Part Three - Estonia: A Captive People Sings its Way to Freedom Estonia is the smallest of the Baltic countries. It’s about one third the size of New York but has less than seven percent of that state’s population—talk about wide open spaces!  So why would such a small country in both size and population be of interest to any larger foreign power? The answer lies in one word (or is it three?): Location, location, location.  Estonia sits on the Gulf of Finland and is in fact just a ... VIEW POST

I just returned from a few weeks touring the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.  I knew nothing about them except that they were once part of the U.S.S.R. What a delightful surprise they turned out to be! Each country has its own culture, history, beauty and, well, “quirks” (at least to an outsider like me). Yet the people share one thing in common: an enduring resilience and a desire to be free. Like Croatia, which I visited late last year, they are “rising stars” in ... VIEW POST

Fiction readers love drama, and drama nearly always involves some type of crime. When something unspeakable happens, like murder, who doesn’t feel satisfaction when the evidence turns up and the bad guy is brought to justice—as long as we’re taken on a wild ride along the way? To gather information (and inspiration) for the spin-off mystery series I’m working on, I recently attended the Writers’ Police Academy's 2019 “MurderCon” in Raleigh, North Carolina.  Spearheaded by crime writer Lee ... VIEW POST