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, www.margaretmizushima.com, or by clicking here, read her last post here, and buy her books here. I do love a good setting for mysteries, and I’m especially fond of those set in the great outdoors. When my husband and I moved from Colorado to Washington State in 2022, I discovered a new setting for Deputy Mattie Wray and her K-9 partner Robo to experience in their next adventure. The state’s mossy trees and misty landscapes started me brainstorming about why these…

Margaret Mizushima is the author of the Timber Creek K-9 police procedurals. 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. Left Coast Crime (LCC) Seattle Shakedown is a wrap for 2024, but it’s not too early to start planning for LCC Rocky Mountain High Jinks in 2025. Set at the Westin in beautiful Denver, CO, the next LCC will take place March 13-16 and registration is open now. You can find out more about it on the Left Coast Crime site. You might…

Margaret Mizushima is the author of the Timber Creek K-9 Mysteries. 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. Lately I’ve been consumed with finishing my ninth Timber Creek K-9 Mystery. My deadline was October 1 and now my publishing team at Crooked Lane Books and I are well into the editing rounds. Along with this phase comes the need to finalize the title for the book, which can sometimes be a challenge. When the first book in the series was published back…

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 mysteries. You can find out more about her here, see her books here, and read her last post here. I’m married to a veterinarian who loves dogs, and throughout our marriage we’ve had two to five dogs in our lives at any given time. It helps that we live in the country, so the occasional bark fest doesn’t bother neighbors. Right now we have three dogs: two German shorthaired pointers named Hannah and Bertie and a border collie named Tess.  All of our dogs have been special, but today I…