Here in Ashland, Oregon, spring is in the air. What little snow we had this year has given way a carpet of pink blossoms.

The turkeys are hot to trot (here, there, and everywhere including in the middle of the road).

In Lithia Park, kids are selling sun tea in Dixie cups for $5 a pop. (Inflation?) I’m writing at a picnic table beneath a towering tree, beside a burbling creek, with ants and earwigs (ick) investigating a pile of flowers and leaves illegally picked (not by me) and placed on the table to create an altar to creativity.

Life is good!

I can’t remember which of my writing “mentors” said that before you make an abstract statement, such as “life is good” you must “buy” that statement with enough concrete detail to prove its validity.

Anne Lamott? Natalie Goldberg? Susan Goldsmith Wooldridge? Whichever one said it, I gift all three to you. If you haven’t read their books on writing, do yourself a favor.

The kids, the trees, the over-priced tea, the creek, the insects, the softness of the air… maybe none of this detail will end up in a book. Maybe all of it will, at one time or another. I mean, those adorable girls luring walkers off the path do have a certain P.T. Barnum quality about them. Not a single person who approaches their table walks away with a full wallet. Put them in the right environment and they’re hucksters in training.

A Dickensian twist could turn the Millennial mom sitting on the rock wall on the other side of the path into a modern-day Fagin. Tilt the felt slouch hat so it shadows her face, fray the hem of her denim skirt, scuff up her leather boots… ? Maybe she’s added knockout powder to the sun tea and has a second crew waiting along the forested trail up ahead. Maybe preteen boys with sticky fingers will lift those wallets from the kindly tea buyers’ pockets after they pass out and fall on their faces on the wood-chip and dirt path.

Meanwhile, I’m writing a spring Pacific Northwest Coastal Mystery. If this one makes it into publication, Saffi Graywood will have a year of Rv-ing, writing, and sleuthing to her credit. So far, it’s been a heckuva road trip. I’m grateful for every reader who’s been along for the ride and I hope to take you to many more of my favorite places in the future.

Spring mysteries. I hope your days are filled with as many as mine.

Get your Pacific Northwest Mysteries at your favorite bookseller or here: Murder at Last Chance Cove, Death in the Haunted Wood, Silenced at the Book Show