Did anyone watch Duel last night on the MeTV channel? Duel is a 1971 Spielberg film starring Dennis Weaver. It is a nail-biting, edge-of-your-chair thriller and probably caused my weird dreams. In one of my dreams, I was in a northern state in the springtime and ice was breaking up on the lakes. In celebration, people were […]

It Takes a Lot of Coffee to Write a Mystery
·It takes more than one cup of Folgers Coffee to write a tension-filled scene in a Darcy and Flora mystery. For example, time is a vital part of setting. When does the story take place? Last December, Oklahoma experienced record floods. I decided to use that phenomenon when writing Grave Heritage. However, the story doesn’t take […]

Gladness Is Where You Find It
·Gladness, joy, maybe a bit of wackiness are all around us. Enjoying the moment makes the day brighter. Going into the church yesterday morning for the senior breakfast, I met a lady I didn’t know. We introduced ourselves. Her name was Betty. “I’m not very good with remembering names,” she said. “Oh, well, in that case, […]

The Beauty of Brothers
My brothers and I often reminisce. Sadly, we don’t usually chat over coffee; our conversations are by telephone except for those rare occasions when we can all get together. Who else but my brothers can remember relatives who are no longer with us or recollect childhood days with Mom and Dad? It’s funny; even when thinking of a shared […]

Wednesday Ramblings
·My Wednesday thoughts are ramblings, here, there, and all over the place. Yesterday, Matt, Nathan and I took advantage of the warm weather to bone up on our basketball skills. Actually, the boys did a lot more shooting baskets than I did but, for an old lady, I wasn’t too bad. The best part was […]

Amazing Real-Life Mysteries
·Life has many mysteries as puzzling as fictional ones, happenings that have never been explained. These intrigue me. Amelia Earhart’s disappearance is one of those mysteries. Yesterday, I read a news story that might explain what happened to this daring pilot. And then again, it may not. In 1937, she was attempting to fly around the globe […]