Rebecca M. Douglass, Author

Work slowed down over the weekend as the Ninja Librarian was checking out the fall color in Colorado and finishing an editing project for writer Lisa Frieden . But The Problem of Peggy is entering the final editing stages (we hope!), and the cover should be ready for release next week. In other book news, the price for The Ninja Librarian has dropped to 99 cents for the ebook, at Amazon or Smashwords . So get a copy and discover the world of Skunk Corners for yourself! Don't forget to take a look at Book 2, Return to Skunk Corners! And now, just for fun, a glimpse of the golden aspens in Colorado. It was just a little early for the best color, but the weather was beautiful and so were the trees.

Title: White Sands, Red Menace Author: Ellen Klages Publisher: Viking Books for Young Readers, 2008. 344 pages. Source: Library Publisher's Summary: It is 1946. World War II is over--ended by the atomic bomb that Dewey Kerrigan's and Suze Gordon's scientist parents helped build. Dewey's been living with the Gordons since before the war's end, before her father died, moving south with them to Alamogordo, New Mexico. At the White Sands Missile Range, Phil Gordon is working on rockets that will someday go to the moon; at home, Terry Gordon is part of the scientists' movement against the Bomb. Dewey and Suze have conflicts of their own. Where does a girl who likes physics and math fit in? How do you know the right time to speak up and the right time to keep your head down? And, most important of all: What defines a family?   My Review:  I read and reviewed The Green Glass Sea a few weeks ago, and liked it enough that I hunted up the sequel to follow up on

I'm pleased to share that The Problem of Peggy: The Ninja Librarian Book 3 has come back from all the editors and beta-readers, and progress is happening once again. I expect to complete edits--mostly minor--in the next few weeks, before sending it out for a final edit and proof-read. The cover is also nearly done--except that part where I remembered I needed a blurb for the back cover, for advertising, etc. I've obviously waited too long between books, to be forgetting that sort of thing! I'll be doing a cover reveal in a couple of weeks, and if you'd like to participate, drop me a PM. By then I should have all the pre-order stuff set up, and have polished that all-important blurb. The cover was a struggle this time, but I think among us (that would be my cover artist, Danielle English , my co-worker Laurie, and yours truly) we came up with a good one. It will be a match for the first two, so that the trio (oh no! have I written a trilogy? I might have to write a four

It's photo time again! Back in July my husband, Eldest Son, and I spent a week backpacking in the Ansel Adams Wilderness (in the Sierra Nevada mountains just south of Yosemite). Here are some highlights. Day One: We drove from SF to LeeVining on Day Zero, so that the first day of our hike we had only to pick up our permit at the Mono Lake ranger station/Visitor's Center and drive a short distance to the trailhead. By 10ish, we were on our way, climbing the rather formidable rampart into the wilderness. You can see the tramway in this photo. A series of lakes, dammed in the 1930s, plagued this approach to the wilderness. Finally getting above the lakes, we encountered the idyllic waters of Rush Creek. Having hiked far enough and climbed more than enough, we found a camp and settled in, with plenty of afternoon left for exploring, bathing, and sitting around camp reading. Day Two: Leaving civilization behind. We woke early, and after breakfast hit the trail, eager to get into the

Today we have another Great Escapes Blog tour, a mystery set among the violence and chaos of WWI. Title: The Shattered Tree Author: Charles Todd Publisher: William Morrow, 2016. 290 pages. Source: Publisher's ARC through Great Escapes Tours  Publisher's Summary:  At the foot of a tree shattered by shelling and gunfire, stretcher-bearers find an exhausted officer, shivering with cold and a loss of blood from several wounds. The soldier is brought to battlefield nurse Bess Crawford’s aid station, where she stabilizes him and treats his injuries before he is sent to a rear hospital. The odd thing is, the officer isn’t British—he’s French. But in a moment of anger and stress, he shouts at Bess in German. When Bess reports the incident to Matron, her superior offers a ready explanation. The soldier is from Alsace-Lorraine, a province in the west where the tenuous border between France and Germany has continually shifted through history, most recently in the Franco-Prussian

The IWSG question this month is "How do you find time in your busy day to write?" This one hits me where I'm vulnerable. Let me be clear: I'm not vulnerable because my days are so jam-packed I can't make time. I feel guilty when I see this question precisely because my days are NOT. Unlike many of my fellow writers, I don't hold down a full-time job (though I do hold a few part-time jobs, I still have more free time than most people). My kids are now pretty much grown. The oldest is out of the house, the younger is in his last year of high school. I'm fresh out of excuses. And still, I often seem to run out of time before I get to my writing (witness Monday: I didn't intentionally not post because it was Labor Day. I didn't post because I failed to prepare a post, and by the time I realized it, I was too tired to care). I'm forced to conclude that no matter how much time you do or don't have at your disposal, you have to consciously pick a

Lately, I've found myself  not finishing some books, and while I don't like to write reviews of books I haven't finished, I thought it might be useful to talk about why I let them go. I'll say right here: it's not always because they are bad books. In fact, it's usually just because they aren't the right books and the right time. That said, here are a couple of books I let expire, and (to the best of my ability to suss out) the reasons why. The Road to Little Dribbling , by Bill Bryson Yup, that's right: I DNF'd a book by the famously witty Bill Bryson. As a matter of fact, this didn't totally surprise me. I had a love-hate relationship with A Walk in the Woods (yes, he made me laugh, but he also made me want to throw the book across the room with his lack of knowledge and planning, utter ignorance of good hiker etiquette and Leave No Trace principals, etc.). I enjoyed his book about Australia, but then when I read the one on the US, I found tha

Title: The Black Thumb Author: Frankie Bow Publisher: Hawaiian Heritage Press, 2016. 270 pages. Source: Electronic review copy Publisher's Summary: When a violent death disrupts the monthly meeting of the Pua Kala Garden society, Professor Molly Barda has no intention of playing amateur detective. But Molly’s not just a witness-the victim is Molly’s house guest and grad-school frenemy. And Molly quickly finds to her dismay that her interest in the murder of the stylish and self-centered Melanie Polewski is more than just…academic. My Review: This was a mystery that caught my attention and kept it from the start to the end. Maybe I was a little extra taken with the main character because I've spent most of my adult life in or around academia, but really the book has little to do with Molly's campus life, since it takes place during the summer vacation. It was just a good read in an interesting setting (Hawaii is just a bit exotic to me, since I've only ever been on

It's Flashback Friday--a fun blog-hop that's a break for bloggers and a chance to give something from long ago another airing. Click on the image above to check out the hop and find the list of participants. I hunted through the archives for a story to re-share. I couldn't remember this one from May 2014, but it made me smile when I re-read it, so here you go. It's short--only about 700 words. What’s for Dinner? Mom’s acting weird.  Well, that’s kind of normal, if you follow me, because she’s always weird, but usually she’s weird like wearing strange clothes and working all night on one of those bizarre sculptures she makes.  I won’t ever tell her this, but I don’t like them.  They have too many jagged edges.  They’ll tear holes in you if you get too close.  I sometimes wonder if she’s out to destroy someone, or if she just sees the world that way, all jagged.  Either way: weird. But what’s really weird is that she’s started cooking.  No more Swanson’s pot pies, and no