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.
I don’t know about you, but I feel like I could sleep until 2021. Our rainy weather isn’t helping. Believe me, I’m grateful (as is our catchment tank) that after what has felt like a dry year, we’re having a winter-ish wet spell. Note, it feels like a dry year, but I have a pile of about three years of rain gauge data I haven’t bothered to enter yet, so at this point a feeling is all it is! The upside of the overcast is I’m not ready to pass out from the heat in our house, or from the Read more…
Another quick post this time around because I’m up to my eyeballs in tech troubleshooting and advertising dashboards and promotional fun bits (more on that momentarily). I’ve also been battling a “bug” for a while—the much milder return of whatever knocked me flat a few months ago. Nothing major, but it has slowed me down just enough to make sure I fall completely behind. I did the responsible thing last week and got tested to be safe. It turns out I don’t have Covid-19. Apparently another microbe said, Oh, so Covid comes back? Hold my culture flask. (Joke for the Read more…
I know the world is dark now (and getting darker) and budgets are tight for many readers. If you’re one of them, you might be interested in my post from a few months ago, How to Get Your Reading Fix During the Covid Crazy, and Other Lean Times. I’ll be sharing a bunch of Giveaways and Deals throughout the month of October to help you stretch your reading dollar. If you want to see all of these, make sure you’re on my email list. (Click on Free Story at the Top or enter your email in the Sidebar to sign up.) Read more…
Hoo, boy. This post is one that’s been a long time coming, and almost didn’t happen this week, either. But when my husband shared that a friend is currently watching this Story I Love as comfort viewing, I knew I had to suck it up. Who knows? If you’re a stranger to Harlan County, this may be the comfort you need to get you through until your next delivery of ice cream and/or alcohol. (Future blog readers, assuming there are any: we’re currently seven months or so into the Covid Times.) Harlan County, Kentucky, is the setting for the crime Read more…
I’m feeling pretty scattered lately. We all are, right? Checking our latest local Covid numbers, or forecasts for the Gulf of Mexico, or wildfires, or… asteroids. <Sigh> I feel like I need some dude with a light saber (and preferably decent sentence structure) to teach me how to F-o-c-u-s. I’ve read so many books and articles and blog posts about productivity and how to best start your day, blah-de-blah-de-blah. Not that I don’t think there isn’t value in their advice. (Was that too many negatives? I’ve been doing Russian on Duolingo, and that language’s approach to negation blows my mind Read more…
