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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As a completely new author with no fan base, no one on my newsletter but my mom, and a brand spanking new website but no real platform or brand or other fancy marketing words yet, I knew that I wouldn’t exactly be rocketing to the top of the charts. I’m in it for the long haul, which translates to, “I never really thought about the first week except as something I had to pass through on the way to the first year(s).” Here’s some of what I learned, living through the first week without having bothered to think about it Read more…
When I first downloaded Goodreads on my (long lost and lamented) iPhone years ago, I thought it was the best app ever. The bar code scanner almost made my head explode. It is a great resource for a lot of people, but I’ve never used it consistently, and it turns out it wasn’t right for me at the time. As I said in my last post, I’m not a big reviewer, and I wasn’t looking for a community. I just wanted something to help me track what books I’d already read and which ones I wanted to read. But if Read more…
As a reader, I rarely review books, unless they are very good (Ben Winters’ The Last Policeman, anyone?) or very bad (an unnamed author whose female characters are less realistic than blow-up dolls, but he’s mega-popular so my review doesn’t matter anyway). There are two reasons. First, the practical: I live in a place where internet isn’t easily accessible, and even getting a cell phone signal involves Cirque du Soleil-esque contortions perched on the highest object in your line of sight. I think of advanced communications on a triage basis: these are the 7 things that must be done in the Read more…
Just a quick update for those of you (all three) who have been watching and waiting–my mystery novel Back to Lazarus is now live on Amazon for Kindle. Yay! (In my best Dancing Kermit voice.) I have to say, the technology hasn’t been as painful as I feared it would be. The novel was originally written in Microsoft Word, but when I decided to self-publish, I imported it into Scrivener. I cannot say enough good things about Scrivener, although I did have a few heart-stopping moments when I was afraid my Bad Tech Vibes had managed to overcome even its resilient functionality. The Read more…
I’m about to wrap up the rough draft of a novella, so of course I’m writing a blog entry instead. But, as I like to preface many of the things I tell my closest friends, “This [blog entry] is not a total non sequitur.” (Which implies that it is at least a partial one.) I was prompted to try a novella that follows my private investigator Sydney Brennan by two things: resistance in writing the second Sydney Brennan novel, and the Black Orchid novella award, a contest put on by the Wolfe Pack and Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine for unpublished Read more…
