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What a Weekend

3/20/2017

This is about as much fun as you can have in a weekend without waking up with a hangover.

I ran a free giveaway promotion for Murder Strikes Twice. the second book in the Catrina Flaherty Mysteries, this weekend and the results were fantastic. The book rose to #1 on Amazon's Crime Fiction best seller list. Wow!

I'm a proud papa and just have to share the latest review on the book.

     5.0 out of 5 stars
     Cat is my hero!
     By marlene harmon
     on March 19, 2017
     Format: Kindle Edition|Verified Purchase
     A great read. I wanted more. Cat is the woman most of us want to be.

Is that gratifying or what?

Speaking of Cat, I'm getting excited about her next book, The Chinatown Murders. I'm finished with the first draft and will started the second this week.

I shared six possible cover photos with you a couple of weeks ago and last week, I showed you the top three vote getters. I sent them off to my graphic artist, Brandi Doane McCann, this morning. I can't wait to get the proofs back. Of course, I'll share them with you and get your opinions as soon as I have them.

Possible Last Tango for Che Cover Shots

As excited as I am about my covers, I'm absolutely in orbit about the cover for Last Tango for Che.

I've told you in the last couple of posts that I'm editing this amazing book for Elina Castro. I'll return the manuscript and my notes to her this afternoon. It has everything, romance, suspense, violence, danger. You're going to love it.

Here are threepossible cover pictures that Elina has selected. What do you think? My personal favorite is #3, the man carrying the girl. It has action, emotion and draws the eye. Drop me a line to give me your opinion.

On the personal side of things, Dawn's parents visited from Panama this weekend. It was nice seeing them. On Sunday we all went for a tour of Mission Bay in Duane's boat. It was sunny enough that everyone (but me) was reaching for the sun screen.

Today life goes back to normal. Fortunately, Dawn had the weekend off. She's back to work today and I'm going to spend the whole day chained to my laptop. The sacrifices I make for my art.

Have a good week everyone. Maybe by next week I can show you The Chinatown Murders cover proofs.

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March 14th, 2017

3/14/2017

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Blue Water & Me Review

Time flies too quickly. I’ve been so busy I missed last week’s blog and I’m sorry. I’ve been editing one book, finishing the first draft of The Chinatown Murders, helping a client with marketing, catching up on promised book reviews, setting up a new computer and refinishing the non-skid surface on the deck of the boat. Time just got away from me.

So, with that being said, here’s what I’m up to this week.

First of all, a big thank you to Donna Lee Anderson, columnist for the Kitsap Weekly newspaper in Kitsap County, Washington. She published a glowing review of Blue Water & Me, Tall Tales of Adventures With My Father in the Feb 3-8 issue.

She sent me an email saying her husband just read the book and loved it. He insisted she read it and she liked it so much she had to review it for her column.

I can’t tell you how good it feels to hold such a positive review in your hands. Once again, thank you Donna.

Next up, I have an interview coming up in The Urban Release newspaper. This is a news magazine dedicated to the arts and issues of urban America. I was contacted by the editor and am thrilled to be in their publication. I’ll include a link when the interview is published.

The real-life heroine of Last Tango for Che

I am currently editing a wonderful book called Last Tango for Che by Elina Castro. Elina lives in Vermillion, Alberta Canada. She was referred to me by a friend from a former writers group.

This is a book about the “dirty war” in Argentina in the ‘70’s. Elina is from Argentina and lived through this terrible time. The military ousted the elected president and set up a fascist dictatorship. University students rebelled and started a bloody conflict that affected virtually everyone in the country. We in the U.S. know little about this period in South American history.
The novel is beautifully written, with superb characterization and action. The descriptions make you want to visit Buenas Aires.

I can’t wait to see it published. I’ll keep you updated on Elina’s progress. It’s a must read.

As for me, I finished the first draft of The Chinatown Murders. I’ve let it sit for a week now. I expect to start work on the second draft next week. I like to let a manuscript sit and mellow for a couple of weeks before I get back to editing it. It’s amazing how many things you see when you look at it with fresh of eyes. The manuscript is about 65,000 words long. I’ve already identified several new scenes that need to be added, so it should come out a little larger than that.

This is my first novel length Catrina Flaherty story. The first, Mirror Image, was a short story about sixty pages long. Her second solo adventure, Murder Strikes Twice, is a novela around one hundred pages long.

This time I’ve made the book a full length novel. There is a honest-to-God subplot that runs through the book. In The Cartel Strikes Back, Ted’s little brother, Carlito, was arrested for a gangland execution-style murder. In The Chinatown Murders, Chris and his firm defend Carlito on these charges.

As for Cat, she’s on the trail of a serial killer in Seattle’s Chinatown. Once again, I defy you to guess the ending.

Last blog, I posted six possible cover photos. Thank you to all of you who responded with your choices for the cover. We’ve narrowed it down to three choices. Once again, let me know which you like best.

I’m excited to be presenting my Marketing 101 class for the San Diego Writers and Editors Guild on April 24th, 2017 at 6:30. If you’re in the San Diego area, drop by for an informative evening of the state of book marketing in the 21st Century. I’ll send you a link to their website when they post the official promo.

Finally, let’s get back to our good friend Ted Higuera. Many of you have written to tell me how much you liked The Cartel Strikes Back. Thank you. If you haven’t read this book yet, you can get it at http://tinyurl.com/thecartelstrikesback.

Stay tuned. I’m already working on the plot for the next Ted Higuera Thriller. I don’t have a title yet, but how about CyberWarfare? In the new book, Ted is pitted against ISIS in a struggle to save the U.S.A from terrorist cyber attacks that damage the economy and kill real people.

Would you believe that a hacker can take control of your microwave and cause it to burst into flames? How about if they take control of your car and cause it to crash? These things, along with little items like taking control of your pacemaker, are real world vulnerabilities that we all face.

Watch as Ted takes on ISIS terrorists sworn to destroy the “Great Satan,” America.

That’s it for this week. While a major late winter blizzard grips most of America, here in San Diego we’re having sunny skies and mid-seventies weather. I hope you’re having fun where ever you are.

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The Chinatown Murders Cover Photo

2/23/2017

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Seattle's Chinatown Gate

Work is moving along on The Chinatown Murders. At the time of this writing, I only have nine scenes left to write on the first draft. Of course, in the second draft I’m likely to add things (I can already think of two scenes that are missing) and take stuff out, but it’s a good start. I expect to complete the first draft this week.

Which brings me to you, dear friend. It’s time to put some effort into the book’s cover. I am publishing six photos here and would like your input about which you think would make the best book cover.

Which picture do you think matches the theme of the book best? I’d love to hear your opinions. Please drop me a note at www.pennwallace.com to vote on your favorite by sending me the photo number.

To give you an idea of what the book is about (in case you’ve been living in a cave for the last few months), here’s the first draft of the book cover description:

Catrina Flaherty is up to her ears in rape and murder.

Someone is raping women working at message parlors in China Town. He selects his victims because they are undocumented aliens. They can’t go to the police or they risk deportation.

Now he has escalated to murder.

What do you do when you can’t go to the police?

You call Cat Flaherty.

But Cat is also in love. Has she finally found her perfect match?

Chris has his hands full with his first murder case. Ted’s little brother, Carlito, has been framed by an old nemesis and Chris must find the truth.

With a shock ending that you’ll never predict, the latest Cartrina Flaherty novel is a page burner.

Last week I wrote about how difficult it is to get inside the mind of a serial killer. In The Chinatown Murders I write the killer's scenes from his point of view. I'm scared to say that I’m getting into it and his scenes are becoming easier and easier to write.

Members of my writers group seem to be enjoying this perspective. They say he’s easy to hate, that he’s a truly bizarre character. I haven’t read too many books from the villain’s perspective (I know that James Patterson has done this), so this is going to be unique.

In the meantime I have to make an appointment with my shrink to get him out of my head.

As I get close to finishing the first draft, it will soon be time to call for beta readers. I ask a dozen or so true believers to read the second draft of the book and send me their comments. I want to know if the characters and technology are believable. Does the plot move along at a good pace. What slows it down? Am I missing any information? Am I telling you too much?
This kind of feedback is invaluable to making the best book possible and enhance the readers enjoyment. If you’re interested in being a beta reader, I’ll put the call out next week. But be sure to respond quickly. I usually have more volunteers than I can accommodate.

Thanks for all of your help. It truly takes a village to raise a book.

In case you’re wondering what’s around the bend as I get close to finishing the first draft of The Chinatown Murders, you’re in luck. Next up on my list is a new Ted Higuera book. I don’t even have a working title yet, but it’s about an ISIS cyber attack on America. (By the way, this plot was suggested by a reader. Be sure to send me your ideas and see if they make it into a book.)

The Islamic radicals stop pacemakers, hack into cars, erase bank information and shut down power grids. The authorities are seemingly helpless to stop these attacks. But the terrorist didn’t count on one thing.

Ted Higuera.

Ted goes to war with ISIS trying to shut down the cyber attacks and put’s his life on the line in service of his country.

I don’t know exactly how the story is going to roll out yet, but I’ve been doing research in my spare time. You’re gonna love it.

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Inside the Mind of a Serial Killer

2/12/2017

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A good night for a mystery.

I’m working hard on my new book, The Chinatown Murders. I’m making good progress, exceeding my goal of two thousand words almost every day.

This book is about a true case that happened in Seattle. I can’t give you too many details about what happened because I don’t want to give away the plot. Let me just say that a serial rapist worked Chinatown for over two years. He was free to spread his reign of terror because his victims were undocumented aliens and afraid to go to the police. It seemed like a perfect case for Catrina Flaherty.

All of my books are based on true crimes. I insert my cast of players and sometimes invent facts here and there to enhance the story line, but basically, I can’t make this stuff up.

In The Chinatown Murders our rapist escalates. He accidently kills one of his victims and gets the biggest thrill of his life. It feels so good that he does it again. When Asian girls start dying, a friend goes to Cat. Catrina runs a parallel investigation to the one run by detective sergeant Tom Bremen, Catrina’s former lover. Needless to say, neither is eager to work with the other.
In the meantime, Cat’s relationship with Harvey Bernstein heats up. Could Catrina have finally met a man she can settle down with?

Remember the end of The Cartel Strikes Back? We left Ted’s little brother, Carlito, in quite a bind. He was arrested for a gangland killing.

In The Chinatown Murders attorney Chris Hardwick, Ted’s best friend, takes on Carlito’s case and fights corruption in the District Attorney’s office. The case takes a few twists and turns and we get to sit in the gallery and watch the two attorneys’ battle it out.

I have to give a big thanks to my friends Ron Ramey and Mike Gibbs. Ron is a retired attorney in Huston. He provides me with incredible insights into legal matters. I lay out the case for him and he tears it apart, showing me the weaknesses and pointing out new paths the case could take.

Mike is a veteran of more than thirty years on the San Diego Police Department. For several years now, he has read and corrected all of my “cop scenes.” He’s given me wonderful insight into how an officer’s mind works and corrected many inaccuracies in my fight scenes.

I owe them both a debt of gratitude.

Looking into Elliot Bay

I’m loving writing The Chinatown murders, but it’s creeping me out. The book opens inside the mind of the serial killer as he makes his first kill. We continue to see the world through his depraved eyes As the book continues, we go back and forth between the killer and Catrina in their intricate game of cat and mouse.

I am not demented killer, but I have to think like one when I write his scenes. I somehow get lost in his head as I write, but when I stop and read what I’ve just written, I’m shocked at the state of his depravity. Last night I dreamed about a lost bear cub finding a home with us and a new baby in our lives. Maybe my subconscious mind is cleansing itself of the horrible things I’ve been thinking while I sleep.

Whatever my mental state, I think you’re going to like this book. It’s set in Seattle and if you live there, you will recognize the scenes, places and some of the people. If you’ve never been to Seattle, you will come away feeling like you know the town.

I had never been to New York, but Connie and I watched so much Law and Order I felt like I knew the town. After a Christmastime visit in 2003, we came home and every time we watched Law and Order we said “I know that place. Remember when …”

I hope that after you’ve read the book, you will take a trip to Seattle (in the summer when it’s not raining) and feel the same way.

As always, I have a twist at the ending that you won’t see coming. I ask readers to write me if they figure out the ending. I even put up a prize for my beta readers who guessed the ending to The Cartel Strikes Back. I didn’t get a single person write me to say they got it before the reveal.

The Chinatown murders has a similar ending. If you guess it before I reveal the ending, please drop me a line.

In the meantime, if you haven’t yet read The Cartel Strikes Back, you should get it right away. Not just because it’s a rousing good tale, but because it is the prelude to so much that happens in The Chinatown Murders.

In The Cartel Strikes Back, Ted and crew are back in Mexico. After the world’s most wanted drug lord, El Posolero, makes a daring escape from prison, he vows revenge on the man who sent him there, Ted Higuera. I don’t want to give away too much of the story, but several of the plot lines in The Chinatown Murders start in The Cartel Strikes Back.

Click here to get your copy.

Stay tuned and I’ll keep you posted on my progress. It won’t be too long now until I make my call for beta readers. In the meantime, have a great week.

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Dawn & Penn's Panamanian Adventure - Part 22

2/3/2017

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Commercial Message:

I hate selling and I hate commercials, but I've been told that you have to make your sales pitch twice on each blog page, so here's my low-key attempt at shameless self-promotion.

In The Cartel Strikes Back, Ted proposed to Maria, but isn't ready for her answer. He follows her to Mexico where things go south in a hurry.

Calling on his circle of friends, Ted and company are engaged in a full-scale war with the Baja Cartel and it's ruthless leader, El Posolero, the most wanted man in the world.

Get your copy today at https://www.amazon.com/Cartel-Strikes-Back-Higuera-Book-ebook/dp/B01MEEA0IK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1486148746&sr=8-1&keywords=The+Cartel+Strikes+Back.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

Panama's oldest church - In need of slight repair

The Flight Home

Dawn and I decided to spend a few days in Panama City before returning home. I found a lovely colonial style hotel in Casco Viejo, the old town. It was originally built in the nineteenth century as a mansion for a French planter. The place was like something out of a Bogey and Bacall movie.

Painted light blue with white trim, it had a turret on the corner of the top floor. The lobby was filled with antiques and the place looked frozen in the Thirties.

The only bad thing I have to say about the Magnolia Inn was that we had to climb four flights of stairs to get to our room. With my bad knees, that was a problem.

The second and third floors of the hotel is a youth hostel. Groups of young people filled the place with an excitement and energy you don’t find in a five-star hotel.

I went all-out for our last nights in Panama. I got a top-floor suite for around a hundred dollars (US) a night. We had a queen sized bed, a little mini-kitchen area and a private bathroom. It was a nice room, but by no stretch of the imagination a “suite.”

The Casco Viejo district was great fun. Many of the building are from the colonial era and have been lovingly restored. Shops and restaurants flourish at street-level and apartments and condos fill the upper floors.

The neighborhood is also a haven for small but wonderful restaurants. During our time in Bocas, I was convinced that there was no good food in Panama. Once we were in Panama City, it didn’t take long to convince me otherwise.

I still don’t know much about Panamanian cuisine because the Panamanian restaurants all seemed to be seafood places. I’m okay with seafood, but wouldn’t go out of my way to find it.
However, there were good Italian, tapas, Mexican and French restaurants. Our last dinner in Panama was at a little French bistro across the street from the French Embassy. It was delightful.

Balboa's soldiers making the streets safe for democracy

Casco Viejo is party central. There are plenty of roof-top bars that party early into the morning. Dawn and I checked one out about a block from our hotel.

We had dinner downstairs in the restaurant, then rode the elevator to the roof. There was a long bar against a wall and a corrugated iron roof over the open-air lounge. When we stepped off the elevator, we were met by a hostess. The bar was full. They were having some sort of special promotion sponsored by a beer company.

The hostess sized us up and asked us to follow her. She led us through the bar, opened a velvet rope and ushered us into the VIP section. I don’t know if we got the treatment because we were Gringos (there were lots of Gringos that didn’t get into the VIP section) or because we were old or because we just looked important.

We sat at the bar, had free tapas (if we weren’t already full from dinner) and took in the sights and sounds.

All of this when people lined up at the elevator on the first floor, waiting for someone to leave so they could go up.

Now that I think about it, they probably put us in the VIP section because we’re so damned good looking.

We never left Casco Viejo while we were there. We did tons of walking, visited historic sites, old churches etc. One day we could see some sort of celebration going on in the park from our window. We walked down, cruised the stalls, I got a hot dog and Dawn joined a professional dance troupe as they danced in the plaza.

We spent a whole day at the Panama Canal. Most of the people there oohed and aahed, but having been through the Ballard Locks in Seattle dozens of times, it was impressive but not overwhelming.

There is a wonderful museum at the locks. I’m the kind of guy that reads every plaque (and I’m a slow reader) and views every display. Dawn’s attention span is not quite up to going to a museum with me. She soon disappeared.

I caught up to her in the last room and we went looking for the overview to the locks. We found a little café, had a cup of coffee and rested my weary knees.

The Miraflores Locks

It was a slow morning and we didn’t see even one ship locking through. I’m told that at times they have ships lined up like rush hour traffic, but not that day.

We took a shuttle from our hotel and too soon he was loading up again. We took the scenic route back to the hotel and drove over and along the canal for some time. We were rewarded with seeing some ships that had already locked through taking the Canal towards the Atlantic side.

when it was built, it was some feat of engineering, especially when you consider that it had never been done before. The largest ships in the world, aircraft carriers, super tankers and now super cruise ships were not able to use the Canal because they were too big.

At the time the locks were built a huge ship was three hundred feet long. Now, with these Goliaths up to a thousand feet long, the locks are obsolete.

Being an enterprising country, Panama solved the problem. In April of 2016, shortly before we got there, they opened a new system of locks that could handle the big boys.

There has been lots of talk about building a second canal, through Nicaragua’s Lake Nicaragua, but political events pretty much shut down that project. With the new locks, the Panama Canal is well positioned to handle Twenty-First Century needs.

Panama is truly the crossroads of the world. Everything being transported between Europe and the East Coast to Asia and the West Coast must travel through the Canal.

I would have loved to stay a few more days in Panama City to explore, but San Diego waited for us. We had to catch a cab to the airport on our fourth morning to head home.

After a long day at the Locks

Now comes the horrible flight home. After the painful trip to Panama, we were prepared for an equally uncomfortable flight back to San Diego.

We were fooling ourselves.

We had tickets on Spirit Airlines. We got to the airport on time (around six am), flew through security and sat and waited at our boarding gate. And waited. And waited. There was an announcement that our flight was delayed. The woman at the boarding gate asked all passengers transferring to another flight to please come and talk to her.

We had two options. We could postpone our flight until tomorrow and fly on our regular schedule.

The other option was that we could fly out as scheduled but this left us with a nine hour layover in Tampa. The airline would put us up in a hotel, she told us, until the seven thirty flight to the West Coast. We just had to check in with the boarding agent in Tampa, she said, and they would arrange everything.

We already checked out of our hotel and I didn’t want to pay for another night’s stay so we took the second option. When the plane finally loaded, we crammed ourselves into the uncomfortable seats and settled in for three hours of torture.

The flight home was every bit as unpleasant as our flight to Panama, but we bucked up and took it. We arrived in Tampa, went through customs and headed for Sprit Airlines check-in desk.

In keeping with the general lack of service at this airline, the boarding agent told us that the woman in Panama was wrong. We didn’t qualify for a hotel room.

Since our layover was during the day, the airline would not provide the promised hotel room, although we could use the meal vouchers.

I exploded. After the situation in Panama and three hours of cramped, uncomfortable travel, I went postal. I demanded to see the supervisor.

She came out and explained to me, again, why we didn’t qualify for a room. I told her what the agent in Panama told us and she said the Panamanian agent was wrong. She had no right to promise us a room.

I showed her our vouchers for a room and demanded that they keep their promise. The supervisor started back pedaling. Dawn says that she gets embarrassed when I get so assertive, but I wasn’t going to back down. The supervisor was not a happy puppy.

Finally the supervisor advised us to go have breakfast. She would call the hotels and see if she could find us a room.

We followed her advice and found a café close by the boarding gate. I ordered, but Dawn was so upset that she just sat catatonically and waited.

The food was what you would expect from airport fare and the prices accordingly high. Our voucher covered about half the cost.

After our meal, we sat and had coffee while we waited. The supervisor showed up at our table and informed us that she had found a room. She was all apologetic and humble. None of the braggadocio that she showed at the counter.

We accepted her apology and took the room voucher. After catching a shuttle to the hotel we checked in. As was par for our travel, the hotel lobby was under construction and we couldn’t find the check-in desk.

Finally, we got to our room and climbed into bed for a nice nap.

Refreshed, we took the shuttle back to the airport and were on our way. We arrived in San Diego about twelve hours late, grabbed a cab and rode back to the marina. The cab driver was some sort of African and couldn’t believe that we lived on a boat. Here we were coming back from spending four months in the Panamanian jungle and all he could think about was us living on a boat. It was outside his sphere of credibility.

Walking down the dock with a ton of baggage in our hands, I was a little nervous. Our neighbor Tom kept an eye on the boat and sent a couple of emails letting us know that she was okay, but I had to see with my own eyes. Four months is a long time to be away from your floating home.

As we walked down the dock, we could see her masts standing tall and proud above the other masts on our dock. At least she was still floating.

We climbed aboard and began putting her back together. We had stripped her down when we left so we needed to turn on the refer and freezer, make the beds and generally get her ready for life aboard again.

We were so tired that we did the bare minimum and saved the unpacking for the next day.

But all’s well that ends well. We were home. We had an incredible adventure, seen amazing things and met wonderful people. Perhaps best of all, I got the plot for another book.

Keep your eyes on my website. When the Panama book comes out, it will be about Catrina hunting down a serial killer on Bocas del Toro.

For the meantime, I return to more local events. A lot has happened since we’ve been home and I need to catch you up.

The first staircase (of four) in our hotel

I hope you enjoyed this post. If you like my little missives, please help me keep them coming.

Pick up a copy of The Cartel Strikes Back at https://www.amazon.com/Cartel-Strikes-Back-Higuera-Book-ebook/dp/B01MEEA0IK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1486148746&sr=8-1&keywords=The+Cartel+Strikes+Back

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Dawn & Penn's Panamanian Adventure - Part 21

1/15/2017

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Tiny Turtle Makes a Break for the Sea

Late September

We are back home now and I want to tie up a few loose ends. We had a few adventures in our last week or so in Panama and a truly horrible flight back home.

Let’s start with one of those heart-warming stories.

Dawn made her usual sunset trek down to the beach. She had only been gone a few minutes when she came charging back up to the house.

“Come quickly,” she shouted. “There’s a nest of turtle eggs hatching.”

In an instant I had my sandals on and took off after her with Wes and Joyce in close pursuit.

She took us up the beach about a quarter mile and pointed to a turtle nest.

“I saw three turtles climbing out of the sand and crawling down to the water.”

What a thrill. I’ve been waiting to see this since we got here. Sure enough another baby turtle popped up through the sand. Then another and another.

Joyce, who is an expert on all things turtle, started picking them up and setting them on the top of the ridge of sand so that they would have an easy climb down to the sea.

By the time she had twenty or so, Wes was digging out the nest with his hands. He started pulling baby turtles out with both hands. Then the sand seemed to bubble and dozens of turtle heads boiled through the sand.

At first I stepped back. They looked like snake heads to me. Then the first ones drug themselves free of the sand and I could see they were tiny turtles. The ground absolutely boiled with them. There were more than a hundred coming out of that nest.

Being careful stewards of the environment, we stayed and protected the little turtles until they all reached the sea.

Birds and land-dwelling predators often pick them off and eat them before they reach the relative safety of the water. With human protectors, the predators are afraid to attack. When the turtles reach the water they are offered some safety. The birds, snakes and raccoons can’t get to them anymore, but there are many vicious predators in the water. I have heard that only ten to twenty percent of the turtles that hatch make it back on lay eggs to the beach where they were born.

Life ain’t easy if you’re a turtle.

After about an hour we had the last turtle safely swimming. By then it was dark and we all headed back to the house with a sense of accomplishment.

Turtles Go Crazy on the Beach

Next up are a couple of less pleasant episodes. I’ll tell you about the snake first, because only my life was in jeopardy. The second story threatened to take us all.

It was a morning, just like any other morning, until I heard Dawn scream.

“There’s a snake in the bathroom!”

I dragged myself out of bed and found my glasses and slippers.

“Where?”

“On the bottom shelf.”

Since there is only one set of shelves in the guest bathroom, it should be easy enough to find.

I stepped cautiously into the bathroom to search for the offending serpent. Didn’t see it.

“Are you sure? Maybe it slithered off?”

Dawn tiptoed in to the bathroom and gently removed a towel from the shelf. Sure enough, there it was. A small terciopelo, the deadliest snake in Central America.

Are baby vipers less poisonous than adults? I don’t know and I wasn’t about to find out. I went to the arsenal (kitchen) for weaponry.

I got a broom, an oven glove and a long pair of tongs.

Armed and ready for battle, I headed back to the bathroom. The snake appeared to be sleeping. I used the broom to trap the snake and picked it up behind the head with the tongs. It couldn’t reach me.

The little bugger was about two feet long. He twisted his tail around my arm, but couldn’t reach my hand.

Taking him out on the deck, I flung him into the jungle. It wasn’t one of my best shots. He ended up in a tree right over the sidewalk. Anyone walking up the sidewalk was easy prey for him. He could just drop down on their head and shoulders and strike.

Fortunately, visitors are few and far between. When I checked on him an hour or so later, he was gone.

On our last Saturday in Bocas, Wes wanted to take us to see some friends on a little island in Dolphin Bay. We hired a boat to pick us up at Starfish Beach and take us on the trip.

We stopped to do some snorkeling on the way. When we arrived at the reef, we were the only boat. When I came out of the water there were a half dozen or more boats.

The reefs in Bocas are not like Hawaii or Mexico. They are very young. As a matter of fact, Panama has the only growing reefs in the Caribbean. The others are slowly dying away due mostly to human pollution.

It’s kinda different. The bay has a sandy bottom and colonies of coral dot the sand. Some are quite small and some of the colonies are five or six feet high.

We put on our gear and jumped in the water. We all swam in different directions. I found a couple of large chunks of coral that looked like good grounds for viewing fish.

I swam to them and as I got there, I spied the two largest angel fish I’d ever seen. They were approximately the size of a small tire. They must have been two feet long. I had no idea that the little guys we keep in our aquariums could grow to this size.

I surfaced and called the group over, but by the time they got there, the fish were gone. It was another unconfirmed sighting.

We climbed back into the boat and headed off to see Wes’s friends, Jan and George. They live on a tiny island with one other family.

The Baby Turtles Finally Make it to the Sea

They originally came to the islands on their sailboat and still live on it some of the time. The rest of the time they live in a lovely vacation home that is owned by a French family. The family leaves the islands for the summer and Jan and George housesit for them.

The house is still under construction and the owners leave a list of items they want done during their absence. George is a marvelous craftsman and has done beautiful work on the house.

With all the exotic woods available here, he has done an outstanding job finishing rooms, installing the staircase, etc.

George gave us a brief tour of the island. I doubt that there is more than an acre of land and at extremely high tides, it’s under water. Everything is built on stilts to keep it dry. The house is actually built on stilts over the water. Only the front porch is on the island.

George and Jan are building their own home east of the Frenchies’ house. So far, they have a dock for their boat (home) and workshop built. George plans on building an “apartment” over the dock this winter.

They were delightful people and time flew by. They wanted to take us to a little restaurant on a neighboring island for lunch. Saturdays were fried chicken special days, so off we went.

It took forever to be served. The owner and his wife were very gracious but we were a little early for the lunch rush. I think they had to go out and round up the chickens, kill and pluck them before cooking. At any rate, the chicken was good and we were all satisfied.

While we were there other groups of people began to arrive, all by boat. As would be expected, they were all retired ex-pats. There are almost no young Americans in the islands.

As we ate and chatted with the other guests, the weather worsened. The ominous looking sky to the northwest was black. Soon we could see lightning and hear thunder. Our captain was adamant that we head back immediately. He had the right idea, but was a little late.

Before the Storm

We climbed into the boat and took off. He headed for the fastest passage out of the bay and into open water.

As we cleared the islands, the wind began to howl. What started as a light rain quickly became a tropical downpour.

The waves built up to about ten feet high. The little panga is a seaworthy boat. She rode up over the waves and surfed down into the troughs.

The boat had a Bimini top, but the rain came in at a horizontal angle, propelled by the wind, and we were immediately drenched. With the wind chill and wetness, we were soon miserable.

The captain stood by the helm, keeping the little boat on a safe course while making progress towards home. The boat began filling with water.

Our intrepid captain began bailing with one hand while the other hand was on the tiller. I offered to bail, but he waved me off. At a time like this, we were literally all in the same boat.

The storm intensified and the captain looked for refuge. We were on a lee shore. There was no place to hide.

He pulled in close to shore where the wind was somewhat lighter and slowed down. We cruised up and down the shoreline for about an hour, waiting for the storm to abate.

Finally he headed back out to sea. I couldn’t tell any difference in the strength of the wind or height of the waves, but apparently he felt it was safe to go on.

We had some of the largest waves as we crossed the open sound between the islands and Bocas. When we were in the trough between waves, they towered over us. We discussed making a landfall at Bocas town and taking a taxi back to the house, but the skipper was insistent that we could make it back to Starfish Beach.

After what seemed an eternity, we finally pulled onto the beach and jumped out of the boat. It was not the worse storm I’ve ever been in, but it was the smallest boat I’ve ever been in a storm in. The captain was a superb seaman. He kept the boat safe and got us home unharmed. It could have turned out differently.

I have to give credit to Wes, Joyce and Dawn. No one showed signs of fear or panic. It may be that they didn’t understand the dire circumstance in which we found ourselves, but they were troopers. Not a complaint was heard.

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Dawn & Penn's Panamanian Adventure - Part 20

1/6/2017

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A goat blocking the road into town

Mid-September, 2016

September means Sea Fiesta in Bocas. Every town of any size in Panama holds some sort of festival. I never did figure out what the locals were celebrating, but they held a week long party.

The road into town was closed off and we drove on the beach to get around the festival and go into town. Driving on the beach was no problem. Someone had taken a road grader and made a hard track for us.

When we went in the morning, there were few people and no problem. Wes and I went into town on Sunday afternoon and the beach was littered with people, most of them tipsy. It took us at least twenty minutes to negotiate the stretch that we usually drove in three minutes or so. The people have absolutely no awareness of automobiles. It’s this way on the street too.

They go walking down the middle of the street, or in this case, standing on the paved track and pay no attention to traffic. It’s up to the drivers to not plow into them. I’m surprised that with all the alcohol flowing, no one got hurt.

The ex-pats, for the most part, avoid the fiesta. Most of the people we know went into town the weekend before the party and stocked up on all the groceries they needed so they wouldn’t have to go into town during the party.

Let’s get back to the beach. While the north end of the island, where we live, has the most pristine beaches you’ve ever seen, not so on the south side. Yes, there are long, wide beaches, but they are black with rotting vegetation. For some reason, on this side of the island, huge quantities of sea grass wash up on the beach. They sit there and rot in the sun, giving the beach a most unpleasant odor.

In La Paz they have a similar phenomenon, but they have hordes of people cleaning the beach every morning. Thus, they have beautiful beaches.

Here it’s all very icky. However, during the festival, bunches of people were swimming on these beaches. I can’t imagine going in the water there. Yuck!

The Panamanians seem to be a modest people. In town, while the foreigners are walking around in next to no clothing, the Panamanians wear long skirts, loose blouses and long pants. It’s hard to find a Panamanian even wearing shorts, except for maybe the teenagers.

Finally I got to see lots of lovely young ladies running around in their bikinis. During the fiesta, the rules seem to disappear and all sorts of Panamanian women, some who should not be wearing skimpy clothing, took off the wraps.

Yes, we have lizards in Panama too

On the way into town during the festival, the police had a road block. They stopped every vehicle either entering or leaving and checked for driver’s licenses, registration and proof of insurance.

When they stopped me and asked for my driver’s license, I handed them my Cali license. It should be no problem, right? After all, foreigners are allowed to drive on their local driver’s licenses.

Wrong-O! Apparently foreigners are only allowed to drive on their own licenses for ninety days. I had been in Panama for over three months.

After I forked over my driver’s license, they asked me for my passport. The stamp on it showed when I entered the country. After several minutes doing the math, the officer called over his supervisor.

The supervisor explained the problem to me. The officer wanted to take me to the police station for questioning.

I explained that I didn’t know about this law and was headed to the airport to buy my ticket to leave the country, which was true.

The supervisor called over a higher ranking official, they went away and discussed the matter, then called someone on a cell phone. I sat there stewing, sure that I was about to experience the inside of a Panamanian jail cell first hand.

Finally, the senior officer came over and gave me my passport and license back.

“You make sure you get your plane ticket and don’t drive anymore while you are still in the country,” he chastised.

With my tail between my legs I drove on.

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Our Christmas Break

12/26/2016

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Our Christmas tree

Let’s take a break on Dawn and Penn's Panamanian Adventure so I may send you all my best Holiday Wishes. We’ll finish up our adventure in January. There are three stories left to tell.

If you’ve been enjoying this series, please drop me a line. Click on the “Contact Penn” button on the top of the page. I’ve been thinking about incorporating these stories into a congruent whole and publishing a chap book about our time in Panama. Would you read such a book (if you hadn’t already read my blog)?

As you must suspect by now, living on a boat is a little different from living on land. We hate “stuff.” There is limited storage space on a boat, so if it doesn’t have at least two uses, it has no place on our boat. It’s a Spartan life, but it fits us.

Christmas is also a little different. The last thing I want is a bottle of Scotch in a commemorative Chicago Cubs World Series bottle or a brass door knocker shaped like a lion’s head. When I get stuff like that, it is quickly donated to Willy Willy. (My grandfather, Teodoro,
used to call Goodwill, Willy Willy.)

(If you would like to know what Santa’s visit to a cruising sailboat is like, click here.)

It’s Christmas Day on board the Victory. We’ve had our Christmas breakfast, opened packages from Santa, had a neighbor drop by to say “hi” and are settling in to a quiet afternoon.

This evening we’re going over to Larry’s Vagabond 47 for cocktails before our Christmas dinner.
Larry’s sailing south for Mexico on the 29th. We’d love to help him sail his boat down, but have commitments on New Year’s Eve and early January.

Dawn has done her usual spectacular job decorating the boat. I contributed the outside lighting, running strings of lights all around the life lines. Dawn decorated a three-foot Christmas tree on the chart table. She put a string of LED lights around the perimeter of the aft cabin. They can be either soft white lights, or red and green Christmas colors.

When I got up this morning, the elves had visited the galley. The tabled was done up with a white table cloth, Christmas napkins and set for breakfast in bright Christmas colors. Soft white lights lined the shelf around the galley table. The shelf was decorated with Christmas cards, presents and a couple of bottles of wine.

It would have been a merrier Christmas season except for the unusual weather. After a two of weeks of rain, the San Diego sunshine returned and the world is drying out. We’re expecting good weather on Tuesday when we march with the San Diego Zoo float in the Holiday Bowl Parade. After the parade, the Zoo kindly provided us with tickets to the Holiday Bowl where Dawn’s Washington State Cougars are playing the Minnesota Gophers. (Gophers?? Really???)

It has been a wonderful, low pressure Christmas season for us. This morning I got up and saw the decorations in the cabin and rushed back to the aft cabin shouting. “Dawn, Dawn, Santa came last night.”

That reminded me of my favorite Christmas memory. (At this point, your screen goes waving and out of focus, taking us back to Christmas Day, 1991.)

Christmas morning on board the Victory

It was the tradition in our house, when the kids were little, not to put any Christmas presents under the tree until Santa came on Christmas Eve. We’d get the girls tucked into bed and Connie and I would watch an hour or so of television, then turn in. After Connie fell asleep, Santa would magically appear. All of the presents were hauled up from the basement, the stockings stuffed and any last minute decorating completed.

After Santa left, I’d climb back into bed with a smile on my face and wait for Christmas morning.

Libby’s first Christmas was nothing out of the ordinary. While Katie was all excited (as a five-year old should be) but Libby didn’t know what was going on. She had no prior Christmas experiences to think back on.

For her second Christmas, Libby didn’t remember last year and what happened on Christmas Day. We got up, went into the living room and opened our stockings while Mom got an extra hour of sleep.

When Connie got up, we opened presents. Libby figured it out fast and ripped the wrapping from her boxes.

Now Libby is three. She remembers last year and is excited about the coming Christmas. It is almost impossible to get her to sleep on Christmas Eve.

I read The Night Before Christmas to the girls and trundle them off to bed. When I return to the living room, I can hear Libby shuffling around in her bedroom.

I go back in to try to get her to sleep. She wants me to read “The Night Before Christmas” again. I read it two more times and she is no more ready to go to bed.

When she was nought but a wee bairn, I sat with her in my lap in the rocking chair and sang to her to get her to sleep. I don’t know how she endured my singing and sometimes thought she went to sleep to get me to stop.

This night, I went back in to try to cuddle and sing her to sleep. I sat in the rocker and she climbed into my lap. I held her close and started with “Silent Night.”

This went on for over an hour. I sang every Christmas song I knew, then went back to my playlist and started again. Sometime in the wee hours, she finally gave it up.
we
I put her in her bed, tucked her in and returned to adult world.

About five o’clock the next morning (Christmas morning) I felt a tug on my blanket.

“Dad! Dad! Santa came!” Then she was gone like a shot from a cannon.

By the time I got my robe and slippers on, she had made it to the living room, grabbed the first package she could see and tore into it. It wasn’t for her.

It took me some time to calm her down, then Katie got up to see what all the racket was about and we opened our stockings. Libby showed no regard for the pretty wrapping, tearing off ribbons and ripping wrapping paper. (I am so cheap that I save the wrapping paper for next year.)

The rest of the day went as planned. We had a wonderful breakfast (I cooked, of course), and we started a family tradition of going to a movie on Christmas afternoon to give the girls a chance to come down from their Christmas morning high before our big family dinner.

We’ve had many wonderful family Christmases since then, but nothing compares in my memory to that three year old girl, eyes all aglee, charging into my bedroom shouting, “Dad, dad, Santa came.”

Now your screen goes wavy again and comes back into focus.

I hope you and your family had a tremendous ______________(fill in the blank with whatever you celebrate this time of year) and are headed for a prosperous New Year.

I’m looking for nothing but good in the New Year. Catrina will make another appearance in her first full-length novel, The China Town Murders, Ted and crew will be back fighting ISIS hackers out to destroy our country, then Catrina will have a twisted time hunting down a serial killer in Panama and who knows what other adventures await us.

I hope that you’ll keep in touch and follow this blog all year as these and other events unfold around us.

The best New Year to all of you all and to all a good night.

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Dawn & Penn's Panamanian Adventure - Part 19

12/22/2016

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Dawn and Little One take a break after a long walk

Still Early September, 2016

Wes and Joyce return!

It’s been a long three months, but it’s been a short three months. I’ve commented on the time paradox here in Panama before. I can’t believe the time has gone so quickly. For the last couple of weeks we’ve been counting down the time we have left on the island. As the end gets nearer, we have a growing feeling of sadness.

We made a last minute run through the house cleaning anything that didn’t move. Little Bit was taking a nap, but when Dawn started sweeping him, he high-tailed it for the jungle.

Really, Dawn keeps things so neat and tidy we had little to do, but we cleaned already clean surfaces anyway.

What we did have to do was to move out of their bedroom. After spending three months living in a thousand square foot master suite, we were once again relegated to a guest room the size of a walk-in closet.

The Tallman’s caught an early flight from Panama City to Bocas, so we picked them up at the airport at seven thirty a.m. They were tired and stressed from the travel, but I could tell they were happy to be home.

It didn’t take us long to slip into their routine. They get up early in the morning, Dawn gets up with them, I think out of a sense of duty. I join them a couple of hours later. We have coffee and eat Johnny cakes, then attend to whatever chore is the most urgent. The general philosophy in the house is “don’t do today what can be put off until tomorrow.”

We eat dinner around six p.m., much earlier than Dawn and I usually eat. After dinner, they read for a couple of hours and go to bed. I usually turn on the TV and watch a TV series or a movie. The amazing thing is that Joyce has joined us for a little television at night. Wes usually sits on the sofa and either reads or watches for a little bit, then goes to bed. If we’re watching a movie that Joyce is interested in, she may stay up until it’s over.

The dogs are either confused or in heaven. With three people showering them with love, they don’t know where to turn. They’ll come in the room and go to Joyce. She pats her chair and tries to get them to jump up, but they notice Wes and go over to him.

Wes talks to them and tries to coax them to jump up and join him, but they see Dawn. She coos and talks to them and they don’t know what to do. Finally, they seem to have settled into a routine of Peanut jumping up on one end of the couch and Little Bit on the other, with Wes in between. They soon fall asleep and all the fussing and fretting over them seems to have been a waste.

The poor dogs are exhausted. Wes takes them for a long walk first thing in the morning. An hour or so later, Joyce takes them on a walk through the jungle and on the beach. Then Dawn decides to go check the beach for turtle tracks and the dogs go with her. By the time all of this is done, Wes is ready for his mid-day walk and off they go again. Then Joyce decides to throw the bones from last night’s dinner in the ocean. By now, I’m awake and Dawn wants to show me her latest discovery on the beach, so off we go.

We get back and it’s time for Joyce’s next trip to the beach, so the dogs are close behind. Then Dawn walks down to the creek (Our blue lagoon has morphed into a creek) for some solitude.

Guess who goes with her?

After Wes’s evening walk, the dogs are dead tired. They find their favorite spots for a nap and are gone.

I will say that all of this walking keeps them in good shape. I hate to admit that our walking schedule was somewhat less strenuous than Wes and Joyce’s and Little Bit was developing a bit of a belly, but those days are long behind them.

Yikes! More snake stories

Speaking (or writing) about all of this walking, I need to tell you about Dawn’s latest adventure.

Our heroine was on her favorite walk down to the creek. Most of the trail is through the jungle, occasionally coming out on the beach until there is an obstacle, then it jumps back into the jungle.

Dawn was walking through the dense forest when she had to duck her head to get between two tree branches. For some reason she doesn’t know, she stopped and looked at the branches.

One of them moved!

A small yellow snake, which we later determined to be a slender hogshead pit viper, was on the branch. By the way, pit vipers are lethal. We’ve talked about snakes a lot once we discovered we were living in the land of snakes. Some of my Boy Scout training must have rubbed off on her. She froze, then carefully backed away.

When we get to that spot on the trail, we usually just brush the branches back and go through. I hate to think what might have happened if her instinct hadn’t made her stop before plunging through the trees.

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Dawn & Penn's Panamanian Adventure - Part 18

12/14/2016

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We are on the upper left side of the map

Early September, 2016 – Top Ten List

Today I take a light-hearted look at life in Bocas. Living here isn't all battles with snakes and saving tortoises. There is plenty of time to contemplate the meaning of life.

Some time ago, Dawn and I began making our top ten list of reasons why you might be late to work in Bocas. The problem was, we couldn’t cut it down to ten reasons. There are so many. We finally managed to keep it to thirty.

But who cares? Why would you want to go to work in Bocas anyway?

With apologies to David Letterman, here is our top ten (plus twenty) reasons why you might be late to work here in Bocas.

The Top 10 Excuses For Being Late to Work in Bocas

There was a sloth crossing the road
I was behind a dump truck
A tree fell on the road (there was a storm last night)
The gas station was closed
My dog got its head buried in the sand
I didn’t know what day it was
The howler monkeys kept me up all night
The road caved in
A pothole ate my car
We ran out of water so I couldn’t take a shower
The plumbing backed up so I couldn’t take a shower
My hot water heater broke so I couldn’t take a shower
I don’t have a shower in my house anyway
The wheel fell off of my truck
A broken down Toyota pickup was blocking the road
There’s no cell service at my house
The surf ate the beach away and I had to rescue my beach chairs
The door to my house fell off of its hinges
I got tied up reading the latest Stephen King novel
I had to go to Juanie’s Café to use the Internet and got stuck behind a bus that was loading
Light headedness due to lack of blood from mosquito bites
The cockroaches ate my homework
I got hit in the head by a falling coconut
I got hit in the head by a coconut that was thrown at me by a monkey in the tree
A howler monkey shit on my head
I had temporary amnesia while the surf was up
The giant spiders attacked
A turtle got stranded on the beach and we had to rescue her
I had to get the giant snake out of my bedroom
A giant snake attacked me in the driveway

Why do you want to go to work anyway? There is no work in Bocas.

That's it for today. Next time we'll get back to our adventures.

Why would you want to go to work anyway?

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What a Weekend

Possible Last Tango for Che Cover Shots

March 14th, 2017

The Chinatown Murders Cover Photo

Inside the Mind of a Serial Killer

Dawn & Penn's Panamanian Adventure - Part 22

Dawn & Penn's Panamanian Adventure - Part 21

Tiny Turtle Makes a Break for the Sea

Turtles Go Crazy on the Beach

The Baby Turtles Finally Make it to the Sea

Before the Storm

Dawn & Penn's Panamanian Adventure - Part 20

Our Christmas Break

Dawn & Penn's Panamanian Adventure - Part 19

Dawn & Penn's Panamanian Adventure - Part 18

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