Summer is for adventuring!
Another month has gone by and we are well into summer! Last year, the hot weather didn’t arrive until July 4th. I’m thrilled our summer showed up much earlier this year (in May, yay) with sunshine and consistent 70-degree weather.
Of course, that means we’ve had a whole extra month to pack in some fun trips.
Summer Adventures
At the end of May, my husband and I embarked on our longest and most ambitious 2023 summer trip, taking our BMW adventure motorcycle from Bellingham, WA to Yosemite, CA. I’d always wanted to take the drive down the west coast, to see the Redwoods and Yosemite. We had planned to do this route from south to north in 2020, but alas, the wildfires raging across California that September meant a change of plans.
My favorite part about this trip had to be camping at Cape Lookout – a gorgeous campsite on the Oregon Coast – and driving the long, twisty roads along Oregon’s coast. The road is carved out of high cliffsides, and as the passenger I got to stare at an expanse of sparkling ocean dotted with dynamic sea stacks (love me a good sea stack!). Once past Oregon, we hit the Redwoods and took the route through the Avenue of the Giants. The trees there felt old, with a hushed calm amongst their wide trunks.
Yosemite was gorgeous and epic as expected, but I was also alarmed to see so much fire damage from years past. Mountainsides lay full of blackened toothpicks. Here I also started to get sick with the other C, aka your average head cold. Being congested on a motorcycle was not the most fun, and at one point I had to just stuff tissue paper up under my visor to try to control the drippage.
Did I also mention at the start of the trip, a bee flew into my helmet? Luckily just a little bumble, and he was so dazed he just hung out until I was able to (pretty calmly, actually), gently nudge him out.
I thought all that time on the motorcycle with naught to entertain me but scenery and my own thoughts (no music or podcasts here people!) meant I’d do some awesome book brainstorming. Surprisingly, I didn’t daydream all that much about future Lishka books until the very last leg of the trip. Oh well.
For the more recent July 4th weekend, we backpacked up into the Alpine Lakes wilderness and camped there for three nights. Last year we did the same trip and found a lot of snow around Copper Lake, as well as some moody mistiness complete with a thunderstorm. This year there was no snow and all weekend we had 70-degree sunny weather. Bummer that my sister and I had chosen not to bring any shorts, but we made do. So many wildflowers grew along the trail, and I took pictures so I could accurately depict them in the next book I’m working on (the prequel of sorts to LISHKA). I just love getting inspired by real landscapes.
From our campsite, we day-hiked to Big Heart Lake along a trail that switch-backed through rocky ridges, boulder fields, and tall spiky evergreen. Essentially, perfect LISHKA scenery.
My sister actually brought LISHKA on her kindle to beta read for me, and I had to (pretty unsuccessfully) restrain myself from asking her every two minutes how she was liking it. The most rewarding moment was when I heard her shout from her tent as she finished the book: “Sequel now!”
What I’m reading
So far this summer, I have read the Bone Shard Emperor by Andrea Steward, Silver in the Bone by Alexandra Bracken, and reread both Shade’s Children by Garth Nix (an old favorite that I’ve read many times!) and Circe by Madeline Miller (her writing in this book is just gorgeous). Right now I am about half-way through another YA book, Soul of the Deep, which I am really enjoying! I also got Sleeping Beauties by Stephen & Owen King from my local library, for a bit of a departure from fantasy that I’m really looking forward to (after randomly discovering it in an airport Hudson News 4 months ago and putting it on my TBR list).
Lishka Updates
Literally right before typing this update, I sent the book off to the proofreader! She and I are both pretty excited for this editing phase. The designer should be starting on the cover this month, which will also be another great milestone as I head toward publishing.
I am still working out the details of actually publishing (getting the ISBN, etc.). In a YouTube writer’s vlog, I learned that Ingram Sparks requires you to be an imprint (aka company) to upload your book to their platform. I’m still trying to confirm whether this is true, but if it is, I’m not sure if I will use them or not. I really want to, but the thought of having to create a mini company is a bit intimidating. So we shall see.
I got to check off a few tasks in my LISHKA Asana project today, and was rewarded with a little magical Narwal with a rainbow flying across the screen. So satisfying. Hopefully in the next few weeks here, I’ll get to check a few more of the logistical tasks off and see some more fantastical creatures.
