This vending machine in the Sip and Sonder coffee shop in Inglewood (near Los Angeles) spits out free short stories for you to read. Well-written ones too. It’s like winning the lotto only with less money and begging relatives.

I’m running for Secretary of the Women’s Fiction Writers Association. We have a margarita fountain at our yearly retreat, so, of course.

We Were Snubbed by Our Dead Dog. Twice. was published in the New York Times. You can find the essay here.

During the pandemic, I hosted Zoom write-ins for members of the Women’s Fiction Writers Association. In those meetings, Pamela Stockwell, from New Jersey, befriended Kelly Hartog from Los Angeles. A year later, and without having met in person, Pamela donated her kidney to save Kelly’s life. Six months later, at the 2022 WFWA retreat in…

Had a fun day researching bees at an Atlas Obscura event held at the Elysian Community Garden. It’s exciting to make things up then do field work and discover those ideas could actually work in real life. Score! And eating fresh honey? What a delicious writing perk.

I had the honor of being in the Debut Authors Program of the International Thriller Writers and attended the Thrillerfest conference at the New York Hilton Midtown from May 5-9, 2026. What a dream to be around rock star authors like Robert Dugoni, Harlan Coben, Lisa Scottoline, Karin Slaughter, Gregg Hurwitz, S. A. Cosby and…