Now that the Keeper of Fire is available to purchase and my press releases have gone out to hundreds of news sites, it’s probably time to delve a little deeper into the metaphor. My father, for one, expressed some embarrassment and concerns about the books’ origins. He has a lot of defense mechanism-driven denial, and there is some guilt in there as well, followed up by sudden agreement. My candidness will make more than one person uncomfortable, I’m sure. Some people wi

So I wanted to get away to begin the reconstruction on my third book, “The Mermaid’s Plight.” As most of this book takes place under the sea, I decided my best bet for inspiration would be to go somewhere where I could free-dive and snorkel under water. Since it is currently March and much too cold in the northern Pacific, I decided to seek out some place tropical. With a budget hovering somewhere around $1,000 including airfare, I had a tough time finding a tropical place th

My husband and I were walking around downtown Seattle, and saw a sign for a Sensory Deprivation Tank spa. We had both read about this in the past, yet neither of us had tried it. Additionally, I had rolled my ankle quite badly on Mount Erie two days prior, and soaking it in warm water infused with 1,000 pounds of Epsom salts sounded marvelous. Photo: So much salt! We made our appointments for 9:30PM and showed up early to get settled. They led us through a hallway and I made

When I was a child I was obsessed with orca whales. I mean OBSESSED. My bedroom was papered into one mass collage from every magazine and calendar picture I could find, and I could tell you every detail about an orca’s psychology and physiology on request. I watched the Free Willy movies religiously, fast forwarding through all the boring plot portions to get to the close up shots of the whales. When I was thirteen we went to Marine World and I made sure I wore a bright neon

Disney’s The Little Mermaid came out shortly after my fourth birthday. I absolutely loved it - the Mermaid concept, not necessarily the story line. It was right about this time that my future step-mother entered our lives. (Too soon)? When she began dating my father, she did that odd thing that so many women do: They bring furnishing items over to “domesticate” the man’s home or stake out their territory, or whatever it is that they’re doing. One of the first items that began