Cheri's Blog

Friends and readers,

Greetings from Lisbon, Portugal, where I am writing you from my hotel room, laptop propped on my knees. 😎  Patrick and I are back on the road for a springtime adventure, mixing work and play, and I'm writing to share some book recommendations and a few of the interesting sights I've seen.

A typical small bookstore in hilly Lisbon

In preparation for this trip, I loaded up on novels with a connection to Portugal. I read an entertaining (but rather improbable) thriller, Two Nights in Lisbon, by Chris Pavone, and I dipped my toes into the multiple literary award winner, Night Train to Lisbon by Pascal Mercier. But my favorite of the bunch was The Colours of Death by Patricia Marques, a gritty police procedural with a paranormal tilt.

While not related to Portugal, I kept myself entertained on our long flight reading Death on Board by Anita Davison. Davison has a nice knack for description, and the story is set on a transatlantic voyage from New York to England in the early 1900s. The sleuth is a British governess.

Literary Lisbon

During our brief time here, I learned of Luís de Camões, considered the “Portuguese Shakespeare,” whose influence was so profound that the Portuguese language is sometimes called “The Language of Camões.” I haven't explored his poems yet, but you can learn more about his interesting life here, including his adventures and misadventures at sea.

And imagine my delight when I learned that the world's oldest continually operating bookstore was a short walk from our hotel! The original Livreria Bertrand (now part of a chain) has been selling books since 1732. We went inside and found a surprisingly modern collection, well-organized and welcoming.

292 years of bookselling history, right here.

I'm unlikely to learn Portuguese anytime soon, so I picked up a charming copy of Alice in Wonderland. A grim-faced saleswoman at the desk applied an “official” Livreria Bertrand stamp to the book before glaring at me like she wished I'd die of a painful disease. Perhaps my tastes were too basic?

Visiting a country for the first time is indeed like visiting Wonderland. You're lost. You don't know how things work. Don't offend the queen of the bookstore, or she'll lop off your head! Ha.

With my head firmly attached to my neck, I headed back out into the rain. Rumor has it that our next stop, Porto, has one of the prettiest bookstores in the world. (Video Link)

Literacy as Resistance

ut when it comes to the power of words in Lisbon, what moved me the most was my visit to the Museu Do Aljube Resistência e Liberdade (The Aljube Museum of Resistance and Freedom). It's dedicated to the activists who struggled for decades to overthrow Portugal's former dictatorship, and many of the exhibits were about communication and literacy.

From the ways the authoritarian government strove to suppress literacy (because an uneducated populace is easier to control), to the explosion of underground magazines and hidden printing presses that kept pro-democracy movements alive, the museum was a powerful reminder of the importance of language and communication, not to mention the dangers of government control over books, media, and communication.

Antifascist activists used “muffled typewriters” like this one to avoid being hauled off to jail for sharing their ideas.

Portugal is a young democracy, compared to the United States. As one local told us, “Young people can be tempted to give up on our system, especially when life is difficult. It's important we show them our history, so they understand how dangerous authoritarianism is.”

Reading helps to build up our critical thinking skills while at the same time building empathy for others. My time in Lisbon reminded me that when it comes to literacy, there's far more at stake than entertainment. Words can bring us together, and from time to time, they have the power to change the world.

Until next time...

All my best,

Cheri B.

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#travel #portugal #news #books

We traveled to Sintra, a quaint Portuguese town full of palaces, lush grounds, and Romantic architecture. It was foggy and drizzling all day, which made for poor photos but wonderfully moody views. Our tour guide drove us all the way out to Cabo de Roca, the most westerly point of continental Europe. The fog was so thick that we couldn't even see the lighthouse looming overhead. Squinting, I caught the barest hint of waves crashing below us, etched faintly in gray. Soundless in the mist.

So we stood at the edge of the land and peered into the impenetrable. Then I went into the gift shop and bought two postcards to see what it was supposed to look like. I loved it. How sweetly absurd to be standing with a bunch of tourists staring in a fog bank, cheerfully looking at nothing. From there, we drove along the coast, near Cascais, and saw waves hitting the rocky beach, sending spray thirty feet in the air. Fisherman looked tiny standing next to their poles, the slender shapes as tall as sailboat masts.

Next was a catch up day. We spent a few hours in a cramped laundrymat, ably assisted by an elderly man who was there washing sheets with a friend. He struck me as one of those mythical figures that shows up to give advice to lost wanderers: The Laundry Man. The laundry man spoke Portuguese, Italian, English. He scolded the two young guys who hopped the line to use the dryer. He patiently coaxed my ten euro bill into the finicky machine for me. The laundry man was generous with advice, showing tourists how to choose the correct settings, ushering people toward a machine when their turn came up. He said to me, “This place is not mine, but I come here every day.” With his somber iron gray mustache and merry eyes, he was the patron saint of the Lavandaria and I will never forget him.

I leave Lisbon behind with appreciation and relief. Appreciation for what I saw and learned, relief because the city has been so pummeled by overtourism that anything but a brief visit feels impolite. I have dozens of photos of tile work on my phone. Beauty everywhere, patterns upon patterns. Within the hour, our train will arrive, and we'll head north, to see what there is to see.

My writing deadlines are screeching at me like hungry seagulls. Beating their wings. Flapping closer and closer I'm glad I packed my fountain pen. While we're on the train, I'll draft out a chapter or two. Sometimes I suspect the computer is best saved for second drafts. The hand knows things the fingertips do not.

Farewell, Lisboa!

I’m never so productive as I am on the road. At home, I’m apt to struggle with motivation, even when the “things I need to do” equal the “things I want to do.”

Each day here contains roughly the same routine. Up early to grab a cup of coffee from a nearby cafe. Three or four intense hours of sightseeing, walking 5 or 6 miles, taking lots of photos. Eat a big, healthy lunch. Take a big nap. Wake up and write for several hours, lost in the story until it’s dark outside. Another walk, shorter this time, to grab a snack and stretch my legs. I haven’t been hungry enough for dinner. Just that big lunch, after which I crash like a hibernating bear.

Sometimes the day is reversed, with writing in the morning and sightseeing in the afternoon. Either way, I’m surprised at how much I’m getting done. Lots of exercise. Eating less junk. Getting my words in, and enjoying them. Less time for boredom, for self-doubt, for getting distracted.

I wish that I felt “like this” when I’m at home. I wish I was walking six miles a day, and eating better, and feeling so productive. Yet I’ve never found the knack of being travel-Cheri when I’m home-Cheri.

Perhaps I’ll figure it out? When I only have two or three hours to write, I certainly spend less time faffing around. And it’s good to be busy, I think, to keep the body as active as the mind. If only I could figure out how to keep it all alive when I’m back in my comfortable rut.

I’ll leave this post here as a reminder to think on it.

Photo: Lisbon Street Art, Alfama Neighborhood

#travel #lisbon #writing

We'd been awake for 24 hours when our flight began descending into Lisbon International Airport. Outside the oval window, I could see only a flat gray sheet, impenetrable and featureless, but the sounds were familiar. The hydraulic whine as wing flaps extended, breaking the shape of the wing, increasing drag, slowing the aircraft down. That, followed by the whir of landing gear extending.

Without warning, gravity pressed us into our seats, hard. The plane’s engines roared all around us. We were climbing, clawing our way up through the sky, feeling the weight of our bodies and the plane beneath us. Alarmed chatter burst out, punctuated by a few laughs, and then faded away. We waited. Surely the pilot would speak to us soon.

Slowly, the pressure on our bodies eased. The windows still showed nothing but dull gray, but now, with my attention sharpened, I could see little flashes of white in the grayness, lights from the wings reflecting in the clouds.

The pilot spoke. There was no need to worry. It was storming in Lisbon, with 40 mile per hour winds, and the approach had been bad. We were circling around for another attempt, to come in from the north. It seemed to take forever to get down. We sank through the clouds, centimeter by centimeter.

Everyone applauded when we landed. Sometimes, you're keenly aware that the pilot's skill makes the difference between arriving safely at your destination and getting smeared across the runway. A covered staircase spit us onto a blustery tarmac where a bus waited to take us to the terminal.

Wild weather aside, arrival in Lisbon was easy. We breezed through passport control, followed signs for the metro, and bought a pair of navegante cards from the machine. Past-me had written down our directions, so we knew which metro lines to take, always helpful when you're running on fumes. Everything was clearly laid out. Everything worked. The stations were clean and well-lit. A foursome of twenty-somethings laughed and joked in Portuguese on the opposite side of the platform while we waited for the metro. In their divergently stylish clothes: sporty, pretty, preppy, and dark, they looked straight out of a John Hughes movie.

We climbed out of the station and into the rainstorm. A massive statue of a man on a fat horse loomed overhead, slickly black in the rain. The sidewalks and even some of the roads are covered in little white and black tiles, like a bathroom (so strange!) and as we trudged uphill with our backpacks, doused in water, dodging puddles, we realized we'd gone the wrong direction. It took us a while, circling, to find our hotel. In the moment when I felt the most lost, I was ready to drop my pack on the ground, burst into tears, and tell Patrick that I was done. Finished! I would sleep right there, on the wet sidewalk, for I was so so tired.

That’s when he squinted. Pointed. Our hotel! It was right across the street.

Too exhausted for dinner, we took showers, texted our parents, and collapsed into bed. In the morning, feeling almost human again, I used a towel to wipe condensation off the window.

“Look at the castle,” Patrick said.

I looked up high, above the rooftops, and saw the wall surrounding São Jorge Castle. Small flags flapped in the wind. The city is spread all around us, red tile roofs rising and falling in time with the steep hillsides, and the rain had stopped.

“I found a place to get coffee,” Patrick said.

He was singing my song.

#travel #lisbon

Happy Saturday, world.

Sometimes there’s so much book inside my head that I feel it pressing on the inside of my skull. It’s not a bad feeling – being full of story – but it’s hard to focus on anything else. The unwashed dishes sit on the counter, sending stink waves through our tiny home. The body pleads for exercise, but the mind is like: HOLD UP THERE, BUCKO, WE GOTTA WRITE.

Out of My Element

My writing group gave me feedback on a few chapters in The Hard Way Home, and it’s time to lock down certain fiddly details about spaceflight in my universe. How fast the ships can move. How far they can travel. Physics.

Science fiction readers are a discerning bunch, and it’s real tough not to burst the bubble of believability, even in space opera.

I was not a STEM major, but thankfully, scientists write books for people like me. I’ll pick up a couple this week and hammer out the details.

A Possible Fix

I trunked a mystery novel recently because it wasn’t working. I’d tried to pull out the salvageable bits, but they fell to pieces in my hands. Live and learn, right? Well, I’ve come up with a possible fix for that story, and I’m feeling – dare I say – optimistic? My optimism and my realism kick each other’s shins beneath the covers at night, but I try to give hope a fair hearing.

Today, I’m glad to have two stories galloping through my brain. You work on one until you hit a snag, then you can switch. It’s like doing intervals at the gym. Cardio, then the weights, then back again. Any more than two stories and I won’t finish anything, but two is manageable. Fun, even.

Back to it!

And body, you can stop hassling me for exercise. I’ll do the dishes and take a walk this afternoon. Promise.

#today

Good morning from //Redacted// Station. Well, that's where I'm headed in today's Hard Way Home chapters, anyway. Yesterday Patrick and I did some brainstorming about space stations, and the notion of a space station as a frontier outpost, the last stop for fuel and supplies before heading into the unknown.

Seattle was once an outpost town. Starry-eyed rubes came here by the thousands to buy prospecting gear, all on the basis of a newspaper article that claimed there was gold up in Alaska. The provisioners got rich, and the rubes went broke.

//Redacted// Station is my little Seattle, I suppose. Actually, it's nothing like Seattle at all, but some of the same pioneer spirit applies. There's a little bit of my hometown in everything I write, one way or another. I can't help it.

I've been squirreling away ideas for months, getting ready to write my first space station scene. Have you seen Eric Wernquist's short animated film, One Revolution Per Minute? It's gorgeous, and while the space station in my head isn't nearly so luxurious, art like that inspires me. Music helps too. Today's soundtrack is Atlantis from Marvel 83.

Behind every paragraph and scene, there's so much that readers never see. The music and art that inspired me, various bits of research, the conversations I've had, and the weeks or months spent dreaming. I suppose that’s one reason to be happy about this blog. It gives me a chance to share some of those influences with you.

Last night, and the night before, I fell asleep thinking of Loretta and //Redacted// walking through //Redacted// Station. Am I ready to write this chapter? I think so.

Into the book I go!

Today's post is about The Hard Way Home.

#writing #wip #firstguardian

Note: I redact certain details from these posts to avoid spoilers.

It looks like Hulu is getting into the cruise ship mystery business with a new series called Death and other Details featuring actor Mandy Patinkin as the detective.

I'm curious about this one! I got a kick out of the Spanish historical cruise ship mystery drama Alta Mar (english: High Seas), and the production quality for Death and other Details seems just as high.

But the vibe looks quite different, and I wonder if it's a play-fair mystery (where observant viewers have a shot at solving the crime) or more of a character drama like Only Murders in the Building. I prefer the former to the latter, most of the time.

I have a personal affinity for cruise ship murder mystery novels, of course. 😏 But it's always fun to see a clever whodunit on screen too.

I anticipate a good time.

I'm working on my next space opera novel, The Hard Way Home, and I recently learned there's another name for the kind of story I'm writing. Near Future science fiction. The Martian is considered Near Future science fiction and so was Project Hail Mary. The Expanse series might fit the bill, although I guess it depends upon how “near” we're talking about.

Think Sailboat, not Starship

When I started writing this series, I wanted to tell stories about humanity's early expansion into the universe. Humans living on the moon and on Mars, but for a matter of decades, not centuries. And with no Trekian luxuries like “antigrav,” force fields, or FTL (faster than light) engines. When stories are set in the distant future, it's easier to handwave the difficulties of space travel away, but that’s harder in the near future.

I’ve been thinking a lot about gravity. How we evolved within it, and the various ways it impacts our bodies and everyday life.

Outlaw Justice took place in a domed city on Mars called Epiphany, but The Hard Way Home takes place mostly in space, thus I'm spending more time in zero gee with my characters, thinking about how that kind of environment affects what happens in the story. It helps that I've spent a lot of my free time watching NASA videos! But other influences that are just as helpful. I've been reading first-hand accounts of sailors at sea, and about some of their customs and how they’ve developed, and I'm trying to grasp the psychological toll of being adrift in a small craft, dependent upon your crew, luck, and the strength of your preparations.

Space opera isn't “hard sci-fi,” but what matters to me is that it feels real. And one thing I'm fairly certain of at this point is that space wants us dead. Space makes the untamed oceans of our world seem like meek little kittens in comparison.

As much as I dream of traveling through the stars, there are so many reasons why we are unlikely to have humans living our their lives off-planet anytime soon. Societies are complicated and require a lot of resources that we take for granted. NASA grew and lost one tiny tomato recently. That's where we're at right now! We are explorers, yes, but it is so so early.

Writing Believable Stories in Space

So, I've got a fat list of practicalities to manage in this story. Sweat doesn't roll down your back without gravity. Can a body heal from major trauma in zero gee? How is radiation handled? Does space have the radiological equivalent of bad weather? How does it manifest? And what about combat? If a ship fires a weapon, how do the engines compensate for the ship's “equal and opposite” reaction? And – oh my gosh – what else am I forgetting? 😂

It’s a lot.

These aren't problems you need to worry about. Instead, you can relax in the knowledge that behind most every science fiction story there's an author in full-on research mode, doing her best to add some salt of verisimilitude to her story. And it’s all background, anyway. The Hard Way Home isn't about the difficulties of space travel so much as it's about adventure in the interstellar frontier. It's about pirates and colonists and friends trying to keep one another alive...

The technical stuff? Well, that's just work. It’s part of the worldbuilding, and how it influences the story is both interesting and fun.

Writing about space has a way of making me grateful for life on Earth. I'm really happy to have gravity. And a magnetosphere. Dirt!

Space is hard. I doubt we'll settle permanently there until long after I'm gone. But damn is it fun to dream. And that’s what a good story is, I think. A dream I can share with you.

Speaking of which... back to work.

Do you like space opera? You can get an early bird discount by pre-ordering your digital copy of The Hard Way Home from my bookstore.

#writing #wip #firstguardian

Today’s post is a bit of housekeeping for 2024, starting with a small announcement: I have a new blog! And I hope to be more active here over the next year.

What Changed?

A while back, Patrick and I moved CheriBaker.com over to Shopify so we could sell books directly to readers. On the whole, it’s been great! It’s very cool to wake up and see that I’ve sold a book to someone in Germany or North Carolina. Bookselling feels so personal and rewarding when there’s a direct connection with readers.

Unfortunately, Shopify is pretty terrible for blogging. And that’s okay. I’m moving my author blog over to write.as, a robust, easy-to-use service run by the guy who hosts my Mastodon instance.

New Options for Readers

My reader newsletter isn’t going anywhere, but now you also have the option to follow me via this blog, either via RSS or by getting each post by email. You can also follow it directly on the Fediverse by searching for @subscribe@blog.cheribaker.com.

Newsletter: Book recommendations, sales and discounts, publishing updates, links to my best blog posts.

Blog: Whatever I feel like writing about. 😏

No matter how you stay in touch, I’m glad to have you here.

#admin

Long time readers may remember that I came up with the idea for the Ellie Tappet Cruise Ship Mysteries during a voyage to South America aboard the Norwegian Sun. I have many fond memories of that trip, so I was delighted when the Sun showed up at Port 66 in Seattle. And last month, Patrick and I went aboard for a late-season voyage to Alaska.

I figured I could do some research for The Case of the Paper Horse and revisit the cruise ship that started it all. This was a vacation, yes, but I was also a writer on a mission. Norwegian was offering a “behind the scenes tour” to the areas of the ship guests aren't normally allowed to see, and I couldn't wait to see how the inner workings of a cruise ship.

I wondered, how did the ship of my memory compare to the world I'd built up in my imagination?

The promenade deck was much as I remembered it.

I love visiting the ship's library! Such a fun space.

On the day of our tour, accompanied by a guide and a security guard, we descended to the lower decks, where the crew work and live. The sheer scale of the kitchen operation boggled my mind. The soup pots in the galley were the size of bathtubs!

Running several restaurants aboard a ship is quite the logistical operation! Here, a chef showed us the daily menus for the main dining room. They called the kitchen 'the galley” and it was enormous, with dozens of chefs overseeing the work.

I was fascinated by the laundry operation deep down on deck one. Each washing machine holds 400 pounds of linen per load, and there was so much specialized equipment. Sewing machines, steamers, and a long machine for cleaning sheets called “the mangler.”

I wouldn't want to get my hand stuck in one of those! The machines were massive, and the air in there was pleasantly warm.

There are so many interesting job titles! We met the “Laundrymaster” and the “Provisionmaster” as well as the ship's engineer. He reminded me a bit of Scotty on Star Trek, only Italian rather than Scottish.

The Provisionmaster does all grocery shopping for the ship, and I was gobsmacked by the size and scale of their freezers and fridges. Here is a photo of their ice cream freezer. That's right. This one is just ice cream.

I didn't meet any colorful characters on our trip to Alaska, but thanks to my time on board I have a mind full of images, sensations, and even smells.

Fiction is... well, it's *fictional*, but I love adding sprinkles of realism to bring a story to life. And there's so much dynamism on a cruise ship. So many levels! The guests, the crew, the ports, the activities and personalities.

At one point, when I was circling the ship and making notes on what I saw, a security guard began eyeing me suspiciously. So I asked myself: What would Ellie Tappet do?

I put my pencil away with exaggerated care and went to the cafe for a cup of tea. Tea is the ultimate sleuth camouflage, don't you know.

It was a good trip! I'm glad to have a better picture of life aboard a cruise ship, and you can bet some of these fun little details will end up in my next book.

Ready for fun, friendship, and mysteries at sea?

Check out the Ellie Tappet Cruise Ship Mysteries, starting with book one,The Case of the Missing Finger.

#EllieTappet #travel #alaska