When Animal Planet's "mockumentary" mega-hit, Mermaids: The Body Found aired last spring, 32 million people tuned in. So many people demanded: "Are mermaids real?" that NOAA had to issue an official disclaimer denying their existence. This weekend's Monster Week sequel: Mermaids: The New Evidence, will probably...

Since the characters in my new novel, The Drowning World, are hybrids -- half-dolphin and half-human -- it made perfect sense when Digital Book World declared me a "hybrid author." Writers who publish both traditionally and as indie authors are now the cutting edge in...

Why are mermaids rising up so strongly in our pop culture? In music, Lady Gaga, Beyonce, and Madonna adorn themselves with fabulous fins; mermaids are charismatic characters in new novels; television's Animal Planet scored high ratings for Mermaids: The Body Found. Can new films starring animated...

Close your eyes. Your world is now only sound -- the rain, the traffic, that far-off siren. In this acoustic world, how you navigate, find food, your children, or mate, all depends upon how well you hear. Imagine that as you search in the darkness for a crying child, a...

Why are mermaids edging out vampires in our pop culture, especially for young women? When I first began my mermaid series, The Drowning World, in 2003, there were few tail flukes in current film or fiction. A New York editor told me, "Mermaids are ancient history. Vampires are...

My mother always taught us that no one should be alone at Christmas. We must expect miracles and mysteries. The gifts of her Christmas were peanut butter fruitcake, cherry and pineapple fudge, and virgin eggnog, since we were raised Southern Baptist teetotalers.

When we kids bundled up...

The murderer of little children wore combat gear. What war was he fighting? Who was his enemy? Who gave him his marching orders and high-powered weapons? As he shot multiple rounds and the count of very small bodies piled up, what battlefield was this soldier boy surveying in his deranged...

Sometimes popular culture can expose and also help evolve our prejudices. An example is our ever-shifting attitudes toward wolves. "Hey there, Little Red Riding Hood," a new car commercial opens with the throaty pop song as a sleek, red car zooms along a darkly wooded highway. Suddenly the driver stops....

The holiday season is a minefield of political etiquette, moral dilemmas and culinary faux pas. First there is the choice of whom we spend our holidays with, always an exercise in doing no harm.

Do I accept the invitation from good neighbors who are glum because Romney lost the...

Women were big winners in this election, prompting the questions: Are we witnessing the end of the "Mad Men" reign in politics and social issues? Is the dominance of white, male voters in this country finally history? And is her-story finally being written and told?

One of my favorite Facebook...

Just as Hurricane Sandy has stripped our vulnerable shores, so has she at last stripped away our illusions that this election is just about our economy or our social issues. This election is about our future and our children's survival in a world wracked by weather disasters that climate scientists...

The presidential debates offered us unscripted and revealing glimpses into each candidate's character. Very different -- and often conflicting -- Romneys emerged in each debate. Watching Governor Romney's ever-shifting debate personas, I couldn't help but think of that bestselling 1950s book and film, The Three Faces of Eve....

Women were the real winners in this presidential debate. We clearly recognized the real Mitt Romney -- and he's just like every domineering and sexist boss we've worked with. While Romney boasted about considering his infamous "binders of women," for a job, it was clear he and his policies are...

As the blogosphere proclaims Governor Romney the winner of the first debate, I believe that he actually lost stature and huge points with women -- and the already considerable gender gap will widen even more. Romney's masculine skills were on full display, but his feminine skills were sorely lacking.

The...

As Isaac battered the Gulf Coast, the Republicans -- vehement deniers of global warming --shared their big stage with a hurricane. While the party faithful boasted about how they will take over the White House and change everything in Washington, D.C., nobody was talking about what scientists tell us is...

Step One: Run Away From Home

In the late 1940s, a young woman, Virginia K., ran away from her family in Tampa, Fla. to become a mermaid in the nearby Weeki Wachee show. Inspired by the fluid grace of Esther Williams, Virginia donned colorful tail flukes. In the...

"What if all the electricity was off for a long time ... like in Japan after the tsunami?" I recently asked an assembly of fifth graders at a local Seattle school. "No cell phones, no computers -- could you survive?"

An unusual moment of hesitation from these bright children; they...

This Mother's Day, as we celebrate our own mothers, we can also celebrate the many people who adopt other species, wild and domestic, and love them as their own. Sometimes it takes a village to practice this interspecies adoption.

In Nova Scotia, the village of Guysborough adopted an orphaned wild...

It was midnight when I found myself hunched over my iMac, one finger poised over the "pre-order" button for the new IPad3. Maybe my defenses were down. Or my lust for all shiny things Apple was overly aroused by the live blogs and ecstatic hype for a faster processing chip,...

It was late last summer when a very thin and sick seal pup struggled onshore in West Seattle, Washington. For most seal pups this might have been her last days - sick and slowly starving on the beach. While joggers ran by, school buses unloaded their students, and dogs ran...