Hurray! BOREAS EN DE VIER WINDSTREKEN (BOREAS AND THE FOUR WINDS) has been proofed and should be on its way to the printer now. I am super excited about this third book in the Boreas series, which will come out mid April. Again, I’ve thrown Boreas in adventure after adventure on his trip around the world with his parents on their yacht the Argo. In BOREAS AND THE FOUR WINDS, the family sails from Miami up the East Coast of America all the way to New York, and back south again to Key West, Cuba, the Cayman Islands and Colombia. After passing through the Panama Canal they sail north to San Francisco for a short trip to the Sierra Nevada. The final destination of this…
Mina Witteman – author | editor | teacher of creative writing
Posts tagged “hawaii”
Not much brain space for anything else while doing the line edits for the second book in the Boreas series. Boreas en de duizend eilanden (Boreas and the Thousand Islands) is scheduled to come out mid-April and I am really excited about that. Working hard now to have the manuscript back on my editor’s desk by Monday morning. I’m good with deadlines, they spur me on and keep me away from procrastination. And my editor Marlous is the coolest in the world. I love shaping and polishing my books with her. Rereading the manuscript brings back many memories of good times on the water, too. Sailing, snorkeling, and in general just hanging out with people who also love the water. Like my super cool friend Kirsten…
Do you ever have that feeling that you are really close to something, that you can almost touch it, that you almost have it in your hand and then it slips through your fingers and it’s gone? Like snapping a picture of a turtle in the water. It happens with plot twists and turns. When you’re brooding over your story to find a twist that will bring you the change your protagonist needs to move forward, a turn that you need to move the story forward and keep the reader engaged. They’re fickle things, stories, and they can keep you tossing and turning at night, surrounded by the dark like you are snorkeling in murky waters without even a sliver of light piercing through. It can make it impossible…
Tagged: #amwriting, green turtle, hawaii, plot twist, stories
A visual post, because day 33 seemed like the perfect day for a break. No writing. Lots of thinking. And a re-energizing walk to clear my head after yesterday’s inspirational overload. I told my muse to sit back and relax and I set out for Kailua Beach. What did I see? What did it spark? A ghost crab (Ocypode ceratophthalma): like my skin ghost crabs are the color of sand and you can hardly spot them scurrying around. They also dart away at the tiniest disturbance and I was happy I spotted this one. Took a long wait and the skin on my shoulders is now the color of the setting sun. Juvenile cone snail: we studied this one for a long time. Might…
Tagged: beach, cone snail, driftwood, ghost crab, goose-neck barnacle, hawaii, Kailua Beach, sand castle, walk
i have nothing left to give said the muse disconcerting news that forces my writer’s imagination to find release in solitary thinking in fantasies dreams words that propel me into ian’s blue hawaiian spiral wings send me soaring over red hot molten rock that burns the trees winding through lush green valleys forests that climb up steep cliffs where ropes of sugar sweet white fizz cascade down until my brain whirls like an airfoil pours out novel words new lines to paint a story like the goddess of fire gushes passion from her pit and coats the earth’s crust in black and silver mahalo pele
muse-inspired thinking on the road through barren black fields of lava rolling hills of yellowed grass rainforests crawling up steep cliffs i open the window and let the wind brush my skin the camera ready i put my feet up and smile all the way from the warmth of the valley of the kings to the icy winds on sky father’s mountain and think up new adventures
Tagged: Big Island, boreas, hawaii, Valley of the Kings, Waipi'o Valley
Four weeks on the road and I moved from San Francisco to Hawaii, not just to write but also to research the third book of the Boreas series, and more specifically Wayfinding or Polynesian navigation, finding your way without instruments, like compasses, maps, or GPS but solely on what you see around you, the stars, the rising and setting of moon and sun, the ocean swells and how waves lap against the hull of your ship, the currents, the winds, the direction birds fly. There’s several ways you can research stories. One is sitting at your laptop and surfing the Internet. You can also go out and meet people, pick their brains, hear their stories, learn about their lives. Obviously, the latter one will most likely…
Tagged: #amwriting, boreas, Flypside, hawaii, here be dragons, Polynesian navigation, research, Shy, Wayfinding
Mina Witteman 