Nature to Novel – How to Use the Natural World as Fiction Backdrop

Use specific, concrete details to take sensory impressions from nature to your novel, using the natural world as fiction backdrop and adding punch and reality to your writing.   As a writer, I...

Australian Birds: Rainbow Bee-eater

The strikingly beautiful rainbow bee-eater performs aerial acrobatics while hunting insects and removes wasp and bee stingers before eating. It’s my pick for Australia’s most beautiful bir...

South African Birds: African Paradise-flycatcher

One of Africa’s most beautiful birds, the agile African paradise-flycatcher inhabits forests and woodlands in much of sub-Saharan Africa.   In keeping with the South African theme of my las...

Beginning a New Book – Rock and Thorn: Six Months in South Africa

To immediately immerse readers in my South African memoir-in-progress, Rock and Thorn: Six Months in South Africa, I’ll write it as an evocative journal filled with sights, sounds, action and re...