I finished Year of the Dog a couple of weeks ago and got it back from my editor and beta readers. It looks clean and will be released on May 13, 2025. (If you’re thinking of grabbing it, the preorder is still 70% off for a little while longer.) In the meantime, here’s a short snippet: *** “Are you all right?” Mari asked. “I’m fine, now.” Lana gulped. “The Rottweiler was only curious. I could tell he wasn’t going to attack, but I also didn’t want to take any chances.” Lana took a deep breath. “Tell me this,” she said in a more normal voice. “How can you face a 75-pound Rottweiler without blinking an eye, but you’re too afraid to face your own sister?” The words fell between them slow and measured, like huge water drops. Mari glanced back at the Rottweiler, then pictured her sister. Her stomach clenched again just at the mental image. “You’re absolutely right.” Then she sighed. “But it’s not like I can erase years of bickering, misunderstanding, and criticism in a single mome...

In chapter 27 of Year of the Dog , Mari takes the dogs running at Moluke’ia Beach Park. My grandma and my parents would often take us here to swim when we were kids. It has a lot of rocks near the shore, but the sand is soft and fine, and the rocks are fun to snorkel around. The last time I went to Hawaii, I took some photos of the beach, so you can see what it looks like. Running on the beach is actually super tough, so Ashwin isn’t a weakling or anything like that—Mari is just a beast! Year of the Dog is releasing in the anthology, Danger in the Shadows . Get it for 70% off at the special preorder price of $2.99!

In chapter 23 in Year of the Dog , I mentioned Auntie Nell’s acerola cherry jam. I promise I didn’t make that up—except my grandma made it, not my Auntie Nell. Grandma had an acerola tree in her front yard and would gather cherries every summer. It’s suuuuuuuuuper sour, so we didn’t often eat it fresh, but Grandma added truckloads of sugar to make it into jam, which we loved. Come to think of it, we probably tasted more sugar than cherry, but we were kids, what else is new? I only just learned that acerola cherries have 32 times the amount of vitamin C as orange juice, and tons of antioxidants! I wonder if that’s why Grandma lived so long! Now I’m missing that jam. Isn’t it awful how we take so much for granted as kids? Have you ever had acerola cherry jam?

My novel, The Lone Rice Ball , is book 5 in my Christian contemporary romance Sushi series , but you don’t have to read the other books before reading this one. (It also serves as Book 1 in my Mahina Security series.) I had a lot of fun writing The Lone Rice Ball because I set it in my home state of Hawaii, on the North Shore of the island where my mother grew up. Most of the places in the book are fictional, including my hero’s uncle’s restaurant, the Molokai Red Restaurant in Haleiwa. I named it after a hibiscus variant that grows in my parents’ yard, which my dad has lovingly tended to for years. This is the Molokai Red hibiscus. Isn’t it beautiful? It’s hard to see in the photos, but it has a rich, dark red color that’s unusual for hibiscus. In the book, I also had the Molokai Red hibiscus bushes growing along the path to the front entrance of the restaurant. But in actuality, it’s not a very common hibiscus variant. I hope you can imagine these lovely flowers whe...

I’m happy to announce that my first Contemporary Romance story in 5 years releases today! The Wedding Kimono is one of TWELVE novellas in this massive Christian Contemporary Romance collection. Here’s the back cover description: Weddings for every season and occasion. Adventures, mishaps, and dream destinations—this collection has it all! As our guest of honor, you’re cordially invited on a journey through twelve heartwarming and inspirational novellas that will take you from small-town America to romantic Paris, from the sunny shores of Hawaii to New Zealand. Office romances, friends-to-lovers, second chances, and more await you in these stories full of forgiveness, redemption, laughter, and love. Say “I do” and claim your copy of this limited-time anthology by your favorite USA Today and bestselling Christian romance authors! January Hope by Kari Trumbo Clothing historian Cleo goes on the hunt for an 1880s fashion magazine wedding dress. Discovering it's part of a mu...

I’m doing a reading challenge for the month of August on the Save the Date Facebook reader group ! The challenge is to read a book with Hawaii in it, whether it’s set in Hawaii, or one of the characters is from Hawaii, or Hawaii is just mentioned in the book. Come join in the discussion !

Please allow me to brag about my dad a little. :) He just sent me this cup that he made from a vodka (? I think?) bottle. He cut it, then sanded it down by hand, and then stenciled it with that pretty Hawaiian design. It's super heavy and thick! I think I'll use it for pens or something like that.

If you ever go to Hawaii, you must visit Royal Kitchen and try their char siu manapua. It is a little golden bun so delicious that it will send you into a higher plane of consciousness. Basically, it’s marinated pork baked inside a fluffy bread bun. It’s like those Chinese steamed bao buns you see in restaurants and sometimes at bakeries, but manapua is usually baked rather than steamed. You can get steamed manapua too, but I tend to like the baked ones. You can get the manapua stuffed with char siu pork or other things. I’ve also eaten it with kalua pork , which is Hawaiian-style smoked braised pulled pork. Captain Caffeine had frozen some pulled pork he made in his smoker a few months ago, so I pulled it out of the freezer to make manapuas on my own, using this recipe for the bun. I’m too lazy to knead, so I used my bread machine to make the dough. I just put all the ingredients in my bread machine, with the liquid ingredients first and then the flour and yeast on top, and pu...

After my first foray into green smoothies , I made them for a while but then stopped. But then my cousin talked about how his cholesterol dropped when he started juicing, so I took up my green smoothies again. It’s hard for me since it’s cold here in California, and I don’t like drinking cold smoothies when I’m cold. (Captain Caffeine, on the other hand, tends to “run hot,” so he’s always happy to have ice in what he drinks.) Anyway, I’m also trying to be good and use up the veggies and fruits we get from our organic coop. A couple weeks ago, Captain Caffeine brought home some grapefruit from a coworker and I also wanted to use that. Grapefruit pith is bitter, so I squeezed the grapefruit juice into our Blendtec juicer. Then I added two apples (cored and sliced), a handful of kale leaves (stalks removed), a ginormous spoonful of honey, and a couple tablespoons of cashew butter. I got the idea for the nut butter because my mom always loved the Ono Ono strawberry shake from KC Driv...

I read yesterday about the Post Office consolidating and closing some facilities , which kind of makes me sad because I use the Post Office a lot for mailing my books. But then I thought about it--I don’t actually use the Post Office, I use the US Postal Service. I have a program and monthly subscription with Endicia.com to allow me to print postage from my computer. That way I can print up postage whenever I need to, and we drop the mail off at the Post Office whenever we’re out next doing errands, or my husband will drop it off on his way to or from work. It helps out in terms of the time I spend standing in line at the Post Office, and I don’t use up gas to drive down there just to send mail. I’m sad about the jobs that will be cut because the economy is hurting as it is. And this isn’t really true in my neighborhood, but in Hawaii, the postal workers are a friendly bunch. They’ll chat with you if they happen to see you when they’re delivering mail, they’ll sometimes pick up you...

Looks like some sushi in restaurants in Virginia had an outbreak of salmonella from their spicy tuna rolls . That makes me sad! I love sushi! I don’t want to have to worry about salmonella! Actually, in Hawaii, my parents always taught me to go to a really reputable sushi restaurant rather than the smaller ones that cater to the younger crowd. There are no sake-bombs at the bar, but you’ll be less likely to be put in the hospital from bad fish. We go to Kabuki, a Japanese restaurant in Pearl City (on the island of O’ahu) where my parents know the sushi chefs. They were trained in Japan for many years (as opposed to some sushi chefs now who are trained only a few months or even a few weeks). They personally pick the fish and it’s always fresh enough to almost jump off your plate. Because of Kabuki, I’m a bit spoiled when it comes to sushi, I admit. :) Anyway, don’t let the salmonella scare you off sushi. Just make sure if you do go, go to a really reputable restaurant. And it u...

I admit the beach doesn’t enthrall me since I grew up in Hawaii, but don’t hate me for that. :) I love forests but people who grew up in one may not find them as fascinating as I do. Today I’m taking my Zondervan editor to the beach in Santa Cruz. I’ve only ever been to one Santa Cruz beach and I don’t remember which one it was, so I went on Yelp and decided on Natural Bridges State Beach since it had a lot of good reviews. I hope it’ll be fun! So when you go to a beach, what do you do? I’ve only ever gone swimming but the water’s probably too cold right now, plus it’s northern California so the water will never be as warm as Hawaii. Sunbathing only makes me hot and itchy. What do you guys like to do?

Captain's Log, Stardate 12.13.2010 I finished my very first marathon! And a huge thank you to everyone who prayed for me! I really felt those prayers! (See below.) My chip time was 7 hours, 13 minutes. (Chip time is the electronically tracked time using a chip I got that attached to my shoe. Every time I passed a special strip on the road, the sensor picked up my chip, which was registered to my race number and identification, and that’s how my time was posted on my Facebook wall—the company who does the whole chip thing has a program that posted my time on my Facebook whenever I passed a chip sensor strip. For some reason, when I passed the 10K mark, it didn’t post on my wall, but it posted at 13.1 miles and on.) We got to the starting line at 4:30 a.m. and the gun went off at 5 a.m., but I was so far in back that it took me about 10 minutes just to cross the start line. When I crossed the start line, my timing chip on my shoe recorded my start time, so my actual race time w...