Cathy Perkins's Blog

 Dear Reader,

It's been a chaotic and life changing year. I have accomplished to survive the pandemic, the loss of my only child, and to celebrate 30 years of marriage to my best friend. I learned a great deal about myself in the last four months. 

1. I'm a true survivor and I will come back stronger for the future. More determined to make something of myself and my life and my son, Danny's, life.

2. I come from a long line of survivors. My ancestors fought manifest destiny and being genizaros in N...

Dear Reader, 

My apologies for being absent for so long. I had a crisis and now I'm back. Last year was a doozy and knocked me for a loop. I'm a survivor and I will survive this as well. 

Today, I'd like to update everyone on what I've been working on. 

I'm revising my manuscript and preparing to send it to my Editor who graciously offered to help me. 

This project has been keeping me busy and I aim to finish it before July 2023. Wish me luck. 

I've been reading some excellent books on writing by exc...

 Hello & Goodbye from the Stiletto Gang!

We've been on the blogger platform for MANY years, but as the platform slowly gets abandoned by the developers it's become more and more unfriendly to readers and writer's alike.  So...

We're taking our old posts with us and we've added functionality, like getting the posts delivered to your inbox, and easier access to our bios and our books.  We hope you'll join us on our writing journey there.

By Kathryn Lane

I love the mountains in northern New Mexico. Nature in this area constantly surprises me with beautiful vistas, wildflowers, and above all, the wild animals. We have elk, deer, coyotes, wild turkeys, several varieties of birds, Cooper hawks, and bears. Occasional wild cats and mountain lions also roam the area. I’m mesmerized by the herds of elk and their calves. 

I'm all packed for camp...but there's one thing missing from this photo and that's my laptop because the camp I'm participating in July is Camp Nanowrimo. 😆 Seriously...I don't camp. Never had. Not even when I was a girl scout. 

So, what the heck am I doing?

Camp Nano (National Novel Writing Month) happens twice a year. It has a more chilled vibe than National Novel Writing Month, which is November (I never understood how that month was chosen). In November the goal is to write...

 By Lynn McPherson

Looking for inspiration these days can be tricky. Where do you go to find it? I am happy to report that I'm planning mine to come by way of my sister's upcoming birthday. Weird, right? Let me explain. My sister has a milestone coming up this fall and has organized a trip to celebrate. Not a big surprise since she loves to travel. It'll be her first time away for over two years, but she and her husband are finally ready to head out again to explore the world, one destination at ...

by Dru Ann Love

Every year me and two of my friends plan a weekend getaway. We’ve been to Boston, Denver, Savannah, and most recently Memphis and Tennessee. Whatever is our destination, I always look to see if I have any author friends in the area and plan a lunch. I like to introduce them to the authors and the books they write. In most cases, they do tend to make a purchase or two.

This past weekend, we did the touristy things, Graceland, the National Civil Rights Museum, and the Peabody Hote...

Writer, humanist,

          dog-mom, horse servant and cat-slave,

       Lover of solitude

          and the company of good friends,

        new places, new ideas

           and old wisdom.

The answer to what love is has defied the best efforts of philosophers and poets, yet we know it when we see it, as these keen observations from children prove. 

"Karl, age 5: ‘Love is when a girl puts on perfume and a boy puts on shaving cologne and they go out and smell each other.’ 

Billy, who is 4, had to think...

June 23, 2022 

Dear Reader,  

It is officially summer, and I spent the solstice riding on a quad runner with mi esposo in the Sangre de Cristos near the cell phone towers at 10,000 feet (about twice the elevation of Denver, Colorado). The air felt thin and caused me to get short of breath. But the oxygen was thick and smelled like wildflowers and mountain meadows and forests. Just what the doctor ordered. I am working on being a better human being and it beg...

Most mystery writers and readers are fascinated by true crimes. Even if our reading doesn’t branch out beyond cozy mysteries, many of us watch everything from Murder, She Wrote reruns to each iteration of the Law & Order franchise. Some of us have even become hooked on true crime podcasts. 

Me? I’m a news junkie. All my books have been inspired in some way by actual events, or human-interest stories. Inspired is the key word, though. For instance, in A Stitch to Die for, the fift...