I have to wake up in a few hours and I’m dead tired. GRL this year is a humming buzz of activity and oh man I’m paying the toll. BUT… tonight was the Korean Food Fest and the readings by Greg Tremblay. I shall try to grab some pix and share.

But for now… sleep!

So I’m at the hotel. I’m not quite Rhys Ford but I will be tomorrow. Right now I’m in the room doing some typing stuff and wondering why the room looks like a swag monster vomited up everything it ate in the past five years onto the floor. I’ll have to organize tomorrow because it’s a bit too far past the line of chaos for me. Dunno why

Whatcha all doing? GRL is happening and the hotel doesn’t quite know what hit it.

So much is flying right past me and I’m not having a lot of time to write. Hopefully once GRL is past, I can buckle down and carve out some time. Actually I have no choice. Time must be carved.

Writing Urban Fantasy is different from murders. The voice is more fluid and there’s more… tang to the air. Especially with Kai. I also have to find the music for this book. So far, nothing is hitting. It’ll come.

Tomorrow we’re going to have a special excerpt and giveaway for Eric Arvin’s new book, The Rascal. Be sure to stop in.

I should also be talking about Fish Stick Fridays with you all. To be honest, I’m very fond of that book. For some reason, it’s just a sweet kind of murderous sorta of thing. Really. Like… a candied poisonous butterfly.

With a hot mechanic and a sweet and hot bookseller. But you know… that kind of average every day stuff.

I also need to buy rice. We ran out of rice. Who the hell runs out of rice? A trip to Zion or Marukai is needed.

I woke up dragging today. Stayed up way too late reading Jonathon Kellerman after watching Ink Master and Face Off. I’ve got a hell of a lot to today and very little time to do it.

Tonight we’re going to dinner at Island Style which is a local-to-Hawai’i style restaurant which is one of my favourites. So I’ll take pix of what we ate because you know… food porn.

Woke up with a kink between my shoulder blades. Very annoying and I can’t shake it loose. I need a good massage. I keep saying that but I never go do it.

My brain is totally blank except for book stuff and work. We’ve got GRL coming up around the corner and a lot of energy has gone into working on that. So much energy *grins*

What do you all planned for this weekend?

Alligators are native only to the United States and China.

Why do I bring this up?

Because I kind of woke up in a pissy mood and the day didn’t seem to be working for me ever since. So I read random facts to push my brain to the side a bit.

Oh man and my coffee is too hot. We have no creamer at work. I am saddened. And I should have known better and had some back up because the coffee supplies are stocked by a non-drinker of the bean. I know… those people are odd. But instead of creamer I used a hot chocolate K-cup. Hey, it has milk in it. I just need a little bit.

It’s just been a thwarting kind of day. Nothing major to get into. Just small niggling things that add up after a few hours.

Still, I shall go forward.

What do you all do when you’re just in that mood where you skin doesn’t fit right?

We’re watching an old season of Project Runway. It’s kind of fun and painful at the same time. Mostly it’s interesting to see how people think. I did a lot of drama in high school and costuming was a great part of that. CosPlay also was a minor part of my life so it’s not an unfamiliar world but at the same time… a whole bunch of WTF are you thinking?

Of course I’ve worn a few things that made me say WTF after I’d seen pictures of them a few years later.

Probably the oddest thing I’ve worn was a shirt made of pastel bright flowers on white. I sewed it myself. Happy with how it came out, kind of like a light cotton button shirt but you know.. now I think about it and say… yeah, no.

Simple is definitely better. I love prints and fabrics. But not all of them are for me. Okay, very few are for me. I do like a nice flannel or plaid.

I own neither plaid nor flannel at the moment.

But nothing says comfort like an old flannel or chambray shirt.

I try to work those feels into the books I write. I think fabrics are a large part of our lives, even if we’re not aware of it. Most of us know the squeak and feel of a leather jacket or the worn softness of old jeans. Or the stiff scratch of a new brocade. Those sensory experiences lends itself to a layer of reaction to a story.

What’s your favourite sensory fabric?

My life is falling apart. Mostly because it’s GayRomLit and this time, it’s in my home city, San Diego.

San Diego has a lot to offer. I chose to stay in this city because the weather’s nice, it’s central enough for me to fly anywhere I need to without too much craziness and a large enough Asian population that I can find the foods I am used to.

Home base should always centre around comfort. And for me, coffee. Sadly San Diego is lacking in coffee plantations but if you like micro-breweries, we’re the place to be.

You grow up in Hawai’i and in or near sugar plantation families and you’re gonna have a lot of coffee in your life. There are varying degrees of coffee love. Some people are merely sippers, those who have a cup a day while others will down a pot by themselves. I make no judgement. Okay I judge silently but you know, you gotta. *grins*

One of my favourite coffees is Pumehana’s Hawaiian coffee. (http://pumehanacoffee.com/).

Now, I’m going to sound like a pretentious snob. I will admit it. I’m pretty picky about saying THIS coffee is great or that one is bad. I like Starbucks espresso but not so much most of their drip coffees. I prefer a medium to dark roast but not one that smells of skunkweed… I’m looking at you French Roast. I want the coffee to be smooth, a little caramel and cocoa with a bit of a sweet note in it.

Pumehana delivers that. It’s a small, single-source plantation run by a local family whose farm is below Mauna Loa. As coffees go, you honestly can’t get better than this. They’re also pretty cheap… surprisingly so considering the region but then Kona coffee while good isn’t as great as a single source Hawaiian coffee.

Because Kona coffee usually is a blend of a bunch of plantations’ yield.

Now I like a variety of Konas. They’re not bad. Just not as smooth or nice.

There are some mass production coffees I like. Peet’s Major Dickason’s is lovely. Good solid every day brew. There are even instant Vietnamese coffees—3-2-1s—that are great. Vinacafe is probably my favourite of those.

So yeah, coffee. It is like a lifeblood.

Here’s a question for the day… favourite coffee or tea? Share your faves!