Just When You Thought it was Gone… The Friday Five, the Ultimate Zombie Post

I wrapped up the rough draft of Sydney #7 today—woo hoo! Consequently, this seemed an appropriate week for the return of the Friday Five. If you don’t remember, these are grab bag posts with odd little snippets of research and writing and life in general that are interesting, but not individually worthy of a full post. (For this installment, everything comes from the past week, so I didn’t have to dig very deep to resurrect it.) We’ll start with research for the latest book. 1) It doesn’t just look cool… I was checking something about Spanish moss when I came Read more…

Giveaway Winner(ish), and Traveling with Sydney

We have a Dead Hollow Audiobook Series Winner! Sort of. But not quite officially… As of writing this post, I’m still waiting for an email reply confirmation from the lucky reader who won the entire series on audiobook. That means if you entered, check your email! If I don’t get a response by Monday, I’ll choose another random winner. Which bring us back to, check your email. And if you missed the Giveaway, you can find out more about the supernatural thriller audiobook series here. UPDATE: Congratulations to our Winner, Grace H. of Tennessee! That pseudo-resolved, I’ll keep this post Read more…

The Solution for Troublesome Timelines? Driving Epiphanies and Cheap Therapy

Last blog post, I confessed that I have no future in professional landscaping. Well, I have a confession of a different sort today. I know — all writers with blogs know — that our readers don’t care how we write. Much like a gemstone or a perfect meal, you/we (because writers are also readers) don’t want to hear about the millions of years of pressure, the raw ingredients (especially if they’re eggs), or the hours of staring at the screen. We just want the dazzling results on our finger, our plate, or our #TBR (To Be Read list). And yet, Read more…

When You Can’t Blame the Cat (Or the Weather) After All—Shiny Object Syndrome

I planned my blog post yesterday, but got caught up in writing writing instead (things are getting real in Dead Hollow) and left it until this morning to draft. Except today I’m a little frazzled because—you guessed it—we had intense thunderstorms and a trembling, medicated Rhodesian ridgeback (plus a totally chill cat) in our bed last night. I was going to write about how I can’t get anything done because of the trouble-inciting Ninja Kitty. Except today, it struck me that the weather is the root of my problem. When we moved to Hawaii a dozen years ago, thunderstorms were Read more…

Audiobook Release Date, and What Audiobooks Taught me About Reading (and Vietnamese Food)

Today, I could subject you to one of my Life in Hawaii posts, venting about several days of severe thunderstorms. But since I’ve committed to sharing something you might actually be interested in this week, the Cliff Notes: A tree fell across our driveway while my husband was picking up post-surgery Fritz, a confused Travis pooped in the house again, Fred hovered and vibrated a lot, and the humans had little to no internet. (The latter was the worst.) And I’ll leave you with a blurry image of Fred hiding under the bed. This was on Tstorm Day Three. Yes, Read more…