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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You may have noticed my absence from the Blog lately. And Facebook, and email, and everything except our brief the dog must poop walk. Like everyone else, I’ve been riding out the summer heat and random life bumps and curves and other things that sound sexy but make you carsick. And I’ve been battling internet demons (the ones that make your router say it’s working when it never is, not the ones that chant in tongues). But mostly, I’ve been hunkered down, writing/re-writing. Which brings me to my good news—Syd #7, The Grave Truth, is chugging down the tracks! Chugging, Read more…
Aloha, y’all! I can say aloha because I’m back in Hawaii and y’all because I just returned from a trip to the mainland that included my childhood home of West by-God Virginia. For those same reasons, I can also say, Please pass the coffee. Again. I am beat! Too many time zones and too little sleep, plus a few days ago I managed a relapse of my previous respiratory plague. It was worth it to spend a little time with family I get to see so rarely, but I will keep it brief today since I’m still playing catch-up. In Read more…
It’s alive! Or maybe I should say, she’s alive! She being me. I know, I know, long time without a blog post. Before the floggings begin, I have to ask… So what do you think of the new website? Spiffy, huh? I’ve still got a few things to tweak, but it should be mostly functional. Let me know if anything makes your eyes cross or exiles you to 404 Error Land. In addition to being pretty, the new design is a lot more user-friendly under the hood. In other words, you won’t hear me swearing while trying to make new Read more…
I was going to do this a little later in the month, but things are moving, people! Tech things in the background that wait for no mere human. I’ll tell you more about those soon. But first… I need your help. I’m editing the Sydney #7 manuscript now. Well, now-ish obviously. As soon as I finish this post, I’ll be back at it. Syd #7 will be a door-stopper of a novel, and those of you on my List, you’ll learn the title in the June Newsletter. Mwah-ha-hah! Barring anything crazy, you should all have it in your hands (or Read more…
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…