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.
On some level, I always associate suicides with Superman. Truth, Justice, and the American Way. Wasn’t that the opening of the old Superman series, the one in black and white? My brother and I used to watch the reruns on TV when we were children. We’d lie flat out on our bellies, propped up on our elbows, dead to the world until the end of the episode. By then the loops of my grandmother’s cheap red-orange carpet would have carved deep grooves in our arm and elbow skin that tingled as they plumped and came back to life. It was Read more…
As of yesterday, No Safe Winterport, the fourth Sydney Brennan book, is live! Woo hoo! Well, the ebook is anyway. Apologies to my paperback readers. I’m still waiting for a paperback proof copy (yes, I’m that paranoid) to make its way across the wide Pacific Ocean. It’s unlikely that I accidentally uploaded my grocery list instead of the manuscript, but in this unreasonably hot summer anything is possible. (By the way, I’m one of those people you hate in the grocery store because you think I’m that addicted to my smartphone; I’m actually staring slavishly at its screen because my Read more…
When I first began sharing Stories I Love, I focused on the mysteries that I return to again and again, like comfort food for the story-lover’s soul. Over the past year, I’ve worked my way through most of those, and the Stories I Love have expanded to include other character-driven narratives that I’ve happily stumbled across, but haven’t made it into my regular rotation yet. (I’ve learned that character-driven narratives are what my brain craves like Ben & Jerry’s Peanut Butter World. Mmm, peanut butter.) This week, I was thrilled to binge-watch a new show with my husband, and even Read more…
I mentioned last month that the Birthday Crab (sort of like Santa Claus in Bermuda shorts) came to visit me, but not how many times he has done so. It doesn’t matter. I’m old. And I have been for a while. How do I know? Because getting grounded sounds like a good thing. Obviously not everyone on the InterWebs is American, and sometimes things get lost in translation, so let’s make sure we’re on the same page. (Just an Americanism, or an expression with a global pedigree?) I love the versatility of language, and it turns out “grounded” is quite Read more…
You may recall (unless your mind is like mine) that I’ve been feeling a little scattered lately. It’s partly the dreaded, double-barreled heat and humidity (Summer Days Make Me Feel Stupid), although in recent days east Hawaii has been mostly dumped on by another weather system in need of some serious Prozac. In fact, my primary productivity culprit is more existential. I sailed through my editor’s feedback from her first pass on No Safe Winterport earlier this week, which was an awesome feeling. (It is funny though, how I seem to develop different weird spelling/typo/punctuation tics for each project; this time Read more…
