First Cup of Coffee - July 25, 2018

Short update from the Aqua Lodge at Navajo Lake.

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

Good morning everyone. It is 8 o'clock in the morning on July 25th. And well, I've been absent for a little while. I'll tell you all of the things that have been going on. Right now I am about to hold your ears. There we go. I am climbing up to the upper deck of the houseboat that we are staying on. I will post a picture of the deck. It sort of requires this multi-stage process to climb up if you're carrying things like coffees and cell phones. And then climb up. And you spill your coffee. Navajo Lake Marina. Navajo Lake is a great big rake lake. Big lake. On the San Juan and Rio Grande rivers where they come together. So it's a man-made lake, dammed up. And there's a it actually spans both the New Mexico and Colorado borders. It's not bad. It's not most favored coffee because it's a drip coffee maker on the houseboat. But we got that Dunkin Donuts Ground Coffee, which is about as good as it gets, and we brew it real strong. And then we have our Stephen almond milk and pretty luxurious for camping out, as it were. So anyway, the Navajo Lake Marina that's on the New Mexico side is a really nice marina. And they have these little places to rent. This is called the Aqua Lodge. And it really is a nice little houseboat. It was really great for two people. Technically sleeps six. But um fantastic for just the two of us. And it's lovely and quiet here at the marina this morning. People aren't really hitting it too hard yet. I got out the paddleboard and did a little stand-up paddle boarding as I before everybody got going. It's always nicest before the wind picks up and before the boats start making wakes. But now they're gearing up to rent out their boats for the day. They've got the pontoon boats and the bass boats and other houseboats. They have bigger, fancier houseboats that you can actually drive around. This one just stays in place. So the marina crew folks are getting all their stuff together, moving the boats out. That's the one that was parked next door to us, is heading out now. That's kind of a cool one because it's got slides on it. You can slide off the roof and down into the water. Which looks like it'd be kind of a kick. As long as you didn't burn your bottom. Oh, they've also got a grill on that thing. So yesterday afternoon, well, yesterday we rented a bass boat and did that all day. It was my mom's birthday present for David, so we went out and spent most of the day out on that boat. And David fished and I drifted in my floaty chair in red for the most part. And then we got back to the aqua lodge and we were kind of chilling out. David had been thinking about going out. We had it, you know, for another hour maybe, and he was thinking, well, maybe he'd go out and tool around a little bit more. And there'd been a storm in the distance. We could see it, and we kept thinking maybe it would come in, but it hadn't come in, but it never did actually hit us, but it stormed upriver, and there was this huge wind. I don't know if there was a micro burst or what, but it was such a driving wind, and it made the surf coming down the river towards us. You know, there were white caps, but there were huge, huge swells, and it was David took a video and you still couldn't really tell. Our little aqua lodge was just rocking back and forth and hitting the side little side dock and chewing that up, and a boat parked next to us nearly swamped, and you could see all of the people coming in on their little rented pontoon boats looking all worried. One speedboat was coming in so fast it was like hitting the waves super hard. You could see it just sort of bouncing down the lake. That was really something I've never seen something like that on a lake before. It lasted probably a good half hour, maybe longer, and then gradually settled down again and turned into a nice peaceful evening. There was never any rain here or anything, just that big tempest coming down the lake. So I kind of fell off doing podcasts at the end of RWA. Um I discovered a couple of truths. One is which well, actually, I'm gonna go with three truths. One is that when I'm at conference I get tired of talking to people, so I don't much feel like talking on the podcast when I have a little bit of quiet time. And another is that not that many people want to meet for breakfast or talk over breakfast, and when they do, because I did do several breakfasts. I had breakfast with some bloggers one morning, and I had went to the Karina Author breakfast, and my agent Sarah Younger had a breakfast for the Nancy Yoast Literary Agency, that's her main agency, the Nylaw authors another morning, and I thought about recording those, but one of the great things about conferences, probably the great thing about conferences, is that you get to have conversations that are off the record. And all of the things I talk to people about, I would have felt uncomfortable um having the microphone on. I would have had to warn people and then they would have been editing themselves and sort of takes away from the whole point of having the social interaction. There was one morning that Dorinda and I had a very good conversation. I went out and walked and then brought back the Starbucks and some protein bowls. There was this great little place that did protein bowls. So I brought those back and we had a really interesting conversation that morning, and I was saying afterwards, I said, dang, we should have recorded that. And she said, Yeah, except none of that stuff that we could have set on record. Well, that's actually true. But the rest of the conference went very well. And then we left on Sunday morning, and Dorinda and I listened to uh the pen keynote lecture in the car. She'd gotten the recordings, and we listened to that on the way from Denver to Walsenburg. And it's a good two-hour talk, so that was about the right length of time for us to listen to. And if anyone um gets the recordings, there goes a little speedboat heading out. Heading up river. Is that right, David? Is this San Juan and Rio Grande Rivers?

unknown 8:42

No.

SPEAKER_00 8:43

I was thinking I wasn't right about that.

unknown 8:48

San Juan and Pine, I think.

SPEAKER_00 8:50

San Juan and Pine Rivers. David's sitting here having his coffee too. Well, it doesn't matter that much. I was just trying to remember. It feeds into the Rio Grande eventually though, right? Yeah. Just downriver from here. Woo! Oh, gracious. But that uh pen keynote talk was really interesting, really useful. Um, I didn't go, I didn't get to go. I had a couple of other appointments during the same time, which I was kicking myself for doing, and Dorinda went, but she had to leave early because she had other appointments. So that was um really good to listen to that, and I highly recommend it. Um really got a lot out of it. A lot of a lot of good thoughts about like um things we already knew, but she really put it into clear relief and made a lot of sense about how chronic stress affects your brain and how having expectations and outcomes on creativity uh affects creativity, how it locks things down for you. And so once we once we hit Wolsenburg, David met me. He drove up from Santa Fe and then the two of us went on and stayed the night in the mountains of Colorado near South Fork and then came over to Navajo Lake the next day to stay in the Aqualodge. I don't know why I always have to say it that way, the Aqualodge. But it was good to have a few days of decompress like this, and I'm really gonna try to get better about that, that when I'm relaxing and doing vacation, I'm really giving myself a a full chance to relax and get better about playing and enjoying creativity that's playful and just for the sake of that. So we'll pack up soon and we'll drive back home. It'll be good to be back home, see the cats, and get back into routine. I hope to get a lot of work done in the upcoming weeks before WorldCon. I go to WorldCon in mid-August. Yes, I am going oh, I I did tell I think I did tell you. I I said on the podcast before that I finished Orchid Throne. So that's done. I got in page proofs for Warrior of the World, which is Jenna's third book. So um I'll get those done pretty quickly and then finish writing Arrows of the Heart. Which I know you're all eagerly waiting for. So that's all all on schedule. Should have some pretty open wakes to work on that stuff. We won't have the uh patio overlooking the lake, but be back in the Grape Harbor, back in our home territory. And in upright chairs. The chairs that they have on this Adirondack on the stick are like those Adirondack chairs that you recline back in, and if you don't sit up to drink your coffee, it spills all down in front. Or maybe that's just me. So I think short podcast today, that's about all I have to say. Still get my brain back into gear. But I wanted to get this posted, let you know that I am alive and will be posting more. And I will talk to you all again tomorrow. Have a good one. Bye bye.