Space Opera With a Twist

Tag: Vacation

Some Rest for the Wicked

Mrs Thomson and I just returned from our summer scuba diving trip to an undisclosed location.  It was our first time at this particular place, though not our first time in that area, and since it is owned by the same people who run our favorite, we had a great holiday.  The diving was good and the water warm enough we didn’t need our wetsuits.  The food was plentiful, tasty, and filling, and the folks – both the dive and resort staff as well as our fellow vacationers – were wonderful.  I raise my martini glass to all you wild and crazy people.  By the way, this was the view from our balcony…

20190817_084212

The break, though only one week long, was much needed by both of us.  There’s nothing quite like immersing yourself in another realm to restore the soul.  But reality beckons and I need to put the final push on When the Guns Roar (Siobhan Dunmoore Book 6) starting tomorrow.  I was past the halfway mark when we left and though I was communing with reef fish and critters, the back of my mind kept working away at Dunmoore’s latest adventure, so it won’t be difficult to pick up where I left off.

A Return to Reality

As we do every now and then, Mrs Thomson and I took a week off from our real lives to go scuba diving at an undisclosed location.  This time, we spent a week on a liveaboard dive boat in the sunny south and while not exactly far from land, we were far from any distraction.  For the first time in years – since the last time we were aboard the same boat in 2014 actually –  we were disconnected from email, the internet, social media, tv and every other distraction, annoyance and what have you of modern life for seven days.  Very refreshing!  So if you were wondering why I’ve been quiet lately, that’s the reason.

We saw plenty of my favorite fish, the reef shark, and my second favorite, the nurse shark.  When I get around to working on the video I took, I’ll post a really neat shark swim-by on the Sanddiver Books youtube channel.   There’s nothing like a curious 7 foot long reef shark coming within touching distance.  On a less joyful note, the place we visited was struck by two hurricanes last year, one of which went straight over a few beloved reefs near an uninhabited cay.  Those reefs were almost completely destroyed by Mother Nature.  The difference between 2014 and this year was stunning.  It’s as if a giant scraper turned lush life into an underwater moonscape.  They will recover thanks to being in a protected area far from human habitation, but it might take more years than I have left on this Earth before they’re back to the way I remember.  Thankfully, the reefs around that cay were the only ones so hard done by.  Those on the islands’ leeward sides survived almost intact.

However, the hospitality, cheerfulness and hard work of the boat’s crew was unchanged even if all of them save the captain and the cook (a legend in his own right in the diving business) were new to us.  Although we did  five dives a day, enough to burn off calories, I’m sure I gained weight from all the food.  And of course, below is the obligatory scuba diving author pic, taken last Thursday.  If you look closely, you can see how bare the reef is, courtesy of two hurricanes in a row.  I was the only object of interest for Mrs Thomson’s camera on that dive!

Author9Aug18

I did put Without Mercy aside for the week, although by the time we left, I was a tad over 75% done.  That should turn into 100% for the first draft in the next two weeks.

Season’s Greetings

Winter has finally struck for good and this time, it’ll stick. We woke up this morning to a white blanket over everything, more than the weather forecast led us to expect, and it’ll be followed up by a solid dump of snow tomorrow night, with mostly below average temperatures for the next two weeks. A white Christmas is now a certainty in our part of Canada.

Sadly, it means yesterday’s walk was the last of the season for my dog. He’ll have to wait until late March or early April before chasing squirrels again. Tiny and low to the ground as he is, even a few centimeters of snow make walks unpleasant. And that means more time at the gym on the treadmill for me. But the first true snowfall of the winter, the one that will stay and become the foundation layer, is pretty to behold. A shame that I’ll no doubt be cursing at Mother Nature soon enough when I tire of the cold, of scraping off the truck and of slogging through another dump of white crap. Nope, I’m not a winter person.

The sixth Decker’s War adventure, No Remorse, is coming along nicely. I’m almost at the 20% completion mark for the first draft, so it will likely be published before the fifth Siobhan Dunmoore adventure, sometime in late winter or early spring. And if you haven’t checked out my latest, The Warrior’s Knife, give it a try. I’ve posted the first four chapters to give you a feel for the style and story.  It’s available for purchase anywhere ebooks are sold.

This will likely be the last blog post for 2017. Even full-time authors need holidays every so often to recharge the creative batteries, but I’ll be back in January, hopefully well-rested and ready to face a new year of writing.

Season’s greetings to all my readers.

May your Past be a pleasant memory,
Your Future filled with delights and mystery,
Your Now a glorious moment
That fills your life with deep contentment.

And may we be alive this time next year!

Author Unplugged

Last week, Mrs Thomson and I took a few days off from our respective travails and indulged in an impromptu visit to one of our favorite places so we could leave the surface behind and blow bubbles over pristine coral reefs.  It was our first time there during the off-season (we usually go in the spring), and we experienced the eerie quiet of a place less than one quarter full.  But the lack of visitors meant the staff could pamper us all the more, and we were glad once more to see faces that have become very familiar over the years.  The water was almost bathtub warm and I dove without a wetsuit all week.  And, of course, we over-ate, over-slept and generally indulged in the gentle art of farniente.

In a departure from my usual underwater pastime, I shot video exclusively and took not a single picture.  It was just as well that I did, since we encountered so many nurse sharks that I lost count.  This fine specimen bade us a fond farewell on our last dive, almost precisely beneath the boat.

Nurse Shark

The image is an extract from the video I shot of the encounter.  You can watch said video on You Tube at the following link Nurse Shark.  And yes, in case you’re wondering after seeing the video, it passed within a few inches of me, close enough to touch.

I even managed to write a whole chapter of Without Mercy (Siobhan Dunmoore Book 5) on the airplane while flying to our destination, but couldn’t muster the energy to do more.  I’ll be getting back to it shortly.

And now to enjoy the weirdly late summer’s warmth we’re experiencing in my portion of the Great White North.

Author, Well Rested

Mrs Thomson and I just returned from our annual Easter vacation, where we practiced two of our favourite hobbies: scuba diving and photography.  This year, we traveled with friends old and new – eight of them in fact – something we hadn’t done in over ten years.  You don’t realize what you’ve been missing until you get it back, and in this case, while vacations as a couple, or with a pair of old friends were nice, moving as a pack of middle-aged, semi-feral divers was superb.  We were of disparate backgrounds, widely varying political views and in some cases sharing nothing more than an age range and a passion for scuba diving, yet we had a lot of fun, be it around the dinner table or on the dive boat heading out to another fine reef under a blue sky.

While it was only for a week, it was enough to recharge the batteries, change one’s outlook on the vagaries of life and lift one’s spirits, though I will likely see that good feeling drain away all too quickly when the every day drudgery of work returns on Monday.  I may regain some of it as I sift through my many pictures, but judging by the fact that I haven’t yet looked at the ones from the previous trip, that may take a while.  In this, I can blame writing: time I would have spent deciding which handful of photos among the hundreds were worthy of retention, then developing and printing them, has been taken over by Siobhan Dunmoore and her crew.  That I managed to complete the first draft of The Path of Duty before the vacation may give me the time for the more mundane chores surrounding my photography, though it might not give me the desire.

Suffice to say, this author feels well rested for now, perhaps too well, and gets to deal with reality again, starting by recovering the family mutts from the boarding kennel later this morning.  The littlest one apparently needed a visit with the vet and some antibiotics while we were gone, and our long-time boarding kennel owner took care of him just as well as we would have.  It’s a testimony to the quality of veterinary care that the boarding kennel’s house vet had already sent all the details back to our dog’s regular vet, and a message was waiting on our answering machine, suggesting we book a follow-up once the antibiotic course had been completed.  Would that some of our human care be so efficient and fast.  Mind you, we have yet to see the bill, which will be tacked onto the regular boarding fees.

I’ll likely start work on the first re-write of The Path of Duty within the next day or so, though with my schedule for the work week coming up, I may not have the energy or motivation to put in the kind of hours I did in past weeks.  My mind might still be wanting to be wallow in the unreality of a small Caribbean Isle where scuba diving is the only activity that involves movement, and where sitting around the open air bar swapping tall tales is the normal after-dinner thing to do.

Back to the reality of an unreasonably cold Canadian spring.  Unpacking awaits, as do the chores attendant on the return to the real world.