I'm working on the first in a series of Redwood County medical mystery novels. My protagonist Dr. Fiona Tyler is an Emergency Department physician with an unusual problem. A shaman who thinks Fiona is his soul-bride is proving his love for her by dropping deranged, drugged, and dead people in her Redwood County hospital. Redwood County is a beautiful place with a high weird to rational ratio but this is beyond quirky.

My writing process is similar to my housecleaning process and my painting process and my gardening process. I can sum it up as "spurts and lags." I'll tend to do a great deal of work at once and then little to nothing for a period of time. I can chip away at some projects a little bit at a time, then finish in a great flurry. Over time, I've given up worrying about it. It all comes together in the end.

I'm working with a cover artist. Because these Redwood County medical mystery novels are a series, I wanted a consistent design that would brand the series. We're considering using images from my own original art as a part of the covers. I have an encaustic (hot wax) painting of the shaman in VENOM.

I'm working on Book Two in the Dr. Fiona Tyler Redwood County medical mystery series. “Sickest quickest” is the mantra. The Saturday night in question, sickest includes the loopy patient playing with the entrails spilling out of his belly. Most people wouldn’t be quite so happy about crocheting their intestines into doilies. The worst part is the police say this patient is one of series of assaults with evisceration, the rest of whom are dead. Who is spilling the guts in Redwood County? The police nominate Fiona’s boyfriend, who is confined in the state facility for mentally disordered forensic offenders at Atascadero.

My desk is cluttered. I subscribe to the geological stratum theory of file management: if I've used something recently, it'll be on the top of the pile where I need it. If I haven't looked for it for several days, it's gotten buried, which is fine.

I also have an empty cardboard box for the cat, and a small cedar wood box with the ashes of my dead dog. They were best buddies. For some reason it's important to me that no papers or objects touch the cedar wood box, so there's a clear perimeter around it.

The desk also boasts paper calendars from current and prior years, some carved wood letter openers from Madagascar, a brass crane standing on a turtle from China, miscellaneous recipe printouts that sounded good at the time, a jar of pliers and screwdrivers, a broken ceramic art piece that fell off the window when the tree hit the roof, five or more obsolete computer peripherals, and a dead printer that succumbed to a power surge. The working computer monitor and keyboard, of course, and the requisite stuffed jar of pens only two of which are functional.

I'm a writer, artist, traveler -- I love to Go See. I go to France frequently, also Italy and Spain. I've been to Africa three times. All of my experiences play into my writing and art.

I read primarily historical fiction for pleasure, such as Diana Gabaldon, Patrick O'Brien, Sharan Newman, Margaret Frazer, Lindsay Davis, Ellis Peters, Elizabeth Peters.

With these writers as inspiration I'm chipping away at a historical novel set in the time of the Spanish Inquisition and the first voyage of Christopher Columbus. The protagonist is Heironymous Bosch, a major artist of the northern Renaissance who created demons, hell-scapes and pre-surrealist paintings.

Writing and art are always intertwined for me.

I have an android tablet with a very tattered leather cover that's great for travel.

I think one of the greatest joys of writing is solving problems. Nice, fictional problems, that are occasionally susceptible to reason and logic, unlike messy real life problems that just seem to bounce around in a pinball machine of doubt, missteps, and confusion. There's a plot! Life never seems to have a plot.