Breaking Away from the Crowd

By Courtney Pierce

Today I have the opportunity to expand beyond my regular post as a Genre-ista to guest blog about this crazy writing biz. As I tap away on the draft of my seventh book, Big Sky Talk, I'm pleased to say that the hefty word count in my literary backpack has earned me the “write” to impart some wisdom. It's a tough business that I now take quite seriously. It didn't start out that way when I wrote my first book, Stitches.

Wisdom lesson #1: No two stories are alike, but chasing a lucrative trend means that you're too late. (As Rocky used to say to Bullwinkle, “That trick never works!”)  Since there are only seven basic story structures in all of literature (according to author Christopher Booker), a fresh take on those plots needs to be unique and loaded with personal style. An example is Stephanie Meyer's Twilight series fitting squarely within the framework of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.

My first series, the Stitches Trilogy, unpacked my imagination with wild abandon. It's structure fits squarely into a "Voyage and Return". Stitches, Brushes, and Riffs became the books I desperately wanted to read and couldn’t find. These books contain everything I love: mystery, crime, heart, humor, naughty pets, and magical realism. I even re-invented ancient Egyptian history to solve the mystery of a supernatural artifact. My baby boomer characters embark on a trek to England, tracked by an FBI agent, and then I plunge them into a tomb in Egypt’s Valley of the Queens to solve the mystery of immortality. I didn’t give a hoot if the series became a bestseller or not, because I was having way too much fun with the research and story composition.

While I wrote my first three books, I sharpened my craft in the Hawthorne Fellows literary program at the Attic Institute. I was inspired to make the impossible possible The most important lesson I learned, though, was to shed my fear of actually finishing the books and sending them out into the world.

Photo: Script Magazine

When I met with several literary agents about that first series, I was forced to squeeze the Stitches Trilogy into a genre box. Heck! I wasn’t Romance, Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction, Sci-Fi, Young Adult, LBGT, Erotica, Steampunk, or Dystopian. My stories were clean, poignant, humorous, and written for the over-fifty crowd, specifically baby boomers like me. Our behavior is driven by Peter Pan Syndrome and adventure. We also have emotional shrapnel stuck under our aging skin, which even the sharpest of tweezers can't extract. I vividly remember being sixteen and turning sixty this year. The decades in between were a blur of a career and responsibility.

Wisdom lesson #2: A story without serious conflict is boring. It takes courage for an author to reduce their beloved characters to tears and push them to their limits. But redemption is oh-so-sweet when I have the power to fix it all in unexpected ways.

I didn’t feel like a bona fide writer until I started my second trilogy about the wacky Dushane Sisters: The Executrix, Indigo Lake, and Indigo Legacy. That series revealed a lot of  personal stuff, and I had to muster up the courage to dig deep within myself. The big difference from the first series was that I wrote the Dushane Sisters Trilogy with readers in mind. As a result, my humor got edgier. My story line got tighter. And the conflict got more uncomfortable. I heaped so much trouble on the three sisters that digging them out became downright hilarious.

Wisdom lesson #3: Release a reader’s imagination. Characters are best developed through what they say and do, not through their backstories or intense physical description. If a novel isn’t made up of 80% dialogue—characters talking—then the book slows to a crawl. A simple three-word comment can say much more than a whole paragraph of explanation about what’s behind it.

I must do a good job with this particular wisdom lesson, because the first book of each trilogy started out as a standalone story. My readers' insisted that I keep the characters going. So buoyed by confidence, I expanded each story to a trilogy. And I’m glad I did. Telling a story in three full-length novels—a complete beginning, middle, and end—allowed me to challenge myself and my craft. Each series became a much bigger story than what I could create in one novel of eighty-thousand words.

Wisdom lesson #4: Behind every successful novel is the author’s truth. The story and characters may be purely fictional, but readers know when the emotions and actions aren’t genuine.

This last wisdom lesson is one I’d go to the mat for. As an author, I must have a real-life reference for the emotions I project on my characters. Otherwise, their credibility—and mine—suffers, and they cease to be believable. How can I possibly know what my character feels about losing a parent if I haven’t personally experienced that devastation? I would also find it difficult to write about a character’s crumbling marriage had I not suffered through a divorce myself.

My intention with Big Sky Talk is to create a tight, intense story that engages readers and makes them think. Set in Kalispell, Montana, a ghost story unfolds among the magic of wildlife, mountains, lakes, and nature's dangers. Themes of aging, losing parents, and taking emotional risks will fill the pages. The cast includes an orphaned retiree, an about-to-retire sheriff, an injured grizzly bear . . . and a rifle. That's certainly a combo I can have fun with!

Now, it's back to work to employ my own advice. True to my words, I am a pretty good shot with a hunting rifle, have lost a parent, been alone after decades of marriage, and am about to retire. I'm planning for Big Sky Talk to be a standalone novel. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Unless my readers tell me otherwise.

Photo: Micah Brooks

Courtney Pierce is a fiction writer splitting her time between Milwaukie, Oregon, and Kalispell, Montana with her husband. stepdaughter, and their brainiac cat, Princeton. Courtney writes for the baby boomer audience. She spent 28 years as an executive in the entertainment industry and used her time in a theater seat to create stories that are filled with heart, humor, and mystery. She 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."

Romance at Any Age!

by Courtney Pierce

You could call me a quasi-romance writer, but my books tend to focus on the complications of life experiences of older characters. The romance part swoops in as an end-game reward that must be earned. And boy do my protagonists work hard for it. I love plopping characters into a dung storm of their own creation. These seasoned players come into a relationship with enough baggage to rack up a fortune in luggage fees at the airport.

Romance with more mature characters is fun to write. I can create conflict on top of conflict in emotional layers. All can be going along swimmingly, then BAM! Geological layers of hurt get nicked from a word, a gesture, or a tone of voice, and the dig triggers a reaction. Old wounds of backstory percolate in the background like an App on a smartphone, always running and sucking battery life. 

Creating a backstory of complicated emotions, such as aging, divorce, death, family drama, health issues, and super-bad old habits adds to the sweet and savory richness of a story. It's what makes characters real. Many of mine are rooted in people I've known in my life. Some personalities can't be made up because the truth is just too darned good to ignore. Of course, the details are changed to protect the innocent . . . or not-so-innocent.

Ah . . . and there's that element of surprise, the unexpected circumstance of opportunity that changes the course of the story. A turning point can be a chance meeting that flips the heart, and then makes a character do irrational things—good and bad. In the second book of my latest trilogy about the Dushane sisters, Indigo Lake, the main character marches into an attorney's office ready for a fight about a lawsuit. Instead, she's knocked to her knees at how attracted she is to this man. And the feeling's mutual, but not without a cat-and-mouse game of wits between them. 

One other technique I use is to infuse a serious situation with humor. My character's response to a dire circumstance can be to say or do something ridiculous to ease the tension. For instance, when my character can't remove her old wedding ring after getting engaged, she ends up in the emergency room to have it cut off, but not before giving a dramatic lecture to the young intern about love, spontaneity, and romance. She spews out everything she, herself, has fantasized about having in a relationship. All of her wishes and dreams are told to a stranger who holds a saw and smells like antiseptic. Oh , . . and she does all this while donating her blood to save her fiance in surgery. The moment the ring falls away and clangs to the metal tray, the whole book takes a major turn. The antagonist of an old wedding band is conquered and my character goes into hero mode.

In my new book in progress, Big Sky Talk, it takes a bit of magical realism to nudge my characters—some oomph—toward a goal of happiness. Older players need spark. Set in Montana, a powerful combination of resources is needed to break through to the chewy centers of the tough-as-nails sheriff and a lonely, clairvoyant retiree . . . including some help from a gun and a grizzly bear. This will be a different kind of romance story to write, but all my same antics will be in play. The fun part will be to incorporate the wisdom of Montana's Native American folklore that will build a frame of authenticity toward a healthy relationship.

As in real life, older characters have a different sense of urgency in matters of the romance. Younger ones can turn their backs on a failed relationship and move on, but time is running out for tired hearts. Falling in love is like a gasp of fresh air to refuel our fantasies of youth, and we take bigger chances to make a relationship work. We fall deeper and harder because not doing so is riskier. Who the heck wants to die alone wrapped in baggage, with no arms of a lover to make it all okay? I could never let that happen to my characters. Unacceptable.

The drama in life gives meaning to a relationship, especially in fiction. It takes two perspectives to work it out and conquer those demons. Then they turn out the lights to hide those bodies and crawl inside each other for emotional solace—and, yes, that's their beautiful reward. 

Courtney Pierce is a fiction writer splitting her time between Kalispell, Montana and 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 at: 

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."

The Long Journey of Imagination

By Courtney Pierce

On this wondrous Christmas Eve, like all Christmas Eves of my life, I reflect on where I am today and how I got here. A writer’s journey is a long one. In my case, stories burned from a very young age. I didn’t do anything about them, though, until I was over fifty. No one could show me how to be a writer; I could only be taught the craft of construction to make my stories compelling and readable. The ideas, though, were completely on my head—or in my head, so to speak.

This writing journey started with my being a mimic at the age of four or five, regurgitating up jingles from commercials and imitating the talking heads on newscasts. If I say so myself, I did a pretty good Walter Cronkite with my version of "Now for the news..." I’d dance around and sing the day's headlines for my Mom while she made dinner. When my Dad came home from work, I’d assault him at the door with my latest tune about Vietnam, the Marlboro Man, or Mao Zedong. Sometimes I’d snap my fingers with new words to the theme song from The Addams Family.

Jingles turned into stories. I’d spout out only a sentence or two that started with “What if this guy was a concert pianist and he had eyes on his fingers?” or “So there was a kid who had three ears, and one of them could hear things in outer space . . . ” And on it went.

My parents would just shake their heads and say, “Where does she come up with this stuff?”

As a baby boomer, I’m obsessed with analyzing those wondrous moments of youth, as if I could capture and bottle them. Now that I’m all grown up, I like to pull apart those emotions of puberty and young adulthood to see how they shaped the person I am today. Without a doubt, my spirit is still based on three major food groups: wishes, dreams, and being in love.

I’m still the same. Nothing has changed, except that the made-up stories are more intense when combined with colorful history and life experience.

Recently, my older sister and I were comparing notes about getting into trouble in middle school. I was a goody-two-shoes; she was a sneaky rebel. I distinctly remember one incident in 6^th grade where my teacher gave me detention for not paying attention in class—repeatedly. Mrs. Truesdale was her name. She was over 6-foot tall, intimidating, old, and a grump. And not only did she give me detention, she called my parents to come to the school for a gang-up meeting.

To be clear, my parents found this a loathsome chore, as if they, themselves, had also been ordered to squirm in detention. I was the meat in a double-trouble sandwich of Mrs. Truesdale and my parents. Here’s an annotated version of how the scoldy meeting went:

“Your daughter doesn’t pay attention in my class,” Mrs. Truesdale announced. She punctuated the statement by smacking her hand on the desk. “Courtney just stares out the window. I don’t know what to do with her.”

My father turned to me. “Is this true?”One of his vivid aqua eyes floated 45 degrees west of my right shoulder. Craziest thing that eye, but it was focused on me from somewhere over there.

“Yes,” I said and gnarled my fingers. Then I turned to the window. Slight shimmers of the fall maple leaves were much more interesting than this conversation.

My mother chimed in and pointed. “What’s out there?”

“I don’t know,” I said and shrugged. “All kinds of things.”

Mrs. Truesdale eased with an expression of triumph. “See? She doesn’t pay attention.”

My mother pinned Mrs. Truesdale with a scrutinizing stare. “But she gets As on all her tests. I don’t understand what the problem is.”

“That’s the most frustrating part,” my teacher countered. “I never know if I’m getting through.”

Dad started laughing. “Join the club. Courtney's bored. You'll need to be more interesting or she's liable to break into song when you least expect it.”

Mom pursed her lips and stood. “I think we’re done here. Leave our daughter alone. She’s fine.”

Go Mom and Dad! I will forever thank them for coming to my defense. My parents saw something in me that my teacher didn’t. From then on, they never scoffed at my stories or jingles again.

Those moments of staring out the window became the fodder of future stories that would percolate for over forty years. The seeds of them were never dormant as I went to college, got married at twenty, became responsible, and nurtured a career. Then they sprung to life with the fuel of burning desire. When I finally learned how to turn my ideas into books, it was like starting over. My young-girl imagination blossomed again with the infusion of experience, wisdom, and education.

Every thought I had in my budding youth felt original and fresh, as if ideas had bubbled up from inside instead of coming from somewhere or someone else. I grew up without the crutch of electronic devices. A set of World Books and a library card gave me the ability to verify facts. The rest of my great wisdom came from Bugs Bunny, Gilligan’s Island, Bewitched, and I Dream of Jeannie. In the new world of Google, smartphones, NetFlix, and texts, I often wonder what the future holds for stories by writers who are growing up in this electronic age. Will young writers not be able to come up with anything on their own? 

I've heard it said that the older we get, the younger we grow.  I think that's all too true. Those confusing thoughts of my youth and hard knocks of adulthood eventually did give way to greater understanding, and along with it came confidence and self-respect. But make no mistake—imagination is hard work. It’s an investment in one’s self to mold who we are and shape the person we’ll become. And the reward is to turn creative thoughts into a book, a song, or a magnificent work of art.

And on this beautiful Christmas Eve at our home in Montana, the CrockPot releases the aroma of the self-managed beef stew. My stepdaughter works on a complicated puzzle at a card table. Next to me on the couch, my husband studies a detailed map of Glacier National Park to plan our next hike. Me? Well . . . my gaze pulls to the window. A light snowfall whirls on a breeze around the lights on the patio. Their dance is accompanied by the snap and pop inside the wood stove. The combination of ice and fire gives me dialogue ideas as I work on my next book, Big Sky Talk.

I wish you all a loving and safe holiday. I'll be back at you in the New Year with all kinds of new stuff!.

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."

Old Meets New Holiday Reads

by Courtney Pierce

A sign of the times. There are  two extremes of emotion driving my holiday reads this year. As a baby boomer, I like to brush the fur in the opposite direction on present-day issues while I bask in traditions from the past. Our ability to flex and bend, as well as be stalwart and righteous, are qualities unique to our generation. We’re sandwiched between the WWII work ethic of our parents and the go-go-go world of Millennials seeking to replace us. But the good news is that we boomers know how to shut down the computers, tablets, and cell phones to enjoy a good book.

So there are two books on my reading list for the holiday break. I want to immerse myself in poignant prose while I face the reality of today’s scary world. 

The first pick is an annual tradition: my 1866 antique edition of  Christmas Books by Charles Dickens, complete with tiny print and misplaced hyphens. Its Old-World aged paper crinkles with a turn of every fragile, double-columned page. The aroma of aged wood pulp draws me like treasures stacked in the back room of a used book shop. I can practically hear the delicate bell on the door as I reach for this book on the shelf.

This book contains five stories: A Christmas Carol, The Chimes, The Cricket on the Hearth, The Battle of Life, and The Haunted Man. Several ghosts, a goblin, a fairy tale, and a love story. By today’s standards, the lengthy descriptions of detail are overdone, the paragraphs too long, and the text minuscule. But this kind of prose reminds me to slow down to appreciate every colorful word. Too often in a book, I race through the color to get to the point.

All five of these novellas carry a theme of redemption. The reconciliation of one’s inner soul must have been a conflict for Dickens himself, and everyone in merry ole’ England, because the stories struck a chord with the public. Guilt is one powerful, crippling emotion. I love to read these stories, though, as a thermometer for how well I’m doing in that department. I help others . . . check. I’m never mean-spirited . . .  check. I’m charitable . . . check. I love and respect my husband . . . check.

Dickens was a master craftsman of emotion. What I love most is that he awarded each character—even the minor ones—with the perfect name to define their personality. The stories are punctuated with names like Ebenezer Scrooge, the miser of A Christmas Carol, and John Peerybingle, a slow, lumbering, but honest man from The Cricket and the Hearth. Then there’s Dr. Jeddler, the elderly philosopher who looks at the world as one enormous practical joke in The Battle of Life. And finally, The Haunted Man describes an eerily gloomy vision of Mr. Redlaw, a chemist surrounded by his drugs, instruments, and books.

These stories are still fresh. They’re still relevant. People will never change their nature, no matter what the era.

From the nature of the heart comes the primal need to survive. My second holiday book is titled Sheep No More by Jonathan Gilliam. This is a hard-hitting book about attack survival. I’m not one to spout about politics or my personal beliefs, but I do feel increasingly unsafe. Don’t get me started on that . . . but I knew I couldn’t turn my back on a world that wants to strip me of freedom and liberty, and then ask me to pay for someone else to have it. The wake-up calls have been constant on multiple levels: on the ground, in the air, and through my computer.

What I look forward to embracing in this book is the power of one. My husband and I want to control our own destiny. We don’t want to wring our hands and whine that the government isn’t taking care of us in an emergency. There are things we can do as individuals to keep ourselves and family members safe. The first, and most important, asset is heightened awareness. I want to educate myself, and then tuck the information in my hair like bobby pins. I have to think of this next level of survival skill as when I learned to backpack in the mountains or hunt to fill the freezer. I don’t need to use these resources every day, but they’re there should I need them.

The last holiday read is my own book, delivered just under the wire. Indigo Legacy is now available after over two years of work to polish just the right ending to The Dushane Sisters Trilogy. Talk about making a book personal! Geez! Of course, I’ve read it so many times now that I must leave it in the hands of my readers. It still makes me laugh out loud and reduces me to tears. The story takes place during the holidays, so Indigo Legacy is a legal holiday read. And like Dickens, it's filled with betrayal, guilt, loss, gain, love, and best of all . . . redemption.

Happy and safe holidays to you all!

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. 

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."

Art and Imagination

by Courtney Pierce

As far back as I can remember, maybe age four or five, a small oil painting hung in my grandparents’ living room. It portrayed a young boy dancing in the woods. The ornate gilt frame measured twice the size of the canvas. The boy wore rolled-up linen britches and a frilly linen shirt. His waist coat appeared to be soft. Tousled brown locks topped his exuberant feminine face, so life-like that he appeared to move.

I named him The Dancing Boy.

There was nothing for a young girl to do at my grandparents’ house. The tick and bong of a clock in the dining room cut through the quiet to mark the passage of every slow hour. My paternal grandmother was a fairly terse German woman who held on tight to every minute of her escape from WWII. Whenever I visited, I would plan my own escape by spending an inordinate amount of time staring at that painting, chased by my own imagination. I made-up all kinds of stories about that young dancing boy. What did the music sound like to inspire him to dance? Why were his bare toes so dirty when he’s wearing fancy clothes? Did he run away from home? Did he have to dance in secret because his parents were too strict? Who are the two shadowy adults in the background?

As I approached my late-teens, my questions focused om the painting itself. I broke through my fear of my grandmother to dig a bit deeper into its history. She told me it was created in the early 1800s and had been given to her as a gift by her employer after an elaborate remodel of a guest bedroom. In fact, most of the furniture in my grandparents' Georgetown home were cast-offs from that wealthy family. She also told me the painting had been a rescued section of a much larger piece that had been destroyed by fire. 

To me, that little cutaway had become its own work of art.

After my grandparents passed away, The Dancing Boy hung in my parents’ living room for over thirty years. My Dad requested I research how best to have it professionally cleaned and conserved. Decades of cigarette smoke had veiled the luminous skin tones, vivid details of the boy’s frock, and richness of the woodsy vegetation. I took the piece out of its heavy frame for any indication of the artist. Nothing. But I did discover it had been painted on wood, not canvas.

I took The Dancing Boy to the Portland Art Museum for a deeper inspection by the curator. My Mom freaked a bit, however, because she was convinced that The Dancing Boy had been stolen by the Nazis and didn’t want me to get busted. Geez, Mom! And I thought I had a vivid imagination.

The curator’s eyes lit up when I showed him the painting. Under the glow of lighted magnifying glasses, he made all sorts of noises: “hmmm . . . ahhh . . . mmm.” Then he raised his head and nearly blinded me before switching off his headgear. “As far as I can tell, it’s definitely Early American, around the Revolutionary War," he said. "But without an identifying signature, it’s hard to say who might’ve painted it. Whoever it was, they were damn good.”

“Damn good to know,” I said. 

Then my imagination started to race with more stories. Maybe Ben Franklin had been in the company of the original painting, or Washington, Adams, Hamilton, or Jefferson. I suddenly heard tankards clinking and the scratching of quilled words on the Declaration of Independence. That would certainly be cause for a budding young man to dance in the woods. The possibilities were endless. I packed up the painting and hung it back on my parents’ living room wall, my soul having grown ten times in size that day.

On Christmas morning of 2012, my parents came by the house for our traditional exchange of gifts. We had spend limits in place, so gifts were usually gag-like in nature. My Dad had been failing rapidly, and I knew he would only exist in my heart quite soon. I sat him on the couch in the living room and handed him a cup of coffee. He pointed to the front door.

“Go out to the truck and get that big box in the back.”

I did as I was told, of course. I had no idea what my parents had given me, but my pulse raced like a hummingbird's. I brought in the box and set it on the floor in front of my father.

“Go ahead and open it,” he said. “It’s for you, not me.”

And when I did, I broke into tears. He had given me The Dancing Boy. I didn’t know what to say, but my Dad did:

“It’s yours now, kid. I wanted to be able to see the look on your face before I’m dead.”

Dad. A steel-belted marshmallow.

It took only fifty years to come up with the ultimate story about The Dancing Boy. The painting became the subject of magical realism in my second novel of the Stitches Trilogy, Brushes. The three-book series—Stitches, Brushes, and Riffs—centers on a baby boomer couple, Jean and Spence Collins, who find a magical artifact at an estate sale. When they discover it holds the key to immortality, they set off on quite the world adventure, but not without getting into serious trouble with the FBI. It’s a bit like The Thin Man meets History Detectives—with a twist of magic.

I relived every wondrous moment of little-girl imagination when I wrote Brushes. And immortalizing The Dancing Boy forever on its printed pages means that I, too, have added to the painting's long history.

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.  

Coming Soon!
Book 3 of the
Dushane Sisters
Trilogy

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.

The Dushane Sisters Trilogy concludes with Indigo Legacy, due out in the fall, 2018. 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."