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).
Interested in something else? You can also Search for something specific—the little icon is at the end of the header—or just dive in and start scrolling.
If you’re reading this as it comes out, you may have noticed that today is Monday, not Friday. Or you may still be hungover from New Year’s and not even know it’s 2016. Let me type that again to help me remember—it’s 2016. In other words, shh, don’t tell anybody… the blog is late. (Poor modifier—is there any context in which being late is a good thing?) That’s okay—you’re my peeps. I know you’ll forgive me. Especially if you just woke up and think it’s still 2015. And especially because it means I got the fifth Sydney Brennan mystery to Read more…
Hope everyone is having a pleasant holiday! We opted not to travel and to generally be low-key this year, so mine should be relaxing. Unfortunately, I keep watching the clock and calendar, feeling the pinch of approaching deadlines. I have a draft of the fifth Sydney Brennan book due to my developmental editor on January 1st. (My husband and I were brainstorming titles at breakfast this morning.) When we first set the due date a couple of weeks ago, I have to admit that I was a little disappointed, realizing I probably wouldn’t be able to release the book as Read more…
It never bodes well when you disrobe in the kitchen—while making breakfast—because there’s an ant in your pants. Yes, I literally had ant(s) in my pants. It was a fire ant, but the kind that hurts just enough to make you angry for about an hour, not one of the horrible ones. But really, it’s been that kind of week. That’s why this week’s blog post will be light, because of the [cue scary music] Holiday Convergence. I’m sure you’ve all experienced those times, when things come together in your life to make a perfect storm of high stress and low Read more…
This week’s blog post is a quick (or at least somewhat scattered) combination rave and rant. The rave is me sharing a show I’ve been enjoying lately. As for the rant, you may remember a post a while back on things that can jolt you out of a story (How Factual Do You Want Your Fiction?). This week I stumbled upon another very specific story jolter, and I thought I’d share. A lot of people claim we’re in a Golden Age of TV, and there do seem to be a lot of quality shows on television now. I don’t have Read more…
Last week, in addition to eating yummy foods we usually don’t take the time to fix (mmm… gravy), my husband and I indulged in another Thanksgiving tradition. Almost every year for—let’s just say a lot of years—we’ve watched the same movie. (I even stuffed it in my suitcase when an earthquake sent us to England during the month of November, but that’s a story for another time.) And it never gets old… Thunderheart is the story of a gung-ho FBI agent, Raymond Levoi (Val Kilmer), assigned to investigate a murder on a Native American Reservation in South Dakota. Tensions on Read more…
