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Nautical Lingo Nautical lingo is all about those strange words that apply uniquely to boats and ships. Every field of human endeavor has its own vocabulary and the nautical world is no exception. Boats show up often in my books, so I thought you might be interested in learning a sampling of the words: Starboard […]

Sea Urchins I met my first sea urchins in Frenchman’s Bay, St. Thomas, USVI when I was eight years old. What a delightfully scary sight they were, with long, black needles undulating in time with tide and current, tempting me to touch them, waiting patiently to stick me. But even back then, I showed healthy respect

Can You Smell Someone’s Emotions? The notion that someone can smell another person’s anger, sadness and other emotions is not as farfetched as we may at first imagine. For example, there is a documented case of a medical student who ingested mind-altering drugs and woke up with amazing powers of smell. For several weeks he

How I Develop My Characters “Developing characters” is one of those “behind the scenes” elements of writing fiction that I find people are curious about. It’s more art than science, because we’re talking about portraying living, breathing human beings, and every writer goes about it in their own way. My approach to character development is

Rainforests in the U.S. Virgin Islands We’ve all heard of rainforests, which are sort of a cross between regular forests and jungles, and we know they exist in wet, tropical places. Some of us have visited a rainforest in Puerto Rico or Hawaii. But did you know that there are rainforests in the U.S. Virgin

Those Beautiful Sea Shells Let’s think about your next visit to a Caribbean Island and a peaceful walk on the beach. In St. Thomas, some beaches are made up of pristine sand. Others have some sand down by the water, but above the tide line there’s a shelf, made rough for bare-feet walking because of thousands of pebbles, broken sea

The Amazing Blow Hole I want to share with you a natural phenomenon called a “blow hole,” which you can find along the rocky coast of many islands. It’s a cave that faces incoming ocean swells. At a certain level of the tide, the swells rush into the cave, trap and then compress the air,

The Versatile Tortola Sloop For over a hundred years, the Tortola Sloop was the jack of all trades in transporting people and goods among the Virgin Islands. A combination of pick-up truck and automobile, this nimble one-masted sailboat plied among the islands, graceful and yet immensely practical.   The design of the Tortola Sloop is

St. Mark, as you may well remember if you’ve read “New Girl on the Island,” is the fictional off-the-grid island north of St. Thomas, where most of the story is set. I thought you’d like to see a map of the place, and whether it looks like what you’ve set in your mind’s eye while

Off the Grid on St. Mark with a Touch of Civilization As you’ve learned by now, the folks on St. Mark do quite fine living off the grid. They have no electricity, no cell reception, and only a few rich folks have cars. Oh yeah, there’s a Jeep fitted out to be the island’s fire