Writer's Life
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View Club Favorites 2023
2023 is about done, so we’ve taken a look back at all we’ve watched and read and experienced this year to pick our favorite moments. A lot of them are disturbingly murder-y, which happens a lot with this group! Thankfully, at least one of us is filled with gratitude. <3 Sahar Abdulaziz The Chelsea Detective Have you ever been in the mood to watch something that is not too heavy, not too light, not corny but witty… but with fascinating characters? I’m not a big TV watcher. In fact, I barely watch TV at all, but once in a while, when my mind needs a break, and I want to…
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Another Day, Another Avian Adventure
The alert came in at 6:30 AM and my collaborator texted me the particulars. I had dressed but still needed a strong cup of coffee to be of any use to her. Less than fifteen minutes later, she began the journey to my location. I had just enough time to change into my hunting clothes and prepare my vehicle. A vigilant spotter had arrived at first light to see if our target had moved during the night. We knew it would not hang around for very long. A stranger to this region, the creature’s habitat reached far into Alaska and to the frigid waters of the Arctic Ocean during its…
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Slow Dancing with the Asphalt
I recently got my driveway repaved. It had been over twenty years since it had first been laid and the freeze/thaw cycle of Pennsylvania winters had taken its toll despite regular maintenance. It started to crumble in spots and if I didn’t get it done now when the base could still be salvaged, it would cost a lot more to remove the old asphalt, lay a new base, and then let it settle over the winter before adding a new layer. The crew began showing up at eight in the morning on what promised to be an absolutely gorgeous day. Sunny, temperature in the low seventies, light winds and low…
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Conquering the Acropolis of Athens
A (Very Brief) History of Athens, Greece Athens, Greece is the oldest capital in Europe. The highest hill in the city, The Acropolis, consists of a flat-topped rock over one-hundred-fifty meters high with three incredibly steep sides. An easily defended fortress and military base from both land and sea, it only became a religious center dedicated to the worship of the goddess Athena much later during the rise and fall of the Mycenae civilization near the end of the Bronze Age. For the next four hundred years, Greece plunged into a dark age when little is known. What we think of as Ancient Greek civilization began around the fifth century…
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Ode to a Grecian Spring
Many countries celebrate May First as International Labor Day, but it’s more commonly referred to as Protomagia throughout Greece. Literally, the first day of May. It all started with the ancient Greeks who honored the Greek Goddess Maia, who was somehow related to a Roman goddess of fertility. Festivals and parades abound. The locals go out to the country to gather wildflowers or attempt the season’s first swim. This year it fell on a Monday, and being a major holiday, Athenians decided to enjoy a long weekend. Even the land celebrated; the countryside overflowed with flowers. Arriving in Athens later than expected on Friday, we barely had time for a…
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A LIFETIME IS NOT ENOUGH FOR MUSIC
The second book I wrote, Eli’s Heart, is a love story and more. Krissy Porter and Eli Levin meet as young teens when Eli, who is a piano prodigy, visits his older sister in Krissy’s town in Tennessee in the summer of 1953. They become good friends and are on the verge of romance, but their relationship is ended by Eli’s over-protective family. They find their way back to each other while college students and marry on Krissy’s twentieth birthday. The story continues as each of them builds a career in the music world. While Eli was born with an unusual gift for music, he also was born with a seriously damaged…
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Dancing Under the Cobwebs
I danced myself dizzy to the rhythms of a bouzouki and guitar. I drank local wine from a carafe that never went empty. Even though completely sated by Greek starters, I ate succulent grilled lamb till I thought I would burst. Ever-present Greek salad with feta, long ropes of pasta with slow simmered beef, garlicky tzatziki, roasted beets, local salami, chunks of crusty bread, and plates of unidentified savories arrived unceasingly from the kitchen. Corfu! Definitely one of the most enjoyable evenings I had in Greece. You may be familiar with Corfu from last year’s BBC series about the Durrells. The Greeks call the island Kerkyra. Corfu is the anglicized…
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Euros From Heaven
The history of Greece can be traced to the Minoans almost five thousand years ago. And this presents problems for all sorts of infrastructure improvements in the cities. Everywhere they try to put in a new Metro line or construct a new building, they find ruins of structures from long ago, mosaics and/or pottery or grave goods. Everything stops while the archeologists document the site. But still, these ancient sites attract tourists from all over the world. And I do mean the entire world. On my way to the Acropolis the first morning hundreds of passengers from three cruise ships joined us. By late morning maintaining a safe distance between…
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Why I Write About Music
In my book Memories of Jake, I introduce the reader to the elder of two brothers who served in Vietnam. The book is the first in “The Cameron Saga” and is about how the war affected the brothers and the people they love. My character Andrew Cameron is an artist. Yet music is vital to his very existence. Andrew listens to music as he paints; it inspires him. Music provides hope, comfort, and healing throughout his life, whatever challenges he must face. Music is part of the happiness he experiences. Jake, the younger brother and protagonist of Man with No Yesterdays, suffers severe retrograde amnesia in a helicopter accident, and…
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A Random Day in the Life of a SDP Author
Take a moment to catch up with our resident Crime author Evelyn Infante and check out her newest novel Bloodhound Investigations The house is clean, the laundry done, and it’s raining—a perfect day for a writer who’s been procrastinating lately, to get on with the hard but enjoyable work of writing. That’s where my mind was on the day I wrote this: A Rainy Day Doing Research On this rainy day in the Poconos, what else is there to do for a writer than do research on a new story idea? Oh, and bake, but today I want to concentrate on my new book idea. I spent most…
