Month: June 2012

Palace of the Blue Butterfly coverEn Fin! Finally. Amazing what I can do with a little free time. Now all I have to do is get this novel formatted for Amazon, and all those who “Have Kindle Will Travel” can download it and be good to go.

I’m not giving anything away if I tell you that Lili takes a side trip to Valle de Bravo, a charming hillside town built around Lake Avandaro just a couple of hours outside of Mexico City. Of course, you’ll just have to read the book and find out why she goes there and what she finds out when she does, but I thought I’d show you some pretty pictures I pulled from Travel and Leisure just to whet your appetite.

In the chapter I’m talking about, we will follow Lili as she walks by the lake, heads up to the plaza and wanders the streets looking for a certain address. It will be hard to read a romantic suspense novel like Palace of the Blue Butterfly if the only images you have in your mind of Mexico are vast deserts, dusty run-down villages, narco-kingpins and a population . . .

Jesse Morrow Mountain, CaliforniaFresno County planning commissioners Wednesday sided with emotional opponents of rock mining at Jesse Morrow Mountain, surprising many who watched a four-hour debate over the project.

In a 4-3 vote, the commission turned thumbs down to the proposal from multinational cement company Cemex, which wants to dig rock from the Sierra foothill and crush it for ready-mix concrete. The company will appeal the decision to the Fresno County Board of Supervisors later this year. Supervisors could still approve the quarry, which would . . .

Horse on  lupine covered hillSeven weeks ago Dave and I were on the front porch, drinking coffee, not a care in the world. All was bliss. Okay, so I had a few cares. I was worried about the presentation on Mexico City that I was scheduled to give at a “Salon” we hold up here.

Actually, let me restate that. I was worried about getting down to the valley to get my hair and nails done before the presentation, and except for that little detail, all was well. I just needed to get myself caffeinated up and run through the presentation a final time.

I went inside to pour another cup of coffee, looked out the window and that’s when I saw Dave lying face down in the grass. You have to realize my first thought wasn’t that he was hurt. Noooo. He’d been on a mission to eradicate all gophers from the lawn, and I just assumed he was getting an up close and personal look at a gopher warren. Except that didn’t make sense, not the way he was lying.

In what now seems like very slow motion, I finally got the idea that his lying on the grass had nothing to do with the gophers, that something was seriously wrong. Only I didn’t know how wrong or I would have . . .