It’s early evening in New Mexico’s high desert, the beginning of the end of Thanksgiving 2015 in America. I am thankful for all the blessings in my life. I am grateful for the roof over our heads, even though it’s a bit leaky in places. I’m grateful to wake each morning to the sound of birds–when so many people huddle awake in the darkness surrounded by the explosions of missiles or the stutter of gunfire. I am so so so grateful for my beautiful daughter, and I pray that she stays safe and flourishes in this challenging world. I am …

Don’t fall into the “black or white” trap! It’s easy even for experienced novelists to fall back into stereotypes when it comes to heroes and villains. I’ve asked more than one war hero why they believed they were motivated to act courageously under fire? Two of them answered more or less this way: “I was terrified I would be a coward so I just ran into the fire!” Remind yourself that every hero has flaws and every villain has tried to do the right thing–at least once in her life. Quick exercises: 1) List three good things your villain has …

  Around 1915, Danish psychologist Edgar Rubin developed his vase illusion (sometimes known as the figure-ground vase), an intentionally ambiguous visual tool for studying human figure-ground perception. It is known informally as the “Rubin vase” because the central image is a vase or goblet, in this case filling the white space. But if you focus on the black background around the vase, it usually takes very little time for that “background” to morph into two black faces in profile, their noses almost touching each other. One of our brain’s jobs is to interpret visual patterns in the eye created by …

I was a guest speaker this weekend with Valerie Plame Wilson, former CIA NOC and my coauthor for the “Vanessa Pierson spy-thrillers.” We were invited to talk to a smart, witty group of journalists at the New Mexico Press Women’s annual conference, “The Power of Storytelling.” This year’s event was held at Ghost Ranch, near Abiquiu, NM. Famed painter, Georgia O’Keefe, visited Ghost Ranch  in 1934; she was so drawn by the astounding natural beauty she spent many summers in residence, painting the countryside and soaking up the solitude. Eventually she managed to purchase a few acres and a house …