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I’m right in the middle of listening to The Witch Elm by my favorite contemporary mystery novelist, Tana French. So far the book is as good as I would expect, having read all six of French’s previous novels. French’s masterful use of language and deft psychological characterizations make her novels qualify as both literary and genre fiction. That’s one of the reason that I (like so many of her readers) am addicted to her writing, and read each of her novels as soon as it is released.

Out of curiosity about the author, I recently spent some time rooting around the web looking for articles by and about her. One particularly interesting one I ran across was “5 Writing Tips from Tana French,” Publishers Weekly, 2012. (I highly recommend the article to all fiction writers) In it she says that […]

This Summer I had the pleasure of seeing three people, who in various ways I connect with through book publishing, tell stories from the stage at storytelling events. For years I’ve been a big fan of The Moth storytelling radio hour and similar podcasts, so it was a real delight to hear people I actually know tell stories from the stage.

The first two storytellers I saw at one of the amazing monthly shows put on by Odyssey Storytelling of Tucson. The theme for the show was Different. Terry Filipowicz, my cohort on the Book and Movie Biz Genre of the Book and Author Committee for the Tucson Festival of Books (wow, that’s a mouthful), Vice President at Great Potential Press, and Instructor at Pima Community College, and Ethel Lee-Miller (etheleemiller.com), Wheatmark author, writing editor and coach, public speaking coach, […]

There’s nothing quite like the experience of holding your finished book at the end of the publishing process. After writing, waiting for editing, designing, and working through multiple revisions, you’ve got it! Reminds me of a story from my childhood about a peach…

As a kid growing up in Southern California, I looked forward to two things every summer: our annual July trip to Minnesota, and the homegrown peaches that were waiting for us when we returned home in August. Every summer the peach tree that leaned against the fence in my backyard would produce the most juicy, sweet peaches imaginable. My family would get so many of them that my mother spent many hot summer days in the kitchen canning fruit and making jam. I loved that tree.

So when my father decided to try out his tree-trimming skills on my beloved tree […]

Photo by Robert Murray on Unsplash

I never imagined myself living in the desert. Born and raised in Orange County, California, I believed that my life would always exist within a certain radius. While we experienced our fair share of heat waves, there was some reassurance in the knowledge that the beach was just a short drive away. The cool coastal breeze and marine layer could temporarily relieve any discomfort caused by summer’s warm embrace.

My life trajectory changed drastically when I met my now husband. Committing to a man who owed at least three years to the Air Force meant that we were no longer the masters of our fate, and that fate was destined for Tucson.

We moved to the Old Pueblo in the middle of June 2014, and I was not prepared for the heat. June heat is unrelenting. Cool mornings […]