I have a final exam today. For the past ten weeks, I’ve been taking an Arabic refresher course. See, I never was able to keep up with my Arabic study after I began twenty years ago. When our local community college started offering the language a few years ago, I was glad […]

Are we crazy or what? December arrives and suddenly we do things we don’t do all year:
~Send cards to people we don’t ever write to.
~Redecorate our house and yard.
~Bake cookies and cook meals from scratch. I never make homemade sugar cookies, but come December we turn out batch after batch.
~Attend and/or plan parties […]

I remember when my first book, Jury of One, got picked up. Word ricocheted through the family tree faster than Joe Konrath can commandeer a platter of petite fours.
Once we got through the initial question/answer session…
Q: Are you going to be on Oprah?
A: Not until I write a book that will change someone’s life.
Q: You’re […]

I make no apologies: I like Christmas music. I listen to it all season long–voluntarily. Now, I don’t say that I like all Christmas music; I don’t care for most of Mr. Thrilling’s holiday listening selections–the majority of which seem to have been either written or performed by guys in prison.
I have nothing against […]

I admit it freely: I’ve no shortage of vices. Salt is my primary one. Don’t talk to me about high blood pressure (mine’s low, but thanks for being concerned) and don’t raise an eyebrow when I reach for the shaker. If you want to get it from me, you’ll have to pry it out of […]

I am Dutch. I am German. I am Luxembourgian. I am French. Alas, the French relatives speak only German, being from Alsace-Lorraine, otherwise known as the Franco-German equivalent of an air-hockey puck.
Point is, if all the participants in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 threw down their arms and decided to go […]

Life as a military spouse is always exciting. Sometimes you get to move during Thanksgiving and sometimes you get to celebrate Christmas in Europe.
That’s right, Pilot Guy (aka my husband) is deploying to Germany and the kids and I are going to fly over (at our expense) to meet him for Christmas. Two weeks […]

Every once in a while, I go to the awstats page of our blog to conduct a little behind-the-scenes marketing research. Curious to see how long people are spending here, what they’re reading, what countries they’re coming from, how many add us to their favorites each month, etc. It helps us see if we’re hitting […]

Like most of the writers I know, I’m obsessed. I think about writing as much as the normal red-blooded male thinks about sex–that’s something like once every 52 seconds, according to THE FEMALE BRAIN by Dr. Louann Brizendine.
I’m always running dialog in my head, working ways out of the corners I’ve written myself into, […]

Yes, I’m doing the birthday equivalent of Blatant Self Promotion. Sue me. I love my birthday; it’s the one day of the year when everyone on the planet has to be nice to me. What’s not to like? I’ll admit to being slightly heartbroken, though. I adore snow, and for most of my life have […]