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Meet Your Favorite Blogger. Plus a Chance to Win

by Brian on October 21, 2013 in Travel

Ever wonder what we’re like in person? No? Oh, well, then feel free to skip ahead to the contest details below.

For everyone else, you’ll have a chance to meet your favorite blogger, Shannon, at this weekend’s Texas Book Festival in Austin, October 26 & 27. She’ll be there to promote her new book, Writers Between the Covers: The Scandalous Romantic Lives of Legendary Literary Casanovas, Coquettes, and Cads.

Be sure to stop by her Writers Between the Covers panel discussion on Sunday, October 27, where she’ll participate in some salacious “literary pillow talk” with fellow author Betsy Prioleau of Swoon: Great Seducers and Why Women Love Them. (The panel begins at 3:15 in the Capitol Extension Room E2.026.) Also keep an eye out for Shannon throughout the rest of the festival. She’ll be prowling around various events all weekend.

If you’re in the Austin area, please drop in for what is always a great celebration. The Texas Book Festival is free and open to the public. It is also held in the spectacular State Capitol Building, which is worth a visit all by itself. Throw in live music, great food, and dirty books and you have the makings of a fabulous weekend.

Enter to Win

Shannon is also graciously giving away some free copies of her latest book. Entering the contest is easy, and free. See details here.

Good luck.

Volcanoes National Park, a Warm-Up Act

by Shannon on October 18, 2013 in Hawaii, Travel, United States

After seeing some of Pele’s handiwork first hand, but before getting up close and personal with the volcano goddess, we had the opportunity to glimpse her from afar. Our first night in the Big Island’s Volcano region, we stood on a viewing platform at Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. In the distance, a giant plume of smoke rose from Halema’uma’u Crater, part of Kilauea, one of the most active volcanoes on earth.

Visitors have long been dazzled by Kilauea—which has erupted more than 60 times since 1823—including Mark Twain, who happened by in the late nineteenth century. As we watched that evening, excitement grew among the crowd standing with us as an orange glow gradually became more and more vivid in the deepening darkness.

This tantalizing hint of Pele’s power was undoubtedly a high point, but the next day we returned to explore the park to see what else it had to offer.

It’s Over

by Brian on October 16, 2013 in Travel

By all accounts the National Parks Hostage Crisis is coming to a close. The good news is that our wonderful parks are unharmed. The bad news is that plenty of other innocent bystanders are not so lucky.

Gorgeous Hawaiian Coast

by Brian on October 16, 2013 in Hawaii, Travel, United States

Every once in a while I capture an image that makes me regret the layout of this blog. This is one of those photos that really deserves a larger format display. For what it’s worth, I left the image larger than normal so you can click on it and download a bigger version.

A Darker Shade of Black

by Brian on October 14, 2013 in Hawaii, Travel, United States

One thing you soon realize while exploring a volcanic island like Hawaii is that black sand beaches are more the norm than the exception. The other thing you realize is that not all black sand is equally black. The younger, it turns out, the darker.

And sand doesn’t get much younger than the twenty-three-year-old variety found on Hawaii’s Kaimu Beach. It’s not often you get to walk on sand nearly half your age, but we did here.

Of course the word dark has more than one connotation and both of those meanings are applicable to Kaimu Beach. Not only is the sand black as night, but so too is the history of the place.