We spent Thanksgiving week in Cook Forest State Park. I took my laptop but did exactly no writing while I was there. I did a lot of knitting though, which was relaxing. We had the first real snowfall of the season while we were there as well. The woods beside the...
In October a friend of mine invited me to join her on a short trip up to her family cottage near Lake Erie. It was a wonderful reset and refresh for me to get back into heavy-duty editing and rewriting after a significant amount of time spent on other projects. It has...
The novel I am working on, Shelf Life, includes a situation where a family farm is being seized in an eminent domain purchase by the state, to facilitate construction of a highway. Researching eminent domain sales is fascinating, more so because I am not at the mercy...
When I’m writing, I like to listen to music. It has to be instrumental music, however, because other people’s words make it harder for me to come up with my own. A few things that are often playing while I’m hard at work on a chapter are the...
Over the past month I have been reading my way through the Vera Stanhope series by Ann Cleeves. Last year, I discovered her Shetland series and read those while finishing up my MA in Writing. I am delighted to be reading the Vera series because the books have the same...