A lot of people think Ernest Hemingway wrote that. He didn’t. It is often attributed to him, but this brilliant writer wouldn’t have done anything as self-destructive as being smashed out of his gourd when writing, at least not long-term. For Whom the Bell Tolls does not refer to last call at your local pub.

It isn’t that Hemingway didn’t imbibe. One of my favorite cocktails is named the Hemingway Daiquiri. And it’s quite nummy. Hemingway was a man who prided himself on being a man’s man. He drove an ambulance in the middle of a war.  He was a big game hunter. He got into brawls. He was a womanizer. He drank, yessiree Bob. Hemingway was a man of the 20^th Century. But he also liked cats, so in my opinion, he had a few redeeming 21st-century qualities. I’m with Mark Twain on this thought: “If man could be crossed with the cat it would improve man, but it would deteriorate the cat.”

But back to writers boozing it up while on duty. I don’t think so, colorful as it sounds. When I’m writing, I’m trying to find words to form into sentences. It becomes very basic. Most of the time, they don’t even have to be pretty words. They just have to make sense. This is something I can barely do while slurping down my morning latte, much less a martini. I strain my brain to try to come up with the word for that latch thingy-hooky that’s at the top of a whatchamacallit to keep, you know, the lid on. Or the name of who’s-a-biddy, the assistant front desk manager in Chapter Six. You know, the one with the long, dark hair.

So if Hemingway didn’t say the quote, “write drunk, edit sober,” who did? They have no idea. One possibility is humorist Peter De Vries. He wrote a character named Gowan McGland. The character, McGland, gave an interview and said, “Sometimes I write drunk and revise sober, and sometimes I write sober and revise drunk. But you have to have both elements in creation — the Apollonian and the Dionysian, or spontaneity and restraint, emotion and discipline.”

Now doesn’t that sound exactly like what a sober writer would pen of a fictional character while trying to give him color?

¡Buenos días desde Cabo San Lucas!

How blessed am I to be able to write this blog while poolside at the Pueblo Bonito Rose Resort? I meant to post this last night, but at eleven-ish, I noticed I hadn’t quite finished my train of thought and decided this morning would be a better time to edit before too many cocktails.

Randy and I have had a relaxing vacation so far. Though I’ll be sad to fly back to Oregon on Saturday, I’m thrilled that I’ve been able to write and hopefully finish “Chaos in Cabo” while in Cabo!

I’d hoped to have this book done before now, but that thing called life threw me more curve balls than a major league baseball game over the last six months, so I’ve worked on the manuscript here and there.

But once we were at our resort, drink in hand, sunshine turning my skin a lovely reddish pink; I felt the creative juices flowing. The first thing I did was reacquaint myself with the story and characters. And oh, how I’d missed them. I hadn’t realized I’d left Coco and Amado in a fight over whether they loved each other enough to sacrifice their separate lives to be together. And how could I set up my villainess to have a major secret revealed and then not write the scene?

Those weren’t the only threads that needed attention. When I walked along the beach basking in the waves from Medano Bay, it occurred to me that in my book, I call the bay the Sea of Cortés. And worse yet, I’d written that Amado and Coco used to surf off of “Lover’s Beach.” An impossibility since the beach sits within the bay.

Like I said, I am so blessed to be able to be here where the story occurs and realize my mistakes!

After a few days of editing and rewriting, I could continue with the novel. And I wasn’t the only one ready! These characters don’t care that I’m on vacation and should be sleeping late before relaxing by the pool. They’ve been waking me up at five-thirty, demanding I set my fingers to the keys of my laptop or pen to paper as I stand in the pool … and get busy.

As you may remember, I write my novels from the POV of the three main characters, rotating chapters with their POV. I love this style because it always allows me to flesh out my characters more and contemplate what happens to them next and how their story moves the whole story forward.

But that hasn’t been enough for these characters. Coco decided before it was her turn to regain control of her life and put the two men vying for her heart in their places. Amado believes he’s lost his quest to sail off into the sunset with Coco and live happily ever after, and he makes a huge mistake. Alida feels she’s made an error in judgment by falling in love with the office manager for her scam-calling crew and fears he may be her undoing.

I’ve mentioned before that sometimes my secondary characters decide they need a better story, too, and do things I hadn’t originally planned. That’s the case with Antonio, Alida’s soft-spoken office manager. Oh, the story he tells about his previous life … even I was enthralled. And when did Nacho decide to disappear with his wife and son?

I swear this novel seems to be writing itself. Is it because I’m here in my México, in the land of sun, sea, and margaritas? Is my creativeness heightened because I can see my characters living in this tropical paradise? Should I get a job as a waitress, learn to speak better Spanish, and stay until all the novels in my Mexico Mayhem series are written?

I doubt my husband would support me staying, so I hope my characters pack up and come home with me when I pack my bags to return to Oregon. I believe I will retain some of the beauty and wonder of Cabo once I’m home, but writing “Chaos in Cabo” while in Cabo has been one of the highlights of my writing career.

So, for now, I bid you adiós as I go in search of my first mimosa of the day. ¡Salud!

Feliz escritura, señoras ~

I’ve just finished writing a story that took me almost twenty-five years to compose, and not because I’m a slow writer either. Doris Lessing once said that “writing is probably like a scientist thinking about some scientific problem, or an engineer about an engineering problem.” Based on my experience with this story, I have to agree.

All those years ago I heard a woman make a comment about a divorced man’s new life. She was a friend of his ex-wife, who remained not so much bitter as still stunned years later. As I learned more about his conduct, I could understand her reaction to the divorce. The scene the friend described to me remained vivid in my memory, and I couldn’t put it to rest, forget about it and bury in in the ash heap of ideas that never went anywhere. So I thought about it. 

Just sitting down and composing a story of the tacky, mean-spirited, selfish ex-husband wouldn’t make an edifying story—we all know too many people like that. So what was the story? And who would tell it? That last question was the key—someone on the outside, not in the family and not in the circle of friends. I landed on a low-level staff person in his office, and at that point the story opened up. It rolled out in front of me like the proverbial red carpet, the stairs up into the blue sky, the plane on the runway. I didn’t know where I was going but I knew I was moving.

Because I was focusing on one character in particular as she dealt with a man of very specific weaknesses I knew all I had to do was follow her through her work and off days. The story from my friend, only a scene she had viewed, developed into this young woman’s story, and went where neither one of us expected. 

This sounds easy—just listen to someone else’s throwaway comment and you have a story. But it wasn’t that easy. I had the scene in my head for all those years, and I could not feel anything growing whenever I thought about it. What finally worked was looking at it as a problem to be solved. Here is the scene. This is the kernel of the story—this can’t be changed. It leads to the end. How do I get there? What do I need? I need a main character to follow, a setting where this man can reveal his weaknesses, a cast of characters that will reveal themselves at the crisis, and an ending that is honest no matter how awful or unsatisfying. (Just looking back at it now the whole thing seems daunting. As long as I didn’t think about all this at once I could make progress.)

I do some of this with other short stories and crime novels, but in those I have more control over where I go with the plot. In this story I was committed to ending with that scene given to me by my friend—it said far more than any one of us wants to hear, see, or experience.

When the story was finished, I was mildly depressed. I felt drained. That’s very unusual for me. My imagination might feel tapped out some days after meeting a deadline, but my emotional reserves have almost always felt bottomless (an illusion, but I like it), and I cheerfully look around for the next project.

Not every story proceeds in this manner. Some are so much fun to write that I’m sad when they come to an end. Some are easily and obviously constructed and I delight in their form and flow, and almost want to pat them on the head, like a well-behaved dog, at the end. But this one left me feeling satisfied, like I had just accomplished something I’d finally set out to do. I also think it’s one of my best. 

You can read it for yourself and be the judge. It’ll be in Snakeberry, the 2025 anthology from Crime Spell Books, out in November.