A young busy mother of two, I look at my twelve-year-old son and a soon-to-be nine-year old daughter and wonder, “where did the time go?” Like many parents, I often get nostalgic while looking at old photographs or remembering when they were born. Now that they are getting older, I cherish moments with them even more, realizing how fleeting time is. It’s funny because there are times when I’m feeing overwhelmed and I’ll say, “I need a break.” We’ll make plans for the children to visit relatives for while and once they’re gone, I miss them terribly. Like now, my daughter is out of town with my husband’s sister and niece. The original summer plan was for her to attend day camp along with my son, but there was a waiting list for her age group. Seeing how she was number sixty on the list, we didn’t have high hopes of her being enrolled. I’d wanted both children to attend day camp so I could write during the hours they were gone and then we could do “fun stuff” together when they came home. Well, with my daughter home with me during the days, my plans to get a lot…

Have you ever written to tell an author how much you’ve loved their book and then waited, hoping for an answer, in vain? I’m not one of those unresponsive authors. I love getting fan mail and make a point of answering every letter I receive. I even invite readers to stop by should they be traveling through this area, and I get quite a few such visitors, all of whom are stunned by the view of Lake Superior my writing desk provides. “How do you ever get any writing done with a view like this?” they ask. Yesterday I had several such visitors — a reader from Wisconsin who brought her daughter and her husband, another reader from the Twin Cities who arrived with her hubby and four ears of freshly grown corn, a young man and his two small children who wanted to see the small shed where I write. This view is actually one of the reasons I became a writer. Moving to this pristine and fairly remote area nine years ago changed me from a writing hopeful into an actual author. Prior to moving here, I’d worked for a literary publisher in Minneapolis where, surrounded by great…