Will we get back to normal in 2022?

2021 was a turbulent year for many, and I'm personally hoping for a much more even-keel 2022.

Unable to Write

I've been writing obsessively since childhood. It's my passion. But I was taken by surprise by how my emotions so vehemently affected my output last year. I'm usually juggling multiple book projects and felt a day without writing was a day wasted. 

I just didn't feel in the mood to write. 

I tried, believe me. But my creativity had other ideas. My brain wouldn't let me grasp onto a thought long enough to turn it into a sentence, let alone a paragraph. It wasn't for a lack of ideas. I have more than a few partially-finished books that just need a few more chapters written to get them ready for the editing. I just couldn't summon enthusiasm to tackle any of them.

2021 was an emotional roller coaster ride of a year. Grief encased my brain like a vice and the only respite was when I opened my sketchbook. I was able to lose myself in the simplicity of an inked line, and wallow in the myriad of watercolours swimming in my palette.

So I put my computer aside and embraced the comfort of my art materials. Sometimes you just have to stop fighting against the tide and go with the flow.

Tonkin's Model of Grief

I've seen it mentioned multiple times online, that grief doesn't shrink (click to view a wonderful depiction of this), your life just grows around it. And less than half a year after my loss, I think this concept, originally defined by Tonkin, is the most palatable.

So as my life continues to expand around my grief, I'm hoping there's room enough in it to return to writing.

About Jay Artale

Jay Artale abandoned her corporate career to become a digital nomad and full-time writer. She’s an avid blogger, podcaster, and nonfiction author helping travel writers and travel bloggers achieve their self-publishing goals. She shares tips, advice, and inspiration to writers with an independent spirit at her website Birds of a Feather Press, and documents her travels and artistic endeavours at her blog Roving Jay. Follow her on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter.

Jay is the author of A Turbulent Mind: A Poetry Collection of a Mother's Journey with Alzheimer's.

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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.

Could I have just one more. . .

by Diana McCollum

As many of you have said, I wouldn't change anything I've experienced in my life because all the  good and bad have made me the person I am today.

My one regret, I wish that I could have just one more day with my mom before she went into the lost her memory completely. The last 2 weeks at the memory care home she wasn't present, she was confused and upset all the time.  The last two months of her life she was slipping into full fledged dementia, Alzheimers and needed 24 hr care. If I could have that day with mom, I would tell her I was sorry I didn't realize she had been ill for so long. It took a hospital stay and the doctor telling me mom's scan showed Alzheimers and she needed 24 hr care.

Since mom lived with us, the changes were subtle. Just mom being mom. Looking back I can see she was falling into dementia for the past few years.

Hindsight is always a few minutes too late, isn't it?

The past couple of years before she died I sometimes got frustrated with her, she lived with us. I tried not to show it, but once in a while I couldn't help it. She had a couple months when she bought mop and glow for the floors every time we went to a store. Forgetting things like the garbage disposal she turned on then walked away from. Things like that, not normal. If I had only known then that she was already suffering from Alzheimers I would have been more patient, more understanding.

An example of my frustration: Mom and I were looking for a parking spot at the grocery store about a year ago. An obese woman was slowly crossing in front of us. Mom says, "honk the horn, maybe she'll walk faster!".  I said, "Mom! She can't walk any faster." I could literally feel my blood pressure rise. My frustration came from mom having no empathy for the woman who was obviously distressed. And Mom used a walker and walked very slow herself.

Grief has been one of my closest friends since December, when mom passed.

Mother's Day loomed in the future and I found myself becoming more anxious. My sister, Sarah and I decided a good way to deal with this first Mother's Day with no 'Mother', was to spread love and joy to others.

So we surprised some family members with 'Mothers' day cards and gifts.

As Lynn said in her post, share the love. In doing our new Mother's Day tradition we made our daughters, nieces, friends, and daughter-in-laws happy. None of them were expecting anything from us, but their joy brought us happiness and joy too, on what would have been a sad day.

My motto is now spread the love. Smile at the grouchy looking person in the grocery line, maybe that will make their day.

If you could have one more day to talk to someone who passed, who would it be?

Romance Authors Helped Me Through Tough Times

Judith Ashley is the author of The Sacred Women’s Circle series, romantic fiction that honors spiritual practices that nourish the soul and celebrates the journey from relationship to romance.

I’d never really read romance novels until the summer of 1997. Oh, it isn’t that I’d never seen one, one of my aunts was an avid reader of Danielle Steele.

However the summer of 1997 my dad had exploratory surgery. Sitting in the hospital waiting for the surgeon to advise us as to the outcome, I needed something to distract me other than a Tom Clancy or psych-thriller-type book.

The hospital gift shop had Nora Roberts’ books and, while I don’t remember the title, I never looked back. You see, even though the surgeon said the operation was a success and the cancer had been removed, that wasn’t true.

When my dad’s balance went and his eye-sight was affected and the headaches relentlessly pounded, my mom relented and let me make an appointment to see an oncologist.

By this time it was too late. Over the next months, I spent hours with my dad at doctor appointments and while he had radiation treatments. Where was my mom? Her grief over losing her soul mate, her life partner for almost 60 years took a massive toll on her health. So much so, we weren’t sure she’d survive.

Trade paperbacks by Nora, Susan Elizabeth Phillips, Jo Beverley and a myriad others easily tucked into my purse. One was always on hand to distract me while waiting.

And that’s how my path to writing romance started. I read, immersed myself in the stories knowing that a happily-ever-after waited for me on the last page, while knowing a happily-ever-after was not waiting for me in my real life.

My dad died March 8, 1998. I was invited to join Wild Women Writers in December 1999. Originally I was going to take a personal growth program I’d developed in the early 1980’s and turn it into a book. I dithered around with that project for a year and then the magic happened.

I started remembering dreams, having day dreams, hearing voices of women who wanted me to tell their stories. They each wanted a happily-ever-after and were positive I was the only one who could write about them. All those hours of escaping into the pages of romance novels rushed back. I put the personal growth book away and started writing down the visions and voices that would not leave me alone.

Would I be a romance author now if not for all those books I read in hospital rooms and doctor’s offices? Read at night or when I couldn’t sleep in an effort to push away the darkness of grief at losing my dad?

Would I have taken the plunge if I hadn’t had these books in my hands?

I don’t think so.

While I’m no Nora or Susan or Jo, if one reader benefits from my books like I did from theirs, then I’m happy.

After working in social services for fifty or so years, one thing I know is this truth: We never know the impact we have on others. We never know if something we’ve said or written or done will change someone’s life.

What I also know is true is that when we move forward in our lives with love in our hearts and our deeds, we do no harm. And what better caveat than that – we send love into the world and did no harm.

Learn more about Judith's The Sacred Women’s Circle series at JudithAshleyRomance.com

Follow Judith on Twitter: JudithAshley19

Check out Judith’s Windtree Press author page.

You can also find Judith on FB! 

© 2018 Judith Ashley

Just Breathe...Correctly

While there are hundreds of ways to cope, there is only one way to keep going—tough times or not. The answer is simple: keep breathing.

But the human spirit wants more than mere existence, we want to feel good; we want to be happy. While most of us can “soldier on,” sometimes life makes every bit of that march pure torture.

When my husband died, my marching halted altogether and a friend suggested I meditate. I complied; not because I expected a new-age, guru woo-woo thingy would make me feel better. I mean, come on…nothing had helped. Not counseling, not exercise, and not even that pint of Ben & Jerry’s I consumed every night. I tried meditation only because I hoped I’d go into some kind of trance and maybe have an hour where I didn’t have to feel.

Imagine my surprise to find out sitting quietly and focusing on my breathing actually helped (the fact that moi could actually sit quietly was amazing in itself). My first inclination was to believe the passage of time was responsible for my improved mood, but there hadn’t been that much passage. There were other changes, too.  Not only had my grief fog started to pass, my overall focus was better than it had been in years, maybe ever.  The constant ache in every muscle in my body started to vanish. Being the logic-driven geek I am, I couldn’t accept that something so hokey as mediation could actually help, so I began to do research to see if my brain improvements were…well, all in my head.

Another surprise. Over 3,000 studies had been conducted on the benefits of mediation, all with a consistent theme: significant improvement in the human mind and body. MRI scans showed that the human “Fight or Flight” impulse actually shrank after only eight weeks of a mediation activity. The pre-frontal cortex responsible for Fight/Flight is also responsible for awareness, concentration and decision-making—enough said.

Without going into a lot of brain science, which makes my head hurt, here are just some of the many improvements scientist say occur as a result of mindful activity (aka meditation):

• Reduced Stress – One study of nearly 1,300 adults showed that meditation not only decreases stress, but  the effect was greatest in those who were the most stressed. Research has also concluded that meditation may also improve symptoms stress-related conditions such as irritable bowel syndrome, post-traumatic stress disorder and fibromyalgia.
• Controls Anxiety – If you’re less stressed, you’re likely to be less anxious (well, duh), but a study of 2,466 participants showed a signficant reduction in their anxiety. Symptoms of anxiety disorders (social anxiety, phobias, anxiety attacks) were also reduced. Another study in a group of nurses showed meditation may also reduce job-related anxiety.
• Improved Attention Span – While my own experience confirms this finding, I was pleased to see that perhaps it wasn’t my just my imagination (now that Temptations song is in your head, right? 😊). One study that examined the effects of an eight-week meditation course concurred: participants had a better ability to maintain their attention. Workers remembered task details better than their peers who did not practice meditation. Another review concluded that meditation (even meditating as little as four days) may reverse patterns in the brain which contribute to mind-wandering, worrying and poor attention.
• Reduction in Age-Related Memory Loss – A review of twelve studies found meditation increased attention, memory and mental quickness in older volunteers. I bet I have your attention now.😊 Meditation can also partially improve memory in patients with dementia and can certainly help with the stress of caring for family members with dementia.
• Improved Sleep – One study compared one group that practiced meditation and another that didn't. The meditation group fell asleep faster and stayed asleep longer. Meditation also helps control “racing” thoughts which tend to keep a person awake.
• Pain Control – One study used an MRI to watch brain activity as participants experienced a painful stimulus. The participants who had gone through four days of mindfulness meditation training prior to the study showed increased activity in the brain centers known to control pain and reported less sensitivity to pain. Another study researched the effects of habitual meditation in 3,500 participants and concluded meditation was associated with decreased complaints of chronic or intermittent pain.
• Decreased Blood Pressure -- A study of 996 volunteers who used a silent mantra (repeated, non-vocalized word) while mediating reduced blood pressure by about five points, on average. Meditation seems to relax the nerve signals that coordinate heart function and tension in blood vessels, thus lowering the pressure.
• The best part… Meditation is free, requires no special equipment, and can be done almost anywhere.  Trying it certainly won’t hurt anything, right? And just a few minutes each day (or even a few days each week) should do the trick.  Don’t expect major improvements after one session though.  Give it a couple weeks minimum.  You will get the instant effects of relaxation during the actual session.

So how do you meditate? That’s a subject for another blog since there are a variety of methods for achieving Zen. Personally, I’ve had really good luck with the guided meditations available on YouTube.  You will want to google mediation methods and find the specific type that’s right for you.

Let me know how you do. Peace be with you. 😊

Coping with the death of a personality…

One of my favorite quotes about writers is:

“Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.”― E.L. Doctorow

But then a drastic life event made me realize that writers aren’t the only people with multiple personalities—acceptable or not. We all have them. By we, I mean you too.

Think about it. How many “you’s” are there in an average week? Really. There’s a bunch of “you’s”. We all respond, react…differently…for the lack of a better term to describe our behaviors, depending upon which “us” is called upon in any situation. I’ll use myself as an example.

I am Christian. I’m wife, mother, grandmother, author, friend. Sister—an older bossier sister at that—just ask my brother who was cursed to be born eight years my junior. Then there’s the  seldom-called-upon chewer-outer of our programming provider when I call to change my channel package and the poor soul on the phone is foolish enough to attempt to sell me something I am not about to buy.

But I digress. Back to losing a personality.

One of my “me’s” has been dismissed. On December 14, 2016, I drove away from my day job of twenty-nine years for the last time. The company I worked for decided to close the steel mill where I’d worked. I hadn’t made “friends”. I’d acquired “family”. The years of laughter and tears, sharing births, deaths, marriages, and divorces were now abruptly over.

My nickname at work was Thumper. You remember Bambi’s best friend? He had the worst time trying to keep his mouth shut and his opinions to himself. Thumper struggled when it came to filtering his words. I share his problem.

I was dubbed Thumper at the steel mill during the first year or two of my employment. They called me Thumper for so long, some didn’t even know my real name.

That thought makes me smile because there were some I couldn’t tell you what their real names were: Sprucie, Sprout, Stump, Ogie, Pappy, Hambone, Romie, Rollo. I guess you could say, we were the steel industries own special assortment of dwarves. But now our forest is gone. Stripped bare and vacant.

So, what do I do now that “Thumper” is no longer needed Monday through Friday from 6:00 a.m. ‘til whenever the work was done?

Yes, I know I am still very blessed. Yes. I have more time to write. But I’m still sad. I mourn that lost corner of my soul.

I know life is all about change and transition into different stages but I’d always planned a more gradual slide from one phase to the next.

How do you handle a chopping block change—after the part of your life they’ve cut away has dropped into oblivion?

How would you cope with the death of a personality? 

A Tribute to Kiko

This month’s theme “If Animals Could Talk…” made me scratch my head. What do you mean if????

Okay, so Kiko the Magnificent couldn’t actually talk—actually she rarely meowed—but that little kitty communicated with me on a far more complex level. To show you what I mean…

Once, I was watching a movie with my husband, and got up, for apparently no reason. He asked, “Where’re you going?”

The question startled me. I wasn’t exactly sure. Without thinking, I replied, “The cat needs some water.”

Then I headed upstairs, almost trancelike (okay, maybe I exaggerate a bit about my zombie state).  There she sat. Patiently waiting by her water bowl.

During the seven wonderful years Kiko allowed me to live in her house, there were daily incidents similar to the one above. I seemed to “know” I needed to move a pillow off a chair because Kiko had decided to sit there instead of her usual spot. A thought would pop in my head and I’d go get a blanket. Kiko would snuggle beneath it, like she’d requested it. I’d stop writing and go remove that tee shirt that had somehow ended up covering her food.

How else, other than mental telepathy, could a cat learn to fetch? Yes, if I threw a toy small enough for her to carry, she’d retrieve the item and bring it back to me. Even more impressive, she liked to play hide-and-seek, always hiding before I got to ten and always tagging me before I found her.  I didn’t teach her that game. I never rewarded her with treats for behavior. Somehow, I just knew that’s what she wanted to do.

So it was very weird I didn’t know she was sick.  I got no sense of her disease, only noticing when she stopped eating.  I know what you’re thinking. Cats are very good at masking illness. Maybe, but that cat and I were synched—I should have known. Our mental connection sometimes freaked my husband out.

But you see, my husband was also very sick. Dying actually. I’m convinced my little kitty wanted to spare me more pain. When I took her to the vet, she said Kiko wouldn’t live more than a month. My cat stayed on this earth for another four months, hanging in there to get me through a horrific time. She spent most of that time in my lap, looking at me with those beautiful green eyes, projecting the same thought: it will be all right.

A year later, tears are welling in my eyes as I write this. But I’m also smiling.  I can still sense Kiko. And she’s saying, “See. It’s all right.”