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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I had an interesting experience recently that I wanted to share. I submitted Back to Lazarus to a promotional site that gives featured books a Content Rating, sort of like a movie in theaters. Instead of simply saying it’s All Readers or Adult or whatever, the site also explains why the book got the rating. The rating is based on information provided by the book’s author in a detailed questionnaire that covers everything from crude humor to sex to violence to use of drugs, alcohol and tobacco. The whole thing is done in a very non-judgy way with the sole purpose of Read more…
This week… yeah. Wow. I generally don’t talk politics on the blog, and I won’t start today, but not acknowledging that this has been a momentous week would be dishonest. Whether you’re elated or devastated or somewhere in between, I suspect many if not all of us are feeling pretty wrung out by the past year, coupled with the release of a burden being lifted. Since I’m being honest, I’ll share that I figure every day this week I managed to put on pants (albeit yoga pants) and not put vodka on my cereal or eat grass (wait—the dogs do that) Read more…
Today, I thought I’d tell you a little story, hopefully one I haven’t told you before. As with all my stories about anything that happened longer ago than yesterday, it comes with the Jimmy Buffett caveat, it’s “A Semi-True Story.” In other words, the years tend to make for a better story, but the accuracy of the details tends to suffer. I was in Band growing up, the kind with polyester uniforms, halftime shows, and folding chairs, not the kind with groupies, torn clothes (except once, in a wardrobe malfunction, my polyester pants), and screaming fans. It began when we gathered Read more…
You know how you’re standing in line behind someone at the post office, or maybe waiting for an appointment, or for someone to serve your beverage of choice, and you overhear a story that ends something along the lines of, I’m telling you, you can’t make this shit up. Well, just in case you’ve never had the experience… I’ve shared before that rural east Hawaii has a hint of Wild West flavor. We live in a development (using the term loosely) where everyone is on catchment water (i.e., if it doesn’t rain, you don’t shower), where electricity poles run down Read more…
You’re probably wondering when I’ll stop talking about writing Prodigal (the first book in my new series). That would be in about a week and a half, when I finish it. (The rough draft anyway.) That kind of boggles my mind, that I’ve been able to stick to my schedule (a minor miracle in itself) after losing a few weeks to a fritzing laptop. And I’m still feeling really good about it. My workspace is deteriorating a bit as I get closer to the end (past 70K words now, and the Post-Its are like confetti), but my mind is not Read more…
