Robin Barefield's Blog, page 4

Jumping Hurdles

Sometimes, life seems like a series of hurdles, and this
winter, a new, huge hurdle appeared out of nowhere, catching most of us by
surprise and forcing us to re-evaluate our priorities.

I hope you and your loved ones are well. We don’t know what
will happen in the coming days, and many of us are struggling to cope with the
present. As some of you know, my husband, Mike, and I own a small lodge in the
wilderness on Kodiak Island, Alaska, and a few days ago, the Governor, in
effect, closed Alaska to visitors for at least the next month. I know he made
the right decision. I am sure the coronavirus will eventually spread to all
areas of the state, but we need to do everything we can to slow its rate of
infection. Folks who don’t need to travel should stay home. Even though Mike and
I feared the Governor might halt travel to Alaska, his mandate still hit hard,
and we find ourselves trying to decide what to do to survive economically.

This is not the first time a national or world event has impacted
us. The 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill and the 9-11 terrorist attack both nearly
decimated tourism in Alaska. Economic downturns always hurt the travel
industry, and during one of the many budget squabbles in the U.S. Congress, the
Kodiak National Wildlife Refuge closed, and we had to cancel goat hunts already
in progress. The COVID-19 threat differs from previous disasters, though. During
earlier crises, I focused my anger on one person or a group of people. Whether
it was a drunk captain, deranged terrorists, or spoiled politicians, I could always
picture the cause of our near-economic destruction.

Unfortunately, a pandemic is no one’s fault. We can’t blame
anyone for the coronavirus. Our government could and should have acted faster,
but even with the best response, a very infectious, novel virus is hard to
stop. We have no idea when this virus will run its course, but until then, we remain
at its mercy.

I find the economics of our situation disheartening and
depressing, and I know the government won’t miraculously bail us out of our
financial woes. Even in the past, when the government caused our economic problems,
we never received assistance to help us rebound. I certainly don’t expect help
this time, but I know we will be okay. We will jump over this hurdle. As long
as our family, friends, and we stay healthy, all else becomes insignificant.

I thank the health care workers and first responders who are
fighting on the front lines of this pandemic. They take incredible chances
every day.

Stay well, and we will get over this hurdle, and hopefully, something good will come from the pain. As you can see from the photo, I have a beautiful place to self-isolate.

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Join the Battle of the Books contest, and you could win a $500 Amazon Gift Card! I am very excited to have my novel, Karluk Bones, included in this contest.

Robin Barefield is the author of four Alaska wilderness mystery novels, Big Game, Murder Over Kodiak, and The Fisherman’s Daughter, and Karluk Bones. You are invited to watch her webinar about how she became an author and why she writes Alaska wilderness mysteries. Also, sign up below to subscribe to her free, monthly newsletter on true murder and mystery in Alaska, and listen to her podcast, Murder and Mystery in the Last Frontier.

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The post Jumping Hurdles appeared first on Robin Barefield.

Romance Author Dee S. Knight

I am thrilled to introduce you to Romance Author Dee Knight. Four weeks ago, I wrote about Dee Knight and Jan Selbourne and their combined newsletter. Two weeks ago, Jan wrote a guest post about her award-winning books, and this week, Dee, another award winner, will take the reins.

Dee has written an excellent guest post, and she not only describes
her journey to become a successful author but also offers fantastic advice to
new and struggling authors. I like all the points she makes, but I couldn’t
agree more with her assertion that to write well and succeed as an author, you
must write every day if possible. We are all busy, so if you want to be an
author, it is unacceptable to say you have no time to write. You must find the
time, so get up an hour earlier, write during the fifteen minutes while you’re
waiting for the kids to get out of school, or key punch during your break at
work. Look for those tiny gaps in your day when you can squeeze in a few
minutes of writing.

Before I take over Dee’s post, I’ll hand it to her. Her
words are not only inspirational but also instructional.

Welcome, Romance Author Dee S. Knight.

So
many authors say they were writers as children. Indeed, some even give the
impression they were developing the great American novel before they even came
out of the womb. Sadly, that wasn’t me. Oh, I’ve always had a knack I suppose
for spinning a tale. But to write it down? No.

I
take that back. In fifth grade we were assigned the task of writing a story. I
liked mysteries, being a Nancy Drew buff, so that’s what I decided to write. It
was truly a dark and stormy night and murder was afoot. I killed off one
character by page three, and by page five, when the murderer was creeping up on
the house to off the next character, I scared myself so badly, I quickly had
the police scoop up the bad guys and happily wrote THE END. I think I decided
then that the writing life was not for me.

Even
when I worked at a county library in Virginia and my coworkers suggested I take
up writing, I smiled and said yes, maybe someday, I knew I didn’t have
the interest. So why, when in my 50s and with a couple of months’ time on my
hands I decided to write a story I’d been building on for years, I have no
idea.

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Writing
the story was my husband’s idea. He was working as a consultant and had two
months left before we would be leaving town to go to the next contract. There
was no use in my looking for a job, so he told me to try writing a book.
Truthfully, it sounded fun and easy. I mean, how hard could it be? I had
the story in mind. All I had to do was type it out and fill in a few blanks. So
I set up the keyboard on a TV tray and typed while Jack was at work. In fact, I
typed from when we got up and finished breakfast until it was time to fix
dinner, and again after he went to bed until the wee hours of the morning. I
typed like that for a month, when I ended with 95,000 words and a finished romance
novel.

I
was astounded! I had written a novel, a real novel! And it was fun and
easy! I’d read articles where people said writing a book was hard. What
ninnies, I thought. Writing was a breeze, compared to teaching high school
kids, driving a tractor-trailer nationally, or brain surgery, all of which I’d
done. (Well, not brain surgery. That was a little poetic license.)

Anyway,
now that the writing was done, I was ready to take the publishing world by storm.
Except, I had no idea how to do that. I looked up publishers online and came up
with a few ideas. I sent inquiries off to five, and promptly received four
rejections. The fourth publisher was more encouraging. I like your writing
style, she wrote back. However, we are a publisher of erotic romance and
your book doesn’t have enough sex in it. If you decide to write an erotic
novel, I hope you will consider us.

Sex?
She wanted sex? Who can’t write about sex?

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So I
sat down for the next month and wrote a 95,000 word sexy romance—or what I
hoped was a sexy romance. Until then, I’d never heard of erotic romance and had
no idea what made a book erotic. I must have done all right because she accepted
it and set me on the path I continued taking for the next sixteen years. In
that time, I’ve written a variety of romance sub-genre, nearly all erotic.
There have been space romps, ménage, paranormal, time travel, contemporary and
historical, and one non-erotic novel. I write using three pen names: Dee S.
Knight, Anne Krist, and Jenna Stewart.

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I
have to admit, I’ve enjoyed these years of writing, though getting the books on
paper (or disk or whatever) hasn’t always been as easy as it started. At times,
beating my head against the wall would have been more fun than getting words
out. I started one book, Passionate Destiny, in February, and by October
swore that if I didn’t have it finished by Thanksgiving, I’d toss it out.
Fortunately, I completed it a week before then and sent it off. It became a Top
Pick in Romantic Times magazine. Other books—some easy and others more
difficult—have won awards from RWA (Romance Writers of America) chapter
contests. I’ve been lucky enough to win the prestigious Maggie award from Georgia
Romance Writers, and most recently, Only a Good Man Will Do, won Best Erotic
Romance of 2019 by the Las Vegas Romance Writers.

It’s
humbling to submit your work to someone else to review and judge, but
submitting to contests is something I would suggest to writers. Unless you
simply want to write for yourself or your family, you have to let others read
your work eventually. Contest judges critique the entries and make suggestions,
helping you grow.

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Another
suggestion I’d make is to consider online publishing. When I started, my goal
was to get in with New York publishers, to have an agent and to see my books on
bookshelves. It was a big disappointment to learn that bookstores will not
consider print-on-demand for their books, and back then, success with an
ePublisher wasn’t considered worthy by NYC publishers. It took years for
ePublishing to get its act together and prove their editing and authors were
not only good enough but in some cases excelled over the print world. Now, I’m
happy with ePublishing and the advantages it offers—excellent cover art and
more say in the cover, excellent editing and some back and forth in what is
accepted, and faster publication.

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I
would suggest for novices to publish through a publisher before giving into the
temptation of self-publishing. With opportunities like Amazon and Draft2Digital,
it’s easy to put your ideas into electronic format and sell to the world. But
working through a publisher first means you see the great advantage of working
with an editor and cover artist. Those things are very worthwhile and will help
shape the kind of work you present to readers. It’s like walking before
running. I was with publishers until very recently, and each taught me
something new.

I
haven’t written thousands of books, but I have written a few. So, if I were to
give any advice to beginning writers it would be:

Writing takes discipline. This is something I wish I’d understood early on. Set aside some time for writing a bit every day.Write every day, and keep on writing. You think that taking a break is okay and that writing again will be easy. It isn’t. Take it from me.Don’t second guess yourself by thinking others are better than you. They aren’t. They’re different from you, but that doesn’t make them better. Believe me and my experience, and don’t talk yourself out of writing because you think you can’t write XYZ better than another author. Be your own voice.Learn to self-edit before submitting your work to publishers or agents or contests. One of the best ways to do this is to read your work out loud. Believe me, if I can read my sex scenes out loud and not die of embarrassment, you can read what you’ve written. It doesn’t have to be in front of anyone, just so you hear the words as they are on the page and not in your head.Learn the craft of writing. When I wrote my first several books I had no idea what point of view was, or conflict, or internal/external goals. I just wrote. But once you know all that stuff, your books will be better.If you can find a critique partner, it’s a good idea. But, find someone who will be honest and not just nice, someone who will support you and not knock you down, someone who respects you and your work. That isn’t easy to find, but when you do, you’ll see how invaluable such a person is. If you join a group, make sure it’s not too large or you’ll be spending all your time trying to sift through contradictory comments to find what’s right. Trust me, when it comes to critiquing someone else’s work, everyone has an opinion.As I said earlier, enter a few contests. Not all of them cost a lot of money and the feedback is worthwhile.Don’t give up your day job. Treat writing as a business (instead of a hobby) but don’t expect for it to pay as a business. Not right away, anyway.Write. Always write. The only way you learn how to do it and do it well is to do it.Develop writing habits. If you have good habits, it will help your writing. If you have bad habits, you’ll spend a lot of time redoing your work.

Thanks, Robin, for letting me share!

Thank you, Dee. I enjoy meeting authors who write in genres
other than my own. I find it difficult to write love scenes in my novels, let
alone erotic romance scenes, so maybe I should get a few pointers from you!

I agree with your advice for new authors. Authors today have
many publishing options, but they are not all good choices, and too many scam
artists prey on those eager to publish their first book. Do your homework
before you sign a contract.

In my next post, I plan to write more about Dee’s advice for authors and offer a few tips of my own. Dee has inspired me!

Robin Barefield is the author of four Alaska wilderness mystery novels, Big Game, Murder Over Kodiak, and The Fisherman’s Daughter, and Karluk Bones. You are invited to watch her webinar about how she became an author and why she writes Alaska wilderness mysteries. Also, sign up below to subscribe to her free, monthly newsletter on true murder and mystery in Alaska, and listen to her podcast, Murder and Mystery in the Last Frontier.

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Author Jan Selbourne

I am excited this week to present a guest post by Australian Author Jan Selbourne. Jan writes about her path to become an author and the true-life inspirations for her novels. Jan is a wonderful author, and I can’t wait to read her newest book, The Woman Behind the Mirror.

Thank you, Jan for this post, and I will step out of the way and let you tell your fascinating story.

Hello Robin, thank you very much for
having me as your guest.

I’m Jan Selbourne, author or four
historical fiction books and the Aussie half of Nomad Author’s Aussie to Yank
newsletter.

I grew up in Melbourne, Australia and thank my parents for my love of books. As a child I suffered from severe asthma and when confined to bed my mother made sure I had books for company. School introduced me to more books and being part of the Commonwealth (the 54 member states that were former territories of the British Empire) we learned British and European history. I was hopeless at maths, so I guess that’s where the urge to write began. A year at business college put me into an accounting career and when I was 21, I joined the tide of Australians travelling to the United Kingdom for a working holiday. In front of me was the history I’d read about. I was hooked. However, career and marriage and children kept the urge to write firmly on the backburner. ‘When I retire’, I said to myself. Then a change of direction to a large historical society in northern New South Wales as committee secretary. This society’s archives hold the history of that region from first European settlement. Life for early settlers in colonial Australia was not easy and their stories are awe inspiring. When I finally retired it was My Time to Write – and I had no idea what to write about.

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Inspiration came from an article on how
people react when faced with extreme danger and my grandfather’s WW1 military
service records.  In Behind the Clouds,
Adrian and Gabrielle Bryce, who can barely tolerate each other, are trapped in Belgium as the clouds of war loom over Europe.
Plunged into a nightmare of lies and betrayal, they flee for their lives as the
German forces cross the border. Narrowly avoiding capture, witnessing death and
atrocities, they reach safety as two different people – to face charges of
treason and a woman who’ll stop at nothing to see Adrian dead. Behind the
Clouds was later renamed Perilous Love.

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A throwaway comment “at any age a lot of
change happens to us in ten years” gave me the idea for Lies of Gold.  A love affair ends in anger, Katherine is
left with the consequences; hard living and war has numbed Julian. Ten years
later fate steps in. Gold is crossing the Channel to Napoleon Bonaparte and
Julian’s orders to find the traitor bring him back to Halton Hall and Katherine
– and the man of many faces whose gold smuggling covers something much more
sinister.  I was thrilled and honoured Lies
of Gold was awarded the 2019 Coffee Pot Book Club Book of the Year Silver Medal
– Historical Romance category.

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In 2014 I visited the Western Front where
my grandfather served during WW1. Thousands of graves of young men who never
came home. So many of those graves inscribed “Known Only to God”. ID tags
missing or their bodies unrecognisable. In those days war service records were
handwritten with a service number, name, date of birth, nationality, marital
status, religion recorded on the first page. I wondered if a soldier could steal
the identity of a fallen comrade. I was told it was possible but the chance of
discovery very real and the penalties very harsh. That was good enough for me
to write The Proposition. One man enlists to avoid arrest, the other to
avoid the money lenders. In the thick of battle, one is wounded and collapses
beside the body of the other. It’s a risk, a hanging offence, his only chance
of a new life. Harry swaps identity discs. Now Andrew Conroy, he’s plunged into
a nightmare of deception and murder.

In 2018 I met Dee S. Knight – believe it or not – over a book. Dee had reviewed Perilous Love, – I wrote to thank her and we clicked.  Despite Dee living in Idaho, me Down Under New South Wales and writing in different genres, we share a lot of the same values and a good sense of humour.  A good sense of humour is a must in the publishing world! Dee has written many wonderful books (spicy hot books I might add) and she’s been super supportive to me, a virtual newcomer.  In 2018 we began our Aussie to Yank newsletter and it’s a lot of fun. Not only do we write about what’s going on in our respective parts of the world, we’ve interviewed wonderful authors from Canada, across the U.S from Alaska to the east coast, Britain and a couple of Aussies thrown in for good measure.  As I wrote in our last newsletter it still amazes me how unique each story is. There is indeed a book for every reader.

Dee and her husband Jack have recently established Nomad Authors Publishing and they offered to publish my just completed 4th book, The Woman Behind the Mirror. I am grateful to Dee for her encouragement and help during the final editing and I’m very excited about this new venture. Here’s a little bit about The Woman Behind the Mirror.

Betrothed by her
father to a man twice her age, Sarah Forsythe does the unthinkable—she runs
away with the son of a Methodist minister. Not to Gretna Green, to colonial
America—For Sarah, this “new world” brings broken promises, abandonment,
poverty and shame. Around her, the American Revolution is seething, and the
siege of Boston worsens by the day. As British soldiers seek out traitors and
treason, a desperate Sarah breaks open a safe looking for cash. Instead, she
finds a box holding Bank of England documents. Through willpower, bitter
determination, and lying through her teeth, Sarah manages to make her way home
to England. What she doesn’t know is that two men follow, and they will do
anything to claim those documents. Bank investigator Neil McAlister faces an
almost impossible task—to determine the true owner of the documents by deciding
who is lying. Most of all, as danger creeps ever closer, he needs to know who
wants the secretive, beautiful Sarah dead.

Thank you again Robin
and I’m looking forward to your next newsletter. Jan

Thank you, Jan, and I can’t wait to read your books. Congratulations again on the 2019 Coffee Pot Book Club Book of the Year Silver Medal for Lies of Gold. Here are a few links to Jan’s books and her social media accounts.

The Proposition

Lies of Gold

Facebook

LinkedIn

Nomad Authors

Robin Barefield is the author of four Alaska wilderness mystery novels, Big Game, Murder Over Kodiak, and The Fisherman’s Daughter, and Karluk Bones. You are invited to watch her webinar about how she became an author and why she writes Alaska wilderness mysteries. Also, sign up below to subscribe to her free, monthly newsletter on true murder and mystery in Alaska, and listen to her podcast, Murder and Mystery in the Last Frontier.

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Authors Jan Selbourne and Dee Knight

I love meeting other authors. Writing is a solitary endeavor, and only another author understands the passion driving us to tell our stories. We spend hundreds of hours writing, editing, revising, and promoting our novels, but really, all we want to do is tell a good story. I’ve shared my blog with several guest authors over the years, and most write in genres different than my own. Mary Ann Poll writes Christian horror, Rich Ritter pens edgy westerns, T. Martin O’Neil tells fictionalized stories based on his experiences as a Naval Intelligence officer during the Vietnam War, and Steve Levi writes in a variety of genres, including his popular series on impossible crimes.

This week I’ll introduce a pair of authors I met recently.
These ladies immediately caught my attention because Jan Selbourne lives in New
South Wales, Australia, and Dee Knight and her husband reside in the Western
U.S.  Despite the distance separating
them, though, Dee and Jan write a highly successful joint newsletter. 

I asked Jan and Dee how they met and why they decided to
write a newsletter together, and Jan said, “Dee
and I have books published with Black Velvet Seductions, but we didn’t meet until
I wrote to Dee thanking her for the review she’d posted on one of my books.” 

Dee added, “I read Jan’s Perilous
Love and absolutely was crazy for it! I don’t write reviews for books I
don’t like but will frequently write them for books I love, so I wrote one for Perilous
Love. That’s how we first exchanged e-mails, but we kept at it because Jan
has such a great sense of humor, and I like to think mine is as quirky as hers.
I can’t believe we live so far apart and yet have so much in common!”

Dee and Jan have never met
in person, but from their joint e-mails, you would think they were lifelong
friends. In this post, I will introduce you to Jan Selbourne and Dee Knight by
reposting one of their joint newsletters. In my next post, Jan will tell us
about her life and books, and in the following post, Dee will share her story.

I’ll provide a spoiler on
each author. Jan recently won the Coffee Pot Book Club Book of the Year awards
– Silver medal for her historical romance novel, Lies of Gold, and Dee
writes in at least six different genres under several different pen names. I am
awed by both women, and I know you will be too.

If you like their newsletter, don’t forget to sign up for it here, so you don’t miss an issue. This is the link to sign up: https://landing.mailerlite.com/webforms/landing/h8t2y6. 

Check out Jan’s Amazon page and Dee’s Amazon page, and click on their names at https://nomadauthors.com to view their websites.

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Hello from Jan
Today, 18 January 2020, I intended archiving last year’s blogs and author interviews but instead I’m watching the lovely steady rain fall. The best rain New South Wales has had in a long, long, time. It’s not only filling creeks and rivers it’s giving our wonderful firefighters a well-earned breather. Before I was interrupted by the rain, I was glancing through some of last year’s work and it occurred to me that every author interview begins with the question. “What inspired you to write your book?” The next question asks about our characters, are they based on people we know or pure imagination? Was the story planned or did it grow as the chapters increased? That’s the beauty of books, each one is new and unique for the reader, taking us on an adventure from the first page.
Nomad Authors has hosted wonderful authors and it never ceases to amaze me that each book we have featured in our newsletters and blogs is a new story to entertain. There is indeed a book for every reader.

My first attempts at writing were full of enthusiasm and lacking the essential substance, inspiration. It was by chance while sitting in the doctor’s waiting room that I picked up a three month’s old journal and read an article on how a person’s true character emerges when faced with ife threatening danger or massive upheaval. For example, the tough guy turns to water and runs, the small insignificant person steps up and takes charge. An idea was forming in my head and again by chance, I was sorting through old family papers and came across my grandfather’s World War One military record. He served with the Australian Imperial Forces in Belgium and France and was involved in some of the bloodiest battles. He came home but was never the same and it was years before he could talk about the horrors of that war. I decided to research the events leading up to the German invasion of Belgium in August 1914 and what followed was called The Rape of Belgium. I was reading the atrocities my grandfather spoke about. There was the inspiration and the setting for my first book Behind the Clouds.

I’m sure every reader could name a book that inspired them in some way. Charles Dickens’ books were instrumental in bringing about overdue social change in Victorian England. Remember ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People’? Louise Hay’s You Can Heal Your Life inspired millions of people around the world. Again, there is a book for every reader and that brings me to my pal Dee who has just released Burning Bridges. The first page hooks you and by the last page you’ll be asking the same question as I did – how many times did this happen. Dee, what inspired you to write Burning Bridges? Until next month, stay safe and remember, if you can’t be good, be careful. Jan.  



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Hello from Dee
Inspiration is a strange and wonderful thing. Take the inspiration for my latest book, Burning Bridges–war and the death of a mail carrier.

I grew up during the Vietnam War. We generally watched the news after dinner each night and the war was right there in our faces. In the lotter, Jack’s number was under 100, and he definitely would have been drafted had he not been going to a military college and the government thought they would get him eventually. Fortunately, the war ended before Jack got out of school, but we both had friends and schoolmates who went overseas. It took me a long time before I could even consider writing anything related to Vietnam in one of my books. But on a drive up to visit my mother once, I heard a radio report about a mailman who had died. When his family cleaned out the garden shed in back of his house, they found two bags full of mail stuffed in the back. The Post Office said they would do their best to connect the letters with the intended recipients, but the mail was more than a decade old. Suddenly, lost letters…the war…a young man leaving for the unknown and a girl staying behind with a terrible secret.

I had my
inspiration.

I had
quite a lot of research to do for Burning
Bridges. Some of it—like the concert at the Alan B. Shepard
Convention Center I knew because I’d been there for concerts, back in the day.
But I knew nothing about the ships and the kinds of work they did in Vietnam. A
story in one of the letters Sara (the heroine, Sara Richards) receives is a
true story I found online. I changed it up slightly, but for the most part,
it’s something that actually happened. The story made me realize how little any
us knew about the day-to-day conditions our men and women faced over there. But
then, I guess that’s often the way with war.

Anyway,
that was my inspiration for Burning
Bridges. I can’t wait to spring Jan’s surprising new book news!
Then she’ll have to tell us about her
inspiration! Maybe next month?

*Burning Bridges, a
non-erotic romance by Dee S. Knight writing as Anne Krist: “With surprising
twists

and believable interplay between characters, BURNING BRIDGES is
an unforgettable love story filled with passionate desires and potent
emotions.” –5 stars AlwaysReviewing.com

Finally, don’t forget that you have access to free stuff on the Nomad Authors site. This month there’s a poem I wrote just for Valentine’s Day. It shows one of the differences between men and woman. Hope you’re staying safe, dry and warm in the northern hemisphere and cool and safe in the southern! Dee  

Robin Barefield is the author of four Alaska wilderness mystery novels, Big Game, Murder Over Kodiak, and The Fisherman’s Daughter, and Karluk Bones. You are invited to watch her webinar about how she became an author and why she writes Alaska wilderness mysteries. Also, sign up below to subscribe to her free, monthly newsletter on true murder and mystery in Alaska, and listen to her podcast, Murder and Mystery in the Last Frontier.

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Dungeness Crab for Dinner

Dungeness crab is a favorite dinner menu item from the docks
of San Francisco to Fisherman’s Wharf in Seattle to the top restaurants in
Anchorage. With its sweet meat and delicate flavor, Dungeness crab ranks as one
of the world’s finest delicacies. So how are Dungeness caught commercially, and
are they susceptible to shellfish poisoning?

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The commercial Dungeness crab fishery in Alaska began around
1916, and Dungeness crabs were first commercially canned in Seldovia in 1920.
Today, Dungeness crabs are canned, frozen, shipped fresh, or shipped live to
market.

Commercial fishermen catch Dungeness crabs in circular, steel pots, usually baited with herring or squid. The pots measure 40 inches (101.6 cm) in diameter and 14 inches (35.6 cm) in height. The round steel frames of the pots are wrapped in rubber tubing and then covered with stainless steel mesh. According to regulations, the pots must include two escape rings large enough to allow the undersized crab to exit the pot. The fishing season and the number of pots a vessel can deploy varies by management area in Alaska, but regulations throughout most of the state for pot numbers remain lenient.

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Biologists manage the commercial Dungeness fishery by the
three S’s: size, sex, and season. Only male crabs over 6.5 inches (165mm) can
be harvested, and the fishery is closed during the female molting and mating
period from mid-August until the end of September. Because biologists do not
survey Dungeness crab populations in much of Alaska, recent research near
Kodiak focused on whether legal male crabs have reached sexual maturity and had
the chance to mate once or twice. The results of the study indicated the
current minimum size limit of 6.5 inches (165 mm) is appropriate for Dungeness
crabs in Alaska. Males are approximately four-years old at 6.5 inches, and they
have probably mated two or three times.

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The meat of a Dungeness crab tastes sweeter than the flesh of either a tanner (snow) or king crab. Approximately one-quarter of the crab’s weight is meat. You cook a Dungeness crab by boiling it in the shell for 20 minutes. Crabs can ingest poisonous algae such as the algae that produce domoic acid or the algae which carry the paralytic-shellfish-poisoning toxin. These toxins are found only in the internal organs of the crabs, so biologists recommend butchering a crab before cooking it. You can butcher the crab by cutting it in half and removing the internal organs and gills. Once you’ve boiled the crab and melted butter for dipping, you are ready to feast!

As always, thank you for reading. I am currently on the
road. We had a nice vacation and family reunion in Hawaii, and we are now
preparing to return to Anchorage, where we will buy supplies and take our
Wilderness First Responder Recertification course. We’ll fly back to Kodiak in
early March and then home a few days later. I enjoyed getting away and finding
the sun for a few weeks, but I can’t wait to get home and dive into new
projects.

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In the meantime, I’ll feature two, wonderful authors who have graciously agreed to write guest posts while I finish my travels. I’ll introduce them to you in my next post.

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Robin Barefield is the author of four Alaska wilderness mystery novels, Big Game, Murder Over Kodiak, and The Fisherman’s Daughter, and Karluk Bones. You are invited to watch her webinar about how she became an author and why she writes Alaska wilderness mysteries. Also, sign up below to subscribe to her free, monthly newsletter on true murder and mystery in Alaska, and listen to her podcast, Murder and Mystery in the Last Frontier.

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Dungeness Crab (Metacarcinus magister)

Dungeness crabs (Metacarcinus magister) live
nearshore along the coast of North America from the Aleutian Islands to
Magdalena Bay, Mexico. The species derives its common name from a favorite
habitat in a shallow, sandy bay inside the Dungeness Spit on the south shore of
the Straits of Juan de Fuca in Washington state. Dungeness crabs prefer a sandy
bottom. They usually inhabit depths less than 100 ft. (30 m), but they
sometimes live as deep as 656 ft. (200 m). They can tolerate a wide range of
salinities and sometimes live in estuarine environments. Juvenile Dungeness
seem to favor estuaries where they can hide from predators amid the eel grass
and other plants.

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A Dungeness crab has a wide, oval, body covered by a hard brownish-orange
shell made from chitin. Unlike a tanner or a king crab, a Dungeness crab has a
smooth carapace, lacking spines. The legs of a Dungeness crab are much shorter
than those of a king or tanner crab. A Dungeness has ten legs, four pairs of
walking legs, and two claws. The crab uses the claws for defense and to tear
apart its food. You can distinguish between a male and a female Dungeness by
examining their abdomens. Females have a rounded abdomen, while a male’s abdominal
flap appears triangle-shaped. An adult Dungeness with a carapace width of 6.5
inches (16.5 cm) weighs between two and three pounds (1 kg). A large male Dungeness
can measure more than ten inches (25.4 cm) in width.

[image error]Male

Dungeness crabs shed their shells nearly every year in a
process called molting. Mature females molt between May and August, and males
molt later. A male mates with a female only after she molts and before her new
exoskeleton hardens. Scientists believe a female attracts a male and signals
her readiness to mate by releasing pheromones in her urine. Male Dungeness are
polygamous, meaning each male may mate with more than one female. After mating,
the female stores the sperm in internal pouches and holds it until her shell
hardens. A female can store sperm for up to two years, and older females
sometimes used stored sperm to fertilize their eggs rather than molting and
mating. Research shows many older females mate less than once a year. When the
female is ready to fertilize her eggs, she extrudes the eggs through pores on
her ventral surface. The eggs are fertilized as they pass through the stored
sperm. The fertilized eggs then adhere to hairs on the abdominal appendages,
and the female carries the eggs inside her abdominal flap until they hatch. An
old, large female Dungeness can carry 2.5 million eggs.

When the eggs hatch, the planktonic larvae swim free. Larval
development takes between four months and a year, and the larvae pass through
several stages before they finally resemble a crab and settle on the bottom.
During their first two years, male and female Dungeness grow at a similar rate
and may molt as many as seven times, growing with each molt. Adult Dungeness molt only once a year. After
two years of age, males begin to grow more quickly, and they grow larger than
females. Dungeness crabs have a maximum lifespan of eight to thirteen years.

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Dungeness eat live clams, worms, fish, and shrimp, and they
also scavenge dead fish and invertebrates. Predators of Dungeness include sea
otters, and several species of fish, including halibut. Many species of fish,
marine mammals, and invertebrates prey upon juvenile crabs. Dungeness are
susceptible to pollution, ocean acidification, habitat damage, and overfishing.

In my next post, I’ll describe the commercial fishery for Dungeness crabs and explain how they are managed.

Robin Barefield is the author of four Alaska wilderness mystery novels, Big Game, Murder Over Kodiak, and The Fisherman’s Daughter, and Karluk Bones. You are invited to watch her webinar about how she became an author and why she writes Alaska wilderness mysteries. Also, sign up below to subscribe to her free, monthly newsletter on true murder and mystery in Alaska, and listen to her podcast, Murder and Mystery in the Last Frontier.

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The post Dungeness Crab (Metacarcinus magister) appeared first on Robin Barefield.

2020 Resolutions

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It’s time once again to review last year and make
resolutions for the new year. I hope you all had a great 2019, and I wish you
an even better 2020!

I had a good 2019, and I’m pleased with what I accomplished.
I went off track a bit and did not fulfill all my resolutions from last year,
but I wandered down some new, exciting paths. I finished my fourth novel,
Karluk Bones, and my publisher released it on September 1st. I did
not finish my wildlife book, but I am now busy editing it and hope to publish
it in 2020. Meanwhile, I’ve started writing my next novel and am beginning to
assemble my true-crime book. None of these things happen as quickly as I would
like, but I’ve learned I dream up new ideas much faster than I complete the old
ones.

I enjoy plotting and writing books, but selling books
remains a puzzle I might never solve. I’ve worked hard over the last year
promoting my books, but when nothing seemed to work, I decided to think
“outside the box.” I needed to search for new places to find my ideal readers.

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Paid Advertising: My publisher uses paid advertising
to promote my books, but I rarely pay for advertisements. I’ve found I never
make as much money from advertising as I spend on the ad, but perhaps this is
because I don’t know what I’m doing.

My Blog:  I
started my blog when I built my website, and while I still love writing posts,
I have learned this is not the best way to find people who want to read my
books. A respectable number of people read my blog each week, but I think most
are either friends or folks who stop by to learn about the specific topic of my
post. I plan to keep writing blog posts as long as I have something to say. I
learn a great deal from researching and writing my wildlife posts, but my blog
posts are not yet useful promotional tools for my books.

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My Monthly Murder and Mystery Newsletter: Many of the
people who open and read my monthly newsletter buy and read my books, so my
goal is always to find more individuals who want to sign up for my newsletter.

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Medium: If you haven’t checked out Medium (https://medium.com) yet, you should. It’s a platform for writers, where you can find articles on every topic imaginable. I post some of my true crime articles and my wildlife content there. At the bottom of each true crime article, I include a sign-up form for my newsletter, and dozens of Medium readers have signed up for my mystery newsletter. When I found Medium and began posting my true crime articles, I felt I’d made progress. People who liked my writing and my subject matter opted to sign up for my newsletter.

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Podcast: I took a stride forward with Medium, but I
knew I needed to do more to find readers. I decided perhaps I should look for
readers who also enjoy other types of entertainment. I didn’t know what to
expect when I started my podcast, but for a low-budget production, it has done
well, and I’ve found new readers.

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My writing resolutions for 2020 are to finish and publish my
wildlife book and to finish my next novel. I also hope to keep blogging,
podcasting, and posting my newsletter on schedule. I’ll work with my publisher
to try to think of new ways to reach readers, and I’ll keep doing the things
that seem to work.

I’ve learned selling books is hard. It’s like a big puzzle
where all the moving parts must fit together somehow. I think if I find the
correct alignment, I’ll turn my fledgling writing hobby into a book business. I
believe most authors are dreamers. Success is right around the corner, and next
year it will happen. Maybe 2020 will be the year for me!

What are your resolutions for 2020, and have you made resolutions for the next decade? I hope 2020 is the year for you to make your dreams come true. I wish you health, wealth, and happiness!

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Robin Barefield is the author of four Alaska wilderness mystery novels, Big Game, Murder Over Kodiak, and The Fisherman’s Daughter, and Karluk Bones. You are invited to watch her webinar about how she became an author and why she writes Alaska wilderness mysteries. Also, sign up below to subscribe to her free, monthly newsletter on true murder and mystery in Alaska, and listen to her podcast, Murder and Mystery in the Last Frontier.

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The post 2020 Resolutions appeared first on Robin Barefield.

Range and Commercial Fisheries for Tanner and Snow Crabs in Alaska

Tanner crabs range from Oregon to the Gulf of Alaska and the
Bering Sea, as far north as Cape Navarin in Russia and west to Hokkaido, Japan.
Snow crabs inhabit colder waters than tanner crab, but the ranges of the two
species overlap, and where they occur together, they interbreed and produce
hybrids. Snow crabs inhabit waters from Japan to the Bering and Beaufort Seas. Snow
crabs also occur in the Atlantic Ocean from Greenland to Maine.

In my last post, I described the biology and life cycles of
tanner crabs (Chionoecetes bairdi) and snow crabs (Chionoecetes
opilio). A valuable market exists for both species, and a robust but limited
fishery occurs in the Gulf of Alaska and Bering Sea.

[image error]Alaska department of Fish and Game

NOAA Fisheries, the North Pacific Fishery Management Council, and The Alaska Department of Fish and Game jointly manage the tanner and snow crab commercial fisheries. As with king crab, biologists manage the tanner and snow crab fisheries according to the “three S’s.” These are size, sex, and season. Fishermen can keep only male crabs over a specific size, and fishing is not allowed during the mating and molting seasons. These restrictions enable crabs to grow to reproductive age and preserve females so they can reproduce. Managers gauge crab abundance during the current season and then adjust quotas accordingly for the following season.

In 2005, the Crab Rationalization Program was implemented,
directing fisheries managers to allocate shares of the overall quota of tanner
and snow crabs among harvesters, processors, and coastal communities. Fishing
vessels must have satellite communications systems, so the captain can report
the number of crabs caught daily. This real-time reporting allows fisheries
managers to monitor the catch and to close the fishery when fishermen reach the
harvest limit.

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Crab pots must have escape panels and rings, which employ biodegradable
twine. When a fisherman loses a pot, the twine will disintegrate, rendering the
pot incapable of trapping crab and other organisms. Regulations also require observers
to join the crew and collect data on the catch and bycatch and document any
violations on a randomly chosen twenty percent of all fishing vessels.

Happy Holidays! I won’t have a podcast episode or a blog post next week, but I’ll be back on December 29th with a post to review my year, make resolutions for next year, and most importantly, wish all of you a Happy New Year!

Whose bones lay scattered in the Kodiak wilderness? My latest novel, Karluk Bones, is now available.

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Robin Barefield is the author of four Alaska wilderness mystery novels, Big Game, Murder Over Kodiak, and The Fisherman’s Daughter, and Karluk Bones. You are invited to watch her webinar about how she became an author and why she writes Alaska wilderness mysteries. Also, sign up below to subscribe to her free, monthly newsletter on true murder and mystery in Alaska, and listen to her podcast, Murder and Mystery in the Last Frontier.

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The post Range and Commercial Fisheries for Tanner and Snow Crabs in Alaska appeared first on Robin Barefield.

Tanner Crab and Snow Crab(Chionoecetes bairdi and Chionoecetes opilio)

Whenever I mention tanner crabs to our guests, they return a
questioning look. “What is a tanner crab?” “I’ve never heard of a tanner crab.”
If you enjoy eating crab, you’ve undoubtedly consumed tanner crab at a
restaurant, but the menu probably listed the delicacy as “Alaska Snow Crab.”

In the 1960s and 70s, when the king crab fishery exploded,
commercial fishermen considered the smaller tanner crabs pests worth nothing. A
decade later, though, when the king crab fishery failed in many areas, savvy industry
marketers began advertising tanner crabs as snow crabs, and suddenly, their
value soared as demand grew.

To make the tanner crab – snow crab situation more
complicated, fishermen call Chionoecetes bairdi by the common name, “tanner
crab,” but they refer to Chionoecetes opilio as “snow crab.” To further
confuse things, where the two species’ ranges overlap, they can interbreed,
producing offspring bearing characteristics of both parents. For this article,
I will refer to Chionoecetes bairdi as tanner crab and Chionoecetes
opilio as snow crab.

Tanner crabs (Chionoecetes bairdi) and snow crabs (Chionoecetes
opilio) are considered short-tailed or “true” crabs. A tanner crab’s body
is a chitinous carapace with a small abdominal flap. A male’s flap is
triangular, while a female has a broad, round abdominal flap. A tanner crab has
five pairs of legs and the first pair sports pincers. By the time it reaches
adulthood between the ages of seven to eleven years, a tanner crab weighs from
two to four pounds (0.91 to 1.81 kg).

[image error]Tanner Crab

Unlike king crabs, tanner crabs do not continue to molt (shed their old shell and grow a new one) throughout their lives. Once they reach sexual maturity, both males and females undergo a terminal molt, after which they will never again shed their shell.  A female tanner crab mates for the first time during her terminal molt. She releases pheromones to attract a male and remains receptive for 21 days. The male crab clasps the female and inserts his sperm into her. Laboratory observations suggest this clasping embrace can last as long as 14 to 151 hours.

After her first mating session, biologists think a female
tanner crab produces another four clutches of eggs before dying. During
subsequent mating sessions, the female has a hard shell, and in the absence of
a male, she can produce an egg clutch with sperm she stored from a previous
mating. A female tanner deposits between 85,000 to 424,00 eggs in a clutch. She
extrudes the eggs within 48 hours of fertilization onto her abdominal flap,
where they incubate for a year.

The eggs hatch the following spring from April to June, and
hatching usually coincides with the peak of the spring plankton bloom, providing
ample food for the larvae. At first, the larvae are free-swimming, and they
molt many times as they grow. The swimming phase lasts about 63 to 66 days, and
then the larvae settle to the bottom. The young crabs continue to molt and grow
for several years. Females reach maturity at approximately five years of age,
while males mature at six years. Tanner crabs can live 14 years.

Biologists do not fully understand the migration patterns of
tanner crabs, but they know the sexes remain separated during most of the year
and move into the same areas only during the mating season.

Tanner crabs eat a wide variety of organisms, including
worms, clams, mussels, snails, crabs, and other crustaceans. They are preyed
upon by fish, sea otters, and humans.

Tanner crabs are susceptible to an illness called Bitter Crab Disease, caused by a specialized dinoflagellate from the genus Hermatodinium. As its name suggests, crabs infected by Hermatodinium taste bitter, and the meat appears chalky. The disease is often fatal, and dying crabs release spores which infect nearby crabs.

[image error]Snow Crab (NOAA)

 Snow crabs are smaller than their tanner crab cousins and reach a maximum of only one to three lbs. (.5 to 1.35 kg). Females carry up to 100,000 eggs, and biologists estimate snow crab can live up to twenty years. Snow crabs and tanner crabs have similar life cycles.

[image error]Karluk Bones is now Available!



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Robin Barefield is the author of four Alaska wilderness mystery novels, Big Game, Murder Over Kodiak, and The Fisherman’s Daughter, and Karluk Bones. You are invited to watch her webinar about how she became an author and why she writes Alaska wilderness mysteries. Also, sign up below to subscribe to her free, monthly newsletter on true murder and mystery in Alaska, and listen to her podcast, Murder and Mystery in the Last Frontier.

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The post Tanner Crab and Snow Crab(Chionoecetes bairdi and Chionoecetes opilio) appeared first on Robin Barefield.

Fatigue

Fatigue looms front and center in my life right now. We have less than two weeks to go until the end of the season at our lodge. Mike and I will stay here until mid-January, and then we plan to take a vacation and return by mid-to-late February. I don’t care about a vacation; all I want to do is sleep!

I have so many projects I’m excited to start but no energy
to begin them. Lately, I’ve been fighting to keep up with my weekly and monthly
deadlines – my blog posts, podcasts, and newsletters. I’m disappointed I haven’t
spent more time editing my wildlife book or writing on my next novel. My
publisher is annoyed I haven’t put more effort into promoting my last book, Karluk
Bones. Once our fall season ends and I sleep for 48-straight hours (just
kidding – I think) and stamp out my fatigue, I will have the energy to write
and edit my books, and yes, I will try to sell my latest novel.

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I began my podcast, Murder and Mystery in the Last
Frontier, this past summer, producing two a month. At the same time, I cut
back my blog posts to two a month. So far, I am happy with this arrangement. I
think I was beginning to get bogged down by writing four blog posts a month,
but I look forward to doing them every other week. Podcast episodes require a
great deal of work, but I still find them fun to do, and I am reaching a new
audience. The newsletter is still my most time-consuming project every month,
but I’ve gotten faster at writing them, and I am slowly learning how to write
non-fiction – It’s not easy!

I know many of my blog post readers have never listened to a podcast, so here’s an excerpt from a recent episode. Just hit the arrow to play it.

If you’d like to hear more, follow this link: https://murder-in-the-last-frontier.blubrry.net

Let me know what you think. I know a true-crime podcast is not for
everyone, so I understand if you aren’t interested in it.

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I haven’t had a chance to thank many of you for buying Karluk
Bones. I appreciate you, and I hope you enjoyed the adventure.

In my next post, I will discuss tanner crabs, often called snow
crabs. I hope you’ve found my crab posts informative. I’ve enjoyed writing them
and have learned a great deal about king crabs, commercial king crab fishing,
and the laws (or lack of) governing the fishing industry. It seemed as if every
time I started a post, I realized I had enough information for two or three articles.
The deeper I dug, the more fascinated I became about king crab and commercial
king crab fishing industry.

As always, thanks for reading, and take a minute to leave a comment and say hi. Hearing from you will erase my fatigue in a flash.

Robin Barefield is the author of four Alaska wilderness mystery novels, Big Game, Murder Over Kodiak, and The Fisherman’s Daughter, and Karluk Bones. You are invited to watch her webinar about how she became an author and why she writes Alaska wilderness mysteries. Also, sign up below to subscribe to her free, monthly newsletter on true murder and mystery in Alaska, and listen to her podcast, Murder and Mystery in the Last Frontier.

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