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…well, friends, here we go again. I have another novel coming out this fall! But this time, I’m starting—and ending with a question for you: Do you know, or do you know someone whose life has been affected by their own or someone else’s addiction? (I’m asking specifically about addiction to a chemical substance, as […]

I’m very proud of myself; this time, I only spent two weeks getting ready for a one-week trip to Bermuda with my family. Of course, months ago, another week had gone into selecting destination, accommodations, coordinating with all family, making and remaking plans. I had to arrange to have Cassie cared for way ahead, too. […]

…I take many deep breaths and launch another novel out into the world. MOTHERS OF FATE is was published yesterday in tradebound paper and ebook, available on all the various platforms. The audible book will be out in the next couple of days. I really hope you love this one, in which I’ve tackled a […]

Are you hanging on by your last frayed nerve as you slog through the dregs of winter? I know it well: the March vagaries of a couple of days in the sixties that bring daffodil shoots above ground reaching for the sun, teenagers in shorts and T shirts flocking like birds, kids wobbling around on Christmas bikes, happy dogs taking their humans on long walks. Fooled again, suckers that we all are, the next day or the next week, of course, comes another “winter storm,” with sleet

Have you ever had a string of days in which everything goes totally, weirdly blooey? I’m definitely not talking about the unbearable losses that most of us suffer at some point now. I’m talking about those times when you’d swear some evil genie had set up your schedule like a very long line of dominos […]

The audible book edition of A MATTER OF MERCY: 10th Anniversary Edition is finally out and available! Here’s one way to get it: Amazon.com: A Matter of Mercy: 10th Anniversary Edition (Audible Audio Edition): Lynne Hugo, Kendra Murray, Amphorae Publishing Group: Audible Books & Originals. Here’s my behind-the scenes story, an excellent example of how […]

Do you remember that song, “Another Opening, Another Show”? One stanzas goes, “You cross your fingers and hold your heart. It’s curtain time and away we go…” I can’t cross my fingers (makes typing impossible), but I do hold my heart and my breath as I write to you: Here’s Scout studying the cover of […]

I have always been an animal lover. Possibly, like enough of my identity to be embarrassing, it was born of rebellion against my parents. Well, actually my mother. It was she who was most vocal in her adamant refusal to let me and my sister have a pet. Jan and I wanted a dog, we […]

Nancy’s husband sent a picture two days before she died. In that one, she wore a white sleeveless nightgown. Her grown sons leaned over either side of her, a hospice tray with a cup of applesauce in the foreground. She was sleeping. Perhaps she’d slipped into the mercy of a coma. Nancy Johnson Pinard was […]

We were recently with our daughter’s family. They have two kids, two dogs–one of which is a Labrador retriever–and astonishingly immaculate hardwood floors. We have no little kids at home, one Labrador retriever, and hardwood floors that make people wonder if we’re running an unlicensed barber shop. Labs shed. Forget that myth about twice a […]

I’ve spent a couple of years trying to figure out how my very smart dog—who can remember and break into any place food is stored—can have such an extremely short memory. Every day, when Scout the Lab sees the horrible menace of the mail truck as it stops in front of the house, we have […]

I’m thrilled to introduce you to my new novel, A MATTER OF MERCY, published August 1. This one has so much of my heart in it. Set in Wellfleet on Cape Cod, it began when I became friends with one of the oyster farmers, Barbara Austin, whom I met while walking the beach at low tide. She was working […]

I have spent all morning lying in the sunshine on the floor with Hannah the Lab, knowing it’s our last morning together. She can’t get to her feet by herself anymore. It came on fairly suddenly last week, this final diminishment. My husband and I can see that it’s confusing and upsetting her to be lifted to […]

Hannah, my chocolate Lab, a main character in Where The Trail Grows Faint, will be thirteen next month. Our forays into the woods have changed, although she still shows me that she wants to go by following me to the door in the late afternoon when I get up from working to head out for a walk. She waits […]

Have you ever tried to do what you were pretty sure was the right thing only to have it explode? Even have two other seemingly sane and intelligent people tell you yes, you should do it before you went ahead and did that thing that exploded? So here’s the story. It was Saturday’s chilly dusk and I was driving home. I’d reached my own quiet […]

An unexpected ludicrous moment, a twist into tragedy, a flash of tenderness: surprise by a character is a crucial element of a riveting story. Speaking yesterday at the College of Mount Saint Joseph in Cincinnati, Ohio, Marcus Zusak discussed this as well as describing how he wrote multiple drafts of The Book Thief, trying out different narrators as he worked to understand […]

Would you think for a moment about your favorite novels? What about them do you remember most? My memories are of tense or revelatory scenes that came alive as strongly as if a staged play were in front of me. (For our purpose, let’s define a scene as a a unit of enacted drama that takes place […]