Just a quick detour before I get back to the cruise pics. I was browsing through Amazon yesterday and found this! I have a short story in this print collection Cleis is publishing, called “The Out-of-Towner”. It releases June 1, 2010.

Every woman has a girl crush — that physical and emotional fascination with another intriguing, provocative woman who inspires the thought, “What if?” Girl Crush answers that question with an inspiring range of erotic short stories about women acting on their desire and sometimes getting more than they bargained for. Teresa Lamai offers an erotic take on revenge in “Mirador,” when a woman has hate sex in a nightclub bathroom with the person her boyfriend is cheating on her with. In “Getting to Work,” David Erlewine writes about a hot young lawyer who has a lot of work to do to make a demanding, sex-craved partner happy. Writer and editor Rachel Kramer Bussel shows us the unexpected in “Great Lengths,” when an unrequited crush finally evolves into something more — and something less. In Girl Crush, what happens next is always a surprise, to straight women, bisexual women, and lesbians alike.

One more quick note: Sasha White posted pics from Labadee Island, Haiti. So be sure to head over to her blog!

On the afternoon of Day 3 of our cruise, we pulled into the port of San Juan, Puerto Rico. A really lovely place. And since it’s a U.S. territory—free cellphone minutes! Anyway, this pic is of a fortress on one side of the bay that I snapped as the ship pulled into port.

A view of the city. It’s a shame you can’t see the photos as I took them. Here they are very degraded by WordPress and small. Maybe I’ll load them into photobucket or Flickr and send you a link.

The long, thin white spike you see extending into the water is our dock.

Everyone crowded onto Deck 11 to watch.

While they tied the boat off, I ran to the other side of the ship. See the whitecaps in the distance? Again, wish you could see how pretty that shot really was!

After we finally got off the boat, Sasha and I decided we’d forego the sight-seeing tour and walk around by ourselves. We headed straight up the hill to the Castillo San Cristobal, which is the largest Spanish fortification in the New World. Spain began work on the fortress around 1539 to protect the city from land-based attacks (that fortress I showed you in the first photo was more for protecting against sea invasion), and the building continued for 250 years. During World War II, the U.S. added to the fortifications.

When we climbed to the top of the castillo, we had a surprising view of our cruise ship.

Here, we are approaching the entrance.

I love this photo. When we were deep in the bowels of the fortress, I looked up some sort of drainage hole. I had to take a pic. It was completely black except for the light at the end and I thought that would make an interesting photo, but I forgot to turn off my flash. I like this so much better and will probably frame it for my wall along with some other beautiful accidents I’ve snapped.

This was taken in the dungeon of the castillo. The picture was likely drawn by someone condemned to die. Maybe even a pirate!

On top of the wallwalk, I paused to peer down at the ocean between the crenellations.

Just to prove we were actually there, here’s Sasha hamming it up!

Okay, and I know I don’t look near as happy as she did—1) I hate having my picture taken, 2) the sun shone directly in my eyes!

Remember, I mentioned that the U.S. added to the fortifications? Here is the view from one of the gun turrets they built. I was lucky enough to catch a barge sailing from around the corner of the peninsula.

After we left the fortress, we headed to the old section of downtown San Juan for shopping! I have no photos of me shopping. But I know Sasha found how excited I would get very funny. She has threatened to post her collections of “Delilah Shopping” photos on her blog.

See the pretty Christmas lights?

At last, after a couple of hours of scouring shops for goodies to take home, we headed back to the ship. Looks kinda spooky in the dark.

Tomorrow, I’ll take a break from cruise photos and offer a nice, lengthy excerpt from my only Christmas story, Silent Knight. ~DD