Reflections: A Nonfiction Writer Tackles Fiction

Many years ago, at a gathering of English professors from the University of Puerto Rico, one of the professors announced she was going to write a mystery novel. “How hard can it be?” After all, she went on, she knew literature, read a lot, and authored professional papers. Many mystery books, she added, were poorly written. Why, with her expertise, she could write a better book and make some money on the side.

The years went by. Silence. If she did indeed complete a novel, mystery or otherwise, it never created any waves that reached me.

Transitioning from nonfiction to fiction writing is not as easy as it may seem. I found this out when I decided to write my own mystery book.

I’d spent many years in Puerto Rico writing nonfiction travel pieces. My most ambitious project was a book titled Where Dwarfs Reign: A Tropical Rain Forest in Puerto Rico. The forest inspired me to try my hand at writing a novel, a mystery novel set in a rain forest. I began the book in Puerto Rico, put it aside for freelance and teaching jobs, and took it up again after my husband and I moved to Spokane, Washington in 2013.

In what I consider an act of divine providence, a tiny, temporary notice in the local Spokesman Review newspaper caught my eye. It announced a novelists’ critiquing group that met in a nearby town. With excitement (and a bit of dread), I answered the notice and became part of the group. From that moment, my transition from nonfiction to fiction writing began in earnest.

In the meetings, each author read up to ten double-spaced pages of their work, followed by comments from the others. Comments could range from glowing to scorching. In the early years, the comments I received rarely reached glowing. Gentler critiquers would start out with praise for my writing and my descriptions (a result of all the travel pieces I’d done), then go on to enumerate the pages’ many flaws:

“The plot doesn’t move along fast enough.”

“This is an information dump.”

“The character is dull and two-dimensional.”

“There’s no hook at the end of the chapter.”

“Add more beats.”

“Every action needs a reaction. Where’s the reaction?”

“Show, don’t tell.”

“Rewrite, rewrite, rewrite!”

At times I’d leave the meetings fuming and frustrated. In my mind, I would rebut the charges, stubbornly clinging to my nonfiction ways. Why do I have to write the character’s reaction? Shouldn’t the reader infer it? Maybe I should join an experimental writing group, where anything goes. But when I calmed down, I realized the critiques were for the most part valid.

It took a long time, but my fiction writing did improve. All the strategies impressed on me worked to make the barebones storyline come alive. Whenever the novel began to sag, the voices of my fellow critiquers whispered in my ears: show, don’t tell; add more beats. As an added bonus, I became part of a group in a city that was new and unfamiliar to me. That meant as much as the critiquing itself.

In June of ’26, my novel, Under the Tree Ferns, will appear on bookshelves. (FYI, three more novels wait in the wings: once I finished the first, I wanted to stay in the group, and to do so I had to keep writing!)

Was my transition from nonfiction to fiction successful? Read the novel and let me know.

Reflections: Thin Places

Do you ever feel moments of emotional tingles, when something brings on a reaction so intense it causes tiny shivers on the skin? I do. Here are a few of my tingle inducers—the grand finale of Dvorak’s New World Symphony, the view from a mountaintop in the Anza-Borrego Desert, the opening line of du Maurier’s novel, Rebecca: “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.”

Recently I found a new emotional tingle in the concept of thin places—places or moments when the border between the physical and spiritual worlds feels especially thin and the divine takes on an extraordinary intimacy. Some call them portals to the sacred, where one could be, well, if not face-to-face with God, no more than a heartbeat away.

Most articles about what we call thin places agree they originated in the region of today’s Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, during the time of the early Christian church. Elements of indigenous Celtic culture blended with Roman Christianity to produce a spirituality emphasizing monastic communities, missionary journeys, and a belief that God’s presence could be found in all creation. However, some places made it easier to feel God’s presence, as if the roadblocks between heaven and earth had been removed. The thin places.

Perhaps the most iconic of thin places are found in the Celtic regions of Britain and Ireland, in sixth-century Christian monasteries that became the sites for pilgrimages and seats of spiritual learning and still exist today, such as the Iona Abbey on Iona Island in the Hebrides off Scotland or the settlement at Glendalough in eastern Ireland. Internationally recognized sacred places include Mount Sinai in Egypt; the city of Varanasi along the Ganges River in India; and Machu Picchu in Peru.

When I think of thin places, right away I think of houses of worship I’ve visited over the years, from the enormous cathedrals in Europe to the amazing wooden churches on Chiloé Island in Chile.

On a more personal level, I think of two sites where I got such a feeling, and they both involved fog. The first occurred on a retreat in New Jersey when I was a middle schooler. I sat at the edge of a lake at dawn. The water was mirror-still, and the fog hadn’t yet lifted. Ghostly white, it hovered atop the water and fingered into the silent woods. To this day, when I think of peace, I think of that mystical fog-shrouded lake at dawn.

As for the second, when I lived in Puerto Rico I often visited its lush rainforests. Most visitors to the forests’ highest peaks wanted views across the mountain slopes, down to the coast, and out to sea. But I felt a great awe in the moments when the fog moved in, erasing the world below, erasing all but the nearest gnarled moss-laden branches and the delicate ferns arcing across the paths. It seemed anything could happen when the fog moved in . . . even an encounter with the divine.

[photo Iglesia San Francisco de Castro, Chiloé Island, Chile]

Reflections: Origin Story

“How did you come up with the idea for your book?”

Here is the answer to that question:

In a time very long ago, I lived in Tucson, Arizona. There, hiking and nature adventures were popular pastimes, and good hiking boots held a certain cachet. When I moved to Puerto Rico to teach within the University of Puerto Rico system, I brought my pastime notions, and my hiking boots, with me. Only later did I realize that mountain hiking, in the wet tangle of tropical forests, was not as popular in Puerto Rico as it was in Arizona. But I was smitten, and the first forest I explored was the Caribbean National Forest (its official name then), commonly known as El Yunque. For years, I hiked on its dozens of trails and eventually published a book titled Where Dwarfs Reign: A Tropical Rain Forest in Puerto Rico.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Decades before that happened, while I was still in Arizona and during my early years in Puerto Rico, I dabbled in stories and poetry—not very good ones, I must admit. When an editor invited me to write articles about places in Puerto Rico for a local Sunday magazine, I hesitated. This, in addition to my full-time teaching load? When would I have time to write my stories? Alastair Reid, a well-known author who was then visiting Puerto Rico, encouraged me to seize the opportunity. “All writing is good,” he told me, “all writing is important. Use the same skills you use in fiction to make the articles come alive.” Thus began a series of travel/adventure pieces for The San Juan Star. They in turn led to more travel writing, and editing—for newspapers, magazines, documentaries, and radio as well as the book about El Yunque.

After the book came out and while my two daughters were still young, I decided to return to fiction, this time to a novel. What could I write about? I’d read somewhere that you should write about what you love and what you know. Well, I loved nothing better than to curl up on rainy days with a good mystery, and at that point I knew El Yunque in great depth.

How about this, I thought—the body of a middle-aged American woman is found in the heart of a tropical rain forest in Puerto Rico? Who is she? Why is she there? And so the story began.

That was over twenty-five years ago. Why it took so long to write and publish the book is a tale for another time.

[photo El Yunque National Forest]

Reflections: The Irony of Tree Ferns

For much of its long gestation, my upcoming novel went by the title The Irony of Tree Ferns, a title appreciated by me and perhaps one other person. Most people found it confusing.

There was a reason for that title. In the book, Javi Montañez explains it to Pamela Palmer while they’re hiking in Puerto Rico’s El Yunque rainforest. They stand in front of a grouping of trees that look like tall green parasols.

“Ironic, isn’t it?” he says. “The most popular tree in El Yunque isn’t a tree at all, but a fern.” He gently pulls on a frond, releasing droplets of water. “Helecho gigante, scientifically known as Cyathea arborea, one of half a dozen species of tree ferns in the forest.”

That is one of numerous ironies in the book, which was a reason why, to me, the original title seemed fitting.

There’s also another reason for the title: I love tree ferns, and I’m glad the chosen title, Under the Tree Ferns, retains the image of that overgrown miracle of life.

Undoubtedly, Javi read about tree ferns in my nonfiction book, Where Dwarfs Reign: A Tropical Rain Forest in Puerto Rico. [He is, after all, my creation.] This is what I wrote about them in a chapter on the forest’s tropical greenery:

In an ironical touch that is nevertheless typical of the complex tropics, one of the most beloved plants in El Yunque is actually thought to be a tree. It is an outsized member of the class Filicinae, commonly known as the tree fern. These delicate parasols stand out like stilt walkers in sunny patches of forest and cling together like demure belles in protected portions of the upper mountains. Though tree fern trunks can grow well over 30 feet high, they are not “normal.” Unlike most tree trunks, they do not expand as they grow; instead, they remain slender poles that rarely exceed five inches in diameter. The trunks are actually bundles of exceptionally elongated roots held together with pith and contained within a dark and scaly outer layer that is often decked with mosses, liverworts, and smaller ferns. Though spindly, the trunks are sturdy and long-lasting, and older mountain residents remember once using them to build homes. Carib Indians apparently used them to transport fire, which could somehow be kept within the trunk for hours without causing flame or smoke. A dozen or more fronds flop over the top of the trunks. Starting as tightly coiled fists, these elegant fronds unroll into majestic quills up to 12 feet long.

There are several species of tree-sized ferns in the Luquillo Mountains. The most common, Cyathea arborea, grows abundantly along Luquillo roads. Its trunk is spineless; a spiny relative found deep within the forest is the bane of cross-country hikers, who grab it for support—once. Ferns can be found most everywhere on the planet, but tree ferns have developed solely in moist tropical areas where their roots can be continually pampered in warm, water-logged, clayey soil.

Though common residents of El Yunque, tree ferns, to me, are far more suited to the enchanted forests of fairy tales. Perhaps that is yet another of their ironies.

[photo El Yunque National Forest]

Reflections: My Own Red Wheelbarrow

“The Red Wheelbarrow” by William Carlos Williams:

so much depends / upon // a red wheel / barrow // glazed with rain / water // beside the white / chickens

Containing only sixteen words and one visual image, this poem at first glance seems modest to the point of trifling. Yet its image often returns to the mind’s eye, like a haiku, a reminder of the beauty and importance of the simple things in life. Over the years, I’ve substituted a few of my own objects upon which so much depends. Here’s one version:

so much depends / upon // a turquoise inner / tube // floating on a / lake // by a hill of / evergreens

This is the story behind that version:

My husband and I had just moved from Puerto Rico to eastern Washington State. While looking for a house, we spent the summer at his parents’ cabin in the tiny town of Northport, near the Canadian border.

I’d lived for forty years in Puerto Rico. There I’d worked as a university professor and freelance writer; met my husband and raised our two daughters; had friends and an active social life; explored just about every corner of the island, its towns, mountains, and warm Caribbean waters. Moving meant leaving all that behind.

In eastern Washington, I knew virtually no one, had no job prospects nor any social life. The setting was lovely, with evergreen mountains rising above the Columbia River and a small riverside town fixed in time, but it was not my setting. There I spent my summer, adrift without a new life to supplement the old.

What saved me was Williams Lake. A mere slip of water (38 acres), it abuts a short-cut road between Colville and Northport. Cars can park on the side of the road, and a break in the grasses provides access. Early on, I drove to the lake. Wearing a swimsuit and water-shoes, I eased onto a cheap turquoise inner tube and pushed off. The water definitely felt colder than the Caribbean but not nearly as cold as I’d anticipated. Not bad. Using my hands as mini paddles, I floated away from the bank.

No one else was there. The sky was a bright blue, the trees on the hill a deep green, the water a shadowy blend of the two colors. Occasional passing cars or trucks broke an absolute silence. A couple of ducks paddled by, and dragonflies alighted on my arms. In that moment, all was right with the world.

Shaking out of the reverie, I slipped down through the inner tube into velvety water, and, with the cord tied to my waist, swam back and forth using a variety of strokes. When done, I pulled myself back up through the tube and relaxed, letting the water dry on my skin and the tube go where it wanted.

I often visited Williams Lake that summer. In the fall, we moved to Spokane. The next summer, I bought a better inner tube and the year after that, an inflatable kayak. Williams Lake was too small for kayaking, so I graduated to larger lakes in the region.

I haven’t swum there for a while, but every time I pass by, my spirits lift, and I smile my gratitude. I swear the lake smiles back.

8/31/25

Reflections: Feeding the Lake

Years ago, when I taught the novel Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys for a university literature course in Puerto Rico, I came upon this quote by Rhys:

“All of writing is a huge lake. There are great rivers that feed the lake, like Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky. And then there are mere trickles, like Jean Rhys. All that matters is feeding the lake. I don’t matter. The lake matters. You must keep feeding the lake.”

The quote has stuck with me.

It comes to mind more often here in eastern Washington, when I’m seated, kayak at rest, in the middle of one of our nearby lakes. The lake might be still as glass or rippling under a light breeze; populated by ducks in formation or turtles sunning on logs; bordered by pine-covered hills or vertical cliffs; set in a gently sloping earth basin or carved out of basalt rock during a cataclysmic flood.

These lakes don’t survive without water. It arrives through rainfall, snow melt, rivers, underground springs, or creeks that wind through marshland in spring and dry up under the summer heat. Whatever the source, I’m grateful, and I agree with Rhys. Lakes must endure.

The one she envisions is a lake of words, strung together into paragraphs, poems, stories, and books—millions of books, spanning countries and centuries. Each book is less than a trickle, yet the lake is immense.

My book, my first novel, will add a drop or two, scarcely disturbing the surface of the word-lake. That thought is humbling, but also liberating. The book won’t change the world or make me rich and famous. It doesn’t need to. All it needs to do is feed the lake.

[photo Sullivan Lake, WA]

7/22/2025