I've been thinking lately about something Alex Sokoloff says in her screenwriting tips for novelists workshops (and in her blog). She talks about how characters in both books and movies) often start out wanting something that they never get,...

Dang, Shelties are cute, aren't they? My two furry babies, who are sitting next to me on the sofa as I type this, certainly think so.  But to the topic of this post. I love research. My favorite teacher in...

I'm often asked how many drafts I write when I'm working on a book. The answer: a lot. I finished my next novel, tentatively titled The Lies We Told, last week, and thought I'd show you the stack of...

I'm getting ready to create my next online newsletter, since some of you have told me you'd like to hear from me more than once or twice a year. Yes, I've been a little slow getting the news out! Now...

There’s one thing you can always count on if you’re a volunteer at the turtle hospital: expect the unexpected. We’ve had plenty of surprises over the years, but when a functioning, juvenile Loggerhead with about half of her carapace smashed to smithereens arrived we couldn’t do anything but stand there with our mouths open.

The Family Giving Challenge - put your game faces on and come up with some creative ways to get together your $1,000 donation for our building fund. We have an astounding number of kids who request donations for our patients in lieu of a birthday present. And these kids give repeatedly, year after year. Toddlers to teens show up at our summer open house lugging heavy bags of coins for our turtles; money they earned from lemonade stands, bake sales, special sporting events and chores; often hundreds of dollars in coins.

We're making your holiday and special occasion gift shopping simple with our revised and updated "Adopt A Rescued Sea Turtle" program. First, visit our website (www.seaturtlehospital.org) to review the list of patients up for adoption. With the recent admit of four new turtles we're pretty much out of floor space, and it's not even cold-stun season quite yet. When that happens we're going to be in a real jam - actually we're already in a literal jam. We know that there will be more sick and injured turtles needing our help and we'll have to somehow work miracles to get them into our tiny building. That new hospital can't come fast enough! We still need over $300,000 for phase one, so when you're reviewing your charitable giving plans for this year please add us to your list. Flipper hugs!

The less-than-perfect weather during the festival certainly didn't stop the crowd of over a thousand people from streaming through our doors for a last peek at our turtles. While our volunteers manned the tanks in our year-round uniforms of T-shirts and shorts our visitors came through bundled in coats and hats trying to ward off the wind and cold. Many of them were first-timers who just happened to be in the area and were lucky enough to catch us before we closed (for good) for 2009.