JanDunlap.com

I can’t believe it. It looks like a Scott’s Oriole has been sighted in Duluth, MN, just three hours from my home. What’s unusual about that is that a Scott’s Oriole is a bird native to the southwest. What’s even odder (is that an oxymoron?) is that my Bob White characters see a Scott’s Oriole in my most recent release, Falcon Finale, when they go to Arizona. And now they could have stayed home and seen one right here in Minnesota!

This has happened to me before with these books: bird events that echo my book events. For the first book, it was an influx of Boreal Owls (normally very hard to find) in northern Minnesota the winter after the book The Boreal Owl Murder debuted in September 2008… ...more...

Spring has been crazy. We’ve had unseasonable cold (snow on May 1!), record breaking heat (103 degrees last week!) and everything in between. On top of that, we added a two-year-old dog to our household, and I feel like I’ve got a toddler underfoot again! Here I thought my life had settled into a neat routine of teaching and writing, but life has this way of always surprising me.

I just received confirmation that my second Bob White Birder Murder, “Murder on Warbler Weekend,” has been nominated for the 2009 Minnesota Book Award. That makes it two for two, since the first book in the series “The Boreal Owl Murder” received a nomination last year. Finalists will be announced in February.

This coming March is shaping up to be an interesting marketing month for me. The first weekend of the month I’ll be at the International Owl Festival in Houston, MN. Last year’s event was delightful, so I’m looking forward to meeting birders and signing books there again. For the last weekend in the month, I’ve been invited to come speak and sign books at the National Eagle Center in Wabasha, MN. I haven’t visited the new center there yet ...more...