YOU SHOULD SEE ME NOW!

View from where I'm sitting right now. Pacific and black sand beach in the background.



Giant avocado tree from the balcony restaurant Coffee Shack, overlooking Kealakekua Bay.


View from the lanai of our condo.
black sand beach now. More later!

Delle

HAWAIIAN JOURNAL

6/4 4:10pm PDT: Sitting in Portland International Airport, waiting. We're over-packed of course. We have very different ideas of what to bring, which makes for too much stuff. Hubbies are strange creatures who pack light then want wifey to put just one piece in the other carry-on. I am also responsible for all the communal stuff, like the grocery items we don't want to buy for the condo (salt, pepper, dish detergent, laundry detergent, etc. ) It all goes on the tally of wife's stuff". Hah, I think just his shoes take up a third of the big bag. And that's just one pair. All the same I'm glad he agreed to bring his fleece jacket. That means we can go into the higher altitudes of Mauna Loa if we want.

I wont get another chance to post until tomorrow. By that time we will have flown to Honolulu, then to Kona on the Big Island, where we'll spend the night, then drive to Ponalu'u on the South Coast, where we'll stay for three days. That's when the good stuff starts!

MOST BEAUTIFUL PLACES #3: All Over the World

By tomorrow I will have the winners of our contest drawn. I go through this insanely elaborate process, giving each entrant a line on a spreadsheet for each point they've earned, and then I run them through a random generator twice. and take the top ones for the prizes. So it takes a little time.

In the meantime I have more wonderful places for you. Martha E sent us this marvelous picture of Madeira. Madeira is a magnificent group of volcanic islands off the Coast of Africa. It's on my bucket list of places I must go.


And this one of brilliantly sunny Cabo San Lucas. I've been to quirky Puerto Penasco on the Gulf of California, and someday I'll show you my pics. But I've never been to Cabo.


Here are some more of my own favorites. A tiny Caribbean Beach at Tulum, Mexico, on the Yucatan Peninsula. While I loved visiting the major Mayan ruins, the ancient ruins of the tiny commercial trading town of Tulum is my most lingering memory of the Mayan culture.


And on the Island of Kaua'i, Rainbow-colored Waimea Canyon. Kaua'i is the oldest of Hawai'i's major islands and is much more severely eroded. This incredible canyon cuts deeply into the island, to a depth of a few thousand feet. Someday it will likely cut the island into two islands.

At the top of the canyon, we found ourselves suddenly enveloped in dense fog- we were in the clouds, so dense that we could only now and then catch a glimpse of a nearby ridge. Then suddenly out of the clouds zoomed something as big as my fist: giant dragonflies! Everywhere! Then gone! No, back! I clicked and clicked my camera, trying to catch a photo of the elusive rascals, and all the while my hubby was laughing at my antics, saying, "You'll never get them!"

Oh yeah?

Just imagine my joy! Isn't it a wonderful earth?

Behind the Story: THROUGH THE FIRE by Beth Trissel

When I wrote historical romance novel Through the Fire I felt as though I’d been through the flames. My hero and heroine certainly had. This adventure romance with a Last of the Mohicans flavor and a mystical weave was born in the fertile ground of my imagination, fed by years of research and a powerful draw to my colonial American roots.

My fascination with stirring tales of the colonial frontier and Eastern Woodland Indians is an early and abiding one. My English/Scot-Irish ancestors were among the first settlers of the Shenandoah Valley and had family members killed and captured by the Indians. Some individuals returned and left intriguing accounts of their captivity, while others disappeared without a trace. On the Houston/Rowland side of the family, I have ties to Governor Sam Houston, President James Madison and Malcolm 1st of Scotland (that last one’s a stretch).
Family annals list early names like Beale, Jordan, Madison, and Hite (a German connection I discovered). A brief account of my grandmother (nine generations removed) Elizabeth Hite, says her sister Eleanor was taken captive and sister Susan killed, though not by which tribe. Their brother Jacob was killed by the Cherokee in South Carolina.

Another ancestor, Mary Moore, is the subject of a book entitled The Captives of Abb’s Valley. A Moffett forebear captured as a child became a boyhood companion of the revered Shawnee Chief Tecumseh. When young Moffett grew up, he married into the tribe and had a son, but that’s the subject of a different novel. An ancestor on the Churchman side of the family was invited by the Shawnee/Delaware to help negotiate a treaty with the English because he was Quaker and more sympathetic to the tribes.

Many accounts are unrecorded, though. Historian Joseph Waddell says we know only a fraction of the drama that occurred during the Indian Wars. I invite you to journey back to a time long forgotten by most.

Hear the primal howl of a wolf, the spill of a mountain stream. Are those distant war whoops? Welcome to the colonial frontier where the men fire muskets and wield tomahawks and the women are wildcats when threatened. The year is 1758, the height of the French and Indian War. Passions run deep in the raging battle to possess a continent, its wealth and furs. Both the French and English count powerful Indian tribes as their allies.

Rebecca Elliot is an English lady. In her attempt to escape a painful past, she unwittingly enters a dangerous world of rugged mountains, wild animals, and even wilder men. The rules are different here and she doesn't know them.

Shoka is a half-Shawnee, half-French warrior, swift and sure like the hawk, and silent as the moon. He makes Rebecca his prisoner, but the last thing he wants is to lose his head and already shredded heart to another impossibly beautiful woman…this one with blindingly blue eyes and a blistering temper. With dark forces gathering against them, will Rebecca and Shoka fight together or be destroyed?

Through the Fire is coming to the Wild Rose Press May 22nd. Daughter of the Wind, a light paranormal romance novel with strong Native American elements, was released May 1st.

BEAUTIFUL PLACES: A Village in Ireland and a Tiny Medieval Village in France

Thanks for being patient while I resolved my internet crisis. I think it's resolved, at least.


Don't you love this one? Sent in by Kerri Nelson, she says: "Just found your blog and love your new contest. Thought I'd send you a pic of where we went for our honeymoon. Well, this was one adorable town that we visited in Ireland known as "Westport: The Tidiest Town in Ireland". Gotta love a tidy town, aye?"

There will be more later from others, I hope, since several people have indicated they want to send in pics. In the meantime, I thought I'd show you the place that was the surprise of our Mediterranean Cruise last September:


I didn't go on the cruise with any special expectations of France because my interest was in Italy and Spain, where I want to set some books. But I thought a tiny 16th Century village set in the foothills of the Alps would be a unique change of pace. It was more than that. St. Paul de Vence, above Nice, completely charmed me. Today it's mostly a tourist trap, of course, but it is remarkable anyway. Above is a view of residences on the outskirts of this little walled village. Few people live inside the walls now and most of it consists of lovely little boutiques, art galleries and outdoor cafes. But much of the ancient structure is preserved.


The village area was inhabited at least back to the 9th Century. In the 16th Century, apparently the King of France saw the village as vital to the defense of his interets, so he took over, kicking out most of the residents to re-build and wall in the village as a fortress to defend the pass between France and Savoy. The walled structure from this time remains, but there is not much change in the actual buildings. I'm telling you this the way the tour guide told us. You can find a more detailed- and more accurate- summary of this charming little place at http://www.saint-pauldevence.com/tourism_uk.html



There are no streets inside the walls wide enough to drive a car. These wonderful paved walkways wind up and down, all through the village, past shops and outdoor cafes, up to the high capped city walls where you can look down on the cramped little cemetery and beyond to the valley below. I didn't see the Mediterranean from here, but it's visible from the village walls.



I didn't actually ask, but I'm sure these lovely pebbled pavements were created very recently. But their charm only adds to the medieval ambiance.

So now I have one more Most Beautiful Place in the World. And now I'm imagining stories of a fictional tiny village guarding a pass between two nations in the Alpine foothills, and the struggle to possess it. Hero and heroine on opposite sides of the conflict, of course.

Big Internet Fight

I'm back, at last, after fighting with the internet for over a week. New router, more trouble. But it looks like we're back on line solidly now. I'll be posting later this afternoon. Thanks, all, for being patient.

Delle

MALE vs. MOLE, or, HERO CAT SAVES FAMILY LAWN

In memory of our old cat Shadow, here's a wacky story that is mostly true. (The not-so-true parts? The guys don't work that hard and are only lawn buffs when I say it's become a jungle.)

Shadow, the Hero Cat (In her broader days)

In summer I do most of my writing outdoors on the deck under a curtained canopy that provides shelter from rain and enough shade for me to see my laptop screen. Last summer while I worked, an additional opportunity arose. I became a War Correspondent. And I didn't even have to leave the deck to do the job.

Here's how it happened: You see, there's something about a string of mole hills laced around a yard that can set even the least intrepid of yard guys into a frenzy. I'm not talking about those strange males with green thumbs who spend entire summers weeding, seeding and trimming every blade of grass to the perfect height. I can't imagine how guys like that survive a mole attack. It's dangerous enough for my guys, and our lawn isn't exactly one a normal suburbanite would discuss in polite company.

Moles are not the innocuous tiny rodents digging around in the dirt they try to make you believe they are. They are vicious, loathsome, alien beings bent on the destruction of the American Way of Lawn. They are an affront to the masculinity of the American male. Therefore it is inherent in any American male that he must rise to the defense of home, hearth and backyard.

Nor is the struggle confined to male humans. The American house cat of either gender also feels honor-bound to join in the struggle to save the dandelion-dotted expanse of green. Or maybe it's that moles taste good. I'm not really sure. At any rate, the two males and two black cats of our household immediately united in the struggle against the common enemy.

I'm not really sure whether it was the human males or the black-furred Special Forces that took up the battle first, but the first sign of battle I glimpsed involved shovels leveling the mounds. By morning, the mounds were back.

Meanwhile, Jinx and Shadow took turns at the latest mound. Jinx dug and dug, turned around and came at the hole from a different angle. Eighteen-year-old Shadow, whose favorite daily routines consist of eating, sleeping, using the litter box and issuing various commands to be petted, let out or fed kitty treats, stood- or rather laid- guard whenever Jinx was not around. But the mounds multiplied, making a nearly complete circle in the yard.

Mole traps, suggested my son. I looked out and saw seven-year-old Jinx digging into the freshest hole like a dog after a bone, while old Shadow supervised from the shade of the redwood tree. And seeing Jinx going deep enough that half of her body was hidden from sight, I vetoes traps. They'd catch more cats than moles. Jinx is nothing if not exuberant in her pursuit of any critter that moves, and I could picture her poor little paw hideously mangled in the trap's ominous jaws.

Rocks, then, they decided. Soon they were hauling in gravel from the driveway and packing it into the holes, which they then flattened with their favorite weapons, shovels. It worked. The moles didn't re-appear in those holes. However, they did move on. More mounds. Closer to the house. My mind was starting to replay the horrors of gophers in Caddy Shack, and I could see those nasty creatures tunneling beneath the house and under-mining the foundation.

And Jinx kept digging, and Shadow kept supervising.

Since the rocks didn't stop the enemy, the guys turned to stronger measures. They'd flood them out. So the garden hose came into action, and the water ran until the neighbor's lawn downhill from us once again turned green even though it was mid-July, and my mind's eye envisioned our house inching downhill in a mudslide. Likely the moles were living it up beneath our very feet, basking beside their underground swimming pools. Only moles would do a thing like that.

Closer, closer, the tell-tale mounds came to the house, and the yard was beginning to look like a minefield. Nothing could stop their forward advance.

Someone said poison, and the guys took it to heart. No, said I, if the cats could dig up a trap, they could dig up poison. We must protect our allies. But what could we do? The moles were winning battle after battle. And the guys were talking backhoe. That would get rid of the moles, all right, but yard as we know it would cease to exist.

Then early one morning I was under my canopy typing away when I looked out to the battlefield through my computer glasses, which meant I didn't see all that well, and I saw Jinx going after a new hole with a new vengeance.

But squinting a bit harder (when I really could have just reached for the other glasses), I realized the cat at war was quite a bit fatter than Jinx. That was old Shadow digging, with all the energy and fury Jinx put into the endeavor. What was this? The feline couch potato in hot pursuit of the enemy? Never in all the years we've had her has she been a hunter, but the way she was shoveling the dirt, I would have sworn she was just about to bring home a mole for dinner.

My heart swelled with pride for the old girl. "Go, Shadow, go," I whispered, and sat up straighter to watch her work. "Go, girl. Save the yard from the backhoe. "

She dug, dug, dug. She came back up. She ran around the mound to the opposite side, and dove in again, sending dirt flying. Knowing her particular eating habits, I figured she'd expect me to roast it in the oven for her supper so it would be nice and tender for her old teeth.

Then she did the altogether too thinkable. She turned, backed onto the dirt and squatted.

Well, we all know Shadow was really simply indulging in one of her favorite daily activities. Don't we?

All I can say is, that was about a year ago and I haven't seen any new piles of dirt in the yard.