Susan Grant's Blog, page 9

More Hong Kong

Victoria Harbor soon after sunrise and my idea of the breakfast from heaven: coffee, my kindle, and views from the 40th floor: 

  

  

  Over the years I’ve seen the Hong Kong Island shoreline growing and the harbor shrinking. All that valuable real estate being reclaimed, I guess. I wonder at which point they’ll stop. When the harbor becomes a  channel? Take a look:

  

The route to this gem of a city took us over eastern Russia/Siberia and down through Mongolia. Talk about the great white north! What a vast and lonely stretch of this planet northern China is. If you look closely at the next couple of photos you’ll see a town and some roads:   

   

Here’s a glimpse of the route we took. The names of the waypoints are a treasure trove of alien names for this sci-fi romance author! If you’ve read my Star series, the Vash surname Vedla is a waypoint name.  And oh so many more! 

  

Room with a view

There’s nothing better at the end of a very long day flying than a room with a view on the 38th floor of a luxury hotel overlooking Victoria Harbor in Hong Kong. I must write many pages tomorrow for my work in progress, The Champion of Barésh, but I get do so with THIS view in front of me!

  

My Upcoming Release

Here’s the blurb for my upcoming book. (release date, final cover image and an excerpt to follow). This is a stand-alone story in the Star Series world, so reading the previous 4 books will not be necessary. I’ve done this because of the length of time between those books and this one.

The Champion of Barésh (A Star World Frontier Book)

If it sounded like a fairytale, it probably was…

Tug driver Jemm Aves struggles to keep her dreams alive on a dead-end world. Working for the mines by day, she’s a successful bajha player at night, disguised as a male to be allowed to compete in the colony’s lucrative and violent underworld where club owners will go to extremes to retain the best players. When a man from the galaxy’s richest family recruits her to be a star player for his team, it’s because he doesn’t know her secret. Only, she soon learns he’s not so easily fooled. Suddenly playing bajha jumps from a scheme to feed her family to something far more risky. She’d sooner face down an irate mine boss than be caught lying to the Vash.

Prince Charming he was not…

Fresh off house arrest, Prince Klark is eager to reverse his reputation as the black sheep of the Vedla clan, a family as famous for its wealth and power as it is for being a bastion of male-dominated tradition. If his bajha team can win the galactic title it would go a long way toward restoring the family honor that his misdeeds tarnished. With a couple of the most celebrated pro-players in the galaxy in tow, he travels to Barésh to track down an amateur who’s risen to the top of the seedy world of street bajha, offering the commoner a chance of a lifetime: a way off that reeking space rock for good.

RITA-winner Susan Grant enchants readers with an all-new tale of two improbable lovers, their daring secret, and a gamble destined to alter the course of their lives forever.

Happy Holidays!

Beautiful lights in Seoul, South Korea! (and polar bears)  

Favorite SFR Heroines in books and movies

How exciting that Jasmine from The Star King made this amazing list over at Smart Girls Love SFR! Vote for YOUR favorite scifi-romance heroine today!

Mountain Meat

I am a food adventurer (unless it means eating animal guts or unidentifiable parts or fluids) and LOVE when I get to try a new-to-me food, as I did when I was last in Seoul. The sign sitting next to the dish said “Deodeok.” It was coated in a very spicy and tasty red pepper sauce. The texture was somewhere in between pineapple and pork. I looked it up afterward. It was Grilled Deodeok, or, Deodeok gui, AKA Mountain Meat, a Korean traditional vegetarian dish. “The aroma of wild Deodeok (bonnet bellflower root) can be sensed even from a great distance. Sweet and pleasantly bitter, it is claimed that wild Deodeok grows on dewdrops in the mountainsides. Deodeok is rich in fiber and has earned the nickname ‘mountain meat’ because of its firm, chewy texture. In China, deodeok has been used purely as a medicinal herb, but Koreans have used it mostly for cooking.” Not bitter at all. Nom nom. I loved it!

Happy summer!

I hope y’all are having a good summer! Here at Flygirl Acres we’ve been working hard to keep the vineyard and the orchard alive in drought conditions, feeling fortunate that we have water rights to an NID irrigation canal. The deer are also very grateful that we keep the vines alive, as they’re waiting for the grapes to hit that perfect sugar level, when they’ll delicately with their little deer lips pluck off all the grapes they can reach. We declared war on the squirrels this year for the first time so it looks like we might have an almond harvest. And pecans. Last year they ate every last one. If they’d only shared and left us a few, sure, we’d have coexisted. Life in the country, as they say…

It’s been way too hot here. People always say, “But it’s a dry heat.” Well, so’s your oven. I suppose it’s better than a Papua-New-Guinea-esque level of humidity so I’lll take it, but this girl will be glad to see the cooler temps that come with fall.

 

Here are a few pics from the past couple of weeks. Enjoy!

Almonds ripening:

Rare summertime clouds in our valley–we even got a few sprinkles of rain: On layover in Waikiki! View of Diamond Head: The Shorebird. Awesome place to sip Myers dark rum and fresh pineapple juice: More Waikiki: Me posing by my big bird at Honolulu international. Excuse the teeth, I’m wearing my new Invisalign braces: The palace in Tokyo: The reason why so many Japanese women don’t have sun damaged skin: Love the contrast of the palace buildings and the modern city buildings:

Algae in the moat: So many grapes in the vineyard this year!:Peaceful summer eve in Seoul, South Korea:

Summer sunset in Seoul: Jumbo selfie!: And so a nap truce is called…: Breakfast udon in Tokyo:

 

Until next time, fly high!

 

 

 

 

Desert Islands and Bowls of Ramen

I’m in the middle of a 6-day trip flying between Honolulu and Tokyo. We were flying a typical “great circle” route from San Francisco (SFO) to Tokyo/Narita (NRT) the other day when the ubiquitous undercast cleared. Whenever it does, and it really is rare, yet seems to be happening more often lately, and I don’t want to think too hard on why, I get to see some fascinating sights. Here’s the big picture of where the following photos were taken. You’ll notice a little place marker in the middle of the Aleutian Islands chain, just east of Adak.

Zoomed in a bit.

You can see the clouds in the background (how this region usually looks when I fly over it) with no land at all visible. But soon they retreated enough to reveal great views of Adak and…

Then…look at that–a tiny island with a crater in the center!

Wow! I really had to zoom my iphone6 in to get any detail. Cool!!! What was this place? Was that fresh water in the center? Was it warm from thermal heating? From an ancient volcano? It looked completely scrubbed and desolate, and I wondered why, as wouldn’t it be the perfect seasonal habitat for seabirds and other life? Since I couldn’t rappel down from 37,000 feet to explore I scribbled down the approximate latitude and longitude and when I got to Tokyo I googled it.It was a real place and it even had a name: Kasatochi Island! With a violent and tragic past, I learned. Prior to 2008, it was green and beautiful, considered by many to be the most picturesque of the Aleutian Islands. Before disaster struck…“Before the 2008 eruption, it was steep, rugged and it’s vegetation was dense, low-growing and dominated by many species of grasses and forbes making it similar to other Aleutian Islands. What set Kasatochi apart was the diversity and abundance of seabirds that nested there each summer. Most notably, Kasatochi supported a colony of about 250,000 least and crested auklets, one of only seven such colonies in the Aleutian chain. The large numbers of seabirds attracted a variety of avian predators such as bald eagles and peregrine falcons. Kasatochi was also notable in that it supported a rookery of the endangered Steller sea lion.” –Alaskan USCS Wow… And now this…

After Kasatochi, it was onward to crossing north of Adak and eventually south of Russian airspace to Japan. Those who know me well know I LOVE traditionally made Japanese ramen. This was my dinner in a little noodle shop in Minato District in downtown Tokyo. A creamy, slightly spicy surprisingly good broth for a tiny hole-in-the-wall place with noodles and some vegetables. I added ground sesame seeds and a little more chili. I went early, before it got crowded with “salarymen” after work, because while I love ramen, I hate eating it to the sound of loud slurping, the proper way to eat the noodles, apparently.

Funny, my breakfast looked a lot like my dinner!

Omelette bar? No thanks. Give me the noodle bar. I made Udon noodles (at the hotel breakfast buffet) with an egg and loads of vegetables, hot chili, cilantro, sesame oil, and lemon to flavor, and one meat-ish ball plopped in, because why not? A thing of beauty…and it tasted amazing, too! 

I’ll write a post about Honolulu next. Until then, be good…

 

What I do…

At United we don’t do things exactly like these British Airways guys, but this pilot is a fantastic writer and his essay gives a great glimpse into my job as a jumbo jet pilot flying internationally. Enjoy!

In Flight

 

Awesome pilot that rocks!

It must be true. I have the certificate!