Day 16. What Rules? What Road?

I spend about half an hour trying to find the henna tattoos, located at 4:00 in center camp. Hot and cranky, I finally give up.  This has certainly turned into a shitty day.

Then I stumble upon friends and next thing I know I’m on an art car with some sort of south seas theme. It takes us to a memorabilia-filled tiki bar tucked into a bus and I’m drinking rum drinks and talking to a psychiatrist about phobias when I meet an older burner at the bar who’s been doing this since the early 90’s and he kisses my hand and suddenly I feel so welcome here.

Read more, see more photos and enjoy the song of the day at Day 16. What Rules? What Road?

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Day 4: Bloom here

I’ve spent two nights at my sisters and have two more nights to go. This is the longest stop of my 28 day journey, save one, and half of my brain at least is already worrying about the trip ahead, checking on reservations, considering needed supplies. No, I tell myself. Stop it. Just stop it. This is precious time.

Read the entire post at Day 4: Bloom here

What I want to be paid

I was complaining to a family member about feeling underappreciated in one arena of my life, adding that the real insult was this involved volunteer work for which I wasn’t even being paid. Can’t I at least be paid compliments? I asked. If not that, then maybe pay me a little respect?

Wait a minute. It looks like there are more than two things we can pay. Our language contains so much truth.

Read more at What I want to be paid.

(For more conversation about the truths hidden in our language see Pay Attention, and Spending time.)

 

Review: The Ancient Tripod of Peace

My Review Summary: This is a fun read that will keep you turning pages and have you googling Shakespeare and  Greek history… It’s full of ancient secrets hidden in plain sight and the reader is left wondering how much is true and how much has been made up to serve the plot. It’s a fun kind of confusion, and it kept me eagerly reading until the end.

Read more at Review: The Ancient Tripod of Peace. 

My Eye-opening Second Reason for Writing

Couldn’t you go research all these things and more, and not bother with the writing part, you might ask? It would be a fine question. Of course I could, but I probably wouldn’t. I’m curious about so many things, but my ability to get myself to sit down and learn about them instead of goofing off is pretty limited. Unless I’m doing it for one of my books. Then I will spend hours on it.

Read more at My Eye-opening Second Reason for Writing.

History at its most exciting

While I was in Peru, I got asked what I knew about the massive Maya discovery being made in the Petén region of Guatemala. What??

“Oh yes,” I was told. “It is so big and amazing that soon people will want to visit it instead of Machu Picchu.”

Really? How could I have missed that.

Read more at History at its most exciting.

(For more on my trip to Peru see What you don’t know …. has the power to amaze you and woman traveling alone.)

Spending time

“What makes you think your free time is any less precious than your spending money? It’s more precious. Hell yes, you say no if you don’t feel like going!”

Then I started to think about the words we use to describe both of these concepts. We have money. We spend money. We have time. We spend time.

Do we spend anything else? I don’t think so. Even our language acknowledges that time is a resource as precious as our wealth.

Read more at Spending time.

Designing your own book cover, part 3

I was sort of like someone who wants to fire a few BB’s at a squirrel to scare it off the lawn and gets handed an AK-47. Before I knew it, I had dozens if not hundreds of relevant images and so many cover ideas that my head hurt. Take a look at a couple of the wild combinations…

I had to make a decision. I picked something that I thought would please everyone a little and my novel first appeared with the cover below.

It took me no more than a few days to accept that I did not particularly like it.

Read more at Designing your own book cover, part 3.

(For more on this topic see Designing your own book cover, part 1 and Designing your own book cover, part 2.)

 

Like Eating Crab

I love to travel, and I do my best to embrace the types of joys my current journey has to offer. Last week, I went on what had to be an Alaskan king crab sort of trip.

That would be a journey in which one has to work to get what one is after. Long flights, language difficulties, bumpy roads or high seas can make this a kind of vacation that many would be loathe to take. But the reward is seldom seen beauty and unusual wonders, and sometimes, a sense of personal accomplishment.

Read more at Like Eating Crab.

(Read more about my trip to Kenya at Smiling my way across Kenya, Still a Sunrise?, Replacing me with … and  Happy Peace Day, Chinese Person in Tent Number 59)

Caring About Far Away Places

My stories make it obvious that I love places that require a difficult journey to visit. Greenland. Bhutan. Antarctica. Tierra del Fuego. A small village in Nigeria. A lake in the Mountains of Guatemala. If it’s hard to get to from where I am, I love to write about it.

No place is more remote to a Texan that the island nation of Kiribati. This south pacific country of 100,000 people is made up of 33 low-lying coral atolls with a total land area of about 300 square miles. More spectacularly, it is the only nation on earth to set inside of all four hemispheres, and it covers a million square miles on the globe.

Read more at Caring About Far Away Places.

(For more thoughts on Far Away Places see Those Far Away Places Could Be Next Door, Leaving a Light Footprint in a Far Away Place, As Far Away Places Edge Closer and The Courage to Embrace Those Far Away Places.)

That’s Why You Make the Trip

Cinnamon on oranges and cumin on boiled eggs. The inside of a walled city so confusing that it has spawned an entire cottage industry devoted to directing lost tourists. Surfer towns painted in hippie colors and seaside resorts caught in a 50’s time warp as they offer hospitality to a smattering of elderly Europeans.

None of this is what I expected when I came to Morocco.

This is a blog about predicting the future, and over the past few days I’ve been thinking a lot about the unexpected.

Read the entire post on my d4 blog at That’s Why You Make the Trip.

z2: my 3 favorite excerpts

From z2:

There was lightness in Stan’s step as he helped unload the two trucks and made his way to the cave’s small entrance. “You first, Dr. Drexler,” Nelson said politely. Stan wasn’t even all the way in when he noticed mud tracks he was sure neither he nor his students had made. No, come on, he thought. Surely we did not have intruders last night of all times.

He looked around quickly. Everything else they had found over the last few days was completely undisturbed. Only the ornate box and its half disintegrated bit of cloth covering were completely gone, as if they had never existed.

You have got to be kidding, Stan muttered to himself. Locals? For christsakes, did one of my students tell somebody? Then he had a second thought. Was there any chance at all that any of the five students could read hieroglyphics from this region that well?

Because Dr. Stan Drexler of course could. He had studied nothing but for the last twelve years. And even though there was a fair amount of local variation and he had only gotten a quick glance at it, there are certain words that anyone who has ever loved archaeology knows, at least in the culture where they have expertise. “Treasure” is one of those words. Even higher on the list is any phrase that translates roughly as “the greatest treasure ever.”

Read this full excerpt and two more at z2: new synopsis and my 3 favorite excerpts.

This box went everywhere with me

Okay …. so it looks like the real me is a lot about eating, drinking and getting a good night’s sleep. And while Ford Perfect traveled the galaxy armed only with his trusty towel, it looks like I prefer cloth napkins and washcloths.

read the full blog post at This box went everywhere with me.

 

 

Treasure hunting for treasure

Treasure hunting for treasure