I promised adventure pictures
It’s taken a while to put this post together because I have a silly-fun new idle phone game to obsess over while I’m also attempting to do book release promotion on what passes for my social media—while simultaneously preparing for a convention when I’m not wrangling contractors who have questions about this and that.
Yeah. But mostly it’s the cute little game.
It’s possible I’m hiding my consciousness in a cutesy playworld to stave off fears about the real world dropping straight into a flaminig toilet after the election in 13 days. It’s also possible that this game just the New Shiny, and like all New Shinies, I will obsess over it until I don’t, and it’s pointless to fight my brain’s rip currents.
In any case, I refuse to feel guilty about spending happy hours playing Cats & Soup: Fluffy Town instead of doing more “productive” things. Ironically, “refusing to feel guilty” can be tiring all on its own, what with the whole “Productivity and identity are the same thing” conditioning I grew up with.
A quick note about Operation Fancify Floor 2: WE HAVE DOOR KNOBS ON ALL THE UPSTAIRS DOORS! MY BUILT-IN BOOKCASES ARE BUILT! THERE ARE TOWEL HOOKS IN THE UPSTAIRS BATHROOM! THE WALL IN THE DOWNSTAIRS BATH IS PATCHED!!!
You can see why that’s distracting, I’m sure.
But. I Digress. This post is actually about the cruise. It was amazing, I highly recommend visiting Alaska and doing it by sea. There are things I would do differently if/when we do it again (sail earlier in the season, smaller ship, no cigar lounge, cabin nearer the bow than the stern, no “specialty dining”) but it was a fabulous trip, 10/10 would do again.
I don’t have many pictures of Alaska locations, as we only had two stop there instead of the planned four. On the plus side, we also did not end up sailing through 15 to 30 foot seas in 50 knot winds. Instead we got a sea day full of whale sightings, and a whole day in Victoria, BC instead of the planned measly 5 evening hours.
Really big storm.
Our route was the little yellow line at the right. The original schedule, put us in that exposed gap of ocean right when the storm got there. We ran ahead of it & dawdled in the Straits of Juan De Fuca below Vancouver Island for a day.
Here be a few pics of the trip. Mostly in chronological order, Seattle, Sitka, Juneau, sea days, and Victoria.
And now, back to the regularly unscheduled shenanigans and mundane adventures of my writing & writing-adjacent life.
Until later!
What’s on your bookshelf?
This is the part where I talk about my books.
First, the new one!
Relics From A Traveling Show
This tidy collection of all my short fictions in one handy volume releases November 12, 2024 in paperback and ebook. Preorders are available now, check your favorite booksite or local shop.
Or! OR! if you like getting your books from your local library, please request a purchase. Free for you, sale for me, everyone wins.
Most libraries need the following info for ordering print books:
Title: Relics From A Traveling Show
Author: K. M. Herkes
ISBN: 9781945745201 (paperback)
Every library system does things a little differently, but most want their collections to serve their communities, so most of them are very responsive to patron requests.
If you like novels more than short stories, I recommend my series The Rollover Files for hopepunk tales of about an alternate world where moms with midlife crisis superpowers have been saving the world and making the military nervous since 1943.
I also have a completed, quirky slow-burn science fiction thriller duology with a romance chaser: The Stories Of The Restoration.
All my titles are available from Amazon, Apple, Kobo, Hoopla, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, Overdrive and many other fine booksellers.
Support your favorite independent bookseller! Find a local shop via Indiebound