Aaron Hodges's Blog

It’s still summer but the southerly breeze is blowing in New Zealand and it seems like winter might be on the way! Scary stuff, but there may still be hope. Fingers crossed Australia sends over another heat wave in the next few days or I might end up running away sooner rather than later XD

Read the rest of my newsletter to hear what stories I have in the work!

The post The cold has reached New Zealand! appeared first on Aaron Hodges.

My laptop has been in the shop a couple of weeks now, so I’ve been enjoying a pretty protracted holiday in the New Zealand summer sun. That means lots of hiking (or tramping as we call it!), biking and beaches!

Or in the case of some special parts of the country, hot water beaches! Last night I visited just such a place with a few friends, where we promptly dug a hole down to the hot water and engaged in an epic battle with the ocean to keep the cold water out…. continue reading in my newsletter!

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Hi guys and gals, how’s your week going? Better than mine I hope! While life is good, there have been a few setbacks recently. Most concerning of which is the untimely death of my poor laptop! Before anyone gets too concerned, I use Microsoft Onedrive to backup all my work, so no loss of anything important from Book 3. However, I do have a considerable number of travel photos I’m quite concerned about – everything from Bolivia and Argentina in fact. For some reason I forgot to back them up on my hard drive

Guess what?? I finally got a proper website, with my own name and everything! And here it is (obviously

I can’t say I’m in the best shape of my life right now, but I thought I was at least in decent condition. Boy did I quickly prove that assumption wrong here in Huaraz, Peru, where I have just returned from a day hike to the gorgeous Laguna 69. The lake sits at around 4600m above sea level (15000ft) and is reached via a 3 hour hike with an elevation gain of 800m. Most of which is climbed in two very short, steep sections.

To be honest, the only time my lungs, head and body have hurt worst was a similar climb in Guatemala (You can read more about that here). By the time I reached the top, my head was getting pretty fluffy and I was having to stop every 20 steps to catch my breath.

But as I came around the last bend in the hill and saw the sapphire lake ahead, with the snow white peaks rising behind it, I couldn’t help but think it was worth it. The view was absolutely stunning, almost enough for me to forget the spinning in my head and the burning in my chest.

It was also enough to convince me to embark on another hike tomorrow – this time for 3 to 4 days, camping at altitudes of between 3500 and 4000m. It should be interesting. And if you never hear from me again, well, at least you know what happened

That’s right, it’s finally here followers! After six months of hard work, I have finally completed the manuscript for Firestorm – the sequel to Stormwielder. And it is officially live on Amazon!

Check it out below, and don’t forget to let me know what you think!

Get Firestorm now for $2.99

The Gods have fallen.

The Three Nations are in chaos.

Archon is coming.

The company are surrounded, trapped on the blood-soaked sands of Malevolent Cove.

Desperate and alone, they carry with them the final hope of the Three Nations. Her name is Enala and she is the last wielder of the Sword of Light. But the girl is mad, her mind lost in a chasm of grief.

She lies helpless before the power of Archon.

Meanwhile, Eric is close to mastering his magic. But with his master gone, there is no one left to protect him from the perilous force. It yearns for freedom and Eric alone stands against it. If it breaks free, all hell will break loose. To prevail he must break the shackles of his past.

He must face the last ghost of Oaksville.

Get Firestorm now for $2.99

 

 

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So, after a rather interesting start to our time in Costa Rica, things went from bad to rather worse. At least in terms of weather – what started off as cold and windy in Monteverde quickly changed to cold, windy and rainy…

And that didn’t get much better when we traveled to La Fortuna, where a volcano towers over the town (but where we never actually saw the volcano itself…).

Pictured: A volcano in the background…

But travelling is about making the most of a bad situation, and what better way of doing that is there than taking advantage of all that rain to go white water rafting! Not only that, but the company was nice neough to pick us up from La Fortuna, and drop us in our next destination of Puerto Viejo!

And boy was the white water rafting fun. With level 3, 4 and 5 rapids at close to maximum river level, we shot down that river like a bunch of barrels tumbling over a waterfall. Okay, not the best description, but I guess you’ll just have to wait for my Central America video to come out to see for yourselves

Okay, I can do this, I can start catching up on my blog!

I’ve been extremely remiss lately in updating this – mostly I’m going with the excuse that I’ve actually been writing book two of The Sword of Light Trilogy, but also because travel is awfully distracting. Good news is, I’m hopefully only a week off finishing the first draft of Firestorm!

Now, what have I been up too?

Last time I checked in I was in Nicaragua, enjoying the surf at the beach of San Juan Del Sur. From there I traveled down with my friend Jon to the boarder and into Costa Rica. The actual boarder crossing wasn’t too bad itself. We met a German guy who joined us in the taxi ride to the boarder, where we managed to check out of Nicaragua with minimum scamming (only lost a dollar or two :/).

Things got tricky when we reached Costa Rica though.

First off, we had been planning on only making it a little way into Costa Rica, since we’d left too late in the day to get any farther. Shoulda stuck with the plan. Instead, we were convinced by the bus lady on the boarder to get a ticket all the way to Monteverde, even though we were pretty sure it would take two buses to get there. I’ll get to why this was a mistake in a minute.

After we’d bought our bus tickets, the next step was to actually get stamped into Costa Rica. So we stood in line for the que, where another bus driver spotted us and immediately singled us out for his little scam. He came over and insisted we would need an exit ticket on the bus from Costa Rica to get our stamp, and told us we would need to go across the road and get a ticket for $50.

Life Lesson: Never trust a bus driver in Costa Rica

After a moments panic, we noticed the immigration line was going very quickly, so we decided to give it a go anyway. The lady at the counter promptly stamped our passports without asking a single question… Gotta love those dollar signs the people here see over your head[image error]

So, onwards to our bus ride to Monteverde. Or, in actual fact, to the side of the road next to the entrance to Monteverde. And no, not ‘entrance’ as in a two minute walk up the driveway. ‘Entrance’ as in another 60km of extremely windy, gravel/dirt road up into the mountains.

The bus driver assured us another bus was ‘probably’ coming in five minutes.

After half an hour we were beginning to get worried.

After an hour and with darkness descending, we decided we’d better take the offer the old man in a house next to the road had made us. $20 each to drive us into Monteverde. Boy was Costa Rica getting expensive fast!

So the old man jumped in his van with his wife and daughter, and off we went!

What we didn’t know was: 1) That the trip would take over two hours in the back of a beat up old van that stuck of gasoline, 2) The road was so bumpy we literally didn’t think the van would make it in places, and 3) Monteverde is bloody freezing!

At least the view was nice!

Oh, and that everything in town gets booked out very quickly! So cold, miserable, exhausted (and in the case of Jon, sick), we grabbed the very first place we found available. A hostel with a private room to sleep three (did I mention the German had joined us for our disastrous journey) costing $20 each.

The bright side?

I actually had my first hot shower in 6 weeks[image error]

At least there was a bit to see in Monteverde

The post Trouble on the Border appeared first on Aaron Hodges.

Hi all, sorry for the long time between updates, I’ve been very slack with the blog lately! Fortunately I’ve been doing better with book 2, which is now past halfway through the first draft! I’m hoping I am still on track for a June release. Its full of goodies, and I can’t wait to get it out to you all! Just a matter of putting all these words on paper

FIRESTORM UPDATE: Okay, so it may not be going along at quite the pace I’d like, but the first draft of Firestorm is up to 33k words and Chapter 10, so its definitely coming along. Still in line for a June release I hope[image error]

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Sometimes you know something is a bad idea, and do it anyway. Other times it takes a good buddy to convince you. Whichever it was, I know I ended up with a pretty decent fever by the end of the day. Guess that’s what you get when you decide to go surfing while sick.

At least it was fun though.

Really, my only mission for the day was to get my laundry done. I’d woken up with a sore throat and new it was only a matter of time before I was properly sick. So a quiet day would have been fine. Somehow while searching for a laundromat though, Jon managed to negotiate surfing lessons for us with some random guy in the street. He got it down to $25 each for 2 hours of lessons, board rental and transport too, so he did pretty damn well.

Only problem – we had to go, now. We didn’t even have enough water for the day ;’D

But the beach sure was worth it. Beautiful sand, awesome sun, and the perfect beginners waves.

Not the actual beach, but this was the main one in San Juan Del Sur

Only problem then was summoning the energy to surf. Good thing I was only just starting to get sick, because the water felt cold enough as it was. Our teacher was a super nice, laid back guy too though, which also helped a lot. And after only about ten minutes on the beach practicing, he had Jon and I in the water getting ready to catch our first waves (well, we’d both surfed before, but never really stood up).

I was very surprised when, after only a few tries, I actually managed to stand up properly on the board. Guess lessons were worth it after all, since it was our teachers observations that I needed to get further up the board to get my balance right that did it in the end. It was also fortunate that I have enough experience body surfing to be able to read the waves. Sadly, its pretty hard to use a gopro while learning to surf, so no shots of me standing.

Jon did pretty well too though, especially given he hasn’t grown up in the ocean like us kiwi’s! He managed to stand up just as many times as me, and still had the energy for another round later in the afternoon. As for me, that fever was really starting to kick in around then, and I found the water freezing. Still got a shot or two of him though!

All and all another great day. Later that night though I pretty much passed out with a lovely fever. But at least it helped to burn off the cold, and the next day I had the strength to get us to Costa Rica. Which was lucky, because Jon had picked up the same cold by then, and definitely did not enjoy the trip.

Not that the trip was all bells and roses – but that’s a story for next time.

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