Mystery Writers of America National Award-Winning Author
Mystery Writers of America National Award-Winning Author
SANDRA NEILY
Blog
At a library author talk this past week, I was asked how I wrote a novel when I’d only written non-fiction for work.
I said I burst into tears, got up and paced the room, made a mantra of the names of women friends who said I had a voice and should write, repeated that names mantra over and over . . . and I sat back down and started typing. Crying but typing.
But I also told them about my do-it-yourself MFA (Master of Fine Arts). (Still ongoing . . . )
At my Moosehead Lake home (camp) I’ve been Kamikaze Gardening.
Kamikaze Gardening is my term for intensely swooping down to remorselessly attack every garden job before black flies drive me indoors. (They know we gardeners are in a time crunch that fits their arrival and dining habits.) I am planting, weeding, composting, sprinkling Milorganite to discourage deer foraging, and this year, furiously hoeing out an invasive that’s choking out flowers I know I can save from the deer.
Good to Know: black flies only breed in clean running water. If we have hordes of them, it means we are actually lucky to live here. (Sometimes that consoles. Often it does not.)
My husband and I have been on the road for almost a month, exploring creeks for wild trout (very smart fish), and staying in North Carolina national park and forest service campsites. I’m used to Maine camping in remote places, so sharing a campground with other travelers (sometimes over forty of them in tents, small campers, and very large generator-chugging RV’s) has been a new experience.
But first, the important stuff. As if there weren’t enough barriers to writing a novel in a small camper-trailer, this morning I mistakenly took the dog’s Benadryl tablets instead of my meds. The fog descended. I have yet to stop staring at a spider that seems to be staring back at me.
It’s mud month in much of the Northeast. I’m washing off my snowshoes and waxing my X-skies to rest them for a while. What to DO when it finally does melt off the high-up slopes?
Distancing is still with us! Here’s something very cool to do. (And then find Maine’s mud anthem, “I Love Mud,” at the end of this post. Sing along with Rick.)
Big Night!
Roads, Rain, and Amphibians. Big Nights are fascinating and unique natural events that occur every spring. With spring rain and warming temperatures, frogs and salamanders move to their breeding grounds by the truckload. However . . .
