Clean-Up on Aisle 7

by Courtney Pierce

For those of you who have read The Dushane Sisters Trilogy, you probably know my Mom nearly as well as I do. Yep, that’s her, fictional Ellen Dushane, along with all the stories about her that I wove into the prose. Mom has a wicked sense of humor, of which I took supreme advantage when I got her permission to kill her off in the first ten pages of The Executrix. In exchange for this tiny favor, I promised Mom that her spirit would loom large as the primary character across all three books: The Executrix, Indigo Lake, and Indigo Legacy. 

I kept my word. The three middle-age sisters have a field day memorializing their dead mother, with three very different views of their history.

Real Mom is 85 now, and even though she has a health wrap sheet as long your arm—heart surgery, cancer, diabetes, neuropathy, and a host of synthetic replacement veins—she keeps going like that cymbal-banging Duracell rabbit. When the time comes, she’ll be 100% recyclable, a poster child for the Green New Deal.

Mom’s a staunch New Englander, born and raised in Tuftenboro, New Hampshire. Yankees can hold a life-long grudge over insignificant things, like not returning Tupperware from decades ago. She still has a Down East accent where steps are “stayuhs” and driveways are “doh-yahds”. Pronouncing Rs is not part of her vernacular.

Looking back, my teen years were full of special moments with Mom. Every week we'd sink down into fuzzy orange beanbag chairs (gotta love early 70s decor) with a bowl of popcorn to watch an episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus. It was just a Mom and me thing. We'd laugh and laugh at the silly walks, silly voices, and silly situations, like slapfests and the impromptu Spanish Inquisition.

Oh . . . and here's a good one.

Imagine Mom’s delight when she discovered Liquid Paper! At the age of 64, she altered the

year on her tattered birth certificate to make herself 65, because she wanted senior discounts. At the age of 70, she clumped the fluid again to make herself 75 to get a free Thanksgiving turkey at the grocery store. When she brought home the bird, acting like she’d won the lottery, we informed her that the turkey was intended to be donated to a less fortunate family. The kicker was that she didn’t need to show her birth certificate at all. She felt guilty, so back to the store we went with her short-lived prize.

At the age of 78, she globbed on the correction fluid again to make herself 80. She thought it would seal the deal for getting a handicapped parking tag at the DMV. My sisters and I quibbled over which one of us would hold the precious access to a great parking space. You see, Mom was a 1950s housewife who never learned to drive. Little did we know that the laminated tag would equate to a life sentence as an unpaid Uber driver. My sisters and I ended up arguing over who would NOT hold the tag.

Which brings me to the next Mom ditty.

Mom is not a qualified operator of any form of machinery. However, the lone exception is the motorized scooter at the grocery store. That calamity cart is hers and, if it’s not available, she’ll send the clerk into the depths of the store to find one. Scooter cop. Mom assesses those using them as to whether they really need it or not. If she suspects it’s being used as a lazy wagon, then “Katie bah the door,” as she often says.

Photo: 7th St Medical Supply

Once Mom is behind the go-levers, she’s off and running at full-tilt-boogie. I’m helpless to keep up with her. She becomes a blurred image as she rounds the corner to the freezer section. She even leans into the turn with grace and style. I swear she tries to ditch me to instigate a chase. 

And when I hear a series of back-up beeps—some loud, some faint—they act like a GPS as she Pac-Mans around the store. I can drill down to her exact location when the beeps are followed by a store-wide announcement:

“Can we get a clean-up on aisle seven?” the overhead speaker booms.

On this particular clean-up occasion, I erupted into a full run to aisle seven before Mom could flee the scene in her getaway vehicle. An end-cap tower of Cap’n Crunch boxes had collapsed like scaffolding in Times Square.

“Oh, Lord. Mom, what did you do?” I said, out of breath. I offered her my best scoldy face.

“Why do they put this stuff right in the aisle?” she said and shook her head. “There’s not enough room to get by.”

“Operator error, I think.”

“Too bad I can’t eat this stuff," she says, sweeping her arm over the candy cereal carnage. "If it was Special K, I could reach right down and get as much as I want.” She ripped her grocery list in half and handed me the long-sided portion. “Here. You get these, and I’ll go after the rest." Off she whirred for toilet paper.

Mom logic. Inside, I smiled. Grocery shopping in a bumper car is an especially fun event for her. Unlike other independent retired people, she can’t go to a brick ‘n mortar store whenever she wants without an expensive taxi (or a free daughter).  

The internet is Mom’s true lifeline. I sometimes introduce her as Addie Cart, an in-jest nickname about her addiction to pressing the “Add to Cart” button on Amazon. Her Prime account gets quite a workout. Every day she awaits the arrival of another box—cat food,  crackers, face cream, toothpicks, protein drinks, you name it. If she makes a bad choice or orders the wrong quantity, one lucky sister receives it as a gift. 

"I hit an extra zero, so I got ten instead of one," she says.

"Just what I always wanted . . . Miralax."

"Don't laugh. It's good stuff." She winks at me. "You'll thank me one day."

My stomach cramps at the thought of actually swallowing the chalky mixture.

My Real Mom

As eccentric as my Mom is, she is forever entertaining. And I love her to death and beyond. I can't go wrong when she stores my original book manuscripts in her cedar chest, a place where her most treasured mementos are kept. She's convinced those early drafts will be valuable one day. Who knows? I hope she's right, but I remind her that becoming famous is not why I write.

The thought of losing Mom is sometimes more than I can bear. That’s why I wrote The Dushane Sisters Trilogy. To get ready. A practice session, so to speak, to protect myself from emotional devastation. I use the safety of humor as my armor.

And here she is . . . the late, great fictional Ellen Dushane. But today I celebrate my very-much-alive Mom, Helen.

Photo: Micah Brooks

Courtney Pierce is a fiction writer living in 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.

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 2020!

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 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.

Disaster Turned Blessing

By Courtney Pierce

A bountiful and delicious Thanksgiving ushered in a promising Christmas season. Let the games begin! Lights, wreaths, decorating, and a daily dose of Christmas movies.

My husband, stepdaughter, and I gladly handed over the $5.00 permit fee to cut our wild Christmas tree on Montana state land. Deal of the century. There’s a lot of shopping acreage here in the Kalispell area, so we bundled up for the hunt under a gentle mountain snowfall. The tree we found wasn’t all perfect by retail standards, but that’s what gave it infinite appeal. We even snagged a small one for my stepdaughter’s bedroom. No worries about having enough decorations. Collectively, my husband and I have an ornament count that spans over forty Christmas seasons. I guess that amounts to eighty Christmases worth of decorations. We selected the best of the best, and we still had an embarrassing excess.

Over the holiday, I had planned to make huge progress on my next book, BIG SKY TALK. I was nine chapters in and excited to pick up where I left off.

Then disaster struck. 

The hard drive in my mere seven-month-old laptop crashed with a bang. I couldn’t access any of my files, including the first nine chapters of my book-in-progress, never mind the manuscripts of my previous six books.

I got a windburn zooming to my local computer to a repair shop. Two days later, the news made my stomach drop to subzero. I needed a new hard drive, and nothing on it could be saved. The squeaky-clean new drive held none of my files. However, the tech gave me back my dead one with a glimmer of hope. He suggested that I contact a specialty data recovery company with more sophisticated equipment to attempt to find my files. Luckily, there was a reputable one in Missoula.

I know, I know. I can hear your voices chastising me for not backing up my files and documents for the last six months. I never had a problem before, so I had become complacent. Shame on me. And shame on Scrivener, my writing program, for switching from storing the proprietary files in the cloud to saving them on my hard drive. The company never informed me about the change in their process.

I should’ve figured that computers aren’t the work horses they used to be. They’ve gone the way of televisions and cell phones. Count on them lasting about a year ̶ or seven months in my case ̶ with more plastic parts to lower the price tag.

After a promising discussion of my situation with the data recovery company, I mailed off my blown hard drive and crossed my fingers. I resigned myself to the real possibility that I would need to start over with my novel. After all, my head held the story. No one could take that away from me.

Then something started to happen: I actually got excited about re-writing those first nine chapters. It was a chance to start fresh. In a quandary, I had written three different opening chapters and couldn’t decide which one worked best. I had nothing to lose by shaking out the Etch-A-Sketch.

Some writing coaches recommend chucking your first drafts in order to breathe new life into a blank page. And as painful as it can be, Stephen King recommends we should “kill our darlings.” First drafts are an indulgence of the author; second and third ones are for the readers.

Maybe there was a higher purpose for my data woes. But all those hours. All those outlines. And all those imaginative brain cells I had killed off. Was I being lazy? Was I trying to be a speed demon to make my own fake deadline? Possibly.

I sucked it up and started my book over while I waited to hear the verdict from the tech pros. The longer the silence loomed, the faster I wrote, convinced those draft chapters were lost. In the new ones, I incorporated more detail, evened out the flow, and cut what I thought was superfluous. The characters started to bloom with personality. My brain fired on all pistons with the freshness of it all. It was like going into a new job with oodles of direct experience. I made better decisions. I dug in with instinct, not superficial details. I let the characters lead me to bring them to life. All five senses came alive with vivid imagery. I didn't have to monitor the small stuff: the color of the protagonist's eyes, what kind of car she drove, or the style of her clothes. I was now creating living, breathing people.

As I dove into the new Chapter Four, my cell phone rang. The data recovery company calling, just like Avon.

“Good news, Courtney! Your data is 98% there,” the Tech said. "But it's going to take us about a week to extract it." 

“That’s great,” I said. "I hope my new manuscript isn't part of the 2% of roadkill. Is this going to cost me my first born child that I can't have at sixty?"

He laughed out loud. "This is a Level 2, so it'll be about $700."

Don't get me wrong, I was thrilled to get back my files, but my writing bubble deflated a bit, and not just about the price. The original drafts of those nine chapters sent my mind into a scramble. Sorting out all of the versions would be like re-installing the old toilet in a newly remodeled bathroom.

When I downloaded my Scrivner files, I created a new folder for those old chapters, but I don't think I'll open it. I'll keep going with the new version. That folder will only be a crutch in the event I get stuck.

And in the meantime, I'll enjoy the holiday with my original plan to spend the time with my family, go out for a snowshoe hike, target shoot to practice for next hunting season, and move forward writing BIG SKY TALK.

And I promise to back up my work at least once a week. The mega-capacity thumb drive I purchased should do the trick, along with the additional external hard drive my husband gave me. I’m also going to email myself the most important files as back-up to the back-up to back-up.

Happy Holidays to you all! Stay safe and warm, and I'll catch up with you in the New Year.

Photo: Micah Brooks

Courtney Pierce is a fiction writer living in 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.

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 

Audiobook now Available!

Available Now!
Book 3 of the
Dushane Sisters
Trilogy

Audio book coming soon!

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 2020!

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 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.

Hook Me Like Velcro

By Courtney Pierce

The burn of a good book is hard to beat. I’ll obsess about an engrossing story throughout the day: even while lathering up in the shower, retrieving the mail, or getting ready for work. If the book is part of a series, especially a trilogy, then it’s even better. The whole saga has a perfect beginning, middle, and end, and the plot has gobs of character development. A writer can only go so deep in three hundred pages, but in nine hundred . . . well . . . let the games begin.

Characters make a book worth reading, with all their flaws, hang-ups, and sympathetic qualities. They need to stumble, make the wrong decisions, and screw up. I live vicariously through their trials and tribulations to make my own seem benign.

My current obsession sits with the trilogy of Greg Iles, his Penn Cage series of Natchez Burning, The Bone Tree, and Mississippi Blood. I’m on the final leg of this painful journey of racial hate and passion for justice. The subject matter isn’t funny or ooey gooey. In fact, it’s tense, tortuous . . . and timely. I hated every minute of reading this series, because it’s uncomfortable and so wrong. Greg Iles had the courage of Hercules and Sinbad combined to write these books. They paint a picture of divisive Southern life, where bitter truth splatters the glass of a fictional frame.

These books pushed me to my emotional limit. They made me want to shout in anger. They made want to turn away. They made me think too hard. But there I was, Gorilla-glued to this story with the possibility of a bombshell resolution to the Kennedy assassination. Yes, Greg Iles did his research into an area that no one else dared to go: the Golden Eagles, an elite layer of the Klu Klux Klan. Beyond the Book Depository and the frame-by-frame slow-mo of the Zupruder film, a darker, more hateful motive sits below the tabloid dirt. The amazing underbelly of this trilogy is that the incidents in these books are rooted in true events. A real journalist’s research and notes provided the inspiration for this story. He was murdered before he could publish his findings.

This series might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but I dove in because I like being yanked out of my comfort zone. Greg Iles’s writing style is so different from mine. My writer's tool bag is filled with humor, poignant sibling relationships, and a little romantic spice. The secret weapons of my personal style are quick dialogue and Murphy’s Law. Greg uses the shock of circumstances and shifting points of view to keep readers on edge. But don’t count this blog article to be a review of Iles’s books. It’s about what makes a book engrossing. 

Truth.

Readers can spot a phony in fiction. And it doesn't matter if the story is dramatic, funny, romantic, fantastical, or historical. All good stories all have something in common: the writer’s own experiences are buried in the dialogue and scene description. And when they do, readers are Velcroed into the emotion behind the words.

Writers sometimes consider their books a form of therapy. I know that I do. The pain and joy my characters feel bubbles up from my own experiences of love, family, the ridiculous, loss . . . and betrayal. It’s all there. My mantra is “fix it in fiction”. Characters can say and do everything that I wish I could in real life. Hence, my readers connect and send me notes about how real my characters seem.

When I wrote Stitches (my very first book) and The Executrix (my fourth book), my intention was to make each one a standalone story. Only through the urging from reader comments did each become the first of a trilogy series. What they didn't know, but intuitively felt, was that they were based on genuine people infused with my past and wishes for the future. It was easy for me to expand a standalone story into three books. They reflected the saga of what was happening in my life—in real time.

My own complicated beginning, dramatic middle, and satisfying end. Thankfully, fictional books can be a lot messier and much more interesting than reality.

After I release the final book of The Dushane Sisters Trilogy, Indigo Legacy, in the coming

Coming Soon!
Summer, 2018

months, I’ll start a new book, possibly a standalone to become a trilogy, or an even longer series. It will be completely new, with a setting in Montana. I might weave in a bit of rootin' tootin' shootin' with a couple of itchy, scratchy Baby Boomers: a clairvoyant woman and a prideful sheriff.  And guess what? I'm married to a man with pride, own  a home in Montana, and I've even learned how to shoot a gun to protect myself from fuzzy mountain predators. There you have it. My money shall sit where my mouth is.

And like the surf of life, all the former jagged rocks of truth will tumble and roll to polish new characters, smooth and set in stone. I hope they’ll be the kind that catch your eye on and get tossed in a bowl on the coffee table.

Photo: Loma Smith Photography

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."

How's the Weather?

By Courtney Pierce

The late-great David Bowie had the best advice for weathering tough times: Turn and face the strain. I’ve sung that line from Changes a hundred—maybe even a thousand—times in my fifty-nine years. Like many other baby boomers, I’ve lost a job or two, lost family members, and lost a husband (not by death, but a loss nonetheless). Any one of those derailments of life is particularly tough on the psyche.

But as is the way with Mother Nature, traumas are balanced with great joys. I’ve excelled in a career or two, won the hearts of two parents and two sisters, and gained an amazing husband and a stepdaughter from the ashes of devastation.

I owe it all to checklists. Don’t laugh. I’m completely serious.

I make lists about everything: complicated things, mundane things, and lists of lists I should make. Emotions are difficult for me to process, so when they’re part of a list, I can keep those tears and fears at arm’s length. We writers banish these big things to the page, not on our sleeve.

Rationalize, monetize, organize. Salute!

But then I think about the stupid things that many people deem to be traumas, like losing keys or trying to squeeze into those favorite jeans that don't fit anymore. Sometimes there’s no trauma at all, only an endurance test of the daily assaults of life. How much time do I spend deleting spam or interrupt a game of Scrabble to check my work email? I need to make sure someone else’s trauma doesn’t become mine. I’m never prepared for the Wi-fi router going out or my laptop inching like a slug from Internet slow-downs. And what about when the Bluetooth on the Bose has ceased to pair with the music library on my phone?

What the heck? Stop the presses! Is this fake trauma like fake news?

But nobody dies from these things. No one’s kids are maimed. Let’s put the challenges in prospective in our instant-gratification, now-means-now world. All anyone really needs to re-calibrate is to lose electricity for a week or two.

The absence of a 60-cycle hum of appliances makes me take notice. Ahhhh… After a day or two, I get used to the lack of rush from the heater or air conditioner. The still atmosphere makes my skin soft and supple. No ambient light from neglecting to turn off the switches ceases my huff and puff about the electric bill. No phone, either, without cable or satellite. We learned our haste from a pattern of waste.

I say a silent “thank you” when the power goes out. My urge to reconnect with my neighbors is powerful, and I reach out to friends for a long overdue lunch to become grounded again. If you’ve been through a hurricane, tornado, flood, or any natural disaster, then you know what I mean. The pull to walk away from technology is overwhelming after a couple of days without it. Then I dread that power coming on again. The respite is over. Back to normal life.

But what about emotional disasters? Relationship-changing disasters are quick to slice and slow to heal, űber-sore like an infected paper cut. I won’t lie, they carry a sting that’s hard to let go. Long after the clean-up of carnage is done, the invisible arrow still protrudes from the chest. Try as I might, I can’t yank it out on my own. Only those close to me, with a commitment of mutual love, know how to twist  and inch out that spear. 

My two sisters are quite colorful, Siblings can be wonderful at alleviating relationship stress. 

We subscribe to the “What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger” rule for weathering the traumas of life. It's up there with the 7-second rule for food items dropped on the floor and headed to the mouth. Here's our recipe:

Shut off the T.V. . . .

Shut off the radio . . .

Close the browser . . .

Pour a big glass of wine and make a bowl of popcorn . . .

Then take stock.

Photo: Loma Smith

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

COMING SOON!

The Dushane Sisters Trilogy concludes with Indigo Legacy, due out in early 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 ends in a mansion on Boston's Beacon Hill.  And the 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."

Rolling in the Dough?

by Courtney Pierce

When I was in my twenties, success was defined by having a million dollars in the bank—cold cash, not this artificial Bitcoin stuff we have now. The amount sounded like a lot of coin to me at the time, though. Thirty-five years ago, it was. And a pound of bacon was well under two bucks back then. Have you priced a pound of bacon lately? How about an artichoke? And when did a six pack of cheap toilet paper top ten bucks? I’m wiped out when I go to a grocery store. It’s an extortion racket!

So how does one get that cool million in the bank? Lottery tickets were never a sound investment for

me, but I must admit that I dreamed of that scratch-off moment with the winning news. My heart raced at the thought of what I’d do. Fantasies about that sexy car were hard to resist. I can still recall the imagined aroma of hand-stitched leather. Then I figured I’d have to spend a lot on a lawyer and a tax adviser, even before I had my picture taken with that oversize Styrofoam check. Heart-racing visions of winning the lottery quickly dissolved to those of predators: charities, friends I’d never known, and those who checked in at the Why Me Inn. Dang! I’d give it all away, anyway, to assuage my guilt of receiving money I hadn’t earned.

Back to work. That was the key to financial security.

Pesky word “work”. Right through my forties, the term signified a sense of accomplishment, self-pride, and climbing the ladder to show my worthiness. It was about that million dollars too. Along with my ego, the monthly statements of accounts became a measuring stick of success. My accountant wanted me to be insatiable because his growth depended on mine. Don’t get me wrong. I love my accountant like my own father these past thirty-eight years, but he’s getting ready to retire too. Now what? Do I have enough? Had I earned the right to freedom?

The closer I get to that magic age of sixty, the less fear I have of turning my back on the corporate world. I’m not razoring through my fingernails over the thought of retirement. My husband and I will only do something different and personal, like writing full time, growing and hunting our own food, and hiking the trails of Glacier National Park. We want to make experiences our goal, not buying more stuff. Besides, we’ll be cutting way back on our expenses in retirement, so our monthly nut should go down.

I take a deep breath and relax. Snow-capped mountain vistas. Mist drifting over the surface of the lake. Loons call for us to paddle the canoe in the morning hours.

Panic shoots through my spine, shattering my fantasies.

Wait just a darned-tootin’ minute! A million dollars is what my accountant says I need just in my retirement account to step away at sixty-six (preferably at seventy-two to maximize Social Security). I brace myself for battle. My fight-or-flight reaction retreats and my shoulders drop in defeat. All plans of a frugal retirement are eclipsed by the destinations on our bucket list: Roman walls in England, castles in Scotland, mountains in Peru, fishing in Portugal. Have you priced plane tickets lately? The baggage fees alone are more than the cost of a ticket used to be.

Back to work. I’m no boomer with a Trust fund. No one is going to will me a million bucks when they die. Everyone I know plans to bounce the last check they’ll write.

And my husband is so right. He says they wouldn’t call it "work" if it wasn’t.

Photo: Loma Smith

Courtney Pierce is a fiction writer living in 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 are back in Indigo Lake. More laughs, more tears...and more trouble. Protecting Mom's reputation might get the sisters killed―or give one of them the story she's been dying to live.

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."

Colorful characters come alive in Courtney's trilogy about the Dushane sisters. Beginning with The Executrix, three middle-age sisters find a manuscript for a murder mystery in their mother's safe after her death. Mom’s book gives them a whole new view of their mother and their future. Is it fiction . . . or truth? 

Get out the popcorn as the Dushane Sisters Trilogy comes to a scrumptious conclusion with Indigo Legacy. Due out in summer, 2018.