Classic Western Beauty

In a couple of weeks, there will be vast meadows with millions of wildflowers. On July 4th weekend, we're a bit early. But hiking along the Carson River in Hope Valley is still as pretty as it gets.

Here's a few pics:

That's the east side Steven's Peak. Red Lake Peak is to its left.

We could see lots of minnows in the river. 

Probably large trout, too, as evidenced by multiple fly fishermen.

 

What A Sight On The Summer Solstice

From several places in South Lake Tahoe, you can look south and see Round Top mountain, which is near Hope Valley, Caples Lake and Kirkwood. I was there on June 21st.

At 10,400 feet, there was still too much snow to easily climb without micro spikes.

Caples Lake is 7800 feet. The wind coming across it was cold!

I love the way no matter what time of the year, you can always hike to snow in Tahoe.

Summer? Or Winter?

 We are just two days from the Summer Solstice. Much of the country is baking in heat.

As I write this Saturday evening, Tahoe is supposed to freeze tonight. There's a 40% chance of precip, and the snow level will drop to 6900 feet, which is our house.

Gotta love summer, right?

Not That You Would/Wood

The Tahoe powers that be have made the rule a little earlier than in past years. No burning of charcoal or wood inside or out is allowed until fire season is over next winter. There's simply too much at stake.

Not Charcoal, regardless of where or how.

Not Wood, regardless of where or how.

Flotation Vests Saved Lives (Again)

Kayaking is such fun.

But even on a sunny day, a flotation vest can save your life.

Last week at Sand Harbor, on Tahoe's East Shore, two kayakers were doing just fine when the wind came up.

Both kayaks capsized. Both kayakers swam to some big rocks that were poking out of the water. Both kayakers were wearing flotation vests (life jackets).

Because Tahoe is so cold, especially in the spring, both kayakers began to suffer from hypothermia. (Which is when you get so cold, your muscles stop working, and you drown.)

Someone saw them struggling and called 911.

The Washoe Sheriff's Office has a patrol boat at Incline Village not far away. They came and rescued the freezing paddlers.

They lived. Why? Because they were wearing flotation vests.

Moral of the story? Stay near shore when you go out on a tippy craft like a paddleboard, a kayak, or a canoe. And ALWAYS wear a flotation vest.

Snow For Tahoe Memorial Day

As I write this on Saturday afternoon, the weather forecast calls for 30% chance of snow tonight, with the snow level dropping to 6900 feet. Which is to say our house. 

I can't count how many times it's snowed in Tahoe on Memorial Day weekend. One year I exhibited at an outdoor festival. It was so cold we dressed in our ski clothes, and we got 5 inches of snow on our tent canopies on Memorial Day.

Locals often think winter goes until June 15. Although we've had snow in July and August, it melts fast when it falls after the middle of June.

One year we skied at Alpine Meadows on June 5th. The night before we got six inches of snow. So we skied fresh powder and the air was filled with little purple butterflies.

Not many places on the planet where you can have that experience.

Drought? The Water Is Flowing In Tahoe!

 Yes, California has a very bad drought. But we've got water in Tahoe. Come up the mountain and see!

Eagle Falls at Emerald Bay

From the north side of Emerald Bay, this is looking south toward Mt. Tallac.

This is the other side of Mt. Tallac, looking from Angora Ridge,

 northwest across Fallen Leaf Lake. 

Down on the shore to the left is Stanford Camp. 

Just out of the picture to the left is Glen Alpine Falls, 

roaring just as much as Eagle Falls.

From Angora Ridge looking north across Fallen Leaf Lake to Lake Tahoe beyond. The distant point on the left, which looks skinny but is not, (the end of the point is just barely visible) is Sugar Pine Point State Park on the West Shore. The far distant land is the North Shore, 30 miles away.

How To Make Your First Novel A Success?

How to make your first novel a success?

Wait.

What?

Yes, wait before you publish that first novel. Wait until you've written two or three other novels. Or more

Seriously?

Yes. The practice will improve your writing in uncountable, unforeseen ways. In huge ways. And, perhaps more importantly, you will get vast numbers of good ideas for improving that first novel, which is a very good thing to do before you put your novel in front of readers who will judge it pro or con and make nearly permanent decisions about whether to ever read you again.

(Writers, I know that this may seem like a harsh post. And if you're not a writer, don't even read this. It's tedious and it's aimed at writers who don't follow the example of composers and dancers and painters and athletes and a thousand professionals, which is to practice, practice, practice BEFORE you audition in front of the world.)

Many writers have said this. Sit on that first novel. Write a few more. Make the thousand adjustments that will occur to you as you write books two, three, four, and five. Trust me, this is not an exaggeration. You will want to make a thousand adjustments. When you get to work on book five, or ten, that is the time to publish your first book. Or, if you listen to Hugh Howey's advice, write twenty books, then publish.

Let's just say you've finished your medical residency and performed your first complicated surgery. Would you want the entire world to watch a video of that first surgery? (Publishing makes your book available to the entire world.)

Maybe you've been learning to be a figure skater. You're going to try your first triple-twisting jump. Would you want the entire world to watch it? Or would you like to practice a bit more first?

You've been playing Beethoven's sonatas on the piano. When you finally decide to perform one, would you do it in front of your spouse and a few friends and family, or would you like to go out on stage at Carnegie Hall and play your first performance for the world, including all of your mistakes, your awkward phrasings, the unsure aspects of your performance?

You've finally painted your first set of 12 large oil paintings. You're a real live painter, living the dream. You find a company that gives you a chance to display your show on the front steps of a virtual version of the Metropolitan Museum in New York. You know that many sophisticated viewers will see it. Including art critics and reviewers. They will comment to their audience and their friends. Would you do it?

You probably know the answer to these questions. 

I know as well, because not a single successful author I know - knowing what they now know - would publish their first book right after they wrote it. Most of them waited until they had more books under their belt, because they knew that would go a very long way toward making their books successful. The ones who didn't wait? They rushed to write many books in a short period of time, hoping to make up for the too-early release of their first one.

So why would you publish your first book when statistical and anecdotal evidence suggests that you will be embarrassed by the result and by the book's reception and sales?

I think I know why. You're excited. You've written a book. It's a big deal. You can't wait to show the world.

But what's the harm in waiting? None.

In contrast, what's the harm in diving in after the first book? I can't count the ways. Mistakes and misrepresentations that could, and maybe will, embarrass you forever. A potential writing career tarnished, maybe spoiled.

Am I a giant downer for saying this? Of course.

But in the last few months, I've had several more inquiries from writers who published their first book, and they want advice on how to make it sell, because it isn't selling. If they had waited and gotten more practice, they would have likely learned what makes a book sell. Unfortunately, the world is already watching the video of them doing their first triple-twisting jump, and that world has decided not to pay 99 cents to watch more.

Am I an expert who has the one true vision? No. I'm just an ordinary guy who earns a living writing novels, a guy who feels bad for the people who dove into the deep end because they felt comfortable in the bathtub but didn't know if they could swim. Then they write me and other writers and ask for help. You launched your rocket before you knew if it could fly, and it never made it to outer space. (There's a great example of mixed metaphors, something more writing practice will teach you to delete before publication!)

It's so easy to avoid these problems. Get more practice before you launch. Do some test flights. Many test flights. Have a half dozen manuscripts on the shelf, ready to go. A bonus is that all evidence shows that launching multiple books in a short period of time greatly contributes to sales success. And you can't launch multiple books in a short period if they're not already written.

I know you think you'll be the exception. But even the one-book wonders who appear to find success with a single book are mostly a fictional concept. The publisher said, "We'll give you a new pseudonym, present you as a new author, and no one will know you already wrote twelve romance novels."

I also know that you don't want to wait until after you've written five books because, well, it takes SOOOO long to write five books.

Well, I've got some news on that front. If you're going to be successful, you're going to write far more than five books, anyway. Why not do several of them before you launch?

Look at your favorite authors. How many books have they written? Ah, there's a revealing inquiry. Nearly all of your favorite authors have written dozens of books. How can you expect to move down the road toward being someone's favorite author with just one book? Your favorite restaurant doesn't only have one entree on the menu, either.

It's likely that the single best answer to the question about how to be a successful author is to write a bunch of books. So do a portion of them before your launch. You will be amazed at the result.

Some of you are asking if I did that. Yes. My first published book was my fifth book. Am I great? No. How did I find some traction if I'm not great? I wrote five books before I published. I came out with the second book in my series one month after the first. (I wish I had done three or four in short succession.)

Cased closed. Successful writers write multiple books. Do several of them before you publish the first one.

Once-In-A-Lifetime Flying!

Shelby Swartz first wrote me some years ago when she read Tahoe Deathfall and liked the flying sequence. She had wanted to learn to fly. Over the next several years, she took flying lessons and periodically sent me photos from "up in the air so blue," as Robert Louis Stevenson wrote. 

Although we had become penpals, I first met Shelby in person when she came to some of my festival events. She even sent me a photo scrapbook of her flying experiences. It was fun watching and following along as she told me tales of her flying.

How lucky I felt that she cared to keep me informed of her progress. She became a friend.

A few weeks ago, she wrote and invited me to come flying. She'd gotten her pilot's license, was now working on her instrument rating, and she said she'd like to fly me from the Bay Area down the coast to have lunch in Hollister, a town not far from Monterey Bay.

Whoa. Flying down the coast for lunch?!

I started crossing off squares on the calendar, an exciting countdown to what I imagined would be a highlight of my year.

Little did I know just how bright that highlight would be!

Last weekend, my wife was exhibiting her paintings at the Saratoga Fine Art show. (For those of you who don't know the "peninsula," Saratoga is a town just south of Cupertino, whose most famous business is Apple.)

Shelby flies out of the Palo Alto airport. (For those of you who don't know, Palo Alto is the location of a certain school called Stanford.) So I drove up to Palo Alto and met Shelby Sunday morning.

Shelby took me out on the tarmac to a small tail-dragger plane called a Super Decathlon, which is a kind of sports car-version of a small plane. 

Note my skill and charm at taking a selfie with Shelby. 

(You think my lack of ability with phones is theatrical? I had to ask Shelby how to take a selfie. I only have the phone so I can take credit card payments. How's that for being a good American capitalist?)

Turns out Shelby - who is graduating from San Jose state with a degree in aviation - has been taking aerobatic lessons and even did some aerobatic flying at the Borrego Springs air show, which is just south of Palm Springs.

(In a bit comes another "little did I know" moment. But I get ahead of myself.)

Shelby took me through the "pre-flight" process, where you check every little thing to make sure the plane is in good shape. The Super Decathlon has tandem seating. Pilot in front, passenger in back. The main controls are a stick, not a yoke. You control the rudder with foot pedals. In the most basic explanation, lean the stick left, the ailerons put you into a left bank and you turn left. Pull the stick back, the elevator pushes the tail down, and you climb. We'll save rudder use for a future discussion.

Shelby helped strap me into a five-point seatbelt system that gave me a little hint of what astronauts must feel like. I asked her why the plane had such a complex seatbelt. Without any trace of drama, she said the five-point seatbelt system is good for holding you in your seat when flying upside down. Hmmm...

Next, she gave me a headset and mic. Then she got into the front seat, fired up the engine, and the propeller turned into a blurred circle.

When the traffic control in the tower gave the word, we paused to do a run-up, which is speeding up the engine while the brakes are on and checking the performance and the various instruments. When the tower gave the word, Shelby released the brakes, gave the engine full power, and the plane sped down the runway. I expected a short takeoff roll. But we seemed to barely start moving when the plane seemed to leap into the air. (Later, Shelby said that a Super Decathlon basically jumps into the air. In a line a writer would be proud to use, Shelby said, "The plane doesn't want to be on the ground.")

We took off to the north, climbed steeply, banked to the west, headed directly over the red roofs of Stanford. We went above the ridge of the Santa Cruz mountains. Looking south and north, we could clearly see the San Andreas Fault, the ridge where the tectonic plate of the Pacific is gradually moving north an inch or so a year, scraping against the North American plate. 

Soon we approached the coast.

Once we were over the Pacific, Shelby turned south. The vistas were spectacular.

Here is Santa Cruz. Even more beautiful from above than on the ground.

After a time, she let me "take the stick." (The back seat has one just like the front seat.)

So, recalling my own solo flying from 40 years ago, I practiced a few turns (I wasn't too bad), and I tried to maintain a constant altitude as I turned (failed at that!).

Then she asked me something over the headset. I couldn't quite hear the words she used, but I gathered she was asking about a "maneuver."

Sure, I told her. We were facing south down the coast. A pleasant lovely ride. Nothing could be more relaxing.

Next thing I knew, she did a hard bank, put the plane 90 degrees on edge, left wing pointing directly at the ocean, right wing at the sky. Then she pulled back on the stick and the plane did the hardest, tightest bank I'd ever experience. The centrifugal force drained the blood from my head as the plane jerked around 180 degrees in about a second, and we were now facing north! I was trying to take a breath when she did it again, and in a moment we were facing south again.

Hello, aerobatics! The sweet young woman I was getting to know turned out to be some kind of kick-ass sky warrior! Who woulda thunk a plane could do that!

But the good news is I didn't pass out from loss of blood to my brain. More good news is I'm blessed with a lack of susceptibility to air sickness. (Later, back at the Airbnb, I looked up the maneuver. Turns out it is considered tame in the aerobatic world. But the pilots commenting universally said, "It will give your passenger the willies.")

Well, maybe what I experienced was the willies. Or maybe it was just a wakeup call. Ground control to self: your blood is in your feet. Hang on until that pilot with the killer skills puts things back in their proper place.

"That was a blood-draining maneuver," I said when we were once again flying straight and level.

"The guage says we pulled three Gs," she said with the same nonchalant calm someone uses when they say they had a banana for breakfast.

I was calculating that. For a moment I weighed almost 500 pounds.

Later, I also learned that it is the maneuver of choice if you fly into a box canyon and realize there is no outlet and you can't climb fast enough to get out. This is what an airborne about-face feels like, dude.

We landed in Hollister and had a great lunch while Shelby, with much animation, told me all about aerobatic maneuvers. She's fascinated by the physics of flying. 

Example: "You probably know about spin recovery," she said.

"Not much. You push in the the stick and rudder in the direction opposite the spin, right? The goal is to regain lift on the wing that's stalling, right?"

"Yes. But what about when you're in an inverted spin?"

"Whoa. You mean, if you're flying upside down and you go into an upside down spin?"

She grinned.

"That's out of my league, Shelby. My brain can't follow that."

At that point she explained the complexities of inverted flying. Wing lift is pulling you down, not up. Things are reversed from what you think. I got to thinking of the Yeats poem. The falcon cannot hear the falconer. The center cannot hold.

It was a great discussion. The ride back to terra firma in Palo Alto was lovely. What a great time.

Bottom line?

Shelby Swartz is an ace pilot, destined for great achievement in whatever flying realm she pursues. Awesome flying skills, charming demeanor, generous with her time and knowledge, a friend I'm proud to know.

The Hardest Writing Of All?

 Many writers would agree that one of the most difficult kinds of writing is that which makes the reader cry. To pull such emotion out of a reader with nothing but words on paper or on a screen requires a type of alchemy that is difficult to quantify or describe. Difficult-to-impossible to teach as well.

Is there any type of writing even harder to pull off? I would say that making people laugh is even more difficult. I know many writers agree with me on this, too.

The subject comes to mind because I've been reading Mark Twain's Roughing It. (I've read many Twain novels and short stories over the years, but never got around to Roughing It.)

Roughing It is his auto-biographical story (albeit very exaggerated - Twain-style) of when he headed west from Missouri in 1861. He rode the stagecoach for weeks to get to Nevada and other points west.

Twain has a somewhat peculiar - and very effective - way to write funny. Over and over I've been laughing out loud. I've tried to quantify just what makes his technique so effective. It's impossible to adequately describe. A combination of sarcasm and exaggeration and put-down, things we'd call snark today. He also has a way of making a deprecating comment about the very point he's making. Another technique he's mastered is surprise.

Take this passage from the section when he's describing just how spectacular is Lake Tahoe.

'Three months of camp life on Lake Tahoe would restore an Egyptian mymmy to his pristine vigor, and give him an appetite like an alligator. I do not mean the oldest and driest mummies, of course, but the fresher ones.'

Two sentences as beautiful to a writer as the lake he's writing about. While the first sentence is fun and imaginative, it is the second that carries the punch. It supplies the surprise that drives the best humor. One could imagine other writers coming up with the first sentence or something nearly like it. But only Twain could come up with that second sentence. A thing of beauty, that, and a near guarantee of generating a laugh.

If you decide to read Roughing It, be forewarned that the racism toward Native Americans is horrible. Even with the expectation that 19th century writing is going to be repugnant, it will still grate. 

But if you can get past that, the story is informative and intriguing. And very funny.

I recommend the 'Mark Twain 100th anniversary collection' version of Roughing It published by Seawolf Press. It has hundreds of interesting and humorous illustrations

Rules Of Writing

 It pays for writers to periodically revisit the basics. One of the writing gods we worship is Elmore Leonard (1925 - 2013), author of classic novels, many of which were turned into films: Hombre with Paul Newman, Valdez is Coming with Burt Lancaster, 3:10 to Yuma with Glenn Ford, Joe Kidd with Clint Eastwood, Get Shorty with John Travolta and Gene Hackman, Out Of Sight with Jennifer Lopez and George Clooney, and two dozen others!

Leonard is widely thought of as a master of dialogue.

Every serious writer has a copy of Leonard's Rules for writing. If you are a writer and don't have it, print this out and tape it above your desk.

1 Never open a book with weather.

2 Avoid prologues. (Yes, I'm guilty!)

3 Never use a verb other than "said" to carry the dialogue.

4 Never use an adverb to modify "said."

5 Keep your exclamation points under control.

6 Never use the words Suddenly or All hell broke loose.

7 Use regional dialect sparingly.

8 Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.

9 Don't go into great detail describing places and things.

10 Try to leave out the parts that readers skip. 

11 If it sounds like writing, rewrite it.

Incredible Avalanche 40 Years Ago At Alpine Meadows And The Amazing Dog Who Saved A Woman's Life

This post is in memory of the first avalanche dog in the U.S. to save a buried person. Roberta Huber's German Shepherd Bridget found and saved 22-year-old Anna Conrad's life 40 years ago.

The recent Sierra storms have prompted thoughts about late season storms. We're so grateful for the precipitation of the last few days. While significant, it's nothing compared to what can happen.

In 1982, it started snowing at the end of March. While accounts of snow totals varied, most agree that somewhere around 11 or more feet of snow fell in four days. Despite constant avalanche control efforts throughout the duration of the storm, a massive slab avalanche swept down Alpine Meadows on March 31st. (Just northwest of Lake Tahoe.) 

The slide snapped off massive old-growth trees, took out chairlifts, crushed the three-story base lodge, and buried the parking lot 15 feet deep. The resort had been closed due to the storm and avalanche danger, and most of the people had left. But seven of those who hadn't yet gotten out were killed. One more, Anna Conrad, was nearly killed. She was buried for five days.

Many people searched for days. Five days after the slide, Huber's dog Bridget was searching when she picked up Anna's scent. The dog was excited and nervous with barely controllable energy. The dog knew what she had found: A live human.

Search workers followed Bridget's lead and dug out Anna. The young woman had eaten no food for five days and had only snow for water. The cold had taken its toll, and the woman lost one leg and the toes on the other from frostbite. But she survived thanks to Bridget.

When we first moved to Tahoe in 1990, there were very few trained avalanche rescue dogs. Now all the resorts have full-time avalanche rescue dogs on staff. Goldens, Labs, and others. They have saved multiple lives.

Moral of the story? Never underestimate what the weather (and a dog) can do.