I love Christmas. Always have. Always will. My parents made a big deal out of it when I was little, even when money was tight. It just meant the tree was smaller and presents fewer, but we still baked and decorated sugar cookies, filled the house with traditional music, and went to church on Christmas … Read more

Authors are sometimes asked where we get ideas for our stories. Sitting in the tasting room of a winery one day, I looked around at the family pictures and noticed every one of the owner’s adult children were somehow involved in winemaking. When I wrote my first book in my Love in Wine Country series, … Read more

“I sometimes joke that my greatest shortcoming as a writer is that I had an extremely happy childhood.” The quote is from Anna Quindlen and I can sympathize. I did not grow up in a dysfunctional family. My parents were married for fifty years. I had a little sister who was close, despite a six-year … Read more

We’re housesitting for a friend this week…actually cat-sitting. Thelma and Louise are two rescues who have found a home in cat paradise. Our friend has a wonderful old Craftsman cottage in the heart of old Sonoma, Ca., right near a winery. The street in front of the house is busy, but the cats have lots … Read more

If you’re a writer, you tweet, or if you visit social media sites you may have heard of Nanowrimo. The term is an acronym for National Novel Writing Month. The idea is that you start writing on Nov. 1 and you write every day until Nov. 30. If you produce 1,667 words a day, you’ll … Read more