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Our Christmas Story
Since Thanksgiving, I’ve been wallowing in wonderful Christmas stories of surprise gifts to totally deserving people. I live in Idaho Falls, which has a wonderful online news website called EastIdahoNews.com. It’s been around about five years, I think, and was funded originally by Frank Vander Sloot, owner and CEO of Melaleuca. If not the richest…
Read MoreThe Moral Arc of the Universe Does Bend toward Justice
This isn’t my usual blog. Well, maybe it is. When I think of what has influenced me as a writer, or a journalist or a novelist, Georgia comes to mind. My husband has had some serious health issues and a major surgery that took my attention elsewhere, too. He’s better now. The turkey is in…
Read MoreWe Don’t Need Columbus to Have a Holiday
My first memory of American Indians came when I was about four years old, and living in Cody, Wyoming. It was during the Korean War, and my dad was on assignment in Thailand. Dad was part of a US Navy squadron that took a load of planes to Thailand and taught the pilots there how…
Read MoreCheck Your Drawers
It’s a writerly joke that we novelists usually have an unpublished manuscript stuck in a drawer. You know, something that we finished, and there it stayed, for whatever reason. I had two such manuscripts. The first one was The Necklace, which I massively rewrote and which came out in February, 2021. My editor, Jennifer McCord,…
Read MoreDoing Anything?
Not a whole lot vexes me. I’m relatively even-tempered. So it is with mixed emotions – amusement and slight irritation (as in, don’t you know me by now?) – that I offer what is probably a common challenge most novelists face. It’s this: Friends and acquaintances often open a conversation with me by asking, “Are…
Read MoreThe Lions’ Den
It’s no secret that I’m a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or Mormon, if you prefer. This particular blog is for fun, not preaching. Recently, I was wasting time on Facebook, looking at a website inviting people to list funny experiences in church. I have a dilly. It happened…
Read More“Hey, Lady, What’s Your Favorite Book?”
Could it be that last month’s school and college graduations brought out the nostalgia in me? Whatever the reason, I’ll indulge in a reminiscence. I suspect that the most common question novelists get is, “Where do you get your ideas?” Correct me if I’m wrong, fellow novelists, but I believe the usual answer is a…
Read MoreInterviewing History
I had quite an experience recently, the sort of thing that sometimes happens to a historian, but never often enough: I talked to an eyewitness to history. I’m currently researching/writing Story #2 of a 3-novella anthology set during World War II. I’m calling the book, “I’ll Be Seeing You,” after the 1938 love song that…
Read MoreSomething Familiar in Unfamiliar Times
Think what you will, but during the pandemic, I did something that brought me a lot of comfort: I reread many of my novels. Through the years, I’ve reread a few of my own personal favorites. At times, I’ve been asked to speak about a particular book, which means rereading at least parts of one…
Read MoreDear Reader…
My childhood was spent in the service of the post-war U.S. Navy, meaning, whenever Dad got orders, we moved. Typically, we moved about every two or three years, so it could have been worse. We did two things once we arrived in our new area: We found a church (Presbyterian mainly) and we found the…
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