Science of Laughter

 

Did you know that humans normally don’t laugh out loud unless they’re in the company of other humans? Imagine yourself watching Uncle Buck, Animal House, or Bridesmaids on DVD all by yourself, with no one else around. Then picture yourself watching these movies in a crowded theatre.

Yep. . .  you’ll barely eek out a snicker alone at home, but you’ll laugh out loud in a theatre full of fellow peeps. It’s part of our mysterious human-to-human frequency that connects us together.

Oddly enough, though, I often crack myself up when I'm writing. It must be due to the fact that writing is such a private and wholly internal experience. We're legends in our own minds, I guess.

Laughter is a scientific wonder. It’s both physical and spiritual because of our miniature army we know as endorphins. These feel-good guys rule the body and the mind for both love and humor. They lift our mood and make our hearts race. A tickle of the funny bone sends those endorphins into action to instantly manage our blood pressure too.

Forget the expensive supplements that claim to get rid of the spare tire around your middle. That flab belt is the result of an excess of Cortisol, a hormone released as a result of poor diet, negative thoughts, and persistent stress. Frequent belly laughs get rid of belly fat . . . and they’re completely free of charge.

By the way, these bodily changes happen with a mere smile, a shared joke, or when we hear a funny story. We suddenly feel uber-social and linked to others. This is needed more now than ever before, since we’ve been locked down and wrapped in face diapers for the past year.

Laughter is one of those traits that makes us uniquely human and individual. Like a fingerprint or a retina scan, the pattern, tone, and pitch of our laughter is an important part of who we are. Whether it’s a melodic trill like the cartoon character of Wilma Flintstone, or the one extra-loud burst of “HAAA!” from the likes of character actress Margorie Main (remember her as Ma Kettle from the 1950s?), we recognize someone’s laugh as part of their personality. I’m sure you could recognize hundreds of laughs if given an audio quiz.

When I was in school—elementary through high school—I would gravitate toward those who had a great sense of humor, especially humor of the naughty kind. I consciously sought out these talented individuals because I love to laugh. At just the right timing, a mere sideways glance and a wrinkled nose can make me laugh out loud. I’ve gotten myself into trouble at more than one funeral because I remembered something funny about the person.

This reminds me of that hilarious episode from The Mary Tyler Moore Show about Chuckles the Clown’s funeral. Everyone is tearful and somber at the death of poor Chuckles until Mary breaks the pall by thinking of funny things the clown had said and done in his career. It starts with Mary trying to hold back a "chuckle" and an embarrassed glance. Then it snowballs when Mary can’t stifle an outburst, which grows to the whole congregation at an infectious rate. Soon the whole room is rolling with laughter. The inappropriate situation is altogether appropriate for the funeral of a clown.

Sometimes I’m the only one that thinks something is funny. I thoroughly enjoyed my private guffaw sessions when I wrote the Dushane Sisters Trilogy. I even inserted scenes I knew I’d delete, just to see what my sister and mother would say when they read the early drafts. I could almost pinpoint the hour I’d get a phone call:

“Are you crazy? You can’t write that!” my sister would say.

“I know,” I replied, “I was waiting for you to run into that scene.”

“You are so wicked. On second thought . . . keep it in.”

“No, I’ll take it out.”

“No, Keep it in.”

“Are you crazy? I can’t keep that in the book.”

And so it went . . . full circle. Those fun sparring sessions bonded us forever.

Humor is pure positive energy, and laughter raises our frequency level by ten fold. Just a smile or issuing a compliment will raise our positive energy level. I'm learning a lot about frequencies these days. They'll be super important when the new quantum technology is de-classified in the coming months. Much of it will be tied to our consciousness and energy. After all, we humans really are electrical devices with a soul. 

Our ability to laugh makes us truly special. So take off the masks and smile at each other again. I don't know about you, but I'm inviting as many people as possible to our July 4th barbeque. 

 

Courtney Pierce is a fiction writer living in Kalispell, Montana with her husband and stepdaughter. She 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 Authors of the Flathead. The Executrix received the Library Journal Self-E recommendation seal.

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

Check out all of Courtney's books: 

courtney-pierce.com and windtreepress.com 

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."

Coming in 2022!

When Aubrey Cenderon moves to Montana after the death of her father, the peace and quiet of Big Sky Country becomes complicated with a knock on the door from the sheriff. An injured grizzly bear is on the loose and it must be eliminated before it kills again. The sheriff's insistence that she buy a gun for protection will present Aubrey with some serious soul-searching, because the grizzly-on-the-run is hunting her too . . . for a different reason.

Scary Moments

 By Courtney Pierce

There are two types of scenes that are incredibly tough for writers to pull off: funny and scary.  What tickles one’s funny bone or tingles the spine is so personal. Success, though, is when a reader's reaction lingers long after the book is closed. A scene gets funnier or more chilling over time when connections are made to the reader’s own life. Authors write their own truth, personal to us, and the honest truth can be downright hilarious or scary. We can only hope it connects with others.

“Oh my God. My Mom does the same exact thing!”

"My sisters are just like that!"

Or,

“I knew her life would change with that phone call. That's what happened to me.”

The same process is at play for writing a scary scene. When the set up is crafted properly, readers know the moment is coming. The anticipation itself becomes the trigger for a emotional meltdown. And when it finally does strike, something quite unexpected happens—a reveal of new information. Sometimes the most chilling scenes expose raw emotions from the character discovering a raw truth, not from a crazed stalker wielding a machete.

Arousing a deep internal reaction can be scary, both for the author and the reader.

Cover: Rosalind McFarland

In my trilogy series about the Dushane sisters, the main character, Olivia Novack, is obsessed with finding her husband’s killer from a hit-and-run accident. That serious backstory is constantly running in the background, driving Olivia and her two sisters’ crazy antics over three books. Behind the hilarity lurks an insidious antagonist. Even after several years, Olivia can’t let go of what happened to her husband. She's terminally dedicated, obsessive-compulsive, driven, and still in love. By the final book, Olivia releases herself from her self-imposed emotional prison by finally disposing of her husband’s personal affects.

Readers knew this moment had to come for Olivia. It was a scary moment for me as the author to write. I, too, had to let go of a husband, not from an accidental death, but from betrayal. My heart raced when I wrote Olivia discovering something unimaginable in her husband’s wallet, something she’d never known was there. It was a game-changer. I grieved with Olivia, so real were her emotions to me. And readers grieved for Olivia, too, the lump-in-the-throat kind of pain when the truth comes out in the final book.

Everyone can relate to feeling emotionally duped. Betrayal and disillusionment offer Olivia only one of two choices: hopelessness in defeat or empowerment realized in forgiveness. She can’t change the past. She has to move forward in order to live again, love again, and be whole again.

In my new book, BIG SKY TALK, fear comes on two levels: the supernatural and the emotions of loss. The combination ups the ante.

Cover: Rosalind McFarland

Upon moving into her new home in Montana, Aubrey Cenderon begins to experience strange happenings that she attributes to coincidence. It starts with an innocent canoe trip on the lake behind her new house. She could swear she spots a grizzly bear roaming in the brush along the shore. A sudden brew of a thunderstorm sends her home to investigate. No grizzly bear is in sight when she retraces the movement, but a flash of lightening sends her spine tingling when she touches the unmistakable impression of a fresh paw print. It’s smeared with blood. She hadn’t imagined it.

Aubrey makes a call to sheriff Russell Knowles. An injured grizzly bear is indeed on the loose.

With Aubrey’s heightened awareness, she hears movement in the woods. A strange violent wind flails the branches of a single tree, leaving the trees around it still. Waves of water on the lake push to the shore with seemingly no source. The air is calm, eerily calm, except for the whoosh of an eagle’s wings overhead. She senses a presence close by, communicating to her. It is the bear.

All of these events can be explained away as an overreaction until the captured image in her camera picks up only a blue aura. Aubrey can't ignore this confirmation of an alternate reality. 

Committed to finding out the truth, Aubrey's fear sends her into hero mode to protect the bear. The animal is speaking to her through the elements, while the sheriff knows he must kill the bear. His Deputy, a descendant of the Salish tribe, knows exactly what’s going on: reincarnation. There you have the set-up for an emotional show down. To further crank up the heat, Aubrey and the sheriff are falling in love with each other. And a loaded Glock stands between them.

I am currently writing this mid-point scene. Crafting suspense is both exciting and scary, especially when I incorporate the supernatural elements into it. What scares me, though, is the personal emotional truth that I must incorporate into the prose: the loss of my father, the conversation I wished we’d had before his death, and how I would feel if I got the opportunity to talk to him one last time.

One last time.

Love is scary.  And loss of that love is even scarier.

Love’s energy prevails. It rides the wind, falls in the rain, rises in the sun, and bursts forth from a thunderstorm. It never disappears.

Courtney Pierce is a fiction writer living in Kalispell, Montana with her husband, stepdaughter, and their brainiac cat. 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 Authors of the Flathead. The Executrix received the Library Journal Self-E recommendation seal.

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

Check out all of Courtney's books: 

courtney-pierce.com and windtreepress.com 

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."

Coming in 2021!

When Aubrey Cenderon moves to Montana after the death of her father, the peace and quiet of Big Sky Country becomes complicated with a knock on the door from the sheriff. An injured grizzly bear is on the loose and it must be eliminated before it kills again. The sheriff's insistence that she buy a gun for protection will present Aubrey with some serious soul-searching, because the grizzly-on-the-run is hunting for her too . . . for a different reason.

Courtney Pierce is a fiction writer living in Kalispell, Montana with her husband, stepdaughter, and their brainiac cat. 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 Authors of the Flathead. The Executrix received the Library Journal Self-E recommendation seal.

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

Check out all of Courtney's books: 

courtney-pierce.com and windtreepress.com 

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."

Coming in 2021!

When Aubrey Cenderon moves to Montana after the death of her father, the peace and quiet of Big Sky Country becomes complicated with a knock on the door from the sheriff. An injured grizzly bear is on the loose and it must be eliminated before it kills again. The sheriff's insistence that she buy a gun for protection will present Aubrey with some serious soul-searching, because the grizzly-on-the-run is hunting for her too . . . for a different reason.

Boomer Times

By Courtney Pierce

I can think of a hundred places in time that I'd want to pay a visit, but I generally stick with what I know. I'd go back to 1969, my favorite year when I lived in the small New England town of Cohasset, Massachusetts.That year signified a turning point, not just in my life, but in the lives of so many of my fellow baby boomers. With a tight grip on our 1950's innocence, we became enlightened by the extremes of violence and freedom, and also of radical music and social responsibility. Doris Day had been replaced by The Who smashing their guitars, and I’d go back there in a heartbeat. I was 10 years old and bursting with inspiration as I rode my bike. Like a sponge, my mind absorbed everything that happened around me—good and bad.

The end of the sixties was a time of discovery for me: first loves and crushes, physical changes, and "duh" questions of why the government did what it did. As it turned out, that government thing wasn't so straightforward. Amazing advances in technology aligned with my interests, such as portable record players, toys that moved in interesting ways, and little screen televisions that jumped out of big cabinets to sit on the kitchen counter. A roll of tin foil was indispensable for messing with the rabbit-ears antenna. Cartoons in prime time were a dream come true with my family’s first color set.

More than the cool electronics, though, the world presented itself to me in new ways. As I watched a man land on the moon for the first time, I believed that I could do anything, be anything, achieve anything. After all, I wanted to stay on earth, which seemed a whole lot easier than achieving stuff in space. Girls could have choices after doing the dishes and vacuuming. I yearned to spin on the ice like Peggy Fleming and flip on the balance beam like Cathy Rigby. 

The sounds of my piggy bank transformed from jingles to quiet paper money with my grasp of a work ethic. When I took the initiative to exceed expectations with my chores, I received an unexpected reward. If I saved, a whole new road of possibilities could be paved. Saving yielded non-cash rewards, too, the most valuable being self-respect and a sense of pride in my achievements. 

Herman's Hermits

The Herman's Hermits were the perfect companion on my journey. Indulgences were earned, not given, which made me appreciate them all the more. While my parents took care of the basics, I was expected to pay for my optional extras. And boy did I work hard for those, like the rabbit-fur purse I just had to have and the delicious lemony scent of Skinny Dip perfume. There was nothing like opening a new record album and playing it for the first time, the vinyl disc's surface free of scratches.

The summer months of 1969 were all too brief as I rafted, swam, and sung away my days at a girl’s camp in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire. No televisions. No phones. The stars at night were flawless diamonds in the sky; the sounds in the woods let me know they were crowded with life. And life was perfect.

Photo: NPR

Then that window of my personal Camelot snapped shut when I came home to start fifth grade. My prime-time programs of The Flintstones, Bewitched, and Addams Family had been replaced with confusing gore: the Vietnam War, Robert Kennedy’s assassination, Stonewall riots, and the Manson murders.  Walter Cronkite had been like my grandfather when he'd relayed the day’s events in a way that I could understand. Now, he had a worried look on his face, and Huntley and Brinkley had lost their optimism too. I never thought about people in terms of race. Boys were boys and girls were girls. Who knew there was an in-between? My friends were just my friends, and I didn’t care if they looked different from me. What the heck was going on? For the first time, my parents wanted to watch the news during dinner. And the newscasters didn’t just report what was happening; they told me their opinion of it.

They say that history repeats itself, but I’m not so sure. Every year becomes more complicated, more disrespectful, and further polarizes us in our views. I think our leaders would see the world differently if they governed through the eyes of a ten-year-old child, a wondrous time when everyone is still created equal.

Come to think of it, maybe I should change my target time period. Next go round, I'd like to visit a day in 1787—September 17th—the day the U.S. Constitution was signed.

Photo: Micah Brooks

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."

Not-so-fancy R&R

by Courtney Pierce

The cell phone sits disconnected from its charger. The television screen is dark. My laptop doesn’t chime with spam. I glance at an empty calendar on the bulletin board in the kitchen, void of obligations. Yeah! No fancy meals on the docket.

We are in our home in Montana, an oasis of forest, lakes, mountains, and wildlife. Glacier National Park is only twenty miles away, and we can’t think of anywhere we’d rather be. Here, life races at a turtle's pace.

My husband stokes the wood stove with tamarack. Beneath its smoky sweetness, the savory aroma of elk stew simmers in the Crock-Pot. By three in the afternoon, dinner is done. I grab a blank notebook and unfold a trail map over the coffee table, I sit on the couch and wait for my soul mate to join me. Outside, the snow is a rush of fat white polka dots, like a scrim to open the show. Right on cue, a herd of deer appear and disappear in their elegant tiptoe past each window, a sight that never ceases to thrill me.

That's my set-up for the perfect vacation.

I like to take vacation time to do research about our next vacation. In our case, that would include hiking, fishing, hunting, and canoeing. The lack of interruption from daily chores, work, and obligations affords me the time to read up on anything and everything, including bears and guns. My next book series will be set in Montana, so I’ve much to experience for my research, which will include local folklore, being hopelessly in love over the age of fifty-five (uh-hem...fifty-nine), and a connection to wildlife through clairvoyance. A fantasy vacation for me is to take the time to read up, strap up, and step out with a backpack. I''ll gather information through capturing the aroma of the forest and climbing through the burn of lazy winter muscles. Then I’ll write about the real with a framework of fiction. Of course, a touch of humor will be in the mix.

There is a sense of peace in this place we call Montana, but it’s deceiving. As Jeff and I study the maps of the Bob Marshall Wilderness, the Swan Mountain Range, and the Mission Mountains for our spring backpacking treks, we must not only plan for adverse weather conditions. Along with the beauty of the landscape, there’s an underlying tension of danger, both at home and on the trail. When living with serious wildlife - far beyond a cat on the lap and dog at our feet - Mother Nature shakes her finger at us humans for our selfish assumptions of superiority. It’s a good thing, too, because those reminders instill a healthy respect for how fast threatening encounters can happen. In our case, we must never let down our guard for a meet-up with grizzly and black bears, mountain lions, and wolves.

Bears hold a top spot for me. A fresh paw print in the snow, the size of a dinner plate, makes my skin prickle. Are we predator or prey? But bears are solitary animals who generally shy away from humans. A gaze of intelligence pleas for us to interpret their every move, posture, and sound as a unique language. Bears lumber along the landscape with grace, seemingly without a care in the world, but they can commence a chase at 35 mph when their space is violated. That’s twice as fast as a human can move.  If there’s a cub or two in the vicinity, then protective aggression is likely. Jeff and I never take to the trail without bear spray and knives, and we always suspend our provisions high in the trees. 

But back to that dream vacation. It is the solace of Montana, the danger and its beauty of habitat, that makes it my go-to destination. The amazing vistas are only augmented by the opportunity of share it with wildlife. This symbiosis with nature reminds me I must remain on my guard to live in such a beautiful place. Mountain life is not for the faint of heart. 

After much practice, I’m a crack shot with a rifle to protect myself. This skill not only earned my husband spousal bragging rights with his work mates, but it also rewards us with sustenance in the freezer. That’s why I take my 6.5 mm Creedmoor rifle with me to take out the trash. That's a lot of fire power for a little Annie Oakley like me, but the biggest difference is that I insist on sporting polished toes.

Courtney Pierce is a fiction writer living in Milwaukie, Oregon, with her husband and stepdaughter. She writes for baby boomers. By day, Courtney 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, she 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 at:

courtney-pierce.com and windtreepress.com. Both 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 summer, 2018. There's love in the air for Olivia and Woody, but will their 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 the answers they've been seeking 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."

Corn

by Courtney Pierce

A serious case of corny humor makes me laugh. A snappy retort or a play on words can take me down that path too.  My sense of humor is . . . well . . . a bit off from the norm.  It’s why I inject a dose of humor in all of books. Life is serious enough, so I like to think of my stories as an escape from the traffic, fake news, and the Bickerson's on social media. Forget that yahoo in the Lincoln Navigator who butts in at the merge every dang day. I wouldn’t dare flip the bird at that guy, though, but one of my fictional characters just might.

To my selfish delight, I save up snippets of funny stuff I hear in passing. They go into my reserve tank, and then I let them loose like spit balls from the mouths of my characters. Dialogue is an excellent vehicle for this sneaky, quite satisfying trick. Protagonists and antagonists alike get to say and do things that I, myself, wouldn’t dare to in real life.

Another great vehicle for making readers smile–and me too—is to infuse something ridiculous into a dire situation. This lightens the mood and breaks the tension. I especially like to do this with an animal, because they’re so well-meaning and pure. It’s like an Art Linkletter moment on Kids Say the Darndest Things. In my latest book, Indigo Legacy (due out in late summer), I use a therapy dog to play out this type of craft. A standard poodle named Pogo picks up on my protagonist’s most hurtful, emotional moment after she learns something terrible about her dead husband. Among his effects is a police report. The dog snatches it and chomps on it like Popeye’s spinach. The vision is intended to be funny, but the emotion behind the dog's bad behavior is not. As a result, my character’s grief is completely re-calibrated.  In an instant, the mood of the scene changes.

Pain is so much easier to write than humor. Whether psychological or physical, pain is pain, but not everything is universally funny. A laugh is the result of the reader's taste and experiences. As an example, take the 2007 novel Sideways by Rex Pickett. Among the backdrop of the California wine country, a raucous boys-will-be-boys story unfolds. Two grown men take a last-hurrah trip before one of them gets married. The premise alone is a total set-up for fun. For me, the debauchery, bathroom humor, and sharp dialogue are hilarious and right on point.  And just when you think these guys couldn’t make one more bonehead move, they top themselves. Every page yanked me forward with one laugh-out-loud scene after another. Of course, some people thought the book (and also the movie) was stupid and immature. Duhhh . . . yeah, that was the whole point!

Unlike authors of thrillers or crime dramas, the recipe for tickling a reader’s funny bone requires their complete trust in the author. But as the author, I'm going to write what makes me laugh, not the reader. A prediction of that magnitude is destined to fall flat because it wouldn't be genuine. How the heck could I possibly know what makes others laugh unless I know them?

Some of the best chuckles are rooted in a character’s struggle. How I get her out of it usually sticks her deeper in fresh mud. It’s a crap shoot, for sure, but when you hit that F-bone just right, then everyone wins.

Go ahead and pick your smile poison: subtle, bathroom, corny, snarky, ironic, or caustic. All forms of humor are accepted here, even encouraged. We can all come up with the flash of something both tragic and funny that really has happened. You know, a real you-can't-make-this-stuff-up moment. How about a character whispering self-barbed dialogue in the women’s restroom after she's already wet her pants? That situation could be dumb or brilliant, depending on what the author does with the scene. 

In truth, it only takes the description of my character's expression in the mirror's reflection to make it funny. 

And on that note, I know a good exit line when I see one. 

Courtney Pierce is a fiction writer living in Milwaukie, Oregon, with her new family. She writes for baby boomers. By day, Courtney 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, she 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 at:

courtney-pierce.com and windtreepress.com. Both 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 summer, 2018. There's love in the air for Olivia and Woody, but will their family history 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. Will the Dushane sisters finally get the answers they've been seeking 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."