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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This is the third in a series of what I’m calling Magpie Moments, things that I snagged from real life and repurposed into fiction. I’ll add something new to the series every week until the next Sydney Brennan release. And SPOILER ALERT: you may not want to read these if you haven’t read Back to Lazarus yet. Ida set her tea glass down and rested her elbows on the table. “I don’t grow fresh mint anymore. I guess you saw Mr. Phillips next door, with his greens and tomatoes in buckets. The EPA man told him it wasn’t safe to eat anything that grew in Read more…
This is the second in a series of what I’m calling Magpie Moments, things that I snagged from real life and repurposed into fiction. I will add something new to the series every week until the next Sydney Brennan release. And SPOILER ALERT: you may not want to read these if you haven’t read Back to Lazarus yet. When I was a sophomore in high school, I caught an elbow playing pick-up basketball and ended up with a hell of a shiner that covered half my face. It was beyond makeup, even if I had owned any and known how to use it. Instead, I Read more…
David Sedaris is one of those people who could make a to-do list funny, interesting, and sometimes even insightful and transformative. I am definitely a fan. He often talks about cannibalizing his own life for his writing. For example, one essay in the fabulous Me Talk Pretty One Day centers around his compulsion to share a personal story that his sister forbids him from telling. (As he points out, it’s not like she’s doing anything with it.) I doubt that fiction authors are any different from essayists. I’m always incorporating bits of my life or the lives of others into my writing, sometimes Read more…
I don’t know about you, but my week has seen a fair number of distractions. Many, like the current political situation in—oh, let’s just say everywhere—are of immense scope and importance, and yet have no immediate and discernible direct effect on me on any given day. (Is that enough qualifiers? Sorry—lawyer flashback.) Others, like the beetley roach (that’s what I call the smaller non-palmetto bug roaches because it decreases my likelihood of shrieking) making his sporadic journey around the room right now, have a small scope and very little Importance, but a direct effect on me. (And once on our Read more…
If you’ve signed up for my newsletter (hint, hint), you’ll know that I have a Sydney Brennan novella in the edits stage now. Yay, beta readers! I started working on the second full-length novel this week, gathering notes and bits I’d written previously into a Scrivener file and getting grounded. I’ve also been using Scapple. Not to be confused with a nasty southern meat product made up leftover butchered bits, Scapple is a software program by the Scrivener people that I’m finding really useful for mapping out the story, seeing connections, and keeping track of timelines. (I wish I could Read more…
