At bedtime in my family of daughters, I heard more “Read me a story” than “Tell me a story.” Now that they’re adults, the clamor has evolved to “Write me a story,” but the urge is still prompted by our storytelling gene. Recently, I attended three days of seminars in a fabulous online writers’ retreat….
“Do you believe in destiny?” Nicolás Serrano, up to his elbows in apple mash, asks halfway through my first book Destiny at Dolphin Bay. His friend Melissa has questioned his self-identification as a Chiloé islander, knowing he grew up a city boy. As she watches him make cider in an antique press, she sees him…
I love mysteries, especially historical mysteries. I also love history, which is why you’ll find the mysterious past woven into many of my books. One mystery of history, however, is how easily we forget both the good and the bad. “Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” –Winston S. Churchill…
If Michael Jordan and Pelé (if you have to ask, the joke’s for you) were walking down the street together anywhere except North America, 99% of the people would ask, “Who’s that guy with Pelé?” That’s how soccer rules the world. Because everybody from Manchester to Moscow, Montevideo to Melbourne, knows soccer. Everybody may not…
Chile doesn’t have any real tropical jungles, but the concrete and linguistic ones offer sufficient challenge to navigate. Life here in the Chilean jungle has always been complicated—my (very Chilean) daughter says it’s “against the law” for anything to be too simple! However, these days the jungle of the past looks like a stroll in…
How does a writer generate ideas for a story? In my current quest to create the ultimate backdrop for a series targeted toward younger “young adults,” I’ve reinvented a minor character from my original story world and drawn Rachelle Peterson to center stage to prompt a round robin of quarantine tales. Every time my husband…
