Thursday Adventure: Jenolan Caves, Australia

Between recovering from jetlag, scrambling to get back up to speed at the day job, and taking yet another plane trip last week so my son and I could spend a little time with my own mom, things have been pretty quiet around the ol' blog.  Happily, my traveling days are now done (for a month or two at least!), and at last I've had the time to sit down and put together a real Thursday Adventure post.

Today I'll show off some pics from one of my favorite experiences on our recent Australia trip: a trip with my husband to Jenolan Caves, on the western side of the Blue Mountains.  (Our first weekend alone together since our son was born - the kiddo stayed back in Sydney with my awesome in-laws.  Any parents out there will understand just how wonderful it was to have the chance to focus solely on each other for a few days!)

Sandstone cliffs rise over eucalyptus forest in the Blue Mountains

I haven't done that much caving before. Colorado's reputed to have some great caves, but I've been too busy spending my time playing on top of the mountains rather than under them.  I did once do a little spelunking with friends in the Grand Canyon's Cave of the Domes, and my husband and I did a pretty nifty cave trip in New Zealand's Waitomo area - all of which I thoroughly enjoyed.  So when my husband told me Jenolan offers both incredible cave formations and the chance for a little "adventure caving," I was eager to check it out.

I wasn't disappointed: the caves are indeed spectacular.  The Jenolan cave complex is quite large, extending far beyond what's available to casual tourists.  Clay in the caves has been dated at 340 million years old, making it the world's oldest known and dated open cave system.  The complex is still undergoing active exploration today by scientists and caving clubs.  If we'd known any cavers, we'd have tried to gang up with some experienced folks on a permit (they're only granted to club members), but lacking that, we simply signed up for a few of the guided tourist trips in the show caves, and one "adventure caving" trip that would let us get a bit dirty.  My favorite of the show caves we saw was the Orient Cave.  I don't have many pics of it, since cave photography is a bit challenging for my little digital camera, but hopefully the ones I did take will give you some idea.

Cave tour guide unlocks a passageway into the Jenolan cave system

Formations in the great chamber of the Orient Cave

Curtains of stone in the Orient Cave

Beautiful flowstone and pillars

I think this formation should've been named Cthulhu's Tentacles

Exploring the massive open-air "Devil's Coach House" area was also pretty neat.  It's considered a "twilight cave," and has some neat formations colored a strange blue-green from cyanobacteria.

The Devil's Coach House - a "twilight cave"

We did a hike up the valley beyond the Coach House and saw plenty of kangaroos hopping about through the forest.

Kangaroos in the bushland outside the caves

My favorite part of all was the adventure caving (of course!). We suited up in overalls, helmets, and headlamps, and branched off from the main tourist path to climb up, through, and around one of the first-discovered caves.  We squeezed through all manner of entertainingly tight spots, saw ancient fossils, nifty rock formations...and a few disturbingly huge cave spiders (near some holes that led to the surface).  

Our little group of spelunkers entering the cave

Fascinating formations

Robert shows off his spiffy caving coveralls

Robert squeezes through a very tight spot (his head is pretty much taking up the whole passageway)

Crawling through the cave

I had a great time...at least until I looked up and saw a spider so big all its mutiple eyes were reflecting red from my headlamp.  No pics of the spider, sorry - I was too busy hyperventilating and squeezing the hell out of there.

Robert hasn't seen the spider yet

Spiders or no spiders, it was a ton of fun.  The most interesting thing to me about caving is how three-dimensional it is, compared to climbing on a cliff.  Through, up, over, around...and it all looks so different when you're coming back!  We didn't have any worries here, traveling with a guide, but I can imagine when spelunking solo you need a very good memory (or a spool of string, as we used in the Cave of the Domes) to keep from getting lost.

Below the main cave area is a lake with gorgeously blue water (the color comes from the caves' calcite), inhabited by a family of platypuses.  We took a walk there near sunset and got to see the platypuses swimming around.  Before I first saw one in Australia I always imagined them as beaver-size, but they're much smaller than that.

Blue lake below Jenolan caves

Platypus swimming in the water

All in all, Jenolan is a beautiful, unique area, highly worth a visit.  If we'd had more time, we'd have continued on from Jenolan to Kanangra Walls in Kanangra Boyd National Park, site of some great bushwalks and cliff climbs.  Next time!  

Back in Boulder

You might remember me talking a while back about my "next big adventure": a month-long trip to Australia and Hawaii.  Astute readers will have guessed from the pics in my last few posts that April was Adventure Month for the Schafer family.  An awesome adventure it was, too!  Not only was it wonderful to see my husband's family and friends again in Sydney, but we had plenty of fun bushwalking (as the Aussies call hiking) in both the Blue and Snowy Mountains....

Bushwalking in the Blue Mountains

...not to mention spelunking in Jenolan Caves (which were fantastic! I'd never been to Jenolan before and it was well worth the visit)...

Squeezing through a tight spot. Thankfully, this part of the cave had no enormous lurking spiders. Other parts...well, I'll tell that story when I do a full-on Thursday Adventure post about Jenolan.

...and yes, we saw plenty of kangaroos.

Curious kangaroo checking us out in the Blue Mountains.

After spending 3 weeks in Australia, we flew to Maui and spent four lovely relaxing days swimming and snorkeling at Keawakapu beach.  (Oh, and for our one big touristy thing we did a dive in an honest-to-gosh submarine, which our 4-year-old son LOVED.)  Stopping in Maui was pretty much the best way ever to break up the grueling return trip from Sydney to Boulder. I mean, just look at this view:

View of Keawakapu Beach from our condo

Even so, the jetlag we're suffering upon our return is nothing to be sneezed at (though not nearly so epic as what we experienced the times we flew straight home from Sydney!).  When a four-year-old can't sleep, well, nobody sleeps.  You better believe I'll have more pictures and stories from our travels to show off over the next few weeks, but right now, I'm gonna get some shut-eye.

Women in SFF Month

A quickie post while traveling, because I realized I hadn't yet highlighted something I find really cool: Fantasy Book Cafe is celebrating "Women in SFF" all this month with a whole slew of guest posts from authors and bloggers (including such luminaries as Patricia McKillip, Lois McMaster Bujold, Jacqueline Carey).  I contributed a post talking about some of my favorite female-authored SFF novels from the 1980s and 1990s - books that influenced me deeply and that I'd love for more people to discover and enjoy, so please, head on over and check them out.  Oh, and as part of the fun, Renay of LadyBusiness blog is asking for everyone's top 10 female-authored SFF novels - at the end of the month, she'll collate them all and share the list.  I've gotta say, it's pretty darn hard for me to narrow it down to 10 books...I might have to cheat and go for my top 10 series rather than top 10 novels!  

A few more tidbits of news:

• The Tainted City got a wonderful review from Bibliotropic - reminding me that I don't care how crazy the business side of publishing gets; so long as people out there are enjoying my books, it's all worth it!
• The Whitefire Crossing got a review recently from Elitist Book Reviews that I found very interesting, because it shows just how deeply an audiobook narrator can affect a listener's experience of a story.
• Another review for Whitefire from Obligated to Exaggerate
• If you haven't checked out all the cool posts over at BookSworn by my fellow authors on objects that reveal their worlds, you should! Lots of fascinating stuff there.

And because it's Thursday where I am, here's a wilderness picture to finish things off:

The "Devil's Coach House", in Jenolan Caves

Climb the Mountains and Get Their Good Tidings

What a crazy week. I can't report anything more on the fate of the first two Shattered Sigil books, since nothing is resolved yet.  In the grand scheme of things that means little, especially in comparison to the disasters in Boston and Texas, for which I don't even have any words.  Yet being a Type A sort of person, I've spent way more mental energy on the books' situation than I'd like (or than I should, most probably).  Fortunately, I've got a great way to clear my head. To quote John Muir,

“Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop away from you like the leaves of Autumn.”

Muir sure knew what he was talking about.  Yesterday I had a lovely day of hiking, so in the interests of sharing a little of nature's bounty, here are a few pics from my quest to achieve inner peace.  (A more or less successful quest!  While I might not have achieved zen calm, I am at least now feeling ready to properly focus again on writing book 3 without wasting time worrying over 1 and 2.) Bonus points to anyone who can guess from the pics exactly where I was hiking.  Shouldn't be too hard, since the rock formation featured below is an iconic landmark...

Morning mist makes for some nifty "cloud waterfalls"

Similar view a bit later in the day, after the mist cleared.  Back in 1997, my husband and I did a wonderful multi-pitch rock climb up the middle pillar. Sadly, rock climbing isn't allowed anymore.  But there is much excellent hiking!

Panoramic view.  Wish I had audio as well as a picture of this so you could hear all the birdsong drifting up from the trees.

Update on The Labyrinth of Flame (Shattered Sigil, #3)

Last week some dismaying news hit the interwebs: Night Shade Books (publisher of The Whitefire Crossing and The Tainted City) is imploding.  There's the possibility of a deal that could allow two other publishers to buy out the contracts of Night Shade authors that agree to the transfer, but if that falls through, bankruptcy filing and the resultant legal mess is a likely outcome.  (For a thorough analysis of how and why NS is imploding, see this excellent article by Justin Landon over at Staffer's Book Review.)  Ever since the news went public, I've been getting concerned emails and DMs and the like from people wanting to know: what will happen to The Labyrinth of Flame?

I've got good news: this won't affect Labyrinth.  Night Shade doesn't own the rights to the book; my original contract was only for 2 books plus an option on a third.  (For those not familiar with publishing lingo, an option just means they have right of first refusal: I'm supposed to give them a contractually-specified number of days to make an offer on the book, and then if they do offer in that time, say yes or no to that offer before I (or rather, my agent) could shop the book elsewhere.)  So it doesn't matter what happens - if NS files bankruptcy, Labyrinth will not be part of the ensuing mess.  (Unlike the first two Shattered Sigil books, alas.)  Likely in that situation I would just do a kickstarter to try and cover production costs, and put Labyrinth out myself (in both print and ebook form).  A hell of a lot of work, but I'm certainly willing to tackle it if that's the only way to get the book into reader's hands.  So fear not! Dev and Kiran's story will have a proper ending.

As for what's going to happen to the first 2 books: that, I don't know yet.  But thank God for my wonderful agent.  Instead of freaking out from stress, I got to dump this entire mess into her capable hands and have an awesome day teaching my son how to boogie board:

Here comes a wave! Ready...set....

GOOOOOOOO!!!

      

   

Want to read a deleted scene from The Whitefire Crossing?

Then head on over to BookSworn, where I talk about an outrider's most vital possession, and share a deleted scene from and early draft of The Whitefire Crossing to illustrate its use.

(The scene originally took place right after Kiran's near-disastrous encounter with the drover-who-would-in-later-drafts-become-Pello, at Ice Lake.  I'm sure you'll be able to tell why I cut the scene: it's all about the mountaineering, and not about the tension. :)  But I did later use a reworked version of it in The Tainted City - yet another reason why it's good to always, always keep a "cut scenes" file and never truly delete words!)

And to further illustrate the glissade in yon deleted scene, I offer these photos:

Ascending a snow slope near Navajo Peak with my trusty ice axe

Preparing to glissade! (My hiking partner's glissade track is visible as the long furrow in the snow.)

Zooming down, using the ice axe's base spike as a rudder

Wheeeeee!!!

Spec Fic Writers 101: in which I talk pacing

Matt Gilliard of 52 Book Reviews has been running a nifty blog series called Spec Fic Writers 101, in which he's invited various SFF authors to discuss the nuts and bolts of writing craft.  I was delighted to be asked to take part (thanks to Stina Leicht for suggesting me, and Matt for the invitation!).  Today's my turn on the stage, and I chose to discuss pacing: one of the most important things to get right in a novel, and yet one of the most difficult areas to evaluate in your own writing.  Addressing the issue of pacing was what helped me take The Whitefire Crossing to publishable level.  So come on over and benefit from my hard-earned lessons, as I share all my best tips, tricks, and examples.

I also heartily recommend the other posts in the series, all chock-full of great advice:
Spec Fic 101: Prose with Myke Cole
Spec Fic 101: Characters with Stina Leicht
Spec Fic 101: Plotting with Michael J. Sullivan
Spec Fic 101: Worldbuilding with Ken Scholes
Spec Fic 101: Research with Teresa Frohock