Halloween was second only to Christmas as my favorite childhood holiday. (Yes, even though my family didn’t eat sugar, so I had to give away all of the candy I collected.) Dressing up as something else and carving jack-o-lanterns scratched the same creative itch I now pour into my books. No wonder adult me…
The Lost Spells by Robert MacFarlane and Jackie Morris is a really lovely book that transcends genre. It feels a bit like a children’s book for adults, with the suck-you-in illustrations and the admonition that it’s best read aloud. And, at the same time, the book reads as a combination of going out into the…
As a gardener and nature-lover, I’ve always been drawn to the cross-quarter days. These holidays are important in my Samhain Shifter series (and in the Celtic belief system that series is roughly based on), so I thought you might enjoy hearing more about them. Less well-known than the solstices and equinoxes, the days halfway between…
Of Wolves and Men was written shortly before I was born, and small parts of it are dated. However, the overall theme of the historical human relationship with wolves stands the test of time. My favorite sections involved the intersection of Native American and wolf culture. Both two-legged and four-legged hunters would stalk antelopes in…
Adele Brand’s book is a lovingly written, easy to read, but far from exhaustive window into the red fox’s world. Most the text is about the European foxes the author has had personal experiences with (which she notes are considered by some to be a different species than the North American red fox). Here are…
Twenty-five years ago, when I first showed up at college, I immediately pored over the academic calendar. “Reading week!” I exclaimed, imagining seven solid days of curtailed classes and assignments. We’d all sit around on bean bag chairs, sipping hot chocolate, gorging on pizza, and reading silently. Now and then one of us would share…
Since today is my birthday, I thought you might indulge me sharing an old family story that contains no werewolves or supernatural elements. This essay was written by 17-year-old me as part of an application for a scholarship from the Daughters of the American Revolution. (No, they didn’t give me the scholarship. I can’t imagine…
Those of you who have dived into my Moon-crossed Wolves series may be wondering where the idea of woelfin came from. The short version is — I made it up. Of course, no story exists in a vacuum, and woelfin have real predecessors in the mythological world. Many of you have probably heard about selkies….
Humans that morph into animals abound in stories of fantasy and romance and can even be found in literary fiction, science fiction, and horror. But which shifters appeal to which readers? I have my own theories, but I thought I’d see how they stack up against real-life responses. To that end, I polled three facebook…
I live in a Star Wars household. Can you tell? Perhaps that’s why, when I heard about Disney Plus, I decided to indulge in a Star Wars marathon before the new movie comes out. Never mind that I love to read but almost never make it through a movie or television show. Okay, so, yes,…