That’s Why You Don’t Leave the House: Vacation Interlopers

My husband and I just got back from a couple of weeks on the mainland. Florida, to be more precise. Not Tallahassee, but close-ish to Sydney’s childhood home. Not that this trip was anything about Sydney; it was about seeing our families. But it is hard not to think in terms of Sydney’s context anytime I set foot in Florida. We had a good visit, one that can’t even be marred by the fact that travel has become such a monumental pain in the ass. I was going to treat you (ha-ha) to a mini-rant on the subject, but the Read more…

Laughing with your Tribe

“Look to the right of you and look to the left of you,” the man from Hawaii Public Radio said. I had a flashback to law school orientation and the ethics professor (insert lawyer joke here) who said we would sleep with one of those people. Fortunately, in this Hilo auditorium, my husband was sitting next to me. Instead, the HPR man continued, “This is your tribe.” I’d had an inkling of that fact when we’d found ourselves competing with a pack of other hybrid cars for spots in the parking lot. Apparently our tribe includes the 23 openly gay Read more…

Make Mine with a Splash of Humor

If you subscribe to my newsletter, you’ll know I’m very excited about our late Valentine’s outing this week. First of all, outing! That doesn’t happen much here on the east side of the Big Island, unless you want to sneak out for an illegal lava viewing. (Yes, there is such a thing.) Second, we’re seeing David Sedaris. Happy dance! (I’m still thinking someone is diverting his plane without his knowledge, and he’ll be halfway through the show before he realizes he’s not in Honolulu or Tokyo.) If you’re not familiar with David Sedaris, why aren’t you? I mean, let me Read more…

Postcards from the Punatic Edge

Okay, so this is the part of the blog where I share the trials and tribulations of living in Hawaii so you don’t spend your wintry days pining for far, exotic shores and feeling resentment toward the people who live there. Our challenges admittedly do not include snow flurries, but we do have flurries of white stuff. (Not sand; we don’t have white sand in east Hawaii.) I live in lower Puna on the Big Island, the home of the active lava flow. Kilauea has been continuously erupting since 1983, but a particular portion of the June 27, 2014, flow Read more…

Sydney Brennan Title Announcement (Finally) and General Meanderings

So the New Year’s Baby Monster Thing didn’t bring me a title after all, but I did finally make a decision. The next Sydney Brennan novel will be: The Perils of Panacea. You may remember I ran a reader poll to get some feedback. This final title is a slight tweak on something someone suggested in that poll, but… being my first poll, I was a doofus and failed to put something in there to ensure participant identification. So, if you were the one who made the poll suggestion, please drop me an email with your name and mailing address Read more…