Classic Dane Pic

Here's a link to a fun group of Big Dog pics on Huffington Post. The Dane below is just one of them. As my sister said, "Thanks for my lunch break entertainment! Love the Newfoundland that looks like a brown bear!! And the Dane getting something off the top of the fridge is hysterical, too!! Kinda want one... kinda don't! :)"

Big Dog Pics at Huffington Post

No dog treats are safe from a Great Dane

Whoa, Kite Skiing Is Something!

There’s a whole lotta ways to play on snow. Some involve riding on a chairlift with the crowds and carving down the mountain on your sliding device of choice. (Which I love) Others take you away from the crowds and the sundeck beer stands to find your own way through the mountain forest and meadows. (Which I also love in the form of cross-country skiing and snowshoeing)

One of the latter approaches that I’ve never tried is kite skiing.

No doubt there is specialty gear that allows for the best control. But the principle is to get a kite - paraglider types seem to be the most popular, although they don’t need to be as large as the ones that you use to fly - and you work your control lines to manipulate the kite into pulling you across the snow.

There are many kite surfers in the Bay Area, leaping off the waves. That this is also a seriously effective type of snow transport is evidenced by the fact that kite skiers have skied all the way across Antarctica, thousands of miles.

These pics are of a kite skier on a Tahoe meadow a few days ago. Though the wind was just a decent breeze, this guy was flying!

Talk about fun!

Now We're Talking Precipitation!

Just when we get bent out of shape about a drought, here comes the "Atmospheric River of Moisture!" As I write this, they are predicting Tahoe's storm total of 3-4 feet of white stuff at higher elevations.

Bring it on!

Check out the areas of yellow and red to the west of Tahoe.
That's some serious rainfall!

Here is the forecast for elevation 9100' at Heavenly as of Saturday.
We love to see those little boxes that say "Chance of Snow 100%!"

Good Snowfall For A Dry Year

Yeah, I know. One storm does not a drought break. But at our house (elevation 6450) it rained most of the day last Wednesday, then turned to snow in the night. By Thursday noon, the forecast of five - nine inches had turned into a foot of snow. It continued to snow on and off on Thursday and into Thursday night.

We toasted the snow gods with a glass of merlot.

This stuff on the deck and grill was heavy with high water content.
The best kind of snow when we need moisture!

We usually measure Tahoe snow in feet. But this year we're counting inches, and another two inches fell Friday. Yea!

On the mountains, all the precipitation above 8000 feet was snow, and the resorts reported up to 24 inches for the storm total.

The last cloud blowing away on Friday

Even if we are lucky enough to get several good storms in the next twelve weeks, every reasonable estimate suggests that our snowpack won't rise to average by spring. But in the meantime, we'll appreciate every flake we get!

Don't stand long under a tree with this much snow on its boughs.
A little of the sun's heat will loosen it, and hundreds of pounds of
snow can avalanche from a hundred feet up. It can knock you down.

Owen McKenna's Ten/Ten Rule Of Sunlight

In Tahoe, as with everywhere else in the northern hemisphere, the two darkest months are over.

Like Owen McKenna, I don't like long winter nights. Yes, sitting in front of the fire, reading a good mystery while sipping a glass of wine is great experience on a cold, dark night, and winter gives us that. But I like sunshine, and I like it to be light at least through the entire afternoon.

In Tahoe, the days during the month before and the month after the Winter Solstice (December 21st) each have less than ten hours of daylight. Not good for me. So I'm unhappy to see the approach of November 21st. This last week, exactly two months later, I was relieved to see the sun climbing back into the sky. The sun is once again high enough that we can now enjoy ten months of days that are longer than ten hours.

Welcome to Owen McKenna's Ten/Ten Rule Of Sunlight.  

The 21st day in January is when Tahoe's daylight is once again ten hours
long or longer. It will remain that way until November 21st.

There are multiple websites that allow you to calculate your day length for any latitude and for any day of the year. One I like is timeanddate.com. Here is the link for Sacramento.  You search by finding the closest major city to you that is a similar latitude, i.e. on a north-south basis. You can pick your month. It will give you sunrise and sunset times, day length, and the altitude in degrees of the sun at noon. (Note that the third hit on my Google search -solartopo.com - had wildly inaccurate sunset times for Sacramento - an obvious mistake - so like anything on the internet, you can't always assume accuracy.)

It's fun (really!) to compare day lengths and sun angles for cities farther north or farther south. For example, our friends in Seattle find the sun 9 degrees lower in the sky than we do. And during the last week of January, their day length is still 50 minutes shorter. Ouch! But come the Summer Solstice (June 21st) their day length will be over an hour longer than ours.

You can also see how the amount of change in day length increases as we get closer to the spring and fall equinoxes and decreases as we get closer to the summer and winter solstices.

The bottom line is that Tahoe is south enough to get good winter sun but north enough and high enough to not bake in the summer.

For sun lovers, Tahoe is one of the great climates.

Compared to the more than half of the USA that is north of us,
Tahoe has great, high winter sun.

What Writers Can Learn From Plein Air Painters

I'm writing this note as I sit inside our car in Hope Valley. Across a snowy meadow, 200 yards away, I can see my wife standing at her easel out by the ice-covered West Fork of the Carson River.

My wife paints plein air landscapes (among other subjects). This morning, taking advantage of a low-snow winter and beautiful warmish weather, we decided to make another foray out to a river/mountain view, she to set up easel and paint, me to write under the warm high-altitude sun.

But shortly after we'd hiked out across a snow, the wind came up. Of course, one always brings extra clothes when going out into the Sierra, winter or summer. We put on everything we had. Yet twenty minutes later, the windchill had taken its toll. My fingers were too numb to type. My wife struggled to mix paint on her palette and even hold her brush.

“You should go back to the car and write where it's warm,” she said.

“But what about you?” I said.

“I came all the way out here. I won't quit until I get a painting done,” she said.

The sky was clear, and the wind wasn't life threatening, so I agreed. I could come back out and help her carry her gear when she was done.

Now that I'm back in the car, toasty warm, I can see her out on the snow, doing jumping jacks, trying to get enough warmth into her fingers to continue painting.

In the center of the photo, straight above the fence post,
just below the line of trees, is a little speck on the snow.
That's my painter lady.

Here I've zoomed in with the camera.
The jumping jacks weren't enough. She's got the hood up on her anorak.

I'm reminded of some of the emails she gets. “I want your life,” people often write after she sends out her weekly “Art In TheMorning” email with a picture of her newest painting, one that often features a plein air landscape.

And yes, it is a great life. Like me making up stories, earning a living painting pictures is a great job. And as a bonus, she gets to spend many hours outdoors in some of the most beautiful places on earth. What's not to love about it?

This one is called "Peaceful River"

But the next time I'm at one of my wife's shows, looking at a collection of her landscapes, I'll remember what I've witnessed and heard about. Slapping the biting flies, searing your skin under relentless summer sun, watching the wind pick up the easel and the fresh beautiful painting and carrying it into the lake or river or plopping it face down in the dirt, passersby whose excited dogs leap up and knock your lunch into the sand, blowing grit that embeds itself in the paint, the toothless mountain man who emerges from the forest and is too interested in you just after your paint companions have left and you are still packing up solo as twilight descends and your car is a quarter mile away. And of course, I'll remember the jumping jacks. Whenever I see anyone's plein air winter scene, placid and glowing and looking like it must have been a great joy to paint, I'll remember the jumping jacks, a try-anything attempt to stay warm enough to complete a painting.

This one is "Sunlit Sierra Winter"

"Turn In The West Fork"

It's a good lessen for us writers. Whenever I feel like it's hard to write, hard to create something out of the ether, I'm going to recognize that I've got it pretty easy and use that perspective to dive in and get to work. For most of us, most of the time, we don't have to write outdoors, and we don't have to do jumping jacks to keep our fingers working.

Writing With Special Colors

The other day, my wife and I went out to one of the great Sierra beauty spots on a winter day when the sun was bright, the wind calm, and the temp in the shade hit 53. She set up her easel and palette, and I parked my butt on a folding chair and turned on my laptop.

By the end of the day, she had a fabulous painting of the snowy mountains and I had a scene of dialogue.

Back home, she set her painted panel on a stand and showed me some little dabs of color that she'd put in the scene, colors that she said weren't actually in the landscape but were necessary to make the scene seem real.

It made me think of my written dialogue, which had word choices that aren't exactly the way people talk. I told her about it and how I put in wording that might not actually be there in real conversation but was necessary to make the scene seem real.

It's amazing how often this happens with us, similarities between painting and writing.

Dialogue is unusual in that you can't actually write what people say. If you did, readers wouldn't tolerate it. “Whassup, dude?” “I'm like totally bummed... you know, that bro was getting on my case, so I thought, man, jus' don't smoke that stuff. Like, you know, jus' don't smoke it.” “Right on, dude. You tol' him. Right on.” Yikes.

To make dialogue work, a writer has to take out most of the dialect and vernacular and add some dabs of color that might not exist in the real world.

Considering how often painting and writing are similar, I wonder if the same applies to music, theater, sculpture, photography, dance, and the other arts.

Size Doesn't Matter

I've written before about how a mountain lion looking at a house cat only sees lunch. But a large dog looking at a tiny dog only sees a pal.

We were in The City a week ago, walking along Post near Union Square, when we saw two puppies playing inside a hair salon.

Chorgi about to leap on a Great Dane's head

Turns out they were both 4 months old. One was a Great Dane, maybe 65 pounds already. The other was a Chorgi, a Chihuahua-Corgi mix, maybe 2 pounds.

The Chorgi was up on a table, and the Dane stuck his head over the table's edge. The Chorgi jumped around on the Dane's head, nipped at the Dane's nose and ears, and acted as if he'd just discovered the best new ride at Disneyland. The Dane endured the assault, wagging the entire time.

It was a classic example of how dogs recognize their brothers, and it was great entertainment to watch.

The Secret Writers Don't Want You To Know

Wow, 2014 in a couple of days! The New Year is a good time to 'fess up to the truth, right? Okay, here goes a myth buster. 

In many ways, writing is the easiest job in the world. And you, dear readers, make it so we can indulge in this so-called work. THANK YOU! But we writers wouldn't want the world to know how easy it is. We'd rather have people think that we slave for our precious art, that, as screenwriter Gene Fowler put it, we struggle at it until drops of blood form on our foreheads. 

What a load of BS we've perpetrated on the world.

Of course, some people, unpracticed at writing, give it a try and mistakenly think that it is hard. That's like saying that riding a unicycle is hard. True only until you learn. Then it is easy. I know because I learned to do both. (Trying to keep up with my kid sister when she first mastered that one-wheeled contraption back in junior high school!)

Once you learn to write, it is the sweetest job there is. 

Sure, it takes some effort to get those words arranged in the best order. But compared to real work? The kind of job where you have to be at the office or the loading dock every morning at 8:30? Five or six or more days every week of the year? Where you bust your butt trying to make your boss and co-workers and your customers happy?

I know what a real job is like because I did it for 35 years. I wrote eight novels during those years. They weren't all good (four are still in a drawer). Partly, they didn't have the right stuff because it took a lot of practice to figure out what I was doing. And partly, it was because I was too busy going to the day job. But, like most endeavors, practice and you'll get pretty good.

Now I have the incredible luxury of earning my living by making up stories. I sit at the computer drinking coffee, moving those little words around. Gosh, should this scene be moved to the early part of my story? What about this character? Should I make him a little edgier? Maybe these commas are too disruptive... You get the idea. Tough life.

If you ever hear a writer complain about how hard it is to arrange those words, go ahead, laugh. Arranging words. That's all we do. The words already exist. Occasionally, we make up a word, but we don't have to. We only have to move them around until they make some sense. On the scale of real work, writing's about a one-point-five.

And then there's the other part of writing. Research. Let me tell you how hard that is. Yesterday morning, I Googled several interesting questions and surfed around cyberspace reading articles. A great way to enjoy one's coffee even if one weren't writing. Then I got in my car and drove around the lake counter-clockwise, scouting scene locations in my new novel, taking a few mileage measurements to make sure I have my descriptions accurate, planning where Owen and Spot and the rest of the gang are going to do their thing...

I took some pics to show you.

My first stop was at six o'clock on the "lake dial," out on the Lake Tahoe Golf Course between the South Shore airport and Meyers (where Echo Summit Road comes down to the basin). I went there to check out one of the footbridges over the South Upper Truckee River.  Might be a good spot for a chase scene...

At four o'clock on the lake dial, I stopped at Zephyr Cove to check on the M.S. Dixie, one of Tahoe's two sternwheelers. The Dixie was sitting very pretty in the morning sunlight.

A bit north up the East Shore (three o'clock) gives you a nice view of the West Shore mountains. In this case, "nice view" is one of the great understatements of the last few days of 2013!

When I got to Incline Village (one o'clock), I took a quick detour up to the Mt. Rose Highway overlook and looked down the East Shore. Sweet!

Coming back down the West Shore I saw the Dixie again in Emerald Bay! (seven o'clock) She'd just looped around Fannette Island and was heading back out to the main lake for the 10-mile dash across to home base in Zephyr Cove.

As you can see, this writing research is a lot of tough work. Writing is so hard!

Happy New Year!

Free Kindle Download Of Tahoe Chase

Come Christmas Day, my latest book, Tahoe Chase, will be available as a free Kindle download. Please visit the page and add it to your Kindle. Here is the link:

http://www.amazon.com/Tahoe-Chase-McKenna-Mystery-Thriller-ebook/dp/B00E2ZSSH6/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=&qid=

As of this writing, Tahoe Chase has 149 reviews on Amazon, almost all of which are 5 stars. Since its publication in August, Tahoe Chase has spent over a dozen weeks on Amazon's Private Investigator Bestseller List.

If you've already read it in paper form, you might want to add it to your Kindle. If you haven't read it, please give it a try. Free is a pretty good price.

If you have an iPad or other tablet, you may be able to download a free Kindle app so you can buy books directly from Amazon (or download free books from Amazon). For those of us who are addicted readers, Free Kindle books are one of the greatest benefits of this new era!

Please pass on this information to your friends. The free Kindle download of Tahoe Chase will be available everyday from December 25th through December 29th.

Happy Holidays!

Notes For Writers - How Important Is The First Sentence?

In the fiction workshop I taught a few weeks ago, we spent a lot of time working on first sentences. Why? Because the first sentence of a novel is critical. Unless your novel starts with a great first sentence - one that puts your character in serious trouble - readers will pass it by for one that does.

If ever a new author could take time to set the stage for her story, that time is gone. With the threshold for publishing a book lowered to zero (anyone can now publish a book), the world is awash in books. How will your story stand out and get attention, especially now that attention spans have shrunk to about the time it takes to read one sentence?

The only way is with a story beginning that grabs the reader's attention in a big way. You don't want a sentence that merely beckons a reader into your story. You want a sentence that jerks them into your story. As Samuel Goldwyn of Metro Goldwyn Mayer said, “I want a story that starts out with an earthquake... and then builds to a climax!”

“Oh, but I've read hundreds of books with leisurely beginnings,” you say. Of course you have. Me, too. And nearly all of them were by established authors with a reputation for telling a good yarn. Most were books by authors you've already read. At the minimum, they were books that were recommended by someone whose judgment you trust. You didn't need a gripping first sentence because you came to the book believing it would be good.

New authors don't have that luxury.

When was the last time you paid good money for a book you've never heard of by an author you've never heard of?

Same with me.

The only exception would be a book that had an amazing professional cover, amazing professional back copy (otherwise you would never open the book), and a first sentence you couldn't ignore, a first sentence that grabbed you and made you read the next sentence, and the next, and the next.

What this means is that the first sentence of your first novel is probably the most important sentence you'll ever write.

I recently printed out the first sentences of the Top 10 Kindle bestsellers. (Most fiction is now sold in ebook format, and Kindle has a strong majority share of ebooks, therefore the Top Kindle bestsellers are a great - probably the best - representation of what works at getting readers' attention.)

Most of the Top 10 were by brand name authors who have established readerships and who could afford to take some time getting into their story. Nevertheless, six out of ten had first sentences that put a character in life-or-death trouble. The first sentence! Life-or-death!

Does your first sentence do that? If not, how are you going to get traction in the marketplace? To put it in starker relief, consider this: There is now an unlimited supply of free Kindle books available. Some estimates range from 10,000 to 20,000 every day. With thousands of times more free books than a person could ever read, why would a reader pay good money to buy your book?

But if your first sentence yanks them into the story, maybe you'll have a chance.

As you read this, many of you are probably wondering if the first sentence of my first book was that great. I won't claim greatness for anything I've written. But it did put a character in life-or-death trouble. And I believe it had a huge impact on my career. Not only did people read Tahoe Deathfall (it still regularly cracks the Top 100 Private Investigator's bestseller list on Amazon), but the book got great reviews and mentions. Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly, and newspapers across the country.

What was the first sentence of my first novel?

The fall from the cliff was so sudden it was as if God had yanked Melissa off her feet and hurled her into the air.

Life-or-death.

I put life-or-death trouble into the first sentence of each of my first four novels. By my fifth novel I was able to take a little more time because I had a readership that believed they could count on me to tell a good story even if the first sentence didn't begin with Sam Goldwyn's earthquake.

Now, after reading the first sentences of the Top 10 Kindle books and discovering that established authors are beginning with life-or-death trouble, I'm going to go back to the practice. The competition for a reader's attention is simply too great.

At every event I do, one or three people give me a copy of their book, wanting me to read it. Many of those books are probably really good stories. But I've yet to open one to find life-or-death trouble in the first sentence.

Life is short. Readers have endless books to choose from. They will continue to pick novels that grab them from the first sentence.

If you've written a gripping story, somewhere in there is life-of-death trouble.

Move it up to the first sentence.

How Much Snow Did Tahoe Get?

Out on the deck Saturday morning.
It was still snowing, and it continued to snow lightly all day.

Using the official Stick-A-Measuring-Tape-In-The-Snow technique, I measured 20 inches on our deck where we live at an elevation of 6450 feet. Although our house is in a particularly snowy part of Tahoe, the mountains, especially those along the Sierra Crest above the West Shore, usually get more.

Nice wind sculpting to the side of the car.

Although Saturday's storm wasn't especially notable for anything but unusually cold weather, it finally gave us a good launch into our winter season. Of the open areas, here are the snowfall totals at the various mountain summits from north to south taken off the ski area's websites:

Sugar Bowl - up to 22 inches
Boreal - up to 27 inches 
Squaw Valley - up to 15 inches
Northstar - up to 18 inches
Mt. Rose - up to 16 inches 
Heavenly - up to 30 inches 
Sierra At Tahoe - up to 32 inches
Kirkwood up to 28 inches. 

(Donner Ski Ranch, Alpine Meadows, Diamond Peak, and Homewood will all be opening soon.)

What's interesting about the totals is that Heavenly usually doesn't get as much snow as the West Shore mountains. Yet this time, they got as much or more. Probably it has to do with a more dramatic elevation/snow intensity relationship than normal, as Heavenly's summit is higher than the other areas.
Come ski!