Here you’ll find progress on current books, behind-the-scenes insight and story inspiration, as well peeks at my life on rural, (usually) rainy East Hawaii Island.
The Blog Menu Dropdown highlights three categories, Hawaii Life(pretty self-explanatory), Stories I Love (also pretty self-explanatory, but includes books, movies, and TV), and Magpie Moments (bits I snatched from real life and incorporated, magpie-like, into my fiction).
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[This post is a continuation, sharing Part Two of our recent journey from East Hawaii Island to the continental U.S. to visit family.] Living on the east side of an island with a honking big mountain in the middle, you get to appreciate sunsets. If the Gulf Coast didn’t disappoint us on that count, neither did the Mid-Atlantic. No, that fleur de-lis-esque shot (I think I just made spell check explode) isn’t from New Orleans, it’s from the car window driving through Winchester, Virginia. By the time we made it to West Virginia (the home of my kin-folk), changing time Read more…
If you’re a regular blog reader, you’ll know that my husband and I recently traveled from our home in Hawaii to the mainland to visit family and friends and do a little book research. I’ve resisted using the word “odyssey,” but it did feel like one: from Hawaii to New Orleans to Pensacola to Tallahassee to Virginia and West Virginia over a couple of weeks. For today’s post, the Gulf Coast leg… It was strange, revisiting these places that are touchstones in our lives. In New Orleans, having beignets at Cafe du Monde while watching carriages in front of Jackson’s Square on a Read more…
I know, I know; I am a bad, delinquent blogger. I have not posted since my last Magpie Moments. Let the floggings begin. I am actually bursting with things to share with you, from my return to Florida and my first book signing and my return to Hawaii, but these things will have to wait. This is a week of deadlines. On the bright side, I just finished going through the Secrets in Stockbridge novella with my editor. Woo hoo—on schedule! On the won’t-it-look-bright-a-week-from-now side, Sydney #3 is due to another editor on Saturday. And I have a magazine article Read more…
This is a very special episode of Magpie Moments. Don’t worry—unlike the sitcoms of the 1980s, “very special episode” doesn’t mean you’ll learn an important lesson about how to treat people who are different from you, nor will anyone be stricken by a disease we should all know about. When I say “very special,” it usually means chocolate is involved. At first I thought she’d left, but when I rose from my own chair I could see her silhouette through the screen door, settling down on the concrete front steps. I crossed to the fridge, retrieved a baggie of fresh Read more…
As you’ve probably noticed, I live in Hawaii, but I’ve been traveling on the mainland lately. I was recently lucky enough to revisit some of my (i.e. Sydney’s fictionalized) old Tallahassee haunts. I was surprised by the usual—how much some places changed, and how much others stayed the same—and also by my reactions to those changes and resilient bits. I’ll be writing about it soon, but I want to give my observations and reactions time to ferment into something beyond blathering, like sharing kombucha instead of stale tea. (Okay, I should have warned you, I’m still pretty time zone-addled, and Read more…