Last month, I braved the heat of Texas and spent a few days in San Antonio. I stayed in a historic hotel right next to the Alamo, strolled the Riverwalk to find an out of the way restaurant, and took in the sights and sounds of a place I’d never been before. I didn’t want to pack up my bags and come home. I love finding new places to visit. But sometimes, the travel bug is biting, but the day job and my budget isn’t cooperating. What’s a girl with itchy feet to do then? Stay-cation. Pull up the chamber of commerce website for your home town and towns within driving distance and find someplace you haven’t been. I’m lucky that I live in a small historic river town. There are lots of places I haven’t made it too, even though we’ve lived here over five years. Like the brand new river museum. When my son visited last fall, we took a trip to the Cahokia Mounds where an early American tribe lived before they disappeared into history. Reminds you of the Roanoke villagers, doesn’t it? The site has a great museum that highlights the day to day life of…

Drama isn’t just the stuff of my fiction, it’s the story of my life. Case in point: two days ago, I’d just posted on Instagram when I realized to my horror I’d accidentally (don’t ask!) tacked a list of my passwords onto the post. I instantly deleted it, of course. I wasn’t aware it had gone out on Twitter and Facebook until I got a phone call from my sister-in-law, Doretta, in California. It’s not enough I have to worry about hackers in the Ukraine—oh no, way too tame for yours truly— I had to post my passwords on the Internet. Hours later, when I finally staggered off to bed after changing all my passwords, it was only to toss and turn with nightmares of Ukrainian hackers. My decision to go indie after decades of being traditionally published began in similar grand fashion. It dates back to an incident that occurred before there even was an Internet to speak of.  When my second novel, SUCH DEVOTED SISTERS, came out in the 1980’s, it happened to coincide with the fatwa on Salman Rushdie, with whom I shared the same publisher at the time. Everyone involved with the Rushdie novel had received…