Aunt Saffi is on a roadtrip to Santa Fe, New Mexico. What have I learned so far? 1. No sane person RVs through California’s Central Valley or the Mojave desert in July. 2. Dante’s Inferno is actually located in Lost Hills, CA. Sulfurous water. Blazing temps. But the KOA camp is fine and there are…
Category: A Writer’s Life
What it’s like to be a writer.
Raven About Series Authors
I devour series books from authors whose work I love as if they were truffles that might melt in a heatwave—like those many of us have been experiencing this summer. As I gobble up the goodness, I don’t really think about the hours and days and months and, sometimes, years that the author spent on…
Cozy Cover Reveal!
At long last, the cover of the first book in my Pacific Northwest Cozy Mystery series has been uncovered. Wow! This really evokes the setting for MURDER AT LAST CHANCE COVE. I started writing this series while staying in the real version of the fictional RV park in this book. Those of you who know…
Genre-Shifting Writers
When I first started writing, I wrote what I read: fantasy, for the most part, and romance. (I was 20-something, so the latter was probably a given.) I came very close to publishing a romance novel with Del Rey. An editor read the manuscript I sent and liked it. If I was willing to do…
Energy Break
When I’m really deep into a writing project, I can sit at a keyboard for hours and not notice the passage of time, until some body part—usually my neck or shoulders—calls a time out. If I wait until that happens to stop, and then I stand up…ouch! My muscles are stiff and my limbs resist…
Embracing the Crone
When my daughter was young, she once told me—in all innocence—that I have a witch’s nose. Shall we say I was not…grateful….for her statement of what she saw as an incontrovertible fact. After all, witch’s noses all look a certain way, right? Long and beakish, perhaps topped off with a wart sprouting several wiry hairs….
Writing Totems
A few years ago, I worked one day a week at an amazing children’s bookstore in Ashland, Oregon—Treehouse Books. Jane, the owner, inspired me by populating the store with items that I’m sure represented the magical/mystical spirits that bless her life: fairies, gnomes, ravens, owls, trees, even the occasional piggie evocative of my own Rufus….
Gatekeepers
One of these people is a gatekeeper: an editor. The other is a hero hoping to be allowed through the gate: a writer. Which is which? Can you tell? Is it the one speaking, or the one listening? The speaker looks authoritative. The listener, earnest, perhaps eager…or intimidated. One of the most intimidating parts of…
Take Flight
Outside my RV windshield, birds soar and swoop and dive. Not just once or twice a day but again and again and again. Pelicans glide into view in arrow-tight formations. Seagulls burst skyward, wings pumping against the wind. Crows chide and ravens rave as they skim the waves. What drives this constant motion? Dogs, sometimes….
Always Another Story
Recently, I’ve been writing short books for an educational publisher. There are no advances or royalties for this kind of writing. It’s flat-fee, work-for-hire writing and the writer gets a lot of input from the editors and series “authors” who, in this case, are big-name educators. This kind of writing can be an amazing teacher….
Cozies & Kim Griswell 