Embracing the crone ...

I’m fast approaching another birthday, the same number as the last two digits of my year of birth. 

Wow, that just blew my mind. 

I tried to come up with another example, like turning 50 and born in 1950 – nope, not this year. Born in 1940 and about to turn 40? Doesn’t add up. But I was born in 1962 and will soon turn 62. That sounds significant. I’ll let you know if anything mystical-magical happens.

Anyway, I’m getting older and I’m quite enjoying the freedom of not giving a rat’s ass about much of anything beyond family and friends. For a time, I worried that I was turning into a cranky old lady. But then I talked to friends my age and I’m not alone in adopting the old crone vibe. 

I follow a woman on Instagram who encapsulates much of what I’m feeling and thinking on any given day.  @menopausalmayhemmothers Here are a few recent highlights from her account. 

Luanna Stewart is a Canadian author who has been creating adventures for her imaginary friends since childhood. She spends her days writing many flavours of romance, torturing her heroes and heroines before helping them find their happy-ever-after. But when she’s taking a break from wrecking people’s lives, you can find her pulling weeds, baking something delicious, or enjoying a cup of tea whilst completing a craft project. Enjoying an empty nest (most of the time), she lives in Nova Scotia with her patient husband and a yard full of voracious deer. 

Website ~Bookbub ~Instagram 

Aging the Ups and Downs by Paty Jager

 

Aging as many say, isn’t easy. It is for your body as it slows down. Things you’ve done your whole life become harder to do, your memory starts slipping, and unaccounted for aches show up.

My 90-year-old mother-in-law tells me continually, “Don’t get old. It’s not fun.” This is a woman who has been a hard worker her whole life and who can’t sit still. She has to have her hands doing something. She still knits socks for the local retirement home, makes baby afghans she gives away to anyone who wants them, she mows her yard, and likes to put puzzles together.  She buys yarn at the thrift stores because it’s much cheaper than at the stores. People even give her yarn, because she enjoys knitting and crocheting. But she struggles with not being able to do everything she would like to do.

My hope is to have all of her energy when I’m her age!

I have things I want to do but then I think about them and I decide maybe it’s not a good idea. I don’t ride my horse as much as I did. In the morning when I go down and feed, I’ll tell my gelding, Jan, “I think we should go for a ride today.” But later in the day, the thought of catching and saddling him feels like more work than the enjoyment would be.  I need to feed with my boots on instead of my sneakers and catch him while he’s in the corral and ride. But then I feel like I’m being a slacker from my writing. I spent most of this year getting back into writing 4 books a year and preparing my audiobooks to sell on my website.

Me riding Jan last summer. 

This past year, I’ve spent more time at the computer with writing, researching, marketing, and promotion than I did last year. And that’s part of why I haven’t ridden my horse. By the time I finish the writing things, I don’t feel energetic enough to ride.

But I do enjoy going for a walk right after I feed in the morning. The dogs enjoy it as well. The early morning walk gets my brain working and I feel more productive on days when I walk.

As I age, I’m not as much help to my hubby. He calls on me, every once in a while, to help him lift or move something. I’ve found my upper body strength isn’t what it was, and I really don’t want to lift heavy things anymore. Because then I’m sore for several days. He’s still strong but he also has noticed his energy level waning.

With age comes decisions. I plan to keep writing at least until I’m 80. If my mind will continue to work. Hubby has one more year of his semi-retirement. He has been managing an alfalfa ranch for a dairy the last ten years and told them next summer is his last summer to do it. They have put the place up for sale. They know they wouldn’t find another person who would take care of it like it’s his own as hubby has.

We’ve also been discussing selling and moving into a small town where we would be closer to medical facilities and easier to travel to town and to see family. With his full retirement, we hope to travel.

While I’m not scared or sorry to get old, it’s something my mother didn’t get to enjoy. I do hope I am a happy old lady and not a crabby one. 

Paty Jager is an award-winning author of 59 novels, 11 novellas, and numerous anthologies of murder mystery and western romance. All her work has Western or Native American elements in them along with hints of humor and engaging characters. Paty and her husband raise alfalfa hay in rural eastern Oregon. Riding horses and battling rattlesnakes, she not only writes the western lifestyle, she lives it.

Website: https://www.patyjager.net

Blog: https://writingintothesunset.net/
Newsletter: https://bit.ly/2IhmWcm

It's That Time of Life

by Courtney Pierce

When I try to recall the best book that I read in 2018, I laughed out loud. I didn’t even finish one besides my own. Indigo Legacy took a full three years to complete, along with multiple read-throughs from both my editor and so many from me I stopped counting. But that doesn’t count, does it? Editing a novel is hard, hard work.

There were two books I attempted to read in order to give myself distance from my manuscript. Both were supremely disappointing: Mississippi Blood by Greg Iles and Origin by Dan Brown. I had a Missus-Bitchy-Face at every turn of the page. Greg Iles is one of my favorites, but a courtroom rehash of the first two books of a trilogy bored me to tears. I wanted to love this book, but it felt like a throw-away to keep Greg's publisher happy. In similar fashion, Dan Brown’s writing has gone downhill with the pressure to crank out a controversial story. Even at 200 pages into Dan Brown’s book, Origin, and I still didn’t know the "big discovery" that was teased in the Prologue. Give me the guts of the real problem upfront, and then play out the obstacles for finding the solution. Schlock. . . pure schlock.

Ugh…sorry guys, but I’m getting so picky. The new traditional publishing machine messed with my leisure reading. I’ve never not previously finished a book, but these two books made me shove them under the nightstand for an evening of staring at the ceiling. I can do better. I can write better.

I did read a fabulous non-fiction book about bears. Bears: Their Life and Behavior by Art Wolfe. It rung my chimes in a big way. His photography was second to none, and Mr. Wolfe captured the expressions, actions, and emotion that I wanted to embrace. I learned so much good stuff. After I read it for my research, I was so juiced to work on my new book that I couldn't stand it. My clairvoyant character has a spiritual communication with a grizzly. With a little Native American magical realism, I'm off and running with themes of aging, love, and reconciling the past. More on that later.

The “machine” of traditional publishing is being eclipsed by Indies, those of us who choose to own and control our work. We fearlessly defend the integrity of our stories and celebrate our ownership. We are so bonded with our characters that our readers, too, consider them part of their families.

I’m happy for this shift. My readers know who I am. I have a personal relationship with them, and I share the details of my life to these strangers who have become my friends. Could I ever imagine this with a traditional publisher who only cares about the dollar return for each press of the “Add to Cart” button?

I’m in this writing business for a different reason: I need to write the story ideas that I obsess over. I can’t not write them. I don’t really care about being famous and rich from my writing. That’s not why I do it. I write about what resonates inside of me. And if it connects with others who experience the same emotions, then Hallelujah! I love you guys. 

Fame and success are complicated topics. We authors want to make a living from the heart of what we do. However, many writers chase fame like a phantom in the night. They lunge for the next trend and hold a cup under the guillotine of an author who gets interviewed as Oprah’s “Book of the Year.” That doesn't personify most of the authors I know. I can’t bond with those who spend more money on their author photo than on what they spend on editing their book.

I write with private abandon and come up for air with fluttery eyelashes. Sometimes I have no idea what happened in the world while I was away in my fiction-crafted existence. A raw humor covers my discomfort at being public, but I do enjoy my anonymity when I want it. And when I’m done, my work will have a life of its own . . .  Equally as important is being a wife, a mother, a sister, and a daughter to a Mom who was at the center of three of my books.

I’m not unique, although my generation of Baby Boomers is quite singular in the way we think and feel. We still believe in so much possibility, no matter what our age. I’m that little girl of ten with too much experience, hurt, wisdom, pride, and work ethic. I’m that little girl who meets her obligations and strives for the moon. With a lasso, I will reach that goal of retirement where I can write full-time. Until then, everything that happens I’ll think of as life-fuel for stories, imagination, and the hope that what I write will connect with birds of my feather.

This weekend I will be transitioning my Mom into a senior living community, but before I leave I'll tell my twelve-year-old that eating junk has long-term consequences, My husband will keep the porch light burning for me when I get home on Sunday. After I arrive, he'll wrap me in his arms to fall asleep, only for us both to go to work on Monday. Not for too much longer, this work routine. But I will miss going by Mom's house every morning and evening, picking up her prescriptions, and receiving her daily hugs. It tears me up, really. But now she will be closer to my older sister, who is also getting ready to retire.

In the meantime, I write this article in an oh-so-quiet house with a glass of wine. Our cat, Princeton, is in my lap, purring away without a care in the world. The food dehydrator whirs to make dried fruit and veggies for my Mom and I to snack on while I drive her to her new home, a long four hours away. I'm not sure if the transition will be harder for her, me, my husband, my stepdaughter, or Princeton.

It's a five-way tie.

Courtney Pierce is a fiction writer living in Milwaukie, Oregon, with her husband. stepdaughter, and their brainiac cat, Princeton. Courtney writes for the baby boomer audience. By day, she is an executive in the entertainment industry and uses her time in a theater seat to create stories that are filled with heart, humor and mystery. She has studied craft and storytelling at the Attic Institute and has completed the Hawthorne Fellows Program for writing and publishing. Active in the writing community, Courtney is a board member of the Northwest Independent Writers Association and on the Advisory Council of the Independent Publishing Resource Center. She is a member of Willamette Writers, Pacific Northwest Writers Association, and She Writes. The Executrix received the Library Journal Self-E recommendation seal.

Audiobook now Available!

Check out all of Courtney's books: 

courtney-pierce.com and

windtreepress.com 

Print and E-books are available through most major online retailers, including Amazon.com.

Available Now!
Book 3 of the
Dushane Sisters
Trilogy

The Dushane Sisters Trilogy concludes with Indigo Legacy, available now. There's love in the air for Olivia and Woody, but will family intrigue get in the way? Ride along for the wild trip that starts in a New York auction house and peaks in a mansion on Boston's Beacon Hill. 

The Dushane sisters finally get to the truth about their mother.

New York Times best-selling author Karen Karbo says, "Courtney Pierce spins a madcap tale of family grudges, sisterly love, unexpected romance, mysterious mobsters and dog love. Reading Indigo Lake is like drinking champagne with a chaser of Mountain Dew. Pure Delight."