I know, an author shouldn’t have favorites, but I really, really, love going to the Rose City Chapter’s Reader’s Luncheon for Literacy. Ah, let me count the reasons”

1) I go down in the most civilized form of travel available. The train. And when you take the train from Seattle to Portland, you have views like this:

And this (South Puget Sound): And you can get a little work done: No one confiscates your banana or your water bottle. You can work with the scenery rolling by and no worries about I-5 traffic and parking when you get to Portland. … Read more »

Beneath their mild-mannered, Dewey loving exteriors, beats some very passionate hearts. I discovered that last week when I made my first trip to the PLA Conference in Minneapolis. (Just in case you aren’t a librarian, the PLA is the Public Library Association). Librarian and romance superhero, John Charles, invited me to open up the PreConference program, Romance 101. Our goal? To educate and hopefully gain enthusiastic support for seeing more romances in public libraries. Luckily for us, it was like singing to the choir, because the folks who came and spent half a day with us were so wonderful and … Read more »

I’ve been so caught up in finishing a book, everything has sort of stacked up on the desk. I looked up the other day, blinked like a ground hog and realized I’ve got a bunch of events coming up soon and I didn’t have any of the particulars nailed down. Like airline flights, hotels, rental cars, the sort of details that my lazy-ass assistant never gets to. Oh, wait, that’s me having to get up an hour early to get it all done–so you can understand why it just sort of doesn’t–get done that is. And with the first trip … Read more »

I know, I’m supposed to wax poetic about this week because I am a romance writer. It is rather like carrying the standard in this business. Oh, it’s Valentine’s Day, let’s trot the local romance writers out of their caves, dress them in red and have them go on and on about the power of love. Gads, I think I am going to choke on my box of chocolates.

It’s not that I am against romance. Or Valentine’s Day–because any day where a man actually feels compelled to act on his guilt of not being romantic enough the rest of … Read more »

I wish I could be inspired this morning and give you something to ponder over the next seven days, but I’ve had the flu for a week and running my push one button have a latte coffee machine is taxing my bandwidth right now. So I thought I would share something I found amusing. My husband took the little hero to the Mariner’s Fan Fest on Sunday. Little hero LOVES baseball, DH DETESTS it, so it is a real sign of a father’s love that he would spend the day at Safeco Field with two 9 year olds as they … Read more »

So last week on my knitting blog, Knit the Stash, I filled out a questionnaire for a knitting swap, Beat the Winter Doldrums. Knitters do cool things like this. Get together, make small projects for each other, add in a pile of goodies and send said box of goodies along to a new friend. The questionnaire is to give your secret friend an idea of the things you like, and one of the questions was something along the lines of “where would you go for a vacation right now.” Now I know what the DH would answer: Hawaii. Before … Read more »

When I was at the New Jersey conference in October, I was invited to sit down with Sophia Nash and be interviewed for Romance Novel TV. How fun is that! I’d been dying to do one of those interviews, but after they asked me and I enthusiastically said yes, then came the email that said to show up in “camera ready makeup.” Huh?

You have to realize, I am so not the makeup girl. I don’t put it on unless I am going out. Like really out, in real public. Not up to school to pick up the kids … Read more »

So for the second December in a row, Seattle got slammed with a storm that reminded all of us out here that while we might not get snow, or tornadoes, or hurricanes, Mother Nature doesn’t leave us out. Here are some photos from my poor neighborhood, which is slide prone to begin with–heck, we just got the main road in and out of our neighborhood opened a month ago after it had been closed for nearly two years, after a slide in 2005 closed it for nearly a year, and then last year, a week after it reopened, the wind … Read more »

Okay, I lied. I wasn’t planning a traditional, family laden Thanksgiving. All the while I was feeding you all recipes and encouraging a Martha Stewart marathon, I was packing my bags and cookware and getting the heck out of Dodge. And quite frankly, I don’t feel guilty. Not in the least. Because the four of us, instead of spending the Thanksgiving weekend working on cleaning and cooking and then cleaning again and resorting to Black Friday spent four days:

In Seaside, Oregon. Yes, this the northern Oregon coast in the late November. And it was a balmy 56 degrees. At … Read more »

Gads. I’ve been terrible about getting something together about the weekend–perhaps its because I’m still trying to get caught up after a whirlwind month of social engagements. My husband was a tad grumpy the other day and I asked him what had his boxers in a knot (okay, perhaps that wasn’t the most gracious way to ask and by way of marital harmony, I could have phrased it a little better) and his reply was: “Well, you’ve been gone. Like the entire month. And I’ve had to deal with the kids and every thing.” Do you see the hands up … Read more »