I live about 100 miles from St. Augustine, Florida, the nation’s oldest city. If you’ve never been there, go. It’s amazing. You’ll learn history, you’ll shop, you’ll eat.
Did I mention eating?
The best fried shrimp I’ve ever eaten is in St. Augustine at a tiny roadside restaurant on A-1-A.  Osteen’s is an old, family owned [...]

For my novel-in-progress REBUILD MY WORLD I’ve had to research photography.  My heroine is a renowned photojournalist who is recovering from a vicious attack.  I am an amateur shutterbug and thought I knew my way around cameras, but boy! Have I had lots to learn. Fortunately there are folks willing to help, including a former [...]

Funny-strange things I will never understand…
People who call you up, and when you answer the phone, they say, “I can’t talk…”
(Then why did you call me?)
People who call you up, talk your ear off for twenty minutes, and then say, “Let me go, I have to…”  (But I didn’t say anything!)
People who pull into the [...]

I write romance novels, so you probably expect me to blog about chocolates, conversation heart candy, and flowers, right?  But I write romantic suspense, which means I add a murder mystery to my romances.  So in honor of tomorrow’s holiday, I’m revisiting one of the most famous true crime cases from eighty years ago, the [...]

Okay, it sounds like the title of a film on SciFi, but it’s a true story–just dramatized a bit!
Back in the early 90s, we bought land in Montana (which is for sale now, if anyone’s interested) that was covered mostly in knapweed.  I’d never heard of knapweed, but the broker explained that it was not [...]

HOLIDAYS CAN BE JOYFUL OR BRUTAL.
WHICH WILL YOURS BE?

By Vicki Hinze  ©2006-2008
Holidays are supposed to be happy times of celebration.
Times when friends and families gather and share the joys of the season.
So why then are holidays the most stressful times of the year?  Why do suicide rates soar?  So many suffer depression and others [...]

How many women do you know who hate putting on a car’s seatbelt because it wrinkles their clothes or cuts into their neck?  Have you heard anyone say “Why use a seatbelt?  I have airbags in my car in case of an accident.”
 
My mother-in-law draws the seatbelt across her lap, leaving it unbuckled, in [...]

Okay, when someone says, “The Hustle,” what comes to mind?
You probably imagine a line dance. People stepping forward and back, spinning, twirling, and pointing in the air to the beat of Van McCoy’s song, The Hustle, right?
Well, there’s another kind of hustle dance that’s gaining momentum. It’s the fast and furious, all-drama, Latin-swing ballroom kind done [...]

While growing up, there were two words my father would utter that would cause complete panic in his four kids. “Family Meeting.” I shudder just typing the words. This meant only one thing. We were moving again.
Yet, as we shuffled to the kitchen table to get the bad news, there was always just a tiny [...]

What is a Code Word?  Who needs one?  Why?
A code word is any word or short phrase that you choose and share with someone else to signal them that everything is not okay.  You’re not okay.  You need help–and you need help now.
Who needs one?
Everyone.
We often think that it is only children who need a [...]