The Next Big Adventure

You may have noticed the lack of a Thursday Adventure post this week.  This time I have the best excuse of all: this week I've been busy planning and booking the Schafer family's next big vacation.  And yep, this vacation's a serious getaway: we're heading back to Australia to spend quality time with my husband's family and friends.  It is truly quality time, because my husband's parents are awesome.  They cook us delicious meals, treat us like royalty, adore playing with their grandson, urge my husband and I to run off and hike in the Blue Mountains, even offer us the use of their campervan to go on a family wilderness adventure...seriously, Best Grandparents Ever.  Plus, Australia is just gorgeous.

Robert and I enjoying some precious couple time in Sydney, on a previous trip

Robert helping our son enjoy the waves.  Yes, all the beaches are this beautiful.  Plus, there is sea-cliff climbing!

This time we're trying something new: instead of flying Denver to LA to Sydney as we've done in the past, we're flying Denver to Honolulu to Sydney.  Not only will that break the long flight up into slightly more manageable chunks (the memory of the 15 hour LA-Sydney flight with our then-18-month-old son still makes me shudder!), it'll give us the chance to stop over for a few days on Maui on the way home.  My husband's never been to Hawaii, so he's excited to have the chance to visit.  I've been once before for a 2-week scuba diving trip and enjoyed the heck of out it, especially the time spent on Maui, so I look forward to going back.  (I really want to visit Kauai and hike the Na Pali trail, but that's gotta wait until our son's old enough for serious backpacking.)

No, I won't tell you when we're going...but suffice it to say, the trip's happening sometime this year, I'm ridiculously excited about it, and I'm sure it will generate tons of new Thursday Adventure fodder.  In fact, it's inspiring me to dig up my old (pre-digital-camera) pics from Australian adventures my husband and I shared in the past...trips to Uluru and Kata Tjuta, canyoning in the Blue Mountains, exploring the Queensland rainforest, etc.  Just gotta scan the pics in.

In the meantime, here are a few links to posts elsewhere that I found interesting this week:

• N.K. Jemisin discusses uncomfortable stereotypes in fantasy, in "The Unbearable Baggage of Orcing"
• Kameron Hurley shares a raw, honest look at her experience in publishing: "On the Business of Writing, Creativity and Burnout"
• Fellow Night Shade author and ex-Night-Bazaar member Brad Beaulieu has some seriously terrific news: he sold a brand-new trilogy to DAW (congrats, Brad!).  I've enjoyed Brad's Lays of Anuskaya books, and the description of his new Song of the Shattered Sands series sounds pretty darn awesome.  (I'm all about desert cities controlling trade through impassable terrain.  Also, puzzle poetry - how cool is that!)