Welcome to my blog!

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.

 

 

Peeking at Process: The Mad Writer’s Laptop Exterior

I may have mentioned this before, but I am a sucker for office supplies. I walk into an office supply store, and I feel almost giddy with the possibilities. It’s a combination of 1) looking for the perfect product that will finally fix my organizational impairments and make me the efficient, fully optimized human I always knew I could be, and 2) making sure I have enough of anything I might need in case of office supply emergency. (Oddly enough, now that I live in Hawaii, when the boats get off schedule I see empty office supply shelves far less Read more…


The Joys of Discovering a New Series: Joe R. Lansdale Edition

I haven’t been reading a lot lately. The evening hours when I could do so are quickly lost to blogging and social media and website and retailer admin and all of the other writing-related activities that are not actually writing. Funny how that happens. You can hear me laughing, right? I swear that’s what that jagged sound is. When I do read, like many people, I am a creature of habit. I recently read Patricia Briggs’ latest because she has two series that I (and my husband, who’d had a birthday) don’t miss. A few months back I read Michael Read more…


New Big Island Visitor’s Bureau Pitch: Visit Mordor While You Can

I’d planned something else for the blog today, but let’s try something different… lots of pictures! Yesterday was my wedding anniversary. Yes–thank you, thank you, it is astonishing that my husband could put up with me for this long. In honor of the occasion, we thought we’d have dinner at the Volcano House and check out the lava while we were there. The Kilauea lava lake is visible from the Jaggar Museum for the first time since 2008, and the front page of the local paper has had fantastic pictures of it rising to just a few feet below the vent’s rim. So, Read more…


Fading Vacation (and Book Launch) Scars

It’s a sad day when you notice that the boogie boarding scab from your vacation is gone. Sorry—was that TMI for everyone who doesn’t work in a medical field? My 13 year-old niece gave me lessons. I’m afraid I wasn’t a very good student, perpetually raking my knee across the sandy bottom in the shallows, trying to ride a little bit of water foam on a bent piece of synthetic foam, but it was fun. I even caught an almost-wave my last day out that made me whoop in a manner she would have approved of, if she hadn’t already Read more…


That’s Why You Don’t Leave the House: Vacation Interlopers

My husband and I just got back from a couple of weeks on the mainland. Florida, to be more precise. Not Tallahassee, but close-ish to Sydney’s childhood home. Not that this trip was anything about Sydney; it was about seeing our families. But it is hard not to think in terms of Sydney’s context anytime I set foot in Florida. We had a good visit, one that can’t even be marred by the fact that travel has become such a monumental pain in the ass. I was going to treat you (ha-ha) to a mini-rant on the subject, but the Read more…