Like I wrote in the novel: Wrig's old wagon, stashed near the trail from the "main river" to the cabin, which I believe had the entire Clearwater valley to itself. 

Wrig was a Stikine River homesteader from an earlier era.

I hope you'll read EAGLE IN FLIGHT for a memorable mid-70s trip to northern B.C. and Southeast Alaska. The stories in this semi-autobiographical novel are among my own favorite travel tales. 

By the way, the paperback edition of EAGLE IN FLIGHT is now available. Enjoy!

link:  https://www.amazon.com/Eagle-Flight-Jessie-Morgan-Book/dp/B09RNP812J/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

Happy July!

I am throwing a Birthday Blowout in honor of my (70th!!!!) birthday. (yikes!)

ALL FOUR of my Kindle fiction e-books will be FREE on July 23, 24, and 25.

WEBS IN THE MIST will be FREE on Kindle July 26 and 27 as well.

Please help me spread the word about this giveaway. I hope this one-time birthday event will help more readers access my books.

Enjoy! And happy reading!

... is something we're not supposed to do, right? But we all do it. In fact, during the month of July I need you to do exactly that.

If you like the cover of my book, Webs in the Mist: The Jessie Morgan Series, Book 2, please vote for it for the Cover of the Month contest on AllAuthor.com!

It would be so fun to clinch the "Cover of the Month" contest on AllAuthor! In order to do it, I need support from you guys.

Please take a moment to vote for my book cover here: Click to Vote! 

Thanks, everyone!

Here it is, coming very soon! Above is the Kindle e-book cover. Below is the paperback cover. Stay tuned, and take good care these days.

Happy May, readers! 

This is my favorite month here in western Montana. It's vibrant green everywhere and the flowers are budding, about to bust open.

All four of my advance readers love my new novel, Webs in the Mist. Three of them said that they like it better than Bell-Bottom Gypsy (Book 1 of The Jessie Morgan Series). I'm excited to hear that, and happy that now I can publish it on Amazon with confidence.

With that said, here is your third and final sample chapter from the new novel. Enjoy!

Chapter 3   (Webs in the Mist: The Jessie Morgan Series, Book 2)
 
In the damp fog, Jess kneeled on the driver’s seat and gaped at the VW’s back seat. Her heart sank as she stared at the open suitcase, the clothes tossed all over. Her stereo, camera bag, and vintage fur coat were gone. The passenger door was unlocked. She was sure she’d locked it. She slumped sideways, her legs sticking out of the car. At least the windows weren’t broken. The camera bag contained not only her 35mm Praktica and its lenses, it had her negatives and undeveloped film. Things she couldn’t replace. Things that would be dumped in the garbage. That’s what really pissed her off. Damn.  
Maybe she’d just go back to bed. Screw it. Maybe this was a “welcome to the city” initiation, she thought, swallowing back the lump in her throat. She’d call it in, but first she’d get everything else inside. Jess crawled into the back seat, gathered the clothes into her blue suitcase, latched it, and checked the trunk. That was where she kept pillowcases stuffed with clothes and bedding, when she traveled. Everything was still there.
She dragged herself back and forth, up and down the stairs, hauling everything to her room, her heart so heavy she could barely stand up straight. Donna was at work, so she had the place to herself except for Ramona, who was stretched out on her bed. Jess found the phone book, plopped onto the living room mattress, and called the cops on the black Princess phone. She recited her story three times before being told to come to the station on Fillmore and fill out paperwork.  
Jessie went back to her room and lay down, curling herself around Ramona. She felt like sucking her thumb. As if she weren’t feeling strange enough, in a new city. She and San Francisco were not off to a great start. Well, if she hated it here she could try Sonoma County. It would be fun to be near Liv and Pancho. She’d spent a night with them on her way down, and liked where they lived.  
She closed her eyes, imagining her negatives and film canisters in a garbage can. The current of rage pulsing through her body was too familiar. Jess pictured it: she’d tiptoe up behind the bastard, grab him, and kick him in the balls, hard. Once he passed out, she’d retrieve her stuff, kick him a few more times for good measure, and vanish into the fog.  
“Mew?” Ramona said in her delicate voice, tickling Jessie’s cheek with her whiskers, licking her tears. She hadn’t realized she was crying. Ramona was a softening balm, crumbling the rage into the raw hurt it really was. Jess stroked the cat’s head, loving the scratchy cat-tongue kisses even though they made her cry harder.
The stolen photos were of her life since Detroit, especially Twisty and Key West and Montana. Some of the negatives had never been printed. In Key West, Twisty had given her a great deal on his camera equipment. Now what would she do? Single lens reflex cameras were expensive. She took a deep breath, missing Twisty.
What was she doing, missing that no-good, lying bastard? Jess rolled onto her back, mad at herself. How stupid could she get? God!  
*
“Ocean Beach!” the driver called.
Determined to salvage her first day in the city, Jess had walked down to Market Street and caught the “N Judah” streetcar. Amazed that she could go to the ocean beach for a quarter, she’d gazed at sunny backyards with children riding tricycles and clotheslines full of sheets and jeans. As the streetcar made its way toward the ocean, they’d entered a murky fog. The closer they got to the beach, the darker the fog was.  
She crossed the road to the seawall and put on her sweatshirt, looking at the gnarled cypress trees silhouetted in silver fog. The sandy bluff was covered with a low, sprawling plant that had pink flowers. Mist washed over her face, cooling her skin as she studied the wild Pacific surf – white lines in the steel-gray sea. Jess wove her obsidian hair into a single braid and fastened it with a band she found in the pocket of her windbreaker. The damp, cool sand was soft on her bare feet, gulls screeching overhead as the Pacific roared, booming against the rocky cliff at the end of the beach. She walked into the shallow water and was shocked by how cold it was.  
Jess wandered down the beach, swinging her bag, aware that she was walking along the edge of the continent. She felt as small as a grain of sand. It was one of her favorite feelings. Montana’s landscape always made her feel this way, too. At Flathead Lake, where she’d spent the past summer, it was probably snowing by now. No, thanks. She’d grown up in Detroit, where winters were long and snowy, the Great Lakes wind cutting like an icy blade.
Turning to face the water, Jess spotted two ships – dim, steely shapes on the horizon, which was a blurry mix of pewter sky and fog. She walked the wide, long beach, emptying her mind, and when her legs got tired she sat on the sand near some suntanned hippies. The guy wore a lopsided Navy blue beret, loose marijuana-leaf print pants, and a sweatshirt that said “Drop acid, not bombs.” He sat on a Mexican blanket next to some bongo drums. The three women with him sat on the sand, long skirts tucked up around their brown legs. Jess wondered if they lived on the beach, and how they got so tan in the thick fog.  
“Peace,” the guy said.  
“Peace to you.” Jess noticed that his long, black mustache curled into his mouth.  
“Groovy day,” he offered.   
“Not really.”
“Having a bummer?”  
“Yep.”
He came over and sat next to Jess, looking into her eyes. His long hair was almost black and he smelled like Patchouli oil and something else she couldn’t identify. “What’s happening?” he asked. One of the women joined them, fanning her India print Maxi skirt on the sand around herself.  
“I got ripped off.”
“Shit.”
“I just got here yesterday.”
“That sucks,” the woman said, twirling her stringy brown hair around her finger.  
“It really does.” Jess sighed. For all she knew, they could have been the ones who stole her stuff.
“Seth.” The woman nudged his shoulder.
He took a baggie from his pants pocket, broke a brownie in half, and handed it to her. “This’ll help, luv.”
“Thanks.” Jess was game. The brownie tasted like cardboard.
“You’ll love San Francisco, though,” the woman was saying. “This is where it’s at…”
“It’s the best.” Seth picked up the bongos. “In the summer I live in a hollowed-out redwood, in Marin.” He smoothed his mustache and began drumming. A long-haired guy walking down the beach smiled at them, dancing to the beat.
“Most of the time we live near here,” the woman said.  
Jess stared at the patches of sunshine opening up over the water. “Good, the fog is burning off.”  
“It usually does,” the woman said, “depending on the time of year. This is the rainy season.”
“Ah.”
“I’m April,” she said.  
“Jessie.”
“See how fingers of mist swirl around the edges of the fog as it burns off?” April asked, pointing at the sunny spots over the sea.  
“Yeah.”
“I dig the mist, but hate the fog.”
Jess nodded. She’d never given much thought to the difference between mist and fog.
“It’s like the fog is a huge glob of mud blocking out the sun,” April continued. “But mist is light, wispy, and golden.”  
“Fog is thick and dark,” Jess agreed, “but you can see through the mist.”
“Right on.”
The other women, in low-slung floral skirts and cropped T-shirts that exposed their midriffs, picked pink flowers near the seawall and wove them into their waist-length hair.  
“What kind of flowers are those?” To Jess, wildflowers blooming in November were weird.  
“Ice plant.”
“I’ve never seen it before.”
“Where you from?”
“Detroit.”    
April nodded. “So, were you mugged?”  
“No, they broke into my Bug.” Jess put her head in her hands.
“They’re just things,” April said gently.  
“I know. But… They took my camera bag, which had negatives and undeveloped film in it. Things I can’t replace.”
“Gotta let it go.”
“I know.”
“Can’t let them win. Fuck them and their bad vibes.”
The other two women brought flowers over, nodding to the bongo beat, their glass-bead necklaces bouncing between their full breasts.  
“This is May, and this is June.”
“I’m Jess. Wait. April, May, and June?”
“Yes!” They collapsed into giggle fits.
“Ridiculous!” one wheezed.  
Jess laughed, too, getting off from the brownie.
May moved behind her, took out her hair tie, and combed through Jessie’s almost-black hair with her fingers. “Pretty.”
“Thanks.” She could feel the dope working as her shoulder muscles relaxed. 
“Are you, like, Indian?” May asked.  
Jess shook her head. “Dark Irish.”
The other women swayed to Seth’s bongo rhythms as May braided Jessie’s hair, weaving the flowers into it. Jess closed her eyes. She loved having her hair played with.
May tied it off. “There, you’re a flower child.”
“Thanks.” Jessie grinned. “What’s that scent you’re wearing?”  
“Cedar oil,” April replied.
“I love it.”
The women kept laughing.
“What’s funny?” Jess hated to miss a joke.
“Shrooms!” One of them managed. The three of them giggled so hard they coughed. “We ate ‘em all!”
Seth laughed as he drummed. May and June stood, tied their shirts up under their breasts, pulled their skirts down so they were hugging their hips, and danced around the beach. May played little cymbals she wore on her fingers, the curves of her bronze belly glowing in the sunshine. The women dipped and swayed in a Middle Eastern style, twitching their hips to the beat. June twirled, her arms out. She stopped and arched back, rolling her shoulders and making her coffee-colored belly ripple. As she danced, she wrapped a fringed, plum-colored scarf around her hips, her beads clicking.
“Come on!” May called.
Jess and April joined them. Meanwhile, a few people gathered to watch. Jess got into the drumbeat and did her own thing as the ocean waves whooshed.   
“You’re a good dancer, chica!” May told her.   
“Thanks! So are you.”
“Awww.”
“Maybe you guys can teach me how to do that,” Jess said.
“It’s belly dancing!” April smiled. “June’s the teacher.” 
June nodded and arched way back again, her gorgeous belly rippling more this time.  
After a while, Seth slowed his drumming. They looked at him. “We gotta go,” he said.
June groaned.
“It’s our turn to cook at the commune.”
Jessie’s legs were tired anyway. “Commune?” She sank onto the sand.
“Yeah, it’s cool.”
May dropped her finger cymbals into a fringed leather pouch. “We share everything!” 
“Feeling better, Jess?” Seth grinned at her.
“You bet!” She laughed. “Thanks.”
“De nada,” he answered.
Jess wondered what that meant. 
“Toodles!” April called. The other women waved good-bye as they started toward the seawall.
Jess smiled and waved. What a different world it was out here when the sun was shining. Shivering, she realized she was cold. She walked to the Cliff House café and warmed up with hot coffee and creamy potato soup, staring out the window at the gleaming expanse of the Pacific. A gray strip on the horizon looked like fog lurking offshore.
As Jess walked back down the sand, a brisk breeze picked up and the beach turned amber in the late sun. It was cooling down. Near Judah, where a streetcar sat idle, drummers sat in a circle around a bonfire. Climbing the stairs to the seawall, Jess moved to the rhythm. What was with all the bongos here?
She sat on a concrete bench facing the ocean, her upper right arm burning again. Shit! Jess rubbed her neck, wondering what the hell was wrong with her. Since the wreck two months ago, she’d noticed this prickling feeling. It came and went, sometimes in her hands and other times in her arms. Stretching her neck and shoulders, she remembered the note Twisty had sent from jail, begging her to come to North Carolina. The doctor thinks the judge should send me to treatment because of the drugs, he’d written. I don’t give a shit. I couldn’t even kill myself if I wanted to, now. She’d written back once, telling him she wouldn’t be coming. I can’t help you, she’d written. I can’t take any more of your lies. They hurt too much. A familiar pang of guilt rushed through her and she shrugged it off. Why the hell did she feel guilty, for God’s sake? Moving on was best, for both of them.
The sun went behind a patch of fog and Jess shivered. This formidable ocean was worlds apart from the calm, sunny sea she’d enjoyed last winter in Key West with Donna and Twisty and her other friends. That seemed like long ago, so much had happened since.
A new ocean, a new beginning. Jess was counting on it.
*
“I feel bad,” Donna said as they lurched down Market Street in an electric Muni trolleybus. “I should have helped you bring your stuff in when you got here.”  
“No way, totally my fault.” Jess peered out her window at the bustling street lined with stores, hotels, and theaters. Earlier it had rained, but now the sun was out. The city looked fresh and clean. They were on a whirlwind bus-and-cable-car tour of San Francisco, to get Jess oriented.   
“Our neighborhood is funky,” Donna was saying. “That’s why the low rent.”
“Right. Wow, what’s that?” Jess pointed at a domed structure behind a plaza. It looked like a capitol building.
“Civic Center. City Hall. The civic center has the opera house and the main library.”
Jess smiled to herself, amazed by how much her friend knew about things. A regular walking encyclopedia, Donna had taught her about the history of Key West when they lived there. They got off the bus and hustled across Market to the cable car that said “Fisherman’s Wharf,” hopping on as it was leaving. Donna sat on a wooden outside bench and Jess stood, hanging on. She could see everything and feel the cool breeze.  
“I smell coffee,” Jess said, handing the conductor her bus transfer.
“It’s the Hills Brothers factory.” Donna pointed toward the Bay Bridge.
Powell Street pulsated with life, musicians playing on each corner. There were more bongos. Jess stared up at the buildings around Union Square. A limousine pulled up in front of a fancy hotel as people hurried down the sidewalks, their faces a variety of colors and ethnicities. Some men wearing turbans entered the hotel; across the street, Chinese women in embroidered silk jackets walked across Union Square under palm trees; an elderly woman with a black scarf tied over her hair was feeding clouds of pigeons.
“Ding, DING, ding!” The gripman rang the bell to warn motorists that he was coming. Tall and thin, with a goatee and rust-colored beret, he looked like a ’50s beatnik. Children on the sidewalk waved to him and he waved back, grinning.
“Is that Chinese food I smell?” Jess asked, detecting ginger.
“Probably. Chinatown is right down there.” Donna pointed to the right. “Walking on Grant is amazing. In a block, you go from Chinatown to North Beach, the Italian neighborhood.”
“It sure is compact.”
Donna nodded. “Seven miles by seven miles.”
“That’s small, right?”
Her friend nodded again. “It can’t expand because it’s surrounded by water.”
The crowd on the cable car thinned and Jess grabbed the seat next to Donna. At one intersection, she caught a gorgeous view of the city, the bay, the Bay Bridge, and low-lying ridges to the east. “Wow,” she murmured.
“I know,” Donna said.
 They climbed a hill where the only flat places for the cable car to stop were in the middle of the intersections. The motorists had to wait, but no one seemed to mind. On top, the view to the north was a dramatic sweep of the cobalt bay, piers, waterfront buildings, cargo ships, ferries, sailboats, a fishing boat marina, a rocky island, and the rounded mountains beyond.
“That’s Alcatraz, straight ahead,” Donna said.  
Jess grabbed the nearest pole as the car tipped over the edge and began its steep descent. She smelled something burning as the gripman controlled their speed. “Is that smell normal?”
“Yeah, the brakes are wood. They get hot and scorch.”
“Wow.”
“Let’s get something to eat at the wharf.”  
“Great.”
“I want to buy food to give to the panhandlers.”
“Panhandlers?”
“Yeah, I give ‘em food. That way they eat instead of getting drunk, or worse. Sometimes it pisses ‘em off.”
Donna was right: Fisherman’s Wharf had plenty of panhandlers. There were also tons of street performers – jugglers, mimes, musicians. It was a Saturday and the sidewalks were crowded with sightseers, so they decided not to hang around. As they walked to Alioto’s for chowder in sourdough bread bowls, Donna quickly gave away all the bananas she’d purchased. The panhandlers seemed to appreciate getting food. Jess wondered where they went at night, or when it rained.
They caught the next cable car headed back downtown. This time they transferred to the California Street car, which dove down an even steeper hill and into a canyon between the lofty skyscrapers of the Financial District. The Bay Bridge was at the foot of the street.
Jess thought the California car’s mulatto gripman might be the best-looking man she’d ever seen. He had exotic, jade-colored lion eyes and a brown Afro with red streaks running through it. He also had style, ringing his cable car bell in a unique rhythm. She watched him play it as they approached an intersection.   
“They have bell ringing contests,” Donna said.
“Really?”
“Yep.”
Jess turned again in her seat. “Are you a bell ringing champ?” she asked him.
“Not yet,” he replied in a bass voice, winking at her.
Donna took a newspaper clipping from her bag. “Two moving sales on Fulton, a block apart,” she said. “We can find some things for your room.”  
“Sounds good.” Jess glanced at the gripman just as he turned his head toward her, smiling. They locked eyes and his smile widened. She looked away, embarrassed that he’d caught her looking.

Happy Earth Day, everyone! I hope you're all doing OK during this difficult time. May we all stay healthy, and may this pandemic pass into history one of these days.

Here's your second sneak peek at the new novel, Webs in the Mist. Enjoy!

Chapter 2
Twisty
He sat on his bunk, slouched over his letters. Each envelope was stamped “Return to Sender” in crimson ink. Shit! They were meant for Jess. Twisty got up and paced around the cell, crushing the envelopes in his hand. Why hadn’t she written? Where the fuck was she?
“Huh?” Jimmy, his cellmate, stirred in his bunk.
“Nothing, go back to sleep.”
“’K.” Jimmy went back to his nap.  
Twisty hadn’t seen Jess since the wreck. She’d looked dazed, sitting on the grass with a cop and staring at his Cadillac, which had been perched precariously in the barrow pit and about to roll. From the back of the cop car, Twisty had watched the ambulance pull up. An ambulance. For Jess.
She’d never come to see him. He didn’t even know if she was OK. Jess had hit her head pretty hard. She’d sent one note, but hadn’t said much. It would take time for her to get over the crap that had happened, but Twisty knew he’d get her back. He had to. Jess was his woman. No way would he let her go.  
What the hell could he do about it from this shithole?
First, he could get his poop in a group. He was working on it. Hell, he’d been clean for two months. At first it had been a bitch on wheels. The doctor was still talking about sending him to treatment.
He recalled how Jess had looked when they met in Kentucky a little over a year ago. Tall and lean, she was a natural beauty who didn’t need makeup. Her raven-black hair and cat eyes had made him think she was Native American. No, she’d told him, she was dark Irish. His own coloring came from his Cherokee blood. Both tall and dark, they made a great-looking couple, Twisty thought. He’d never forget the first time Jess wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him. He’d felt like a real man.
Twisty caught his angular image in the funky cell mirror. Man, he’d lost weight. He’d always been sharp-featured, but now he was gaunt. The food here was gross. But it was time to force himself to eat more, and start working out. That way he’d look good for Jess.
Twisty leaned against the bars, the cold metal soothing his feverishly hot face. Maybe he could pay someone to track her down. There was money in his Asheville bank account. Ma was coming to visit in a few days. They could talk about hiring someone.
The buzzer echoed off the naked concrete walls. Rec time. Good. Some air, and walking the yard track with Carl. That crazy redheaded fucker was full of good bullshit.
Maybe Carl could help get his mind off this crap.