VALENTINE'S DAY IS just around the corner, which has me thinking warmly about things—and people—I love. But first, a brief history. Apparently, there was more than one Saint Valentine: Valentinus, from the Latin word for worthy, strong or powerful was a common name between the 2nd and 8th centuries A.D. The St. Valentine who [...]
I’VE BEEN BUSY WRITING production notes for the upcoming audiobook of The Walled Garden (so exciting!), so I haven’t had a lot of time to think about what to write here. It’s January in the Pacific Northwest and though the weather continues cold and raw, there are tiny signs that the garden is [...]
“THERE’S SOMETHING HYPNOTIC about the word tea,” says Lord Peter Wimsey, one of my all-time favorite fictional characters, in Dorothy L. Sayers’ incomparable 1935 novel, Gaudy Night. In my Welcome post, I wrote about how I fell in love with the taste of tea at a young age. Like a well-steeped cup, [...]
HERE WE ARE IN the middle of December already! Every year I try, with varying success, to find books with a Christmas theme to companion me through this busy and sometimes difficult season of decorating, shopping, and preparation. And before we get too far, I’d just like to say that if you [...]
I'VE ALWAYS LIKED THE IDEA of one person giving another flowers that might appear to others to be just a casual bouquet, but with the power to communicate secrets only the recipient could understand. As I was writing The Walled Garden, I realized I needed a code that two gardeners might use [...]
It began with a bowl of beautiful reddish-gold plums and a question: are those damsons? The young woman behind the bar at one of my favorite places in the world, The Old Parsonage Hotel in Oxford, England, shrugged her shoulders and said she didn’t know. Why did I want to know about [...]
The Hermit of Eyton Forest(and others in the Brother Cadfael series) by Ellis Peters If you haven’t yet encountered the chronicles of Brother Cadfael, of the Benedictine Abbey of Saint Peter and Saint Paul at Shrewsbury, you have a huge treat in store for you! The twenty-book series follows the medieval monk’s [...]
After a long, hot summer here in the Northwest, it’s finally starting to cool off, which means it’s time to grab a cup of tea or hot cocoa and head for your favorite comfy reading spot. Let’s talk about our favorite cozy fall reads! I love reading with the seasons—and I’ve realized [...]
Hello and welcome! I’m Robin and I’m a writer. You have no idea how many years it’s taken me to be able to say that. But after 15 years of writing, revising, and rejections, I’m thrilled to be able to say that my debut novel, The Walled Garden, is coming out with [...]