In BORACAY PINK SQUAD – Keychain Sunset, Bruce, a retired and widowed American from Portland, Oregon, joins a tour to the beautiful, white sands of Boracay Island in the Philippines. He is fulfilling a bucket list beach vacation he and his wife had prior to her illness, as well as reacquainting himself with the Asian…
Tag: Fiction
Short Stories are Life (Lifer?)
Remember the horror story you lived through three years ago (or 3 months ago, 30 years ago, whatever)? Maybe everyone survived, maybe not, maybe it brought about a new normal, maybe it spawned a fresh hell. How about that past love story? Or the current one? Maybe there were or are a lot of tears…
Japan – Tokyo Writing Inspiration
I’ve had the luck and luxury of traveling to Japan in my previous life for work. Those trips were intense, scary, interesting, and took me way out of my comfort zone. Hopefully they were also productive and meaningful for my past employer and for the Japanese folks I met and worked with when I was…
NaNoWriMo update: Conflicted – work in progress
I didn’t win this year’s National Novel Writing Month, NaNoWriMo, meaning I didn’t complete 50,000 new words for a story. However, I did do exactly what I set out to do. I got myself focused and tuned up the skills I’ve learned in the past to fire up the word engine. I’ve been working on…
Readers make me happy
Whether they are nieces, nephews, or friends from places 10,000 miles away, readers make me happy. And no, not only when they’re reading my books. They wouldn’t make me happy very long then, because I haven’t written many books. To me, reading, almost any genre, is a connection I feel with people. Kind of like…
It’s NaNoWriMo Time again!
November is National Novel Writing Month = NaNoWriMo I won (wrote 50,000+ words in the month) in 2013, 2014, 2015 and took 2016 off. So this year is the fourth year I’ve participated and I’ve chosen what I think is a terrific project. I am calling it CONFLICTED. It’s a Psychological Thriller with roots in…
Inspiration for Smugglers in Paradise series
A reader recently asked me what was the inspiration for my SMUGGLERS IN PARADISE series. This might be a good topic to talk about in a couple of blog posts. I’ll start with book one – GAME OF WIT AND CHANCE: BEGINNINGS. This story is best described as a family saga using passion and tragedy…
Back to School
Writing Prompt from Poets and Writers Magazine: Back to School Ms. Taplick took a breath and straightened her back, bringing herself to her full five-foot three-inch stature. First impressions were so important, especially when she would have these kids for only a short time. If she could gain control immediately, the class always went more…
Saltwater Saves
Saltwater Savior It was the bird that saved her. The bird whose entire head was inside the little one’s mouth. The bird whose scrawny feet were just barely twitching as the little one suckled in apparent ecstasy. She hadn’t been to this side of the island. And for good reason, she thought, her legs aching…
Eating my way through Manila
I’m spending a couple of weeks in the Philippines visiting good friends, doing research, meeting readers, and trying to get better connected. While I’m at it, I’m eating good food. I’m staying at an extremely reasonable boutique hotel in Makati, a business district in the heart of Metro Manila, that is close to some great…
R. Scott Tyler - writer 