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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The film version of The Descendants opens with this great monologue where the main character discusses the image people from the mainland have of people living in Hawaii, that it’s Paradise and everything is Mai Tais and surfing and easy living all the time. “Are they nuts?” he says. “How can they possibly think our families are less screwed up, our heart attacks and cancers less fatal, our grief less devastating? Hell, I haven’t been on a surfboard in fifteen years.” I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately. Don’t get me wrong–I’m not complaining about where I live. It’s more that I’ve been struck by how Read more…
You may recall (That’s Why You Don’t Leave the House) that we have occasional issues with rodentia in our rural Big Island home. Also, everywhere else we’ve lived on the island. Our first stop in North Kohala, the rats lived in the ceiling space above our heads and rolled mac nuts across it at night like bowling balls. There was a small knothole in the ceiling near the kitchen, and occasionally you’d see a rat head peering out of it like a periscope. It took us a month or more to get the rat situation under control here the last Read more…
Sorry for the late post today–our internet has been even spottier than usual lately. (I’d blame the wind, but I’m not sure that’s logically or scientifically defensible when you have satellite internet–maybe the dish is wobbling?) In any case, this post and the Book Five manuscript will be passing each other in internet space tonight. (Or maybe not; I’ll admit, I’m pretty fuzzy with most physics beyond Newton.) To be more precise, mobi files of Sydney Brennan Book Five, the novel Braving the Boneyard, are heading to beta reader devices today. (One beta reader might be distracted by the delivery of Read more…
As regular visitors to this space know, there’s a new Blog post every Friday. I usually write these on Thursday nights, but occasionally I’ll wing it on Friday. So here’s my dilemma. It’s currently Thursday night (as I’m writing), and most of the potential Blog Posts in my head are about rewrites, because that’s what I’m doing and—to be honest—that’s what I’m dying to get back to. But we have a contract—I deliver a weekly Blog Post and you pretend to read it—and I suspect by now you’re sick of hearing about editing. What’s a blog-blocked writer to do? Apparently Read more…
It’s a good thing it’s hard to fall asleep on a yoga ball chair. Yes, it helps your productivity to actually be awake at your desk. (Although I have heard a well-timed nap can do wonders, unless you have three dogs and a cat for whom human napping is anathema.) But right now, staying awake at my desk is a matter of life and death. The day I fall asleep may be the day they eat me. Following is a rough reconstruction of the Arachnopocalypse timeline. Day One: Oh, that little bitty web at the ceiling is too hard to reach, Read more…
