So, is it summer, or what?

I don't think it can make it's mind up right now.

On the one hand, all day today we found ourselves seeking shade at every opportunity. And yet, as always seems to happen early September, it's like someone's flicked a switch and the evenings are suddenly no longer inviting for sitting out on the deck. After weeks of non-stop outdoor living, we are back to eating meals indoors.

Yesterday evening, we were out picking our first blackberries. Something that should have happened a whole month ago.

Then today, we went to the Saanich Fair, which always, to me, signals the end of summer.

What a topsy-turvy season.

The Saanich Fair has become an annual favourite of ours, even though most of it is now familiar and predictable. There's big sheds of livestock, arts and crafts, and all the usual displays you'd find in a country fair...flowers, vegetables, home baking, preserves...as well as a wide assortment of stalls and endless varieties of food stands.

Because we've seen it all before, we asked the kids if they wanted to bother this year. Megan, especially, insisted. Here's why...

She's made friends in past years with some of the goat owners, and spent the whole day helping them out.

Of course, going to fairs like this has its attendant perils. There's always the danger of coming home with rather more than you intended to.

Please welcome two new additions to the family: Midnight and Liquorice.

Liebsterised

The lovely Laila Knight at Untroubled Kingdom has passed me the Liebster Blog award. The idea of this award is to spread bloggerly love to some deserving bloggers with fewer than 200 followers.

I have to thank and link back to the sender - done - and nominate a few people to tag in return.

So, in no particular order, I hereby Liebsterise the following:

Steph at Across the Border
Elizabeth at Devious Diversions
Unikorna at Why I Wake up Every Day
Saloma at About Amish
Mysti at Unwritten

Another good reason not to get a boat

The campground at Pacific Playgrounds is right next to a marina and boat launch.

We returned from an outing one day to find this little drama unfolding at the boat launch...

Can you see what it is yet?

The car was only two months old.

Thankfully, no-one was hurt in this incident.

The changing face of vacation pastimes

This is the third year running we've spent our main summer vacation at Pacific Playgrounds, on Vancouver Island's east coast.

Some things have stayed the same:

Since our first visit here, we've asked for - and got - the same pitch. We know this pitch, we know how the car and trailer fit into it, it suits us.

The river, beach, and pool are still here, as is the convivial family atmosphere that draws us back each year. Everything is now homely and familiar.

The patchy wi-fi hasn't changed either, which means there's a 50-50 chance of this post managing to appear before we leave.

But the main focus of our leisure pursuits has changed each year.

First year, we swam in the river and spent hours swinging in off the rope swing someone tied high up on an overhanging tree. We also visited the beach many times and made sandcastles, boats, trains, spaceships - one marathon construction each day to be washed away on the tide leaving a blank canvas for the next day.

Last year, the river ran higher and made useable rapids running into the deep pool under the rope swing. So a drive into Courtenay secured some decent river tubes and we all spent long afternoons tubing.

This year, beach and tubing are still on the agenda, but now the kids have got the fishing bug. So, another drive into Courtenay and they now have rods, lines, and tackle.

Wonder how their tastes will have changed by next year?

I Hate You

Tessa Conte, over at Tessa's Blurb, is hosting a Hatefest today.

The idea is as follows: On August 12th, post a story, an excerpt of your work or a poem you've written that shows HATE of some form or another - your character hates someone, someone hates your character, or maybe you hate someone / something?

So, of course, I've picked a passage from Ghosts of Innocence, because, of course, in a story of tit-for-tat revenge for the toasting of your home planet there's never going to be any kind of hate showing.

Is there?

Here, professional assassin and revenge-seeker, Shayla Carver, has stolen the identity of a newly-appointed public servant, has infiltrated the Imperial Palace, and is face to face with her unsuspecting quarry for the first time.

There were guards at the doors and ranged around the walls. None of them had weapons drawn. The nearest was a good twenty feet away. Shayla stood alone in front of the desk, scant feet from the Emperor himself.

She looked at him with a mixture of loathing and curiosity, carefully masked under an expression of bland obeisance.

I could kill you here and now!

The feeling was overwhelming. It would be so easy. She could end it now, and she didn't care what happened to her afterwards.

But she submerged the burning rage under glacial determination. I don't just want to kill you. I want to destroy you!

Emperor Julian Skamensis leafed unhurriedly through a sheaf of documents floating across the surface of the desk. He spent a few seconds reading each one, scrawled notes on some, signatures on others, oblivious to the simmering hate standing opposite.

Patience.

In order to calm herself, Shayla forced herself to gaze past the Emperor's shoulder to the tall windows behind him. Fountains played in the courtyard behind. Rose beds formed a blaze of regimented color. The whole effect was more sumptuous and welcoming than the solitary fountain and tired flagstones of the court outside Shayla's window. Her eyes followed the tracery between the window mullions, the high glass panels glowing in afternoon sun depicting scenes of Imperial conquest. She hastily tore her eyes away and instead followed the plush folds of green and gold drapes.

At length, the Emperor looked up from his desk.

Housekeeping note: The timing is a bit awkward for me, but this blogfest was just too interesting to ignore. When this entry gets posted my Internet access is likely to be patchy at best. I will try to get online to visit other participants, but please understand if I don't get around to it for a couple of weeks.

Of Quarks and Ships and Shimmerblades...

I've ranted so much recently about the use and explanation of advanced technology in the sci-fi world, that I decided I'd better hold my own misdemeanors up to the light.

So here is a brief rundown of some of the technology that appears in Ghosts of Innocence.

Have I followed or broken my own rules? Let the bloggers decide.


Faster than light travel

Exhibit A, M'Lud: The "hopper" drive moves a ship from point to point in space by jumping between higher-dimensional folds in visible space-time, effectively taking a short cut from A to B. Individual hops in open space are typically tens or hundreds of miles long, and the drive may make a million hops a second, giving superlight speed.

The charge: Significant exposition at one point on how pushing the drive too far can result in cumulative damage to ship and crew, akin to radiation exposure.

Also a suspiciously techie turn of phrase later on: The heat of the sun posed no threat, but the invisible grasp of its gravity tugged on the particles of ship and crew as they flung themselves across a fractal labyrinth of inter-dimensional chasms.

The defence: At no point is anything about the drive mechanism explained in any kind of detail. Risks are hinted at in the reactions of the crew at various points, and illustrated when a ship they pursue explodes.

The one piece of exposition is delivered as dialogue, when a very ill Shayla talks to an engineer on board a ship racing to beat the bad guys. The engineer explains why Shayla and other crew members are getting sick, but nothing about how the drive works. This sickness is a crucial plot point, as they are forced to stop for medical aid which leads into the next phase of the chase.

On the offending sentence I offer no defence. I just enjoyed writing it.

Materials, drugs, biotech

Exhibits:

Nicodyne: A stimulant, widely used to keep people going around the clock. Trylex: A drug which robs the victim of all voluntary movement and unable to resist the suggestion of external commands. Animastin: A memory-erasing drug. Nacrolin: A nerve poison which paralyses and kills the victim in hours or days of agony, depending on the dose.

Refractory materials: Capable of withstanding a high-grade plasma.

Chemical recognition signals: Examples like the "nose" mentioned in an earlier post.

Subcutaneous implants: Biotech disguise that allows a person to voluntarily change appearance.

Mitigating pleas: None of these are explained at all in the book. The effects are illustrated as they occur. See earlier post for an example.

Weaponry

Exhibits:

Miscellaneous big guns: Quark bomb, pulse bomb, plasma cannon, particle beams.

Hand held weapons: Particle beams, needle guns, and the shimmerblade - a kind of knife with extraordinary cutting power.

The charges: Gratuitous inclusion of advanced technology, and inclusion of techie jargon like "quark" and "plasma".

Also one-line description of the shimmerblade which borders on the jargonistic: Her pocket knife was another matter entirely. Looking perfectly commonplace, it was a shimmerblade like Finn's. When activated, the vibrating crystalline edge could shear effortlessly through anything short of military grade vehicle armor.

The defence: Here I suspect I'm on shakier ground, but in this spacefaring society I decided I needed advanced weaponry to go with their level of technology.

Quark bombs were a simple extrapolation beyond the release of chemical energy (conventional explosives) and nuclear energy. They are not described nor seen in action, just referred to in hushed tones. They are touchy buggers and impractical to deploy in warfare, but make a potent terrorist threat.

Plasma beams are seen, big time. I needed something futuristic that could plausibly level a city in a single blast.

Most of the other weapons are commonplace sci-fi staples that really needed no introductions. The shimmerblade, I decided, was different enough to warrant something to justify its potency, having just seen it behead two people with minimal effort.

In no case do I try to explain the technology behind the weapons, but I'll accede to the charge of gratuitous jargon-dropping if the court so sees fit.

Miscellaneous

Artificial gravity, handheld computers in the form of flexible scrolls and notepads operated by drawing and writing, limited artificial intelligence in surveillance systems and ships' control and battle systems.

These are all seen as part of the everyday fabric of life. No explanations offered.

Summing up

Throughout the book, I've tried to adhere to some simple principles:

• Showing technology in use, showing its effects in the world and on the characters.
• Avoiding any kind of lecturing or explanations of underlying function.
• Introducing additional detail only where essential to the plot or to the reader's understanding of events, and trying to do so as naturally as possible.
• Giving items mundane names, or names that could be trademarks (especially the drugs), and steering away from anything sounding too geeky. In other words, using terms that you could envisage being used in everyday conversation.

I hereby throw myself on the mercy of the court.

Upcoming blogfest - I Hate You

I stumbled over this exciting-looking blogfest over at Tessa's Blurb...

Of course, there's no hate or anger or anything like that in my novel about planet-busting tit-for-tat revenge, but I decided to enter anyway. Why don't you check it out? Entries to be posted this Friday.