enough to do there to make it worth traveling, but not so very much that I feel like I'm missing something if I just hang out at the hotel and relax. The hotel might even be worth the splurge price. It's right on the river, but on a peaceful section of the Riverwalk, not a part with lots of noise, and you can get rooms with balconies overlooking the river. They also have outdoor room-like balconies opening from the lobby, which was where I sat and read and watched it rain on the river after I checked out but before the airport shuttle came. In the afternoon, they had a kind of "afternoon tea" in the lobby, with lemonade and cookies and live music. I spent about an hour Friday afternoon sitting in the lobby, sipping the lemonade, listening to Spanish guitar music, watching the river and brainstorming the ending of the book.

The very early (for me) morning was because my panel was scheduled for 8 a.m., and while sleeping in would have been nice, I did rather enjoy that morning. I took the convention shuttle from my hotel to the convention center at about 7, then went in search of breakfast. The convention center is connected via a canal to a mall across the street, so I walked along the canal to the mall, where there was a Starbucks. The river/canal (it's a manmade offshoot of the natural river) runs right into the middle of the mall, and when it goes under a street bridge, the underside of the bridge is lit up like the underside of an old movie theater awning, with rows of little light bulbs. The Starbucks was the only thing in the mall that was open, and it was raining, so there was something kind of magical about entering the lighted tunnel and emerging in the mall, like going into Narnia, and I had this whole world almost entirely to myself. The only people I ran into were the men on the boats that were going around skimming trash out of the river. There's a feeling/imagery that seems to be begging for a story in there somewhere. I'm not fond of early mornings, but I do enjoy that feeling of having the world to myself, and it's magnified when it's raining.

I have to say that San Antonio has to be the friendliest place I've ever been, almost disconcertingly so. I've lived in Texas most of my life, including in a small town, and my family is from the South, so I'm used to friendly, but this city goes even beyond that. Just about everyone seems to go out of their way to be friendly. It's not just the hotel staff and the people working the tourist sites. The guys on the trash-skimming boats even called out a cheery, "Good morning!" I can only imagine what it must feel like to someone from, say, New Jersey. (Not that all people from New Jersey are rude, but on my scale of friendly to rude in all the places I've visited, New Jersey probably falls at the rudest end of the scale, with San Antonio on the other end. I find that most people everywhere are generally nice if you're nice, but most of my experiences of outright rudeness among people you'd expect should be friendly have occurred in New Jersey. My Southern Belle powers don't seem to work as well in New Jersey, either, while I can charm the socks off of just about anyone anywhere else I go.)

I think our panel at the convention went pretty well, and we had a decent crowd for 8 in the morning on the last day of the convention. I didn't get a bag of books, but I did get a bag of goodies as a thank-you gift, and it included a chocolate Alamo. It's very cool, but it almost feels like a desecration to eat the Alamo. As much as I love chocolate, it kind of bothers me when it comes in the shape of something meaningful or way too cute. Plain old bars are fine for me.

And now I guess I need to get back to my book, as much as I'd love a nap (I think it's taking me longer to recover from this trip than the trip itself took). Although I thought I'd brainstormed the ending, I got a huge new inspiration last night and am now rethinking my plans, so I have to figure out which idea might work best.

On Being Wrong (plus more New York)

Yesterday felt utterly unproductive because I couldn't seem to focus on anything. But then I realized that it felt like my subconscious was up to something, and that was why the day came across as a waste. Sure enough, I think I've come up with some good stuff, and I've realized that I've been totally wrong about a lot of things. It seems like no matter how much planning I try to do, it doesn't count for much until I actually start writing. Then once I meet the characters on the page and see how the situation starts shaping up, I find that a lot of my planning was flat-out wrong.

For instance, talking in only vague terms, one of the major plots in this story involves the search for someone who's missing. I had thought that it would function more like a mystery, where the missing person's whereabouts are unknown both to characters and readers, so the missing person and the bad guy keeping the missing person would remain off-stage. But then once I started writing I realized that the missing person had her own subplot and conflict and the story would have to go back and forth between the search and what the missing person is up to, with the suspense coming from information the readers have from one plot line that the characters in the other plot line don't have (the Hitchcock bomb under the table scenario). And that meant I actually had to develop the character of the missing person and create the setting for where she is.

One thing that tells me how wrong I was about what this book was going to be was the "soundtrack" I created for it. I put together an "inspirational" CD of music that seemed to fit the vague idea this story was at the time. Now that I've developed characters and plot, I'm realizing that I was totally off-base with a lot of it. I've been doing the iTunes shuffle the past few days, and the songs I'm picking for the soundtrack have been fairly different. Some are the same, some went by the wayside and some have been added. The result is that the mood has mostly changed. I never would have anticipated this, but there's a lot of Ella Fitzgerald going on. It's a more classic, timeless mood. I think the emotions coming up are also different, as a whole. This may be a more serious, angsty book than I usually write, though there are definitely still humorous touches. It will be more of a book that has some humor in it than an outright comedy, though I think it does have something of a screwball comedy structure to it.

It's shaping up to be a cool, rainy day, and I have books waiting for me at the library (some references I need to develop some other characters who suddenly demanded more attention), so I think I may walk over there, bring my notebook, and sit in the cafe for a while to do research and brainstorming. If it's not actually raining, I can sit on the patio on the waterside.

And because it's not a Friday without at least a touch of Virtual Vicarious Vacation, some more pictures from my recent trip to New York. Central Park and the general areas where I was are rather Victorian, and it struck me that New York would make a good Steampunk setting. I shall have to consider that.

So, for instance, here's the famous Bow Bridge in Central Park:



And then I think this is the Ansonia Hotel, based on something in a guidebook and the approximate place where I was when I took the picture, though I didn't get close enough to verify. I suspect a mad scientist is working at the top of one of those corner towers. Or else that area reminded me of Paris because it was on a part of Broadway where the street is two-way and has a park-like esplanade down the middle, and that building also has a bit of Parisian flair.

Virtual Vicarious Vacation Friday: New York

I'm still playing with the idea in development, and I've found that for this stage of work, it actually helps to have some kind of background noise going. When I write, I like absolute silence, but for brainstorming, having the TV on in the background seems to distract the conscious brain so the unconscious can play. However, some of the ideas I've played with will now require additional research, but it's more the kind that just requires a few Internet searches, not a library trip.

When I went out to get ingredients for my Southern Church Lady funeral food baking yesterday, I also ran by the nearest Half-Price Books, since it's extra 20 percent off weekend (which started yesterday), and I managed a huge find, an out-of-print book I've been dying to find for ages. It's so out-of-print that I don't think there's even a cover or information posted on Amazon, and I'm not even sure it was ever published in the US. I'd almost given up ever finding it, but I still automatically check whenever I'm in a bookstore. The weird thing was, I found it in a section where I wasn't expecting to find it -- in the mass-market paperback section instead of in trade paperback (so I think maybe it's a British edition, since I'm pretty sure that if it was published in the US, it wasn't published in mass market, and the store's scanner wouldn't read the bar code on it). Even better, I saw a lovely example of customer service at the store. Usually, they do the thing where they keep one line for two registers, and just take the next customer at the register that comes open, so I got in the line behind the first register. The lady at the other register waved over the person at the front of the line I was in, and then all the people in line behind me rushed over to that other register. I was mildly miffed because even if the store wasn't officially doing the one line to feed both registers thing, it was still a bit rude to essentially line jump and go from the end of the line to the front of a line, but it's not that big a deal, so I didn't say anything. Imagine my surprise when the bookseller cheerfully informed the next person in line that I was actually next and had been waiting longer, then signaled me to come over.

Now I'm trying to decide whether to indulge myself in reading the new book this weekend or to save it for my fall vacation so I have something to look forward to. I just got a ton of books from the library, so I may save it for vacation, since I love having something to anticipate.

But now, for some pictures from the New York trip. I'm still getting used to the digital camera, and while it's handy for instantly having something to post online, I think for any serious vacation photography I may also use film and my old 35mm. The LCD screen is difficult to see in sunlight, and strangely, I find it more awkward to work the smaller camera than I do the larger one (which is contoured with a hand grip). It was raining for most of the trip, and it got very hard to juggle the camera and an umbrella, so a lot of the shots are at wonky angles or very dark (because it was rather cloudy). Here are a few that don't require clean-up and that don't have anything to do with the content of the book I was researching (that I know of, since you never know).

First, after that week's Warehouse 13 episode (and that show has really grown on me), I found the Alice statue in Central Park rather amusing. I wanted to warn all those parents having their kids climb on the statue for pictures to keep their children away from the dangerous psychopath.



You can see here what a gorgeous day it was -- crystal blue sky as the backdrop to the Bethesda Terrace fountain in Central Park.



And then things were very different the next day. I ventured down to the bottom tip of Manhattan and found yet another reason why this was a good setting for a hidden magical corporation. You never know what you'll find tucked away in some corner. There were all these corporate headquarters type buildings, and then this block of little old buildings that looked like something you'd see in Amsterdam. I don't know for sure what these buildings were, but I suppose they could be a holdover from the New Amsterdam days.

Back from New York

I'm back from New York, and am in my usual exhausted state after a trip like that. However, I'm mentally all revved up to work. The blister I got the day before the trip was a bad omen because I ended up with even worse blisters by the end of the first day, thanks to the fact that one pair of shoes hurt my heels, but then the other hurt my toes, so I just couldn't win. I think I may try what I've heard is a Boy Scout trick and wrap the most blister-prone parts of my feet with duct tape BEFORE I get blisters. That's supposed to prevent blisters because it means there's no rubbing on the skin. The worst of the blisters have shrunk today, but shoes still aren't my favorite thing.

But other than that, I had a great trip. The first day was absolutely lovely, with warm temperatures and sunny skies. The rest of the time it was a different kind of lovely (to me) -- nice, rainy days that give the city a certain feel that's almost otherworldly. It also makes stepping into cozy basement restaurants even nicer.

I can't talk in much detail about what I did, since it was research for a book and I don't like to talk in specifics about unwritten (or unpublished) books, but I did do a lot of wandering in Central Park, I returned to my favorite tea shop for breakfast (and hot tea and scones on a rainy morning is a treat) and I found a perfect Italian restaurant that was romantic enough that I actually found myself wishing I could go there on a date.

After seeing a sign in a real estate office window, I got the bright idea of checking on open houses to get into an apartment building, but they didn't have any open houses while I was there. However, they did have a lot of photos with listings posted in the windows, and my hotel room window looked down on the roofs and backs of the buildings in the next block, which gave me a better sense of the building layouts. It looks like in those older buildings that just about any layout goes, since some of them were originally built as single-family homes or maybe two-family homes or apartments that took up entire floors, and they've since been cut up into smaller apartments in various ways. So I think I can make up what works for the story, and it won't be utterly unrealistic. Based on an overheard conversation, I think I can also make just about anything financially feasible, since there are apparently people who inherited apartments from family members who bought them decades ago when prices weren't so high, so the larger old apartments are totally paid for and all the current residents have to pay is maintenance and taxes.

I also figured out from this real estate research that no matter how much I enjoy visiting, I probably won't ever decide to live there (unless I reach JK Rowling levels), considering I'd have to pay more than double my current mortgage payment to live in an apartment smaller than my current living room. I can travel there instead, especially now that I've found the perfect hotel. It's so perfect that part of me wants to spread the word about it, but part of me wants to keep it a secret so it won't become too popular (not that I have that much influence). It's very cheap by New York standards, but absolutely lovely, a well-preserved old building right behind the Museum of Natural History and a block from Central Park. The rooms are really small, and the bathroom was pretty much microscopic, but it was still nice and comfortable, with a good bed, LCD TV and CD player in the room. I think I have my new New York headquarters.

Because of the foot problems and general weariness, I didn't do anything nightlife-related. I ate early dinners and was back in my room, collapsed with my feet up, by 7, so my evening tourism amounted to watching syndicated reruns of CSI: New York. I got to play the "hey, I was there today!" game, only I didn't find any dead bodies or severed heads in those places. The early nights meant I discovered the time when the City that Doesn't Sleep sleeps: Saturday mornings when it's rainy. I had the city almost to myself when I headed out for breakfast.

I have photos, and I think I'll post the ones not related to the book as Friday's Virtual Vicarious Vacation. But now I have to get to work and catch up on a lot of stuff.

Tomorrow: My airplane books for the trip.

Virtual Vicarious Vacation Friday: London

I'm on the final wave of that book I was working on earlier in the summer (final until my agent gets ahold of it). In this phase, I read it out loud. That helps me spot awkward constructions, missing words, redundant words, etc. It also helps me make sure my dialogue works. It's a pretty time-consuming process to read an entire novel out loud, but what I'm finding with this book is that I want to keep going. I didn't even take that nap I promised myself yesterday because I got caught up in the story. I consider that to be a good sign.

I think I may have to make a bookstore run today because Borders sent me another coupon (curse them!) and I've discovered another book I really want to read. Plus, there are a couple of grocery items I need, and I want to avoid leaving the house tomorrow. This is the first entirely free Saturday I've had in ages, and my next couple of weekends will be busy, as next weekend I've got a meeting and the weekend after that I'll be in New York. I hope I'll be done with the book re-read today, so I can just relax this weekend. Well, there will likely be some research-related reading, and I may need to start the viewing of some of my mood-setting movies, as the start date for working on the book of the misty idea is growing closer.

And now, it's Friday, so it's Virtual Vicarious Vacation day, and we're off to London. This is that same trip from October 2000 (I took something like nine rolls of film, so there were a lot of pictures, considering I was only there for about 4 days). I have better London pictures from my subsequent trip, when I spent a lot of time in London, as I was staying with friends who lived on the outskirts, but we'll start with these major landmarks.

First, Westminster Abbey. I do have some shots from later in the day when the sun came out, but I like the foggy look, too (and they're on a different CD, and I'm not particularly compelled to dig it up). This was right after I got off the bus from Oxford in the morning, then after wandering around, I came back for the Evensong service, so I was inside when the sun came out, and that brought all the stained glass to life. Very pretty. My Tourist Tip: The Abbey is closed on Sundays for tours because it does function as a church, but you can attend services there, so you can still go in. You don't get the full tour, but you do have to go through much of the church to get to the seating area, so you still see a lot, and the sound of the choir is breathtaking, so I thought it was the best way to see it -- in use for its purpose, not as just another tourist site.



Then there's Big Ben. You can't go to London without taking a picture of that.



And then St. Paul's. It was hard getting a good shot because it's so big you need some distance, but the buildings surrounding it are all crammed in pretty close. It just about required standing in the middle of a street to get a good picture, but it was mid-day on a Sunday, so that part of town was pretty deserted. I think I have some pictures on another CD (this was the end of a roll) of all the pigeons around the cathedral, and I will confess that I went around singing "Feed the Birds" for a while.



I may play photo CD roulette next week and just grab one out of the box to see where we'll go next time.

Virtual Vicarious Vacation Friday: More in England

Happy birthday to me! I have a bad tendency to get moody, introspective and a little depressed on my birthday, so I usually try to make plans to avoid that. Last year, I was at WorldCon and got serenaded in public twice (once by Larry Niven) and then had dinner with my agent after moderating two panels. I can't top that this year, but I am going to brunch with friends and then to see the latest Terminator movie at the dollar theater, probably followed by ice cream. The dance store is near the movie theater, so I may get wild and crazy and get a second leotard and maybe even one of those gauzy dance skirts, since I'm going into my second year of ballet. I think I'll also hit Borders while I'm there. There was already a 40 percent off coupon for the week, but then they sent me a 15 percent off birthday coupon. I wonder if I can use them both at once on two separate items. I'm suddenly craving a good chick lit book. I haven't read one in ages, and they're awfully rare. The few that are still being published are by the big names who survived the glut and bust, so they're in hardback. But I have heard of one that sounds like my thing, so I'll have to see if they have it.

I got a bit of an early birthday present yesterday when I got yet another peaceful swimming session. The storms the night before had strewn delicate pink and white crepe myrtle blossoms in the water, and the effect was rather spa-like. Or maybe like the forest pond where the fairy princess is swimming when the knight who's been lost in the woods appears. Or maybe it's the lagoon where the mermaid swims. The one annoying thing is that the mailboxes are by the pool, and one of my neighbors stopped to say hi and chat as he went by to get his mail, and he totally broke the fairy princess mermaid magic (since he definitely wasn't a knight lost in the woods).

Not that I have a vivid imagination, or anything. (And can one become too old to daydream about being a fairy princess swimming in a flower-strewn forest pond?)

So, on to the virtual vicarious vacation. We're still in England in October 2000, but these shots aren't from any particular day and aren't in any order. They're just some random pictures I thought were interesting.

First, Doctor Who fans might recognize this building in Warwick, as it played an Elizabethian London street in the episode "The Shakespeare Code." When I saw the video diary for the shooting of that episode on the DVD and they showed that they were in Warwick and how they were dressing the medieval buildings to create the street scene, I realized I'd been there.



Then, I've got a couple of nice, scenic shots that aren't of any tourist attraction but that just show the country. On my first day in England, while I was walking off jet lag, I captured an utterly idyllic moment on the Thames, somewhere between Iffley and Oxford.



And then there's the Cotswolds countryside. The walking paths cut across farms, which took me aback at first (I kept thinking, "If I tried this in Texas, I'd get shot."), but I am a former farm girl, so once I realized I wouldn't get in trouble, I rather enjoyed getting entirely away from the roads and really being out in the country. This whole area was just breathtakingly lovely.

Virtual Vicarious Vacation Friday: The Cotswolds

I'm visiting the parents today, so just a quick Virtual Vicarious Vacation post. We're still in England, from October 2000, the day after my day in Warwick (from last week). It was a day in the Cotswolds. I took a train from Oxford to a town with a train station, where I caught a bus to another town, where I bought a book of walks and then walked across-country to another town, where I caught the bus back to the train station. I don't have my guidebooks or photo albums with me, so I'm guessing on some of the spellings.

The town where I had lunch and bought a book of walking directions was called Stow (maybe Stowe) on the Wold, and there was this one fun moment on the street where an old car went by, and it was almost like something out of an old movie in that setting.



One benefit of seeing the country by walking is that you see things that wouldn't be visible from the road, like this manor house that appeared ahead as I emerged from the woods.



Then in the village of Lower Slaughter, there was an old mill with the water wheel.



That really was one of the best days of my life. I like walking, and walking like that and really seeing interesting stuff out in the country was just amazing. I capped off the day with a nice tea, and the whole day was sheer perfection.

Virtual Vicarious Vacation Friday: Warwick Castle

Juggling three writing projects may not be good for my sanity. There's the previous project, that I'm wrapping up. There's the current one I'm rewriting. And there's the future one I'm researching and brainstorming and that is really taking over my brain. Yesterday, I read straight through the previous project. I think it's important to try to read a book the way a reader would because you catch a lot more things than you do when it's weeks or even months between the time you wrote the first chapter and the time you wrote the last one. For instance, you're more conscious of words or phrases you use repeatedly. Or you might find that you used the exact same paragraph twice after you cut it from earlier in the book and then moved it to another scene, then used it again in a later scene. Not that I might have done something like that. It's also good to get a look at the book as a whole rather than as units from a day's work. Aside from a few wording and repeated paragraph issues, I think I still like this one. I have a page of notes of little things to check or tinker with, then it rests again for a couple of weeks, and then I give it one last read out loud to catch any subconscious errors that might have slipped between the cracks. And then I'll be down to two projects, until my agent gives me revision notes on this one.

I know I have a ton of reader e-mail to deal with, but that gets kind of draining since they all seem to be asking the same questions, and repeating that particular answer over and over again makes me want to crawl into a hole. No, there is no book five on the horizon because my publisher doesn't want it. No, book four is not being translated into Dutch because the publisher doesn't want it. I have no idea about book four in German because they haven't committed one way or another. I guess it starts to feel like the book version of, "Why aren't you married yet?" I have to remind myself that it's because they care, not because they're trying to make me feel bad. I will say that, in case anyone's reading this, it might be more effective to be addressing these questions to the respective publishers. That way they'll be forced to realize that there is a demand.

But enough about that. Let's take another virtual vicarious vacation! We're still in England, on that same trip from October 2000, and in fact these photos are from the day after last week's photos. I took a day trip from Oxford up to Warwick to see the castle. Yeah, this is a pretty touristy castle that's now owned by the people who run Madame Toussad's, which means that parts of the castle are set up as a wax museum so you can see how people lived there at various points in history, complete with music and sound effects. But the castle itself is truly magnificent, and it's on gorgeous grounds. Apparently I got really lucky because normally it's swarming with tourists, and it was practically deserted the day I was there. I only ran into other people a couple of times (and once it was a couple from Texas I'd met before, which was kind of freaky). I spent the whole day there, just wandering, and it was one of those nearly perfect days.

So here are a few views of the castle, and these are some of the photos I've had enlarged and framed and that hang on the staircase wall. First, the side view of the castle, taken from a bridge over the River Avon.



Then there's the approach to the castle.



And then the view from the top of the highest tower (I'm not great with heights, so that one was a bit scary until I got used to being up there).

Virtual Vicarious Vacation Friday: Oxford

Harry Potter in the morning, then burgers and frozen custard for lunch (separate courses, not together) -- the makings of a lovely day. Now, though, I'm utterly exhausted for some reason.

I liked the movie. I tend to be a bit of a purist when it comes to film adaptations, but I've decided for the purposes of this series that the movies and the books exist in separate universes, and I appreciate them separately. With that in mind, I think the adaptation worked, for the most part. I was wondering how they'd adapt this book for film, not so much because the book was so huge, but because there really isn't much in the way of action. I often jokingly call this one "Harry Potter and the Off-Stage Antagonist" because there's no real struggle to this story. It's mostly the coming-of-age story for the series, the transition from childhood to adulthood, rather than being about the fight against the Big Bad. So I can see why the scene that was added was added, so there would be actual action at the midpoint of the movie and a reminder that there was a threat. There was one thing left out that I thought could have been kept in without making the movie longer and that would have deepened that part of the story. Otherwise, I think it flowed well enough, and it was both funny and intense. Jim Broadbent was absolutely wonderful as Slughorn. That was such a good performance. I did have one inappropriate giggle fit at the very beginning, in the scene where Harry is preparing to flirt with the coffee shop waitress. I had a massive Extras flashback and halfway expected to see Diana Rigg at the next table.

Since I'm in an English state of mind, let's go to England for Virtual Vicarious Vacation Friday. To Oxford, to be exact. This one was actually a vacation, a rather spontaneous trip I took in October 2000 after a rather harrowing customer conference for a client. I wanted to go somewhere where my clients couldn't reach me, so I spent a few days wandering the Oxford area.

First, a lovely view of the city skyline:



Then Balliol College (I like the way the sky looks in this shot -- that was the only really sunny day of the whole trip, and it was gorgeous):



And finally, the River Thames, just downstream from Oxford. They've turned the old towpath into a walking trail, and it was a great way to walk off jet lag.



I may end up doing some travel this summer, after all. I think I will do the New York trip. It turns out that it's actually less expensive to go in August (which is odd because usually travel prices drop after Labor Day instead of going up), so I can go at a time when it fits better with the book. I won't get to enjoy a northern autumn, but it still should be cooler there than it is here, so I can maybe get a tiny preview. Now I need to book everything (and hope it's the same as it was when I was researching yesterday).

Virtual Vicarious Vacation Friday: Washington, D.C.

This schedule adjustment thing is getting ridiculous. Today I was up at 6:30. That may have had something to do with the fact that I went swimming yesterday, which meant I slept really well last night. The annoying thing is, there isn't much I can do with the extra time when I get up that early. The library doesn't open until 10, and although I'm awake, I'm not really in the frame of mind to write. Today I did some yoga and read the newspaper thoroughly.

It's another Virtual Vicarious Vacation Friday! For those who missed the announcement last week, I've decided that since a lot of us aren't getting to travel this year, I'll share some of my old travel photos (sadly, mostly from business trips). While I'm on the subject of vacation alternatives, like the "staycation," I've got an entry for the "people unclear on the concept" files. A local Realtor had a full-page ad in the newspaper this week, advertising the fact that with these homes you could have a real staycation. The homes had such features as a Napa Valley-style wine cellar, an in-home movie theater, a water park-style swimming pool, etc. If you can afford a home like that, I don't think a staycation is really an issue for you. You can just take your private jet wherever you want to go.

This week, we're in Washington, D.C., giving a little preview for those going to the RWA conference, and a couple of these were taken during the last DC conference.

First, to give you a little glimpse of the neighborhood where the conference is held, this shot looks up Connecticut Avenue toward the convention hotel area. I think that bridge is called the Francis Scott Key bridge, but I'm not absolutely certain and I don't have a guide handy to double check. I went to Georgetown for lunch with some friends, and they had an event they needed to get back earlier for, so I wandered and explored Georgetown on my own (even though it was raining), then checked the map and realized it wasn't actually all that far from where I was to the hotel, if I took the right route, so I walked all the way back.



The convention hotel is in walking distance of the Washington National Cathedral (though, mind you, my definition of "walking distance" isn't exactly based on normal human beings and I am mildly insane when it comes to walking). You'll need a map, though, as the way isn't marked and you'll have to weave through some residential neighborhoods (some very nice ones) up a steep hill to get there. But there's a big payoff, as it's a spectacular sight (I took this the day before the 2000 RWA conference).



I think my favorite memorial on the Mall (so far -- I haven't been there since they built the WWII Memorial) is the Korean War Memorial. It's very haunting. I must really like it because I found very similar photos from a couple of different trips.

Virtual Vicarious Vacation Friday: July 4 Edition

I'm still struggling with the ending from hell (and the talk about happy endings was actually kind of a help there), but after a lot of pacing around the living room yesterday, I think I've got it all figured out and have even managed to visualize the next scene. It turns out that I made a rookie mistake: I had things happening because the plot needed them to happen, not because that's what the characters would have done. It took getting into each character's head and imagining what he/she would really do in that situation to see it all come together. So, guess what I'll be spending my holiday weekend doing? Aside from fireworks time, of course. The biggest show around here is tonight, so I'm looking forward to watching things blow up.

I imagine that with the economy in its current state, I'm not the only one without the money or time to take a summer vacation. Therefore, I'm instituting Virtual Vicarious Vacation Fridays, in which I'll share some of my travel photographs from past trips. I realized in digging up these photos that going freelance really cut into my travel, not so much because of the money and lack of paid vacation time, but because most of my travel was on business. All of these photos today were taken on business trips (I generally managed to extend my trips by volunteering to travel on the weekend, which cut the airfare). Today's virtual trip is an East Coast tour of patriotic sites, in honor of the holiday.

First, it wouldn't be Independence Day without fireworks, so here are fireworks over Boston, from July 4, 2000 (you get really cheap airfare if you travel on a holiday, and it goes up a lot if you travel around the holiday, so I got to spend July 4 in Boston).



Also in Boston, the old State House, complete with patriotic bunting.



Then there's Lady Liberty herself, the Statue of Liberty (taken from the Staten Island Ferry, October 1999 -- on trip for Internet World trade show).



And the National Mall, with the Washington Monument covered in renovation scaffolding (from summer 1999 -- I don't remember if this was the June trip or the early September trip).



I'll have to think about where we'll go next week. There's a lot to choose from. I've got a trip to Germany, which also included Luxembourg and Amsterdam, two trips to England, lots more Boston, New York and DC; Philadelphia, New Orleans, Chicago, Charleston and Colorado.