Time to get down to business! For two years, I followed a schedule of writing a manuscript for six months, then spending the next six months editing, proofing, getting comments from beta readers, followed by the back-end work of cover design, formatting into e-book and print versions, etc. That translated to completing a book a [...]
How do you decompress? Do you ever relax? What’s your favorite mode of down time? I will admit I’m not usually much good at sitting around doing nothing. Except at the ocean. I was fortunate to spend nearly a month in Hawaii recently, which is my mother’s birthplace. She was born on Maui, had relatives [...]
Where does your inspiration come from? Does it come in fits and starts, bits and bobbles? Or is it a continuous flow? Does it come from nature or music? Or from chaos and disarray? Many are inspired to create by most anything, and others feel like they have to be inspired by something specific to [...]
It finally happened! For whatever reason, I’ve always been interested in sound effects. I listen intently at the “foley effects” in motion pictures, always wondering how they create the footsteps on gravel, or horse hooves on cobblestone and a fly buzzing in a room. I used to listen to the radio theatre mystery shows that [...]
A friend recently gave me a book called “40 Days of Thankful Living,” where there are spaces to write what I’m grateful for between Oct. 16 and Nov. 24, or the 40 days prior to Thanksgiving. At dinnertime when our son was little, we would each tell what we were “thankful” for that day, and [...]
How many ways can you say hot? In Arizona, many pass the time coming up with new descriptions for what temperatures feel like when they climb over 100 degrees in the Sonoran Desert. Scorching, blistering and toasty are a few words that come to mind. Similes include: hot air like an oven; so hot you [...]
Many people ask how I accomplish all that I do. The simple, and practical answer, is "schedule, schedule, schedule." I’ve mostly been sticking to my Monday through Friday morning writing routine, which sometimes includes reading the daily digital newspaper with my coffee and breakfast, and sometimes I head right to the computer before the paper, and [...]
Dads everywhere will be honored this month for Father’s Day, and I’m grateful my dad is one of them. Lowell Fagen has had a varied and interesting life, starting as a farmer, raising hogs, sheep, corn and soybeans; going into the Marine Corps and serving in World War II as well as Korea; teaching Dale [...]
To have the my son’s birthday and Mother’s Day fall in the same month is a lovely gift I have cherished for the past 24 years. The arrival of our one and only son was one of the most amazing experiences – from the pregnancy to delivery to even those first blurry, sleep-deprived months – [...]
The annual Left Coast Crime conference came to Phoenix recently, and mystery readers and writers came from all over to hear a wide variety of authors speak. Here are a few soundbites from the conference: On learning to write: Catriona McPherson - "I’m a graduate of MSU: Making Shit Up." On getting rejections: Andrew Kaufman Andrew [...]
