Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving – the purest of holidays, and my personal favorite for it is a day devoted to food, family, friends and gratitude.  It is a day too that reminds me of just how much I have in life – my family and friends, my health, my job, the release of my  7th book six months…

Read More

Nurses’ Week

Nurses’ Week is upon us, and this year, in the midst of healthcare crises seemingly everywhere, it seems especially fitting to celebrate nurses, those quiet heroes who walk among us. For in every hospital around the world, it is a nurse who works feverishly to stem the tide of death and disaster that seems always…

Read More

Christmas Once Again

Christmas Wishes Christmas – the most magical time of year, a time of sweet dreams and still sweeter wishes for most of us, but for so many here and around the world, Christmas may never come at all. It will be another day to get through and nothing more. For refugees, among the hardiest yet…

Read More

It’s Christmas Time Once More

Christmas.  It’s that time of year again. And, though the very word—Christmas—carries a hint of magic as it twirls through our thoughts, stirring up wonderfully evocative memories of enchanting, never to be forgotten moments, it is also a time of short tempers, long lines, great expectations and,  greater still, disappointments. The real meaning of the…

Read More

The Continuing Misery of Afghanistan

As a nurse/humanitarian aid worker, Afghanistan was my first assignment and the place I returned to most often in my decades long career delivering aid in some of the world’s bleakest spots. On my first trip, a savvy reporter told me that it would become the place that would forever hold my heart. And, through…

Read More

Looking Back on Covid

Was it only a year ago that life as we knew it, came to a swift and unexpected halt as, what was then, a strange new virus, Covid-19, was moving like wildfire through Europe and Asia and then it was suddenly on our doorstep. “A pandemic is upon us. Two weeks.” they said, “will allow…

Read More

Behind the Mystery Series

People always assume that I am solely a women’s fiction writer and that my recent foray into crime thriller is a real departure. I’ve been writing since I was seven years old when I penned my first short story series, but it was at age 12 when my English teacher, Mrs. Hughes, gave the class…

Read More

Merry Christmas!

Christmas.  This has been a most difficult year for all of us, but as we sit and celebrate the joys of Christmas and our own resilience, let’s remember that the magic and the promise of Christmas still exists in our hearts and our most precious memories. For me, even the name is magical.   Christmas!…

Read More

Behind The Book – Dead Girl Walking

I am a nurse who has spent much of my career in the ER and, as with so many ER nurses, our roles include a significant bit of detective work and skills. From those first moments in Triage, whether the patient has arrived on foot or via ambulance, it is the nurse who will undertake…

Read More

Nursing in the Time of Covid

Long before the pandemic hit, the World Health Organization (WHO) had declared 2020 The Year of the Nurse, and now, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, it seems especially fitting to acknowledge the work of nurses, for whose life hasn’t been touched by a nurse? That degree of commitment to patients happens not just…

Read More