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.

 

 

Monday Musings: Peeking (again) into the Writer’s Psyche

[NOTE: I wrote this on Sunday, but couldn’t get it posted until what is, for most of you, Monday. Or even Tuesday, with the glories of a very large, round world.]  This is a rare Sunday check-in to let you know I haven’t run off to join the foreign legion (I think I’ve aged out of that option) or jumped in a volcano (the lava lake at the Kilauea caldera isn’t as dramatically enticing as it used to be). But since we’re talking about hot places (how’s that for a transition?), let me say, satellite internet is the spawn of Read more…


Freaky Friday, with Franken-Face Fred

Apologies for the extended absence. My internet has been more down than up for the past… lifetime which is why I’ll keep this short and sweet and not push my luck. [Shocker: we’ve been waiting for a service call-out all week.] Anyway, I just wanted to let you know I’m still out here, somewhere. Though not on Facebook because I can’t even get it to load. 😜 And I thought I’d take the opportunity to share one of our other distractions of late, a canine-related one. Caring for Travis, aka Dingbat Dog, is edging into at least part-time job territory (a Read more…


Friday Five: Things I Learned Writing my Tenth Book, Including the Dangers of Schrödinger’s Objects

Hello out there, and happy Friday! (For me in Hawaii Time, anyway.) Hope you’re recovering from your holiday festivities. Remember, New Year’s Eve is still on the horizon, so pace yourselves. And don’t forget to visit the vet, as we did today, to refill that prescription of Special New Year’s Treats for the scaredy—I mean, sensitive—dogs. 😜 Good news for Sydney Brennan fans: her latest adventure, Grave Truth, is alive! Woo-hoo! I was doing the math, and with six previous Syd books, plus the Dead Hollow trilogy… Yes, I’m pausing to help you assess the state of your holiday recovery Read more…


Why I Didn’t Wake When Feral Pigs Ate our Trash (And a Weekend Ebook Sale for Syd Fans)

Hey, stranger—remember me? There’s a reason I’ve been incommunicado. And it’s not just to give you a Jimmy Buffett earworm. The title kinda says it all, doesn’t it? Yes, I’m sleeping like a mostly dead person (time to watch The Princess Bride again?) when I get around to sleeping. And yes, a few nights ago a feral pig and her ridiculously cute piglet woke my husband—but not me—rooting around in our trash like a slightly shorter, more casually dressed Yogi Bear with Boo-Boo in tow. Last night, they were snore-chuffing under our house almost directly under our bed. After one Read more…


Getting Ready for Grave Truth, and an Appreciation for Quiet Skies and Running Water

I’m about to share something that won’t come as a surprise to anyone who’s ever lived with me, met me, or perhaps even read my blog posts. Shh… Don’t tell anyone, but I’m not very organized. Yeah, I know, big shocker. I don’t consider it a character flaw exactly, but it is something I need to work on. And yet, I can’t help feeling that sometimes the universe doesn’t help. Case in point: the release of the next Sydney Brennan novel, Grave Truth. This is where I gratuitously whip out my new cover again and do a happy writer dance. Read more…