I am a realist. Though my mother might disagree (I suspect she equated my head in a book with my head in the clouds), on the bottom line I’m the ultimate pragmatist. I believe—and write—about life in all its humble glory, yet that’s a spiritual reality. I search for SUBSTANCE, the core value inside the…
“Art takes nature as its model,” Aristotle said. In other words, art imitates life—and I believe that to a point, since much of my own writing reflects the settings and characters I interact with every day. While I’ve never suffered from a scarcity of story ideas, after experiencing the Chilean version of a “24” season…
“If you want to change the world, pick up a pen,” Martin Luther said—and did. Thirty-two years ago, as a young wife and mother in the (almost) godforsaken Islands of Chiloé, I decided I wanted to change the strangely delusional world I lived in. So I picked up a pen and began to write some…
In writer’s terminology, a WIP is a Work-in-Progress. Our lives, like my books, are a work-in-progress. They’re in process. In preparation, on the path to perfection. When friends ask (some with dubious confidence, I suspect) how my latest project, Anchor at Alcázar Reef, is coming along, I share about four factors that indicate the status…