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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Okay, so I’m deviating a little bit from my formula here. I wrote about Broadchurch as a Story I Love a while back. The Fall is another amazing British police procedural I heard about around the same time. I highly recommend it, but I can’t quite say it’s a Story I Love. More on why that is in a bit. Unlike Broadchurch, the 5-episode first season of BBC’s The Fall doesn’t follow a single case, but it does follow a single serial killer. And rather than being a mystery, The Fall is more of a cat-and-mouse thriller. The viewer follows Read more…
With the Secrets in Stockbridge novella now out there making its way in the world, I’m about to dig in on the edits for the second full-length novel. I’ve had ideas for the cover rolling around in the back of my mind for months, and I’ve even browsed stock photo images. Unfortunately, I don’t have my cover designer’s magic touch on the search engine. I know what I want; I just can’t find it. (And yes, it may include a gator–mwah ha ha!) There is one other little thing holding me up on cover design… the title of the book. You’ve probably noticed Read more…
I’m a big fan of the Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie version of PG Wodehouses’s Jeeves and Wooster. In Season 3, they travel to the United States, and there’s an episode where Bertie’s poet friend Rocky is in crisis. (Bertie always has a friend in some uniquely upper-crust crisis.) Rocky happily lives in the then-relative-wilds of Long Island, but a moneyed relative is forcing him to move to New York City. Rocky says, “Good Lord, l’d have to dress for dinner every night. l won’t do it, l can’t do it. l don’t get out of my pajamas ’til five in the Read more…
A month or so ago, I gave a British friend a copy of my novel Back to Lazarus. The next day, having read a couple of chapters, he remarked that there were expressions he was unfamiliar with. I wondered if they were Americanisms or Southernisms, but he couldn’t recall any examples. When I recently received a very sweet email from my West Virginia hometown that began, “God bless your heart,” it reminded me of my British friend, and also of another cross-cultural conversation several years ago. I was on a month-long summer research cruise in the Northwest Hawaiian Islands at Read more…
The title of my latest novella, Secrets in Stockbridge, refers to the small town in Upstate New York where the bulk of the story takes place. But is it a real place? It feels real enough in my mind, for whatever that’s worth. You may find it on a map. Since it’s the holiday season, perhaps you’ve even heard it immortalized in song. Yesterday my husband returned from a morning drive bursting with the realization that Alice’s Restaurant, of Arlo Guthrie Thanksgiving fame, is in Stockbridge. (Apologies if I just planted an ear worm; if I didn’t, you’ve obviously never heard Read more…
![Puuhonua o Hanaunau by OldPine at wts wikivoyage (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons](https://www.judykwalker.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Puuhonua.jpg)
