It's pronounced shing-kuh-teeg, and it’s the name indigenous people gave to the small barrier island off the coast of Virginia many years before European settlers arrived. Just seven miles long and a mile-and-a-half wide, Chincoteague is protected from the Atlantic by the much larger Assateague Island, which stretches nearly fifty miles up the coast. Many of my award-winning books, including Seeds of Evidence and some of my SAR books, are set there. Why? I fell in love with Chincoteague in 1961 when my grandparents retired there, to a house they’d bought at auction. It had no indoor plumbing, no central heat, and had been neglected…

People often ask me which book is my favorite. That’s like asking me which of my three children is my favorite. I have loved writing each of my fourteen books. Each has presented different challenges. Each brings a particular joy. However (there is always a however, isn’t there?) if I was forced to choose, I’d say A Great and Terrible Darkness, K-9 Search & Rescue Book 6, would be one of the finalists. For most of my life, I have lived in the Mid-Atlantic near the Appalachian Mountains. Growing up, I went to Girl Scout camp the mountains. My husband…

I AM SITTING on my back porch. It’s a chilly, breezy day with rain showers threatening. The app, Merlin, is open on my iPhone advising me that the sounds I’m hearing are those of Carolina chickadees, Northern cardinals, a red-eyed vireo, and … what? An orchard oriole? That would be a lifer, if true. A mug of hot tea sits beside me. The sentiment on the mug, attributed to Jane Austen, reads, I declare after all there’s no enjoyment like reading.  Unless it’s writing, I silently respond. I believe she’d agree. Two hundred fifty years ago, in Austen’s time, women did not…

Kevin Burrell takes Jesus’s command, “Look at the birds of the air,” seriously. And also humorously. Kevin, a pastor in Charlotte, North Carolina, is an avid birdwatcher. His monthly blog and newsletter, “Ornitheology,” is one of my must-reads. His writing is clever, informative, and just plain fun. For example, he describes a swift as “a cigar strapped to a boomerang.” He tells of seeing thousands of flamingos clustered in a cove in Mexico. The birds were pink, he writes, “and when I say pink, I truly mean pink. Pink like a taffeta prom dress. Pink like a Barbiecore convention.” He describes Golden-winged Warblers as wearing “trendy…

Brr, it's cold! I took this picture in December a couple of years ago at the lake in our neighborhood in Yorktown, Virginia. The temperature was about 38 degrees that day. The white birds are great egrets, stopping over as they migrate south. The Canada geese may be migrating as well, although we have a lot who are year 'rounders here. I love going for walks any day I can, which ends up being about five days a week. I check out the visitors to our lake,  species like cormorants, bufflehead ducks, hooded mergansers, great blue herons, and the ever-reliable mallards.  And I have questions, always questions.…

Christmas. That one word evokes so many feelings, from joy and anticipation to loneliness and loss.  It's a sensitive--and precious--time of year. The pups shown here are remnants of my children's childhoods. I've kept them around to remember the joy of those years, and because you never know when you’re going to need a hug. My dad gave my son the dark brown pup, Poochie, when Matt was a baby. Matt was born in California. We'd moved far away from our East Coast families so my husband could pursue his Hollywood dreams. As December rolled around that first year, I admit it was hard for…