Oh look, another glossy magazine article about lovely Orcas Island! You’d think the island would be used to this sort of thing by now, but this innocuous, perfectly decent little article has occasioned a great ruckus on at least two of the “locals” groups I follow on social media. “Oh no! This will only bring […]

Before we moved to Orcas Island, we lived in Portland, Oregon. Portland is famous (and rightfully so) for many things–Portlandia, roses, coffee, bicycles, beer, hipsters, hipster coffee, hipster beer–but one of the most important things for me about Portland was Powell’s Bookstore. Well, bookstores, actually; in addition to the giant mother ship downtown (oh my

Now that my household are all past our second shots, we are beginning to step, very slowly and carefully, back into something resembling normal life. No, we haven’t had any friends over for dinner; and no, we haven’t been inside any restaurants…but last week, I had a medical appointment off-island, and so we actually went

It isn’t literally true that now that spring is making its presence known, my husband has left me for the garden–it just seems that way sometimes. Actually, I jest: I thoroughly approve of his efforts out there. If I wasn’t RECOVERING FROM SURGERY, I’d be right out there with him, digging and clearing and pruning

On the evening of December 30, 2020, I was sitting in the living room with my husband and mother-in-law. We were playing a board game after an enjoyable, not over-large, dinner when I began to feel some tummy distress. On the morning of Monday, March 1, 2021, I had surgery to repair a hernia. The

The return of Our Lady of the Islands–and an all-new sequel! Because everything always takes longer than you expect it will…sometimes WAY longer…at long last, I am delighted to announce the re-release of the celebrated novel Our Lady of the Islands (which I wrote collaboratively with the late Jay Lake), and its as-yet-unnamed sequel! Outland Entertainment, my publisher for the

I love snow! So fluffy and pretty, so magical, so peaceful, so…inconvenient. Well, not usually. Usually we’re pretty self-sufficient out here. You have to be, to want to live on an island with only an unreliable (and fairly expensive) ferry system to connect you to “civilization”. We work at home (even before the pandemic), we’re

Silly me. Last year, when the pandemic hit, we dutifully canceled travel and took precautions and hunkered down. We washed our hands, and bought and wore masks, and learned how to make crumpets and how to Zoom. Our family indefinitely postponed my stepdad’s memorial service and my brother’s wedding; my husband Mark and I even

We live on an island–Orcas Island, in the San Juans, in farthest western Washington State–and there are lots of lovely woods here. I’ve written before about how much I love walking in the woods, how I walk nearly every day up the country road outside our house, to pick up the mail, or just to

Happy New Year! Oh my goodness, happy new year 2021, sheesh. I am not much of a blogger (to say the least…), but every year, I compile and publish a list of the books I read over the past year. I keep track of them in a spreadsheet but don’t tally it up till New