Dishonorable Intentions: The Best Romance I've Ever Read

A while back I posted a poll to determine the extent to which readers of this blog were also readers of romance novels. Of those who answered the poll, 100% of the women and 24% of the men had read at least one romance. I was among the 76% of unenlightened men... until now.

Indeed, I just finished reading "Dishonorable Intentions," by Katherine Ivy, aka Lady Notorious, aka my charming, talented girlfriend, Rhonda. It wasn't the first time I had read her stuff- I had also seen her short story, "Love's Consequence" in the anthology "Modern Magic: Tales of Fantasy & Horror," and I had read the not-yet-published fantasy novel that she wrote for her master's thesis. Both of those blew me away, so I had high expectations for the romance novel. Rhonda tried to lower those expectations by explaining that "Dishonorable Intentions" was a different genre, and that it had been her first effort at writing, completed as a just-to-see-if-she-could-do-it "practice novel" while she was an undergraduate geology major. It turned out that Rhonda's warnings were unnecessary, because I found Dishonorable Intentions to have the same fast-pace, ingeniously-constructed plot, and badass-yet-realistically-characterized heroes that drew me into her other writings.

Dishonorable Intentions takes place in England during the "Regency" period of the early 19th century. The Regency was a rich and ritzy time for the nobility, and it was less uptight than the subsequent Victorian period, so it was the perfect setting for juicy romances. The romance of Dishonorable Intentions is made juicier still by intertwining with a crime mystery; the perilous hunt to recover a lost fortune in the form of a giant sapphire called "The Eye of the Storm." Intense drama develops as gorgeous, intelligent, great-spirited young Arabella battles to save her family and preserve her independence while winning the love and healing the heart of the handsome and virtuous but cynical and much-maligned noble Gabriel.



I must admit that before reading the book I doubted that I would be able to sympathize with characters from the upper crust of English society. I figured the nobles of "le bon ton" would just be tiptoeing around from mansion to carriage to ballroom, snootily obsessing over superficial concerns. In fact, some of the background characters in Dishonorable Intentions WERE a lot like my fluffy stereotypes, but the heroes Arabella and Gabriel had personal strengths and values that ripped right through the bullshit parts of their world. Those qualities made them very appealing, both to each other and to me as a 21st century reader.

I shouldn't give away too much of the story. If you want to read the book yourself you can download it from Amazon at this link. It's only like $5, so you really can't lose. If you don't have an e-reader device like a Kindle then you can do like I did and download Adobe Digital Editions (for free) so you can read it on your computer.

PS- Here's the novelist paddleboarding at Nahant last week. (Swoon!)

Some Pictures from Horseneck

Dang, I missed a good windsurfing opportunity today in a last-minute rush to finish a grant application. Oh, well. I'm still stoked from the memories of Sunday at Horseneck Beach. Below are a few of Lady Notorious' pictures of the event. I've divided them into three sections. The first section is "getting out." These pictures show the drama and danger of getting from the shore to the relative safety beyond the breaking waves. The second section is "riding waves." These pictures show people doing cool, playful turns while riding a wave back towards the beach. The third section is "being a badass." It is mostly dedicated to Josh Angulo, who as a world champion wavesailor is in a whole 'nuther league from the rest of us.

GETTING OUT

This is me with my dorky helmet, watching Matt Allen battle his way through the whitewater and wondering if I'll have better or worse luck than him.


Here, Eric Doremus ventures into the surf for the first time in his life. I admire the man's bravery for trying it on a rough day like this. My own first samplings of ocean waves were in much more benign conditions. Eric made it out successfully on at least one of several tries, though he ended up breaking a mast later in the day. He'll be back.


It's a pileup of sailors heading in and out at the same time. That's me in the upper left with the red and clear sail.


Two young teenage guys, Graham and Manish, both managed to get out. These kids are really good at doing "freestyle" tricks in flatter water, so I reckon it's just a matter of time before they're doing equally impressive tricks in the waves.


One of the toughest things about getting out is that you have to do it all over again after every time you catch and ride a wave towards the beach. Here a veteran sailor makes an effortless looking jibe in the whitewater zone and points his board once more into the onslaught of waves.


Here's the way Josh Angulo gets out through the waves. He does it with POWER.


RIDING WAVES

It's tricky to pick "the right wave" to ride, but I think I got a good one in this picture.


You can't see my board in this one, but you can see my spray. I'm trying to do a bottom turn to head downwind and back up into the wave face.


This is more of a top turn, where I've hit the upper part of the wave and I'm coming back down.


Here i'm not doing anything, but the guy in the foreground is doing a "backside" wave ride. That means his back is to the wave and he is heading upwind. When the wind is blowing roughly parallel to shore like it was this day you can do either frontside (downwind) or backside (upwind) moves on the wave. I illustrate the different terms in this post.


Here I've just turned on a small wave and I'm going backside.


In this one I'm awkwardly going frontside on the wave, and Angulo is looking at me and cringing, probably.


BEING A BADASS

One of the more advanced waveriding moves is "hitting the lip." You build up speed doing a frontside waveride, then at just the right moment you do a sharp S turn into the breaking section of the wave. Angulo had a ton of awesome hits this day, but he probably has ton of awesome hits every day he sails in the waves.










Here's my turn to try to be cool. The first of these pictures is a normal jump, but in the second one I'm trying to do a backloop. I need to try harder because I only got about 2/3 of the way around on this one.

Horseneck Huck Report

Sunday I drove down to Horseneck Beach, on the border of Massachusetts and Rhode Island, for a wavesailing jam session organized by local hotshot windsurfers via the iwindsurf forum. The conditions were very challenging, at least for me, but the stoke level was high. Below are some videos from the event. The first ones were shot by a nice guy named Claudio, who was sitting on top of a ladder next to the water. In them you can see Josh Angulo kicking butt with his pink and teal sail, and you can see me playing it safe with my red sail and helmet. (The best shot of me is at 2:35 in Claudio's first video.) The last video was shot by me with my helmet camera. Also, Lady Notorious took a ton of great pictures, so I'll add a few of those later when they're edited. Woo hoo!

Claudio's Videos:








My Video:

Windsurfing the Angulo Surfa 10'4" SUP

Neither the waves nor the wind were remarkable today, but the combination of both was good enough to tempt me onto the water for a standup paddleboard windsurfing session. My paddleboard is an Angulo Surfa 10'4". I'm still getting acquainted with it. Windsurfing a board with a "surf" rocker is different from windsurfing a board with a "planing" rocker because the surf rockered board wants to stay more attached to the wave and wants to turn more from the center of the board than from the tail. Anyway, here's the video:

GPS + Camera + Windsurf + Mac = Epic Nerdery

A girl in the back of the van suggested that we stop at the L.L. Bean outlet in Freeport. I barely suppressed a groan. It was Friday afternoon, and after a long week of up-before-dawn marine biology fieldwork in Lubec, Maine, I just wanted to get home and crash. Of course we stopped, anyway. It turned out all right, though. The store had a neat aquarium full of Eastern US salmonid fishes (picture) and a huge section of interesting outdoor-related gadgets.



I was unable to resist a major purchase: a Garmin eTrex Venture HC hand-held GPS unit, which I thought would be fun to play with on my windsurf. It wasn't the first time I'd bought a GPS for windsurfing. Back in the day when I lived in Virginia I went through a couple of similar eTrex units. (They are not nearly as waterproof as advertised.) This time I'm keeping the thing in an Aquapac to be on the safe side.

Some of my motivation to get back into sailing with a GPS came from reading Peter Richterich's blog, "The Windsurf Loop." Peter is savvy about analyzing his speeds and tracks on the computer, using a program called "GPS Action Replay." Looking at the nerdy gloriousness of that program, I knew I had to try it. Today there was a good side-offshore breeze and the waves were very small, so I got my gadgets together to do a GPS-recorded speed session. I used a 106 liter freestyle-wave board and a 6.8 meter squared wavesail, which is not a particularly fast setup, but whatever. Here's a screenshot from the gspar program with an analysis of part of my track.



The program said my max speed was 23.4 knots (26.9 mph), which is a little lower than what the GPS itself said was my max speed (27.9 mph). I'm not sure why there's a discrepancy, but it might be that there are too few "bread crumbs" in the track file saved in the GPS and uploaded to the computer for analysis. I think I can change the GPS settings so it records at a higher frequency, and that might help.

Another cool stat that gspar can calculate is your minimum speed in jibes. My maximum minimum speed was 9.8 knots (11.3 mph). I'd say that's planing, but barely.

Heh. As if the GPS data logging wasn't obsessive enough, I also filmed the session with my GoPro camera and made it into the video below, set to a song by The Brother Kite.

Gusty and Rusty

We got some "real" wind today in New England for the first time in a while. It blew 20+ mph out of the NNW, and there was a decent swell coming in from the East, which is an ideal setup for side-off wavesailing from the Nahant causeway. The only fly in the ointment was that the wind was very gusty. We're talking over-powered in 30 mph one minute, and shlogging your sinky board in 10 mph the next minute. Quite a few determined and talented sailors were out there making it look good, though, including Mr. Josh Angulo, who I witnessed doing back loops from my apartment window just before I went out to sail myself. Woo hoo! My own performance was decidedly "meh," but there were one or two times that I hit the lip during a wave ride in what felt like a pretty cool way. The video is below, set to an oldies rock song by Unit 4 + 2.