Spring here in the Carmel Valley of California, the redwing blackbirds are back in the fields and marshes. The grass in the old hay field near our community is almost shoulder high. We had a wet winter and the fields are beautiful and green right now.

Dot is doing well but I suspect she wishes I would walk her further on our twice a day walks. Jan works on her whale data at her computer most days and I have been working on a draft of my next book. The title is Big Breath In and it involves the life of a scientist who is returning to her investigative roots as she is being treated for cancer. When I started this project all I wanted was to write a fascinating female character and by the time I got to the end I had written a book about Jan Straley.(and no, Jan does NOT have cancer) I will drop a little more of Big Breath in here later.

Jan and John the summer after we were married.

I’ve also been reading a lot lately. Here are some of the books I particularly enjoyed since Christmas:

Burn Book by Kara Swisher (How one tough, funny and well connected writer fell out of love with big tech)

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver. (a southern woman’s take on modern life below the Mason Dixon line by re-imagining Dicken’s David Copperfield, Funny, moving, tragic and unapologetically political) She is one of the few best selling novelists whose success makes me happy.

And the big book: Moby Dick … again. Herman Mellville. This was perhaps the fourth time I’ve read it. Each time I go through it I both learn something new about the world I thought I knew and am in awe of a book that confounds both teacher’s and student’s urges to explain it.

I also read the first three Harry Potter Books, because… well, because there is something Christmasy about these books, and I chugged them down at Christmas time. Maybe too because I went to an English style boarding school for one semester and came home by Christmas. It was also filled with Trolls and Goblins.

What I’m reading now is Storylines: How Words Shape our World, which is a terrific, scholarly but readable book by a writer whose influences include, but is nowhere near limited to, Native storytellers, Cowboys of the Canadian West and Bob Marley.

Next week I will write a full review of Storylines, because it needs to be better known.

I hope you are all well and I look forward to getting back in touch with you all.