A Day Without Internet (a.k.a. The Horror)

So, here I was on a regular old Tuesday, birds chirping, coffee brewing. I sat down at my desk, fingers poised dramatically over the keyboard, inspiration about to strike—when… nothing loaded. I refreshed. I stared. I unplugged the modem and plugged it back in like a techno-priest performing a sacred ritual. Crossed my fingers, did it again.... Still nothing.

The internet. Was. Out.

And yours truly? Flying into a full-blown tizzy. Not a mild inconvenience. Not a quiet sigh and a cup of tea. No, we’re talking dramatic gasping, pacing, muttering to myself like a Victorian heroine who’d just received tragic news via telegram.

Now, let me say this—writing, in its purest form, requires no internet. Not even a computer if you're hardcore enough. You can write with a pencil on a napkin while waiting for your latte. You can scribble in notebooks like it’s 1992 (Yes, I wrote entire books like this back then). But we don’t do that anymore, do we? No, because we writers have convenience. Cloud storage. Online dictionaries. Thesaurus tabs open like hopeful little windows of genius. Research rabbit holes. Character name generators. Pinterest mood boards. And, of course, the ever-therapeutic ability to email or message another writer friend: “MY MC IS MAKING REALLY BAD LIFE CHOICES, HELP.”

But without the internet?

Suddenly, all my documents were floating in the ether. My reference files? Vanished. My email drafts? Unreachable. I had the gall to try looking up whether a cinnamon bun existed in 1893 (don’t ask), and the little “no connection” dinosaur just stood there mocking me with his tiny pixelated arms.

I realized something unsettling: I didn’t know how to write without having the entire universe at my fingertips. It was like trying to cook a five-course meal with a single spoon and no idea what’s in the fridge.

And don’t even get me started on how I couldn’t vent about it. My email? Down. My group chat? Dark. I was trapped with my own thoughts. It was just me and my spiraling imagination, which—as a cozy mystery author—meant that by hour two, I was convinced the outage was part of a sinister plot, and possibly the dog was involved.

Eventually, I gave up. Curled up with a book, decided the day was wasted, and dove into my embarrassingly tall TBR stack like a defeated heroine. It was oddly peaceful—until I remembered I couldn’t post about it online.

Here’s the thing: the internet has only been around in its full glory for less than 30 years, and yet it has completely rewired our lives. For writers. For readers. For everyone who’s ever looked up “what poison kills instantly but smells like vanilla.” (For a book. Obviously.)

It made me think of a quote I saw once:
“You never really know someone until you've seen them try to function for three hours with slow internet.”
I would now like to amend that to: “You never really know yourself until you’ve tried to write a novel during a full internet outage with only a confused dog and cold coffee for company.”

So, dear reader, if you ever catch me gazing wistfully into the distance, it’s not because I’m dreaming up plot twists. It’s because I’m remembering the day the internet left me… and how I almost started writing on actual paper again.

Almost.

So how did I manage to survive the day? I finally decided 'research' was really called for, I went upstairs into the library, grabbed one of my favorite cozy mysteries and put up my feet. No excuse needed because - hey, the internet's out!

The Absolute Madness of Naming Characters

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You know you have the best readers in the world when they politely demand the next book—with extra exclamation marks and not a hint of shame. So many of you have been asking (some quite insistently, and with the kind of enthusiasm that makes my day) about the next Magical Papillon Mystery . Those of you who asked on social media — thank you!!! To all of you, I say — bless your sweet, book-loving hearts, and fear not. Pixie will return! Here’s what happened… Last Christmas, after one (or more) festive Negronis with my very talented artist friend, I made the kind of pronouncement that can only come after equal parts gin, vermouth, and orange. I looked around her house — absolutely overflowing with paintings, colors, and canvases stacked like leaning towers of artistic chaos — and said something like, “Wouldn’t it make a great story if someone inherited a house full of original art, and every painting had a secret behind it, and they had to solve the mysteries one by one…?” Well. One...

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