Hawai'i - Write With Aloha

We're back from our big family trip! What a week it was! Before this, we'd never been to Hawai'i, and it's really not a place I ever thought we'd go. We stayed on O'ahu, the island with the biggest population in the chain, almost a million people, if my Googling was telling me the truth.  Compare that with around two hundred thousand on the big island, and you can imagine that it was a lot like visiting any large city. 

We did every touristy thing you can think of, Pearl Harbor, The Arizona, The Missouri, The Pacific Aviation Museum, The Dole Pineapple Plantation, The Bowfin, The Bowfin Museum, Waikiki, Honolulu, and on, and on, and on.

What I didn't do, at all, was write Book 10. It's the last book in the series, there WILL be a spin-off, but in effect, this book will wrap it up. The Company will meet it's maker, the bad guys will get their just deserts.

As an aside, I have never understood the "just deserts" saying, so I looked it up, because really I thought it should be spelled "desserts". No, it's not spelled that way, in case you were wondering.

​Here you go:

"Deserts, in the sense of 'things deserved' has been used in English since at least the 13th century. A citation in which it is linked with 'just' comes from 1599, in Warning Faire Women:

"Upon a pillory - that al the world may see, A just desert for such impiety.""

And, there you have it. The bad guys, just deserts, it happens in Book 10.  I sat down today to start outlining, and I'm happy to report that I've gotten 3 chapters in. That might not seem like much, but for me, someone who has to first sit down and homeschool two boys that would rather do anything but school work, it's a big deal! 

My goal is to have the book out at the beginning of July. Why so far away? Well, I'll tell you. My oldest son is going off to camp this year for the first time ever, and I get to provide "camp mail" for him. This will be in the form of packages I have placed in his luggage at the beginning of the week, all tagged with dates so the counselors can distribute the mail to the campers each day. One of the camp mail items will be....you guessed it, Book 10. 

So, if I finish it earlier, I'll put it out there, but I can't think it would be too much earlier. Each one takes a solid month to write, edit, and illustrate, longer if the "kids" (the ones in the book) are giving me fits about what they do and do not want to do. 

Thankfully, I have a Book 10 star already, and things will revolve almost solely around this character for the duration. That does make things easier. :) 

Alright, that's all I've got! In the meantime, here's a picture of my husband posing behind this fantastic sea turtle that was literally sleeping right outside our back door on the North Shore.

Aloha!
​Ty