For my vacation this year, I went away to... yeah, Montreal. I know, just a hop and a skip, but after more than a year confined to my home, it felt like paradise! Chose a hot week - one day the temperature was 32 C but with 80% humidity, it felt like 40 C, according to the weather report. Numerous wildfires still blazing out west.
Dali's depiction of Dante
Among other activities, I went to see an exhibition of Dali etchings of Dante's Divine Comedy. Shown above is Dali's portrait of Dante. Since I have borrowed from Dante's Inferno in my book Resurrection : The Second Book of Eng, it seemed a useful activity, and inspired me to look at borrowing from Dante's Purgatorio and Paradiso as well. And I also took in an immersive VR experience of life aboard the space station, which may help me with details about navigating zero g.
To make a break from my work revising the Chronicles, I picked up the manuscript for Face Down, my Zoroastrian thriller, where I had left it last autumn. The work requires a massive amount of research, which is fun to do and offers a change of pace from the revising, so that is what I did during my holidays. Along with spending time with people, friends I haven't seen in person for far too long as a result of the pandemic.