Great Basin Summer : notes from the campground
NONFICTION
This is a family-friendly nonfiction work-in-progress highlighting our summer as volunteer campground hosts in Great Basin National Park. Filled with insights and photographs of the changing season, from wild flowers and deer to the Milky Way Galaxy in the night sky overhead, Great Basin Summer: notes from the campground combines written stories accompanied by related photos.
The experience has been transformative for us. As a MFA creative writing student, especially with a Nature Writing concentration, my main focus in this project is putting into words just how and where and why it has been so transformative.
I kept a detailed journal of our experience including interviews with some of the park rangers we got to know and revere over the summer, while Bob was ever-ready with his camera, capturing moments of the Park's flora, fauna, sweeping landscapes and spectacular night skies. The bumblebees he photographed at our campsite were counted in the Great Basin BioBlitz 2025 event in June.
I am inclined to self-publish the book in both print and digital formats on Barnes & Noble Press upon completion. I will update here as I get closer to finished manuscript.
Photo on mock cover by Bob Hartman ©2025.
Hat Tricks In Hangar Six: A Magda Lena Blue Mystery
FICTION
After a lifetime on the road, jazz singer Magda Lena Blue finally found a place to call home and settle down — in an abandoned train depot in the high desert town of River Cross.
Over the next decade, hammer by hammer, friend by friend, the abandoned 1920’s era train depot had been reimagined into “Maggy Blues, a vintage-style jazz cafe in the middle of nowhere,” as described in the local newspaper.
The Club as her home, the staff and guests her surrogate family, Maggy finally had some of the peace of mind she'd longed for — that is until her friends are accused of murder during the Club's anniversary event on a cold winter's night.
Hat Tricks In Hangar Six is the first in a series of novels, novellas, and short stories centered around Maggy Blues Jazz Cafe and the colorful characters drawn to it.
I drafted Hat Tricks In Hangar Six during NaNoWriMo 2021. (I am still in rewrites, which is taking longer because now that I'm back in school, I have a lot more writing to do ahead of it! But, I'll get there.) I'm also grappling with the idea of the series as a possible TV or limited series so might rewrite it as a screenplay. Still pondering! We'll see!