I love our golden poppies of Northern California, but sometimes I wish we could have the red poppies that grow abundantly in Southern Europe! I’m not sure if these are red poppies or just red flowers!

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My husband and I spent four nights by the sea recently and it was just the little “get away” that we needed to feel refreshed, enabling our creative energy to flow once again.

During these “COVID” days, many of us spend far too much time inside our apartments, condos or homes.

But what can I do when I can’t get away to the sea? I wrote the poem, “Cottage by the Sea” with that question in mind.

Cottage by the Sea

Cottage by the sea

I long to go

clothed in mist and salty spray

where worries drift away

Cottage by the sea

sandy beach and rugged rock

I need to go

no heat or heavy thoughts

Tiny clapboard fortress

My cottage by the sea

An image in my mind

You shelter me

In my first novel, AMELIA, my protagonist, Amelia, lives in a rural part of England where thatched roof cottages sit back from narrow country roads. When my husband and I were in England a few years ago, we took a photo of this lovely home.

I am excited to be writing a new novel, my third. This will be a romantic mystery set in the 1950s. I can’t tell you any more as I need to keep my secrets!