When a reader fan becomes a friend...

Honoring the special bond between an author and a reader.

Royce and I meet in person for the first time in 2018

The year I moved to the Russian River the big Santa Rosa fire, known as the Tubbs Fire, swept down from the hills surrounding the big Sonoma town and engulfed it.

A new resident to the area, that fateful week in October I was hosting a writing retreat at an inn on the Russian River. Fortunately, the writers joining me got out to the riverside inn where we were staying before the full conflagration hit, though one woman said her plane was “racing above the fire” to the airport. The writers all had stories of the hazards of their travel getting there. I used my clinical therapy skills to debrief them and hypnosis to help us relax, and we coughed our way through the weekend attempting to write as the inn filled to overflowing with refugees who’d fled the town.

The Tubbs Fire was an unbelievably traumatic and terrifying experience that shattered any illusions people had that an urban setting was safe from one of these “superfires.”

After…