The mountainous terrain of northern New Mexico, where my husband and I spend our summers, makes me aware of J.R.R. Tolkien’s clever way of segmenting Middle Earth into various regions. I’ve let my imagination fly thinking that he set up different regions, and their diverse inhabitants, by using mountain ranges and valleys to map out […]
Bob and I spend the summers in northern New Mexico. We enjoy the idyllic mountain scenery, the wildlife, the enriching tricultural experience in art, food, and the wonderful people who live here. Some are full time residents while others, like us, are only part timers. After we arrived at our cabin, I was surprised we’d […]
Have you ever felt guilty for reading a cozy, a mystery, or a romantic novel instead of delving into one of the great books, like Homer’s Iliad or Proust’s Swan Way or a classic like Virginia Wolf’s A Room of One’s Own? I grew up in northern Mexico and I attended a fantastic high school […]
Happy 4th of July to Everyone! I was 25 years old, the mother of a precious five-year-old son, and I did not hold a college degree when I crossed the southern border to live in the US. I was leaving a really bad marriage in Mexico and starting a new life for my son and […]
When I write fiction, my approach is to “fly by the seat of my pants”, a style often called pantser, as opposed to a plotter who outlines and plans every minute detail of a story. I’ve said that if I had to plot every trifling item in planning a novel, I’d slit my wrists. Plotting […]
The novel – so abundant today was not always so readily available. In ancient times, novels were handwritten on papyrus paper, and they were super expensive. Before I continue though, I should share the definition most scholars use for a novel: It must be fiction. It must be prose. It must be a narrative. It must be at least […]
Like so many people before me, I wanted to write. I’d left my corporate job in international finance and moved to Texas, enrolled in a creative writing course at a local college, and on the first day of class, I sat on the front row, anxious to discover the art of writing. Much to my […]
…and readers also love sleuths that solve mystery after mystery after mystery, such as Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous protagonist, Sherlock Holmes. The genius detective solved mysteries and crimes during Conan Doyle’s lifetime and today continues to be one of the most popular characters in TV crime series. Sherlock Holmes is the archetypal detective. He uses […]
Three years ago, I wrote a blog about the probabilities of writers being replaced by artificial intelligence apps that would write faster, better books. I cited an article in The Guardian stating that AI’s capability to write creative, coherent novels was still decades in the future. I slept well after reading that article. It now […]
Presenting a new cover to the reading public is like sending a baby announcement! It takes me nine months to write a fictional story unless research is required. Then it can take longer, like in the case of Stolen Diary. For most of my stories, ideas simply come to me. Ideas can come while I’m […]