Author: Margaret Mizushima

Margaret Mizushima is the author of the Timber Creek K-9 mysteries. You can find out more about her on her website at www.margaretmizushima.com, or by clicking here, read her last post here, and buy her books here. Creativity is an innate trait in all human beings. While some people create stories with words, others might use paint, glass, fabric, stone, or other media to produce their works of art. Some might design recipes to create delicious new foods or to structure fabulous meals. Some might create business plans or new ways to track data. Some create new machines or technological…

Margaret Mizushima is the author of the Timber Creek K-9 series. You can find out more about her on her website www.margaretmizushima.com, or by clicking here, see her last post here, and buy her books here. Last time I posted on our Blackbird Writers blog, I wrote about my husband and I moving from a small ranch in Colorado to a rented apartment in a Washington state river valley. After forty years at our Colorado home, reducing our belongings to one container and a horse trailer was no small task. We’re grateful that our landlady shared her beautiful property with…

Margaret Mizushima is the author of the Timber Creek K-9 series. You can find out more about her on her website, www.margaretmizushima.com, or by clicking here, read her last post here, and buy her books here. Moving. The very word strikes fear in the hearts of braver folks than I. And yet…moving can certainly have its positive side. After forty years of living on our small ranch in northern Colorado, my husband and I have relocated to Washington state to be closer to family. It was a difficult decision and one that took two years to evolve, but at the…

Margaret Mizushima is the author of the Timber Creek K-9 series of police procedurals. You can visit her website here, find out more about her here, read her last post here, and see her books here. I’ve attended writing conferences and workshops since before the turn of the century. Until about ten years ago, writing teachers would advise us to never bore our readers with descriptions of food and drink. “Don’t show your characters eating,” they said. “No one wants to read about that.” Enter the age of cozy mysteries! An intrepid group of mystery writers gave birth to a…

Margaret Mizushima is the author of the Timber Creek K-9 mysteries. You can find out more about her here, see her books here, and read her last post here. There is more than one way to build a fictional character. Throughout the years, I’ve used many different methods: character interviews, character profiles, discovering my characters while I write. But one method I’ve grown to love when character building is through the application of the Enneagram personality typing system. The Enneagram is an ancient Sufi method of establishing personality types and it was brought into modern psychology back in the 1980s…

Margaret Mizushima is the author of the Timber Creek K-9 police procedural series, set in the Colorado Rockies. You can find out more about her here, see her books here, and read her latest post here. Years ago (Could it possibly have been twenty?) I came across a book by Julie Cameron and Mark Bryan titled The Artist’s Way: A Course in Discovering and Recovering Your Creative Self. Many of you have probably read this book, and it’s still popular today. The book wasn’t meant to be just for writers. The lessons in it inspire creativity of any form, from…

Margaret Mizushima is the author of the Timber Creek K-9 series. You can find out about her here, or click here to read her last post. My family moved to Colorado when I was a young teen, and I’ve been drawn to the mountain wilderness to explore hiking trails and peaks ever since. And each autumn, the great outdoors beckons with a dazzling display of color. Aspen dot the mountainsides with pockets of yellow, gold, and orange against a backdrop of greens and blues from endless forests of pine and spruce.  I’m a slow hiker, often stepping aside on the…

Margaret Mizushima and friends Margaret Mizushima is the author of the Timber Creek K-9 Mysteries. Check out her bio here. I’ve been married to a veterinarian for almost forty years, and I’ve become accustomed to sharing my life with animals, usually dogs and cats but sometimes fish and birds. I grew up on a cattle ranch, but my family typically only had one dog at a time during my childhood, not the pack that my husband seems to need. Currently we have four dogs, which is a handful, but we love them all. We live with Hannah and Bertie, both…