I'm working on the revisions for my fourth novel, The Last Camellia, and I just stopped to snap this photo. I love looking up out of my office window at this spooky moon and ominous sky above. It's so cozy and fun, and it gets me in the right mood to right the sort-of-spooky scene that I'm working on, and the romantic scene that comes next. Don't you love when you spot the moon outside your window? I think our house is situated exactly right, because I can see the moon when I'm writing, and then when I hit the hay, I can see it outside my bedroom window (facing west) when I'm dozing off. Sweet dreams.

Yesterday, we bought a new house. Well, an old house, with wonky plumbing, faulty electricity, and a faint smell of must in the air. But, it has the biggest, loveliest, sunny yard with lilacs, a prolific fig tree, plums, a Southern magnolia, Japanese maples, camellias and all kinds of wild strawberries, raspberries, herbs and irises. It's in Seattle, a few blocks away from our current house, and we're excited to build a new home for our family on the property. And so begins the dreaming and design phase! I'll be sharing snippets of the process here, so you can follow along. Kitchen ideas! Paint swatches! Kids room concepts! A great big office with built-in bookcases for all of the books I currently have stacked in piles in my office (can't wait!). My parents built a house when I was 12, and I remember "helping" my dad work on it (hammering nails on the roof, even). Ever since, the idea of building a house from scratch has been in my blood. My husband and I have looked at all kinds of properties over the years, and nothing seemed just right until we found this house. Now, to come up with a name for the house and property! I love how Martha Stewart names her homes (Skylands, Turkey Hill, etc.), and I adore Jane Green's "Figless Manor." What should we call our fledgling home? Because a little green tree frog was spotted on the property by the former owner, our 5-year-old wants to call it Frog Hollow. Hmm---not quite sure about that one! More updates soon!

Today, Blackberry Winter (my third novel, set to debut in the U.S. on September 25!) sold in Norway, to the amazing publisher Cappelen Damm. I couldn't be happier about the sale, especially since I grew up in Poulsbo, Washington---a town that takes its Norwegian heritage very seriously! To date, my books have been/will be published in twelve countries. I'm very, very grateful for the work my literary agents do to get my stories out there, and I can't wait to hear from Norwegian readers---soon!

A career highlight happened yesterday: I got the chance to interview Dr. Maya Angelou for Glamour. Here's some bits from our conversation, which I shall remember for the rest of my life. We also talked about addictions that are killing people every day all over the world, like alcohol and drug addictions. This is massive problem in the world, people should talk more about rehab centers and try to get over the addiction, for example last week I sent one drug addict to https://www.drugtreatmentfinders.com/locations/missouri-drug-rehab/

My publisher put this little quote card together for me. I really loved writing this scene, which takes place in a graveyard! P.S. Blackberry Winter will be out on September 25! You can pre-order it here, here, and here!