An excerpt from a writing exercise, “First Impressions,” at the Lama Institute, Taos.

The hills are not stone, as I thought. They are loose mud carrying a slurry of rock pudding, individual stones like blueberries in a sea of chocolate mousse. I thought the high desert an arid, primordial place, where surfaces are solid, but they are strangely fluid…

It seems like an eternity ago, but at the beginning of this month I made good on a couple of promises to myself: to start taking my fiction seriously, and to visit Taos. Luckily, both converged at a nexus that involved my cousin Sean Murphy, who with his wife Tania Casselle is living the writer’s life that I’ve always dreamed, spending days in the desert sun in a remote conservation area spinning yarns for your reading pleasure. Sean and Tania run regular writer’s workshops (in fact, they met at one), and I attended “Writing from the Ground Up,” with a great group of go-getters. The landscapes, the teachers, and the camaraderie in the group inspired. It all went by too fast. I’m pleased to report that, although my volume of work is overwhelming, I am taking time to write, and am getting together with fellow writers to share. It feels right. This is a photo of Sean with the Rio Grande Gorge in the background. Go check out his website … his books are great!