Whether you’re seeking to improve your life in the new year, or just looking for a good literary escape from the January doldrums, Dauntless Bookstore in Port Gamble is hosting two authors Jan. 14 who fill both needs.

Karen Wright is the author of “The Sequoia Seed,” and will lead a “Wright Minded” workshop at 1 p.m. Ron Lovell will follow that presentation at 2 p.m. with a talk about his latest book in the Thomas Martindale mystery series, “Murder Below Zero.”

Wright describes her workshop as “a walk toward a clearer, more substantive way of thinking that can make your tomorrow dramatically more meaningful than today.”

Using the analogy of a sequoia seed, Wright said “. . . like the tiny seed hidden in the cone of a giant sequoia tree, our promised potential awakens in the heat of our own personal forest fires. It’s when confusion and doubt reign that real possibilities for living out our destined paths surface. It’s (in) this moment of pivotal change that our fates bud or burn according to our habitual thoughts. ‘The Sequoia Seed’ is about breaking old patterns and realizing our legacies.”

Lovell began writing novels after a lengthy career as a journalist and professor of journalism. He has worked as a magazine writer for Business Week, Medial World News and McGraw-Hill World News in Los Angeles, Houston and New York. After “retiring” from writing he taught journalism at Oregon State University for 24 years.

He is the author of 13 textbooks and now four mystery novels, all featuring Thomas Martindale, a journalism professor at a university in Oregon.

In “Murder Below Zero” the amateur sleuth Martindale joins a research expedition to the Arctic aboard a U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker. When Russian scientists join the crew things get interesting.

In a previous talk about the book Lovell said, “. . . ‘Murder Below Zero’ . . . uses the environment throughout as a key element in the story. Indeed Arctic ice is like a main character. In writing this book, I wanted to use several elements in my narrative: global warming and what it might do to the normally ice-clogged water surrounding the Arctic Circle (and) how those ice-free waters might impact the national security of the United States.”

Karen Wright’s presentation is at 1 p.m., followed by Ron Lovell’s at 2 p.m., Jan. 14 at Dauntless Bookstore, 4790 NE SR 104, Port Gamble. The event is free. wu