I’m just back from vacation, which included a cruise around the Tyrrhenian Sea, a place I had only before seen on 2000-year old maps doing research for the Eye of Isis novels. On Sardinia I visited Nora, an ancient Roman ruin of a seaside village, where for the first time in my life outside Alaska I felt like I was walking through the pages of one of my own books. Yes, that book would be Abduction of a Slave, the prólogos. It was dizzying and a little nauseating to imagine real pirates coming ashore at Nora to kidnap real people to sell in the slave markets all over the Middle Sea.

Today, it is as peaceful as it looks in the pictures below.
Sometimes? Travel gives you whiplash.

Top, a panorama of Nora’s lovely little bay. You can see why they built there.

Middle, they even had their own theater.

Bottom left, the four columns remaining of the atrium of one of the houses, and bottom right, a recreation of that room.

(More photos of my trip coming on Random Saturdays.)

Meet the Storyknife writers of May 2025! I’m happy to report that April’s Founder’s Match was again a success thanks to all of you chipping in with your hard-earned cash to match my $16,500. That amount includes $5500 to underwrite a Storyknife Fellowship in crime fiction (natch) and a $1000 Travel Scholarship for Alaska women writers living off the road system. You, too, can sponsor a Fellowship or a Travel Scholarship. Just let us know!

And ICYMI, congratulations Tessa Hulls, 2022 Storyknife Alum, for winning the 2025 Pulitzer Prize in Memoir! Which book–ahem–she finished at Storyknife. We are pleased and proud to bask in her reflected glory.

And now, back to work on The Harvey Girl. Just as soon as I get over jet lag and the guys finish the new siding on my house. It is a tad distracting but they’re working until 9 every night, sunshine or rain, so how can I yell at them? Above and beyond the call. Later, ‘gators–