Miscellaneous Musings
Life in Málaga—Mysteries of the universe
In August we had the eclipse. We didn’t get totality in Andalucia, but we were able to view with our special protective glasses the moon’s partial obscuring of the sun. The aligning of celestial bodies not quite a mystery but still wondrous. We were on the roof of Diana’s apartment building. I’m fumbling with my…
Read MoreLife in Málaga—Does anyone in Spain care about my book?
When you live in Spain and your book will be published in the United States, there’s a whole ocean of doubt when it comes to whether your book will find its audience. My new novel Ofelia and Norma releases in the United States on September 29, 2026 from Regal House Publishing. Does anyone in Spain…
Read MoreLife in Málaga—Life according to Vincent (Van Gogh)
June began with a trip to Amsterdam for a European Writers Salon literary meetup that featured a reading, a book crawl, and a canal boat ride with writing prompts. I listened to an eclectic lineup of Dutch, British, Turkish, Italian, North American, and other writers share their work. I bought a book at each stop…
Read MoreLife in Málaga—Thoughts from the balcony
Spring is here, the weather is warmer and the beach beckons, the tourists are filling the streets and restaurants, and the cockroaches are back. Not in our apartment just yet, but in the building entrance and only corpses have been sighted, always with a leg or tentacle dreamily waving in the air, a taunt to…
Read MoreLife in Málaga—Hey, look at me!
It’s been the month of Carnaval, the month of new connections, and the month that begins the hey-look-at-me prelude to the release of my new book. Let’s start with hey, look at me! My new book, my fourth book of fiction, comes out September 29, 2026. That’s eight months of me saying pre-order my book!…
Read MoreLife in Málaga—Mujeres
I belong to a group of women that meets every couple of weeks to converse mainly in Spanish. Diana, the group’s originator, is the only one that is fully bilingual having been raised in a Spanish-speaking family and spending part of her life in Colombia. The rest of us can claim functional bilingualism since we’ve…
Read MoreLife in Málaga—Bilingual baby, books, and fall
It’s a walk in the park, a stride across an empty street, as easy and pure as a toddler pushing a toy stroller. It’s my granddaughter’s unconscious switching between Spanish and English. It’s what I envy and delight in as I continue my daily, ongoing, and never-ending Spanish acquisition process. Our daughter Natalie, who became…
Read MoreLife in Málaga—A retreat, France, racism. Oh, and Feria.
August in Málaga means Feria, when women don traditional Flamenco dresses and accessorize with flowers, fans, and shawls, when countless bottles of the sweet Cartojal wine are poured, and song and dance, both planned and spontaneous, fill the streets of the Centro by day and the fairgrounds by night. And it happens during some of…
Read MoreLife in Málaga—A Book, a Movie, a Friend, a Retreat
It’s the end of July and I’m posting this from northern Spain in the foothills of the Pyrenees, where the weather is cool and rainy—a nice change from the high temperatures in Málaga, where I spent afternoons indoors reading or writing, or in a movie theater sheltered from the heat. At the beginning of the…
Read MoreLife in Málaga—Comings and Goings
People come, people go. So goes the line in the movie Grand Hotel. And so goes our lives. In Seattle, where I lived most of my adult years, I established friendships, some close, some casual. I saw some of those friends move to different cities, while new people came into my life as a result…
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