1800 Miles of Meditations
In March, I turn 60 years—and this is the 60th blog posting on my website. So, I’m going to take a break from this writing project, at...
Mystery Writing, by the numbers
The 2019 “Six-Word Mystery” contest sponsored by the Rocky Mountain chapter of the Mystery Writers of America drew more than 200 entries...
Immigration, Integration, and Imagination
A reader of Lethal Fetish and the other Riley mysteries asked me why I chose one of this Irishman’s haunts to be a Polish bakery—and how...
Why is "normal" good?
Lethal Fetish is now available (via Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Pen-L) . And real controversy may be hot on fiction’s heels! The day...
Pilgrimage
During my artist’s residency at Guadalupe Mountains National Park in the Chihuahua Desert, I crafted set of daily meditations. These are...
The Locusts Are Coming!
The locusts are coming!!! Well, at least Locust: The Opera (an environmental murder mystery with music by Anne Guzzo, libretto by Jeff...
A Dark Genre’s Enlightening Lessons
Last semester I taught an undergraduate course on crime noir, including films, radio programs, readings, and (of course) writing. Upon...
To Truly See... Look Away
I recently spent two weeks in Grand Teton National Park on a writing retreat. I’d been there before, but this time I adopted a...
Homemaking
Last month, I served as the artist-in-residence at Homestead National Monument outside of Beatrice, Nebraska. Having come to believe...
The Two BLMs: What a Government Agency and Political Movement Have in Common
The following essay was written for my nature/environment column on the Unitarian Universalist World website (https://www.uuworld.org/aut...
