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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It’s been raining here a lot lately. I’m not complaining—my whiteboard has fallen off the wall (with 15 pieces of “permanent” mounting tape) and my dog-walking sneakers haven’t dried in about five days, but the daily drenching has definitely provided a welcome relief from the heat. (Okay, maybe I’m complaining a little.) Last night, we had occasional thunder between waves of rain that pounded the metal roof hard enough to loosen your fillings, which is unusual for Hawaii. (The thunder, that is—rumbling in the distance here is more likely to mean the military is playing with its boom-boom toys in Read more…
A couple of weeks ago, I used an aggregator (a company like Smashwords or Draft to Digital that acts as a sort of middleman) to add my books to some of the lesser-known ebook retailer and subscription services. Of course, then I had to check my books on each of the sites and see what had gone wrong, because something invariably goes wrong. Some sites don’t support any description formatting, or they support html but not that kind of html. Then there are the I-know-I-proofread-seventeen-times moments, when you discover that you can’t even spell your own name. (Hasn’t actually happened Read more…
My thoughts are a little muddled today. I know, I know—pipe down there in the Peanut Gallery. On the one hand, it’s International Private Investigators Day. Yay! July 24th was chosen because Eugene Francois Vidocq, arguably the father of the modern private investigator, was born on this day in 1775. (Read more about him, and about how John D. MacDonald broke me for other genres, in last year’s PI Day blog post.) Good reason, but late July doesn’t exactly encourage you to celebrate by dressing as a classic noir PI. Here in Hawaii, the humidity would bead on a decent Read more…
I used too much shampoo in the shower this morning. And then I had that moment in front of the mirror when I wondered, comb? Brush? Fingers? What is the appropriate hair-wrangling tool for this sudden lack of hair? Ahh, the summer haircut… one of the best parts of summer. (Very short is my preferred year-round haircut in Hawaii, but the last few times I’ve succumbed to, “But what if we tried a little longer?”) It felt so good being shorn! The cold water shampoo/head massage in the middle of the day didn’t hurt. Of course, I’ll let it go uncut Read more…
[Quick reminder: Magpie Moments refer to bits I snatched from real life and incorporated, magpie-like, into my fiction.] The post title doesn’t refer to twelve-year-olds at a pizza party or college students on Spring Break, but rather to beloved pets, and a scene from my most recent novel, The Perils of Panacea. In it, Sydney asks a couple about the origin of their pet pig’s name. “Why Banana Whiskers?” I asked. Danny smiled. “BW was the runt of his litter, and so sickly when he came to us that Sam wouldn’t let me name him. She didn’t want me to get too Read more…