All In for the Tucson Festival of Books

The Tucson Festival of Books is this weekend, and I’m in for the full meal deal, from the beginning author reception on Friday evening to the Literacy Connects reception on Sunday after the festival closes. This if the ninth annual TFOB, and I’m honored to have been a part of it from the very beginning. […]

Man Overboard, Ali Reynolds #12

I’m in the midst of writing the next Beaumont book, Proof of Life, but for now I need to step away from that because … guess what? … book tour season for Ali Reynolds #12, Man Overboard, is coming at me like a freight train.  This time the tour is staying pretty close to my […]

A Trip Down Memory Lane

Every once in a while it’s a good idea to take a trip down memory lane and go back to one’s roots.  This week, with my daughter and grandson in town for a visit, we took just such a trip—back to Three Points and to the place I lived for five years during the time […]

The Princess and the Pea

When I was a child, I loved the story of the Princess and the Pea—the one about the young woman who was so sensitive that she could detect even something so small as a single pea hidden in her towering stack of mattresses.  And when Carol Burnett’s musical version of that folk tale—Once Upon a […]

In Praise of Arboreal Renegades

I am not generally what one would regard as a tree hugger.  The first time I noticed an outbreak of tree hugging in my personal history happened in 1990 or so when Bill and I were selling our first house in Bellevue.  It was a house he had purchased and landscaped with his first wife, […]

James Andrew Busk

Walking 10,000 steps a day takes TIME and allows for a lot of solitary reflection. Occasionally on my outside laps, I’ll see runners or joggers go speeding past the front gate. I suspect that’s a way of getting the exercise job done faster. I also suspect that, long term, jogging is a lot harder on […]

Happily Ever After

I read the emails readers send me and respond to same. I also read the comments on my blog on both the website and my Facebook page, responding where a reply seems to be in order.  (Initially I wrote “called for” but prepositions are not to end sentences with.  So endeth the grammar lesson for […]

Step By Step, Putting it Together

Each year, as the holidays come to an end, the after-holiday commercials start in earnest– end-to-end coverage, as it were, of ads promoting Jenny Craig and Weight Watchers. In my opinion, if you lose twenty pounds for twenty bucks, you’re liable to find those twenty pounds again, along with plenty more to go with them, […]