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.
Last month I posted a Survey to see what Sydney Brennan Short Story you’d most like to read. It closed earlier this week, and the results are in. From most to least popular: Noel agrees to help Syd with some simple surveillance and gets more than she bargained for; How Sydney became an investigator; JD arrives unexpectedly for a weekend with Sydney, but the PI’s life gets in the way; and A relaxing day at the beach for Sydney and Ben becomes anything but relaxing. So, Noel and Syd it is! To be honest, I was pulling for Syd and Ben, but Read more…
You may have noticed, in my various ramblings, that I’m a fan of the TV show Castle. Some of the long-term story arcs are wearing, and some seasons are inconsistent (see The Challenges of the Wayback Machine for a mini-rant). But at its best, the cast has great chemistry, and at its worst, you’ve still got Nathan Fillion. My husband and I recently watched an episode that looked like a nice, goofy one. (We were taking a break from Broadchurch; I wrote about Season 1 in Stories I Love, but Season 2, still impeccably performed and filmed, is even darker). Castle Read more…
When does a draft become a rewrite? Is anything after the rough draft a “rewrite,” or does your story have to be farther along (i.e., less crappy)? Sorry—that’s probably a little too esoteric for a Friday morning. Maybe I’ll look it up when I’m not so busy second drafting/rewriting. Overall, I’d have to say I’ve enjoyed my first week of Book Five rewrites (gotta call it something), but it’s a contradictory process. There are entirely new scenes to be added (two in particular are going to be so much fun!), descriptions to flesh out and motivations to clarify. But I’ve Read more…
I’ve mentioned before that eggs are liquid gold in Hawaii. My husband and I have never been big egg eaters, but several months ago when they hit $7 a dozen in the health food store (I’m not even sure they were organic) I put my foot down, or at least put my credit card away. No more! Earlier this month we were on the verge of breaking our boycott when one of our neighbors saw us on the street and gave us a dozen eggs fresh from her chickens. (We were having friends over and wanted to make ebelskivers; see the final Read more…
You ever wonder if all of our technology (or maybe artificial sweeteners or gamma rays from another galaxy) is making us stupid? Do you wonder what’s happened to our basic common sense? Don’t worry—this isn’t one of those back in my day we knew our times-tables rants. It actually dovetails with some research I’ve been doing, but I’ll start with a recent personal experience. Earlier this week, I drove to town to run some errands and stopped for a snorkel. The lifeguards had put out the High Surf and Strong Current signs. It was sloppy, and the sets rolling in Read more…
