I’m marveling at the difference between common speech and dialogue that lays on the printed page as I edit my sixth crime fiction novel. If you ask anybody a question in daily life they don’t answer, “Yes.” Full stop. They say, “Yeah, right. Like I said…So…yeah…like I...
The Brits say “up sticks and moved house.” I like the way it makes moving sound—active and positive. For several months now that’s what I’ve been doing and trying to stay active and positive. I am moving away from Pine Mountain Club after 17 years, a village in the...
I live in a village of maybe 2000 people in the mountains of central California, seventy miles beyond the Los Angeles sprawl in the Los Padres National Forest. There’s a few restaurants, no movie theater, no mall, or much organized entertainment. It’s called Pine...
After what’s felt like a long, cold winter, I’m packing up my house, getting ready to move. I can’t bear the cold in my Central California mountain village. Since I grew up in northern Ontario, I know this is baby cold. I must have thin, runny blood since moving to...
Inspiration comes from unlikely places in the form of ears going ping, ping, ping and your fingers tingling as you reach for a pen or keyboard. Cherry Mattias, DVM, and I attended the Writers of KernSpring conference yesterday. Writers of Kern (WOK) is a branch of...
I’m off to the Left Coast Crime Conference 2016 in Phoenix this weekend, three days with my fellow fictional crime aficionados. During the excitement of registering on Thursday morning, meeting and greeting old friends, I will be given a conference tote bag that...
I was alerted to this TED Talk 10 Ways to Have A Better Conversation by a fellow who talks too much and thought, how ironic. How unaware we are of ourselves and our impact on people. Or is it only me who thinks he talks too much? I’m fascinated with conversational...
I’ve just sent off my sixth novel to my editor and my two best and trusted writer friends. I am hoping to get insightful comments that help me better this mystery. It is the second in my series about a Kern County Sheriff’s Detective investigating a murder in the far...
Dateline: Valentine’s weekend in Pine Mountain Club (PMC), California. The Mountain Theater Alliance (MTA) is staging a production of Ken Ludwig’s Be My Baby. The romantic comedy captured Broadway audiences with its story of a crusty Scot and stuffy English woman...
I live alone and the evenings are sometimes long here in the village where everything closes at 8 p.m. Almost for a goof, I tried out for a role in the play that Mountain Theater Alliance was mounting for Valentine’s Day weekend. I’d heard the romantic comedy titled...
