Mike Jastrzebski's Blog, page 26

Culture Shock

The view from my room at Sleuthfest 2014 in Orlando, Florida

by Christine Kling

According to Wikipedia, culture shock can be defined as “the personal disorientation a person may feel when experiencing an unfamiliar way of life due to immigration or a visit to a new country, a move between social environments, or simply travel to another type of life.”

I think they can add a new definition to Wikipedia: Board a plane in Majuro in the Marshall Islands and travel for the next week on plane after plane and then drive your boat all day to move to a new dock and then go check into a hotel and attend a conference like Sleuthfest 2014 with people you used to see all the time four years ago in what now seems like another life.

From worldatlas.com

Don’t get me wrong – I love my people, my tribe. But my neck is hurting a bit from the whiplash brought about by all these changes in my life. Because, yes, you see, Talespinner is for sale. Anyone interested? Just email me I’m not going to be a singlehander anymore. That’s what has really been my culture for the last 18 years — single mom, single woman, solo sailor. Now, the s/v Learnativity is my new home. So, here at Sleuthfest when people ask me where I’m living now, I tell them out in the Pacific islands.

But oddly enough, as I read back over that definition of culture shock, I realize that the disorientation I’m feeling isn’t coming from the shift from singledom to coupledom. It’s that I’m feeling odd here in this country with these people who are my tribe. And yet I’m missing jumping off the transom steps into crystalline water. I’m missing the smells of  cooking and diesel exhaust and campfire smoke of island life. I want to wake to the sounds of cocks crowing, birds singing, dogs barking and the gentle wash from the wakes of the fisherman’s boats. I’m longing to be back in that world I’ve so quickly grown accustomed to calling home.

Fair winds!

Christine

 

 

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Retreat!

C.E. Grundler

Even if I try to avoid the news and ignore the constant talk about the weather, unless I lock myself inside for what seems the foreseeable future, there’s no escaping the bitter cold. One step outside, and there it is, surrounding you, cutting through layers of clothing and stinging exposed skin. The frozen river is lifting docks and rearranging pilings. And now word on the pot-hole pocked streets is that we’re in the bull’s eye for yet another round of ice and snow. So what’s a land-locked, ice-bound writer to do?

Retreat into my imaginary world!

I’ll admit, there are countless things I enjoy about being a writer. It gives me an excuse to travel to fascinating places, all in the name of research. It allows me to try new things (foods, activities,) all in the name of writing more accurate descriptions, though that’s not the sole reason you may find me in White Castle at 3 am. Writing gives me an excuse to talk to just about anyone about just about anything. (It also gives me the excuse to write a sentence that utilizes the words ‘about’ three times.) Being a writer gives me permission to be — shall we say — a bit eccentric. “Oh, it’s okay. She’s a *WRITER*.” But one of my favorite aspects of being a writer is that it gives me the excuse to remain firmly entrenched in my own imaginary world. And when I’m lost in this fictional world, I’m actually WORKING!



In my youngest days, many a teacher called my parents in for a conference, concerned that I spent far too much time day-dreaming. “Doesn’t apply herself,” these teachers insisted. “Doesn’t focus on the lessons or assignments.’ And they were dead-on. I could care less about school-work, not when there were far more interesting worlds to explore, populated by far more interesting residents than my fellow class-mates. My parents were warned that if I didn’t change my ways, I’d never accomplish much of anything. Ah. it was a grim future that lay ahead for a little day-dreamer such as I.



I’m certain they had my best interests in mind at the time. Clearly there was little chance I’d get far in life so long as my imagination over-rode more grounded, reality-based endeavors. Fortunately, that didn’t stop me, though it did keep the stories I wrote side-lined for far too many years, when I still believed these imaginary people in my private world would be of little interest to most people. That is, until I realized most every book on the fiction shelves was born within someone’s imagination. That, and baby needed a new pair of heat exchangers. It was at that point I said, “Screw it.” I stopped calling myself a dreamer and started calling myself a Writer…with a capital W, because it looks more important that way. And these days where I work, at least within in my imaginary world, it’s currently sixty-two degrees and sunny. The water is still in a liquid form, and the boats are still afloat…at least for the the moment. According to the weather reports, my imaginary world is about due for a real messy hurricane.

Be a Writer. Embrace your imagination. In there, the weather is what you make it, and the sky can be whatever color you like!

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Shape Shifting

By Christine Kling

I’ve rarely failed to get a blog post up on my weekends, but this weekend I completely lost track of time. I’ve been slowly traveling back toward Florida from the Marshall Islands and I think I’ve been lost in some kind of time limbo.

We left Majuro at 8:00 p.m. On Friday evening and flew to Honolulu and then on to San Francisco and then down to Ontario. We saw the sun set in Majuro, rise again in Honolulu, set again in San Francisco, and yet we arrived in Ontario on Friday evening at 7:30 p.m. A half hour earlier than when we left Majuro.

I think my brain went into some kind of slow-mo and got lost out there in the sky over the Pacific Ocean. I forgot that I had to write a blog, I forgot to check my own emails, I got so tired, I forgot to mail off the proofed manuscript of Dragon’s Triangle I had promised to send my editor.

Here at Write on the Water we often write about the difficulty of shifting between the world of boats and the world of books. I’ve been living the sailing life for two months now, but I’m off to the SleuthFest Writers Conference on Thursday, and I need to adjust to more than a change of time zones. I don’t suppose the rudder wrangling story will get much play there, so I’ve been trying to read and catch up on all the news from the book world. Like a shape-shifter, I feel like I’m creaking and twisting and and pulling myself into this new form. Christine, the writer. But before I go to SF, I need to move my own boat to a dock 50 miles to the north, so I’ll have to shape shift back into a yachtie for the day on Wednesday. And once Talespinner is tied up at her new home in New Smyrna Beach, I’ll shape back to being a writer for the next six months. Sigh.

Fair winds,

Christine

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Dissecting “To Beat the Devil” – part two

All right, the overall premise of the book was done in my last blog. Now it’s time to deal with the opening of the book.

“To Beat the Devil” opens differently than my other books, because it’s told in Norm’s voice. I began in Murphy’s voice, but realized what happened in the end of “Stairway to the Bottom” would have left Murphy in bad shape, both physically and mentally. So, Norm, Murphy’s black bag friend begins the story and it’s not in Key West. About 100 pages into the book, they arrive back in Key West, and we have Murphy telling the story.

So, the book opens with Norm explaining why Murphy is beating a Russian gangster with a rubber hose. There are some later torture scenes that I made up, but the practice is not fiction.

A lot of the story in the beginning deals with tracking Alexei, the person responsible for the violent ending of “Stairway to the Bottom.”

Without giving too much away, there’s a few chapters set in South Beach outside and inside a Russian “private club.” It’s true, the Russian Mafia brings over bar girls from the old Soviet Bloc and use them to entice wealthy men to come to the clubs, where they guys are usually fleeced with prices of a grand for drinks. Stories have appeared in the Miami Herald about these clubs and sometimes the owners are taken to court. But it takes a while.

There’s a few altercations with the Russians that leads Murphy to Mexico and drug gangs fighting each other. Remember, Murphy’s friend Pauly is an ex-drug smuggler and knows his way around Tampico, Mexico. Thanks to Pauly’s connections, a Mexican Navy attack to the drug compound, Murphy finds out about a possible terrorist attack about to happen.

These chapters are built around Iranians, Russians and Mexican drug cartels. Is it real? Can it happen? When I brought the chapters to my intelligence expert, he said I was right on, especially about the Iranians. To find out what I was right on about, you’ll need to read the book. But, I can assure you, the chapters concerning the Russians and their cohorts are plausible and what I have them involved in may scare you as much as it did me. Sometimes in writing fiction, the truth behind the story may be more titillating.

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Meltdown!

At last!

I’m sitting with the sun on my back, streaming through the window behind me, and for the first time in a long time, I’m actually truly WARM. I’ve always believed in the ‘put a sweater on’ method, rather than raising the heat, but there are only so many sweaters you can wear at the same time.

The view from my window. Not Annabel Lee’s shed, but you get the idea. The small mountain of snow and ice is the fallout of what slid off the roof, then got further snowed on. You don’t want to park too close…I’ve seen cars buried by roof snow-slides. From this angle it isn’t obvious, but this pile  is over five feet high.

I’d almost forgotten how delightful it is to sit in a warm sunbeam. And those sunbeams are streaming down, melting the mountains of snow that have engulfed this region. It’ll be days before any bare ground is visible, (and rumour has it that we’ll be getting more snow next week, but I’ll worry about that when it’s on the ground,) but with this hint of warmth comes hope. It won’t be long until we can actually resume work aboard Annabel Lee. In past years I did my best to continue work through the winter, but not this year. It seemed so much colder, or perhaps it’s just me, getting older. Either way, work’s been on hold for long enough.

I checked on Annabel Lee again the other day, and this is certainly one winter I’m glad she’s safely tucked away indoors. But between the roof-avalanches and drifting snow, a waist-deep wall of white had the doorway beside the boat securely barricaded. On the opposite side, I waded through snow up past my knees to squeeze through a small gap in the other door. Judging by the tracks on the ground, other than the local feral cats coming and going, I’ve been the only visitor. But the days are getting longer and warmer, and it’s time to get this ongoing project I call a boat wrapped up and back afloat once and for all. And who knows? Maybe I can put some of those cats to work, in exchange for Friskies.

 

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Hu-Ke-Lau Revisited

There is no going back. I know that adage, but I had to learn it once again last week when I visited an iconic culinary institution of my youth, the Hu-Ke-Lau Restaurant in Longmeadow, Massachusetts. (Yes folks, it’s true. While fellow writer and Write On the Water blogger Christine Kling gives us dramatic posts from the South Pacific, I am offering-up an entry about a stateside Polynesian restaurant. Stick with me, though.)

I’ve been talking about going back to the Hu-Ke-Lau for decades, and with each year of absence, the place grew in importance, gaining a Mount Rushmore-like standing. Last week, I finally made the trek and it was all there – the same plush carpet (now warn thin after a decades of use), the same menu (more on that later), and the same exotic ambiance (exotic for a sheltered baby-boomer from Western Massachusetts).

When I was young, my aunt and uncle would visit us once a year. Each time, we’d go out to dinner, and without fail my uncle would involve me in his sure-fire method for picking up the tab. When the check came, my uncle would point to me and tell the waiter that I’d be paying for dinner. The waiter would laugh along and then I would confirm my uncle’s statement by pulling out a fresh fifty, one that my uncle had covertly handed me before dinner.

Back then, my family rarely went out to dinner and meals at home were conventional. The exception was the Hu-Ke-Lau, and it was fun – the strange pronunciation of Polynesian dishes, the fiery arrival of sterno-lit centerpieces, and, of course, me picking up the tab.

So there I was last week, walking in with my wife, regaling the old spot. My first observation was that the place was empty. Then I noticed the carpet. It seemed so plush back then, and it must have been given that it has lasted all these years. The lights were brighter than I remembered – a little dimming would have helped now. And then came dinner. I ordered Hawaii Three-O (the Hawaii Five-O dish included shrimp and white fish).

“Wow, look how much food there is,” I said as my plate arrived. Yet, it was downhill from there. A vivid imagination can assist a writer, but it’s a curse when you’re convinced that these huge portions must have sat on a previous patron’s plate. And the spare ribs? They were just as I remembered them. In fact, they may have been hanging around since the late sixties.

Soon, my thoughts shifted more to a sense of resignation, than one of disappointment. For a moment, I thought about Trader Vic’s in New York City and the fact that it’s long gone from the basement of the Plaza. Like some old professional athletes, the Hu-Ke-Lau stayed around too long.

I can’t imagine ever going back again. But I assure you, there are mighty fine memories of my family sitting at one of their big round tables with a consumed Pu-Pu-Platter. In that image a young boy sits with his family, and he’s about to close out the night by surprising the waiter with a crisp legal tender marked with the face of President Ulysses S. Grant. Funny what we recall, isn’t it.

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The Waiting Game

By Mike Jastrzebski

I’m not a very patient  person and so waiting for the fiberglass on the bottom of the boat to dry out is a frustrating process for me. Since it seems that we will be on the hard until at least mid-April I’ve been thinking about how I want to pass the time.

There’s a nice park next to the marina and Mary and I have been walking the dog every day, but let’s face it, that’s an hour in the morning. I’m working on my taxes and I’ve been reading a lot, but the truth of the matter is that I’ve been putting off the two inevitable things that I need to work on. Writing and boat projects.

I was going to work on the rewrite of Stranded Naked Blues, my new Wes Darling Mystery, but then I took a look at my project list. It’s grown to a full two dozen items I need to take care of before we can take off on the boat again. Since most of these projects can be completed while we’re on the hard I’ve decided that the boat has to come first. Some I can ignore if I have to, but I think I can complete everything in a month. Then it will be time to start on the writing.

Am I the only one out there whose project list seems to grow exponentially, even while I’m sleeping?

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New features in Navionics app allows boaters to use satellite photos for navigation

Wayne and Ruby on the beach at Eneko

by Christine Kling

I’ve been fascinated with iPad navigation for quite a while and with our newly repaired rudder, we took off last Monday and motored across the Majuro lagoon to Eneko, one of the smaller islands that form this atoll. I’ve blogged here before about navigation apps and there have been some big changes in the offerings from Navionics. When Apple introduced iOS7, they redesigned their app and it may well become my favorite nag app. The trip to Eneko gave me the chance to try out these new features in the Navionics app, and it’s so cool!

At Eneko there is a small facility onshore, the Eneko Island Bungalows, where intrepid travelers could sleep as long as they brought their own food. I took the photo above on one of our hikes ashore to give some welcome exercise to Wayne’s dog, Ruby. Technically, she is quarantined to the boat, so she had not been ashore since Fiji, and it was really fun to watch her absolute joy at running on the white sand beach, digging for crabs, and barking at the giant pig.

One of the big issues with cruising in the Pacific is the fact that the nautical charts for the area aren’t very good. The governments of the world that have financed the surveys and kept the charts more or less up to date are mostly concerned about commercial shipping. Cruising yachts don’t account for a big enough market to make it worthwhile to survey all the little corners where they want to visit. This means that the entrance to a big commercial port like Majuro is well charted. You can count on the entrance channel being in the spot where the chart says it is. But the small islands around the rim of the atoll? Probably not. What is so cool about the new iOS7 version of the Navionics software is that it allows users to pull in the satellite images from Bing or Apple’s Maps and overlay those images onto the chart.

So here is the chart with our original track out to the island of Eneko. It really looks like we went right up to the shore and we’re anchored on top of the island’s tip, right?

Okay, but here is a look at where Learnativity was really anchored. The bottom does drop off very quickly so we were close to shore, but not on top of the land! Look again at the chart above. Atolls are formed by the coral reefs that grow around the perimeter of high volcanic islands. But throughout hundreds of thousands of years, the soil of the islands erodes and the islands disappear. Only the coral necklace of small islands remain, but because they grew on the shores of these steep volcanoes, the drop-offs are incredibly steep.

So, to really get an idea of how steep to these islands are, take a look at this satellite photo of Eneko. You can easily see the reefs and the lighter color is where there are depths of about 20-40 feet and yachts can anchor. There are also 4-5 moorings at Eneko so that yachts won’t damage the coral, but they were all occupied when we arrived.

 

Below is the chart that you can create with the Navionics iPad app by using the overlay with the satellite photo from Bing. The chart now shows the islands with a black line.

Look at how poorly the islands line up with the satellite image. You can see that the islands are pretty far out of their charted position. Can you imagine how relying on the charts could get you in trouble? The app also lets sailors play with the settings so that the satellite photo will cover more or less of the nautical chart. I’m still learning how to tweak it to make it work best for me.

The Navionics app is “free” but you have to buy the charts through an in-app purchase. And you have to make an extra in-app purchase of the $4.99 Advanced Mapping module to get this satellite photo feature.  I bought the Asia and Africa chart package (for about $65) which was what I needed to get Fiji and the Marshall Islands. And, of course, in order to get these sat photos, boats have to have Internet access, so that means they have to plan ahead and get these overlay charts made in advance. But, heck, this is so much better than relying solely on the charts.

I’m working on a Kindle book on Marine Apps for Boaters, so I’m curious to hear what you all think about these new features of the Navionics App. I hope you’ll leave some comments.

Fair winds!

Christine

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Yet again…

It has snowed. A lot. The above photo was taken sometime after breakfast this morning. Rex seems to be enjoying this winter, and if I had a coat like his I’m sure I wouldn’t mind half as much. My other dog, Loki, on the other hand, is not built for this weather and had little interest in being outdoors. Can’t say that I blame him.

And this photo was taken a few hours later, during a lull in the storm. Note the patio table and the railing from one photo to the next.  One day’s snow, and the day, and the snow, are far from over.  We’re expecting another 6 inches before dawn, then another round of 4-6″ from Friday night to Saturday morning.

And me? I just spent the last two hours clearing the latest layer from the driveway and walk. Now, if you’ll all excuse me, I’m curling up in my favorite arm chair with a nice glass of brandy while I watch the Olympics. Which, ironically, was held in Russia rather than New York City, in part because, well, you know. It’s the Winter Olympics, and for that you need a whole lot of top quality snow and ice.  Maybe we could ship some of this white stuff to balmy Sochi — I’m sure they could put it to good use, and I for one, would be happy to see it go.

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Fiction can excite you – while the truth may scare you

www.michaelhaskins.net

I’ve had a few discussions with people, some friends and others that showed up at the Smokin’ Tuna Saloon on Friday for happy hour because they read my books and know I’ll be there. The discussions are about To Beat the Devil, my latest book, and reality.

The discussions and questions didn’t happen in order of how the book unfolds, but someone I met last week thought I should talk about the questions that have been asked and follow the book. For the next few blogs here, I will do just that. If you’ve read the book and have a question about how I came up with something or if it’s possible or true, write and I’ll try to answer you.

The most often observation is that throughout the book there are two sets of bad guys. The terrorists and all their cohorts, and people in government that should know better but it would seem that they want the terrorist act to happen, so they do nothing to stop it.

I  made a few government officials bad guys in the book. Men and women that shouldn’t be. Hard to believe, people have told me. If you haven’t heard about the Whitey Bulger case in Boston and the corrupt FBI agents that allowed Whitey to get away with murder because his other activities helped advance their careers, go to Google. A badge, a gun and an acronym for an employer doesn’t guarantee someone is a good guy.

How many American federal agents have gone to jail for spying for the enemy? How many cops have gone to jail for stealing or even for dealing? Is Snowdon a hero for exposing NSA snooping on unsuspecting American citizen and world leaders, or is he a trader? It may be a personal decision, but it’s fodder for mystery writers.

So, in To Beat the Devil, my protagonists, Mick Murphy, and his ragtag group of miscreant friends, have to seek justice because those in positions to do it won’t. In all my books, it’s about people seeking justice when the system is broke or for other reasons, the system doesn’t work.

I make up the situations in my books, but the background is there for anyone to see. All you need to do is look for it. With the fall of Communism, writers like me needed to find another enemy and we didn’t have to look far! Corruption is in all our backyards. Read the papers, that’s where I get ideas, or watch the local and network news.

To Beat the Devil is based on a scary premise of what if . . . what if the terrorists were financed by Iran, trained in Mexico, crossed the border to attack us, using drug smugglers and what if officials in our intelligence agencies new this but turned a blind eye.

I learned things in my research that concerned me. Are we as safe as the government says? Are government agencies acting as if they are at war with each other when it comes to garnishing federal budget dollars? Would intelligence agency officials lie all the way to the White House to protect themselves? Would they let innocent people die to advance their careers or their agency?

We’ll see, in the coming weeks, what I learned and it might scare you too.

And don’t forget to register for Mystery Writers Key West Fest in early June. www.mysterywriterskeywestfest.com

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