Happy New Year!

2024 was a year of accomplishment, but ended with frustration. I submitted The Knight, the Gnome, and the Fox, the third book in the Sleuthing with Mortals series in November of 2023. My publishers changed distributers at around that time, and it did not go well, through no fault of theirs. The poor staff had to load all their authors’ books (and there are hundreds of them) to numerous platforms by hand, which meant they slaved away all through the holidays and beyond. This holiday season was mercifully stress-free for them, comparatively speaking.

Here it is, at long last!

However, this all meant that new launches were delayed, hence, the third book in my “Sleuthing with Mortals” series took quite a while to get through the process. But here we are in 2025, and The Knight, the Gnome, and the Fox goes live on January 17. Not long now. As usual, my editor was meticulous and thoughtful and the cover artist as masterful as ever. 

There is a fourth book in the works, too. Odin’s Word is in typesetting now and I will post here when it is up for pre-order. I can’t wait to see what the artist comes up with for the cover!

Teaching and coaching are still going strong, and it’s great that I can do it either here in Northern Virginia or by the Chesapeake Bay in Southern Maryland, thanks to Zoom. Zoom is one of the few good things to come out of the COVID pandemic. I know it existed before that, but I’d never heard of it, and I don’t think most people had.

I’ll be teaching this year at the Tinker Mountain Writers’ Workshop at Hollins University in Roanoke, Virginia

It’s a beautiful campus in the Blue Ridge Mountains and a wonderful experience for beginners and advanced writers alike. A nucleus of participants return year after year. It’s an honor to join such a distinguished faculty. To add to the fun this year, it’s the workshop’s 20th anniversary, so I know a few special events will be planned.

I have a special place to sit and work at our house on the Bay

I can look out at the water, which sparkles like the Mediterranean in the morning sunlight. I find being near the shore immensely soothing and inspiring—lapping waves, the splash as ospreys dive for fish to take back to their chicks on the platform just off our neighbor’s beach, the croak of a heron as it takes off from the breakwater, and the honking of geese as they fly home at sunset.

I guess you can tell that it’s my favorite place to be.

The major characters in Sleuthing with Mortals started out living in Northern Virginia in a town called Salton

I introduced this town in my Flower Ladies trilogy. But by the third book, they have moved to—guess where? Right, my favorite place. The story still takes the reader all over the world, though, as Lin narrates her memoirs ranging over the eons, and the family travels abroad, which often lands them in the middle of precarious situations. There’s never a dull moment!

I won’t take so long to post again—my New Year’s Resolution.

Ciao for now!