I was busy doing Very Important Work—okay, fine, I was working the Sunday crosswords—when I heard birds squawking and the neighbor dogs barking up a storm. Nala was inside so she and I rushed to the patio door to see if Timmy fell in a well or something. It took a minute for me to see him, but the most elegant fox crossed our yard … Continue reading Where the Wild Things Are

Historians don’t really know the origins of April Fool’s Day (and there is some dispute about how to punctuate it), but some believe it goes back to 1582 when France switched from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian. In the Julian calendar, the new year began with the spring equinox, which typically occurs somewhere around April 1st. Those sillies who didn’t get the news that … Continue reading Happy April Fish Day

Last Friday night while my husband and I watched a movie, I was shoveling popcorn in my piehole. And yes, I’d rather have been eating pie. When I finally took a breather, I could feel one of the little husks stuck on the right side of my tongue, a bit underneath. I didn’t worry about it; those things always loosen up. But it didn’t. I … Continue reading Things That Get Stuck

They staged the musical “Clue” in my little town recently. If you’re not familiar, it’s a play based on the board game. It has snappy numbers like “Corridors and Halls,” “She Hasn’t Got a Clue,” and “A Conservatory is a Conservative Place for a Contract Killing.” Okay, I just made up that last one. I didn’t see it this time, but my kids were in … Continue reading Ms Clark, at the Kitchen Table, with a Blog

People ask me about the recipes in my Crossword Puzzle mystery series all the time, and it always makes me laugh. I think I’ve told this story here before, so if you’ve heard it, just hum to yourself for this next bit. When I was noodling over the series, thinking about who these people were, I decided that Georgeanne (the mother of Quinn, my sleuth) … Continue reading My Unintentional Culinary Cozy

I probably don’t have to tell you that a lot goes into a book cover. There’s psychology, design aspects, color theory, font decisions, genre considerations, and much more. When it all works, you probably can’t say why. You just know it pleases you and makes you want to take a second look at the book. But when it doesn’t work, it’s usually obvious why it … Continue reading Judge ‘Em By Their Covers

I grew up in Colorado Springs, at the base of Pikes Peak and when I was a kid—and gas was cheap enough to guzzle—my dad would gather us up on a weekend afternoon and say, “Let’s go color in some new roads.” We knew that meant we were going for a drive on some back roads we’d never explored before. And maybe, just maybe, there’d … Continue reading Coloring In New Roads

My first grown-up job was as a liability claims adjuster for a big insurance company. I didn’t know the job existed until I got it, but it was the perfect Venn diagram of my skills and interests. Because we adjusters went to court a lot, one of the things drilled into us was that in a trial, our notes will be enlarged to wall size … Continue reading Inadvertently Funny Notes

I read an article by Heather Murphy in the New York Times recently about a lost manuscript of John Steinbeck’s. I’m never surprised to find out that famous authors have written other works, but this one piqued my interest because I think of Steinbeck as a very literary writer who explores deep themes in his work. Yet this newly discovered manuscript was a “lighthearted detective … Continue reading Steinbeck’s Fictional Swamp Monster

Sheesh, how many times you gotta check facts?? I got an email recently from Rebecca, my production editor. She was alerting me that I might have a mistake in the manuscript for FATAL SOLUTIONS, the third Crossword Mystery that comes out in November. She was getting it ready to go to typesetting, but something caught her eye. In one scene Quinn Carr, my main character, … Continue reading Re-Re-Re-Research