2020

Before sifting through today’s blog photographs, I put the kettle on to boil and drop a bag of Barry’s Irish Breakfast Tea into a mug. Then I start the music from the Chieftains first album playing on the stereo. Aki follows me around the kitchen after the water boils. Something about the smell of Irish

Many of my book coaching clients are currently seeking agens for finished manuscripts or, in the case of some pursuing hybrid publishing, already in the pipeline with pub dates set for their work. The most common comment I hear, whether a new author hopes to be published in 2022, 2023 or later, is “It’s so

I had a fun, and decidedly Alaskan experience, when I saw that one of the characters in my forthcoming novel, Lost Mountain, shares the name of a real guy who lives in Southeast. His name is Mike Trotter, and I ran across the name a few years ago in the Letters section of an issue

Most airplanes landing in Juneau pass by the Mendenhall Glacier with landing wheels extended. In this time of Covid, passengers flying from outside the state have to submit to testing and live quarantined until test results arrive. Government experts are expecting a new, post Thanksgiving rise in Corvid cases in our state, increasing stress on

Dear 49 Writers Community, The year 2020 has been challenging on so many levels, for reasons with which we are all well familiar. Yet through it all, Alaskan writers did what you do best: you wrote. Despite the discouraging and exhausting days of a year of chaotic extremes, you found time to put words to

I’m sitting in the back yard of our house in Phoenix, homesick for my wife and cats, but grateful not to be in Anchor Point too, because the 65 degree sunshine here makes the countdown of days to my impending neck surgery a little more pleasant than the January freeze/thaw cycle ongoing at home might.

This morning I spent one hour listening to a webinar about social media for writers. Don’t groan—it was time well spent. (More on that topic next month.) But somehow after that, beteen 11 am and 2 pm, I did little more than eat two rounds of toast, futz around with Instagram Reels, communicate with my

I’m a long-time advocate of using technology to build community and help writers feel supported. When COVID brought unforeseen changes and demands into all of our lives, I felt grateful that at least one aspect of my life–creating community via distance–could adjust with ease in the face of so many unknowns. Most of our work

Gracie, my Irish-American grandmother, was the last child her mother delivered. Gram’s other six siblings left the home after school, believing that Gracie would stay with their mom until she died. That was the Irish way for the last born. They must have been angry when my Grandma Gracie took a winter train to Montana