Monday’s verbiage: 1,257 words. Total now for this section is 7,802.
And here, from our recent trip to Alaska via Seattle, is a picture none of you will have ever seen before:
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Urban ramble…
Barb and I took a hike through Chinatown to downtown Vancouver last weekend, ambling past Canada Place to the Marine Building and then catching Skytrain, at Burrard, to make it back to East Van.
The pretty part of the walk is along Union Street, where there are lovely old houses with beautifully tended gardens, graceful well-aged trees, and the Union Street Market, a little mom & pop where you can grab a cup of coffee, a Portuguese custard tart, or a cod cake–whatever suits your fancy, and more besides.
Our only real photo op of the day came just as we were venturing out into the back alley behind B’s apartment: I saw a hawk doing the post-catch wobble in mid-air, with something small and gray in its talons. It paused in a tree: we gleefully gave chase. It hopped to the next, and we followed. In time it holed up in a big evergreen in a park that I’ve dubbed Iguana Park (because I saw a guy sunning a massive iguana there, twice, a couple of years ago). There was not even a glimpse of it to be had amid the dense piney greenery, and we would have questioned whether it might have eluded us, but for one thing: a little spiral of falling sparrow feathers, tuft after tuft after tuft, drifting out of the tree’s heart like a single line of snowflakes on a windless winter’s day.
Here’s the shot I got before it lost us. It reminds me a little of Dr. Horrible’s
The Native Star can finally be yours!!
It’s August 31st! This means M.K. Hobson’s delightful, ambitious, quirky, romantic, and thoroughly delectable first novel The Native Star
My experience with Indigo Springs
To keep you from dying of anticipation while you are sorting out the logistics, Hobson has kindly posted the first chapter, Ashes of Amour, here. Or if you missed her Journey interview earlier this month, you can check it out too!
Congratulations, Mary!
Cruising back in time… to Victoria!
Victoria was a bit of a pit stop, as cruise moments go… the ship was there for about four hours in the evening. With that in mind, 
Kelly and I had decided the thing to do was make straight for Munro’s Books. My uncle came along for the hike–between one thing and another, we hadn’t spent much time together over the course of the preceding six days.
It was a pleasant and scenic walk. We saw the Legislature, naturally…
and, in accordance with B.C. tourism laws, I took the obligatory shot of The Empress Hotel!
We happily dropped a pile on books before Munro’s closed, and decided that was enough. (Note to any Victoria readers: I did sign the copies of Indigo Springs they had in their sf section.) Back to the ship we went, in a nice taxicab.
We used to go to Victoria from time to time, years ago. It was a handy and inexpensive tourist-type outing for us. Then life shifted, and all our trips Vancouver Island became family focused, taking us to Qualicum Beach instead. I have been wanting to go back, and it was nice to get a glimpse of the city, but a proper visit is still on the Gotta Do list. The bookstore was, of course, lovely. If I was gonna do one thing, that was the right one. No complaints there!
But there’s so much more to visit & revisit: Craigdarroch Castle and the Royal BC Museum (Where the Past Lives!), and flower-mad as I am, it’s a little crazy that I’ve never made it out to the Butchart Gardens.
Any of you have a within-reach tourist locale you’ve been meaning to get back to?
Name dropping, with chicken and artichokes
Most of the writers I’ve interviewed for the Journey series have agreed that the big joy of working in publishing is getting to know so many cool and delightful people. I got a concrete reminder of the essential truth of this when Peter Watts came through Vancouver on his way to Worldcon. We spent Wednesday evening catching up over dinner and wine.
Peter and I got to know each other when Starfish
Peter is also a big fan of Rumble–who responds by treating him with uncharacteristic aloofness–and even named a head cheese after him in Behemoth
Anyway, it was one of those lovely, magical nights. He introduced us to Mr. Deity and we talked a lot about TV–Dexter and Breaking Bad and the ill-fated tv pilot Virtuality. Even as writers, it’s easier to talk tv than books–there’s still an awful lot of it and you cannot watch it all, but the areas of overlap are greater. This is part of the appeal of book clubs, I guess: if everyone agrees in advance to read something, you know you can talk about it with someone.
(On somewhat of an aside, another writer I know, Nancy Richler, is in a book club that specifically focuses on books its members failed to finish the first time. They’re currently wading through Henry James’s The Golden Bowl
We have more company coming to town this weekend… it has been an action-packed month! However, I am hoping to find time to post some Victoria pictures and do some grading.