Blog
July 2018
Sunday 1st July 2018
Time is Passing. Are You? These words were printed above a doorway at Glenwood High School, in Canton, Ohio. I passed under those words every day during high school—they weren't meant to move us along. We weren't supposed to loiter in the halls—we were meant to keep moving. In the past few years, those words have come back to haunt me over and over again; now they mean something radically different from their original admonition. This past…
June 2018
Monday 4th June 2018
I'm late again, but this time I have an excuse I'd just as soon not have. A little over two weeks ago I woke up to the news that my brother Dave, two years younger than me and my nearest sibling,…
May 2018
Tuesday 1st May 2018
When I first left home, September 1971, at the age of 19, I could fit all my possessions into my VW Bug. All my clothes, my records, record player—everything! After a year at Bowling Green State University, I needed to try my wings, and leaving the nest for the first time meant moving from Ohio to Florida. This was the beginning of A LOT of moves- back and forth across America, and more recently, three times across the Atlantic. (The photo is of my black VW bug somewhere in the middle of South Dakota with my brother Darrell, who traveled with me when I moved from Portland, Maine to Portland, Oregon. I've obviously moved on from being able…
April 2018
Sunday 1st April 2018
I have just finished Between a Rock, my latest book in my BREAKING CAMP MYSTERY SERIES. I had hoped to have it through its final edit and on sale by spring, but spring is late coming to England this year, and I'm afraid I'm a bit late as well! One of the more onerous tasks of self-publishing is self-editing. I have always hated going back over anything I've done before—but I actually don't mind editing my books because I usually wait a day or two and then it feels as if I'm reading a new book- even though I know what will happen, I'm usually surprised! I think this is because there is a lot of action in…
March 2018
Thursday 1st March 2018
As I write this on the last day of February (yes, I'll be on time with my BLOG this month!) it is snowing- the British have named these past 3 days of cold temperatures and snowfalls the 'Beast from the East' and where I live we've had an accumulation of about 5". I grew up in snow—in the aptly named town of Geneva, in New York State, where snowfalls were often marked in feet. And for most of my life I've lived in states that had snowy winters—New York, Ohio, Minnesota, Washington, and Maine. So…
February 2018
Monday 5th February 2018
On February 1st, I was sitting alone in our family room, looking up through the skylights at the brilliant blue sky (unusual for England, especially in winter) and said aloud, "Dad, if you're ready to go, this would be a good day for traveling." Not ten minutes later my husband, who was out walking our dog, called to say his father had 'just passed'. My father-in-law had been a widow since 2016. Boxing Day…
January 2018
Thursday 4th January 2018
FOLLOWING THE YELLOW BRICK ROAD I wish you all a happy and healthy New Year! "The old year now hath passed away"...words from an old Lutheran hymn and so appropriate for a NEW YEAR. I didn't get that quite right one time- I was working for a church and in typing up the Sunday morning 'bulletin' or program, I mistakenly listed the hymn title as "The old…
December
Monday 4th December 2017
My father always said I was "a day late and a dollar short", and so, keeping in character, I am 'late' with my blog! I love the sense of peace I feel during Advent when the days are short and the sun teases as it barely clears the treetops. I love Christmas!- the music, the Christmas plays, shows, movies, the hand-crafted decorations, and the hand-made…
November
Wednesday 1st November 2017
I've been reading Lucy Worsley's biography about Jane Austen (Lucy is a UK historian & TV presenter). At the same time I'm reading Northanger Abbey and I'm watching Sense and Sensibility. I've never read Jane Austen before and I must admit there are sentences I'm re-reading several times in order to 'get it'. But I'm going to persevere because I want to get to know this author; my curiosity about her has been aroused thanks to Lucy's book. One thing that intrigues me is that Jane appears to me to be very much influenced in her writing and in her relationships by her sense of 'house'. Where she lives matters a lot to…
October
Sunday 8th October 2017
TRAVELLING HOME I'm late with my October blog because my husband and I have just returned from a two week trip to America- it had been 18 months since I was last there- the longest I've ever been away from the USA. We flew into Denver,…
SEPTEMBER
Sunday 3rd September 2017
September—the month of autumn and all my favorite colors—is frequently the time when I check my compass bearing and make sure I'm headed in a direction I want to go. Often correcting my course means making a move—which I've done several times from coast to coast and in between! Which brings me to Mary Tyler Moore. (For readers not familiar with Mary Tyler Moore, she was the star of a popular sitcom in the U.S.)…
AUGUST
Tuesday 1st August 2017
It's the middle of summer and I'm working on another book in my Breaking Camp Series. This time the Trasks are visiting the Black Hills of South Dakota. I've been through this area three times. The first time was when my family visited on a camping trip- we set up our Coleman Apache…
