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...
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...
