It's a Journey All Right!

by Courtney Pierce

A funny thing happened on the way to writing my first book. Well . . . maybe not so funny, but let's give it a go..

The seeds of a book percolated inside me for over a decade, but I didn't do anything about it. After 25 years in corporate life, the routine had grown tiresome, and the constant business travel put me on the road to official burnout. So in 2011, when my company wanted to transfer me from Houston to New York City (a third relocation), I heartily declined. I wanted to move back to Portland, Oregon, to be closer to my family. It was also as far away from New York as I could get.

I needed a sabbatical. With a healthy buyout of my employment contract, I took a year off to recharge my batteries, the goal being to finally write that book. Dreamy images filled my thoughts: sitting on the patio with a cup of chamomile tea, typing away on my laptop, and taking long walks for inspiration. I made my fantasy a reality . . . for exactly two weeks.

Then the phone rang one evening. It was my Dad.

“Hey, Kid," he said. "Can I talk to you for a few minutes?” His tone made my heart pound. Something was wrong. My parents lived four hours away in Southern Oregon. I eyed my car keys on the kitchen counter for a possible impromptu road trip.

“Sure. What’s up, Bear?" I said. "Everything okay?” I kept my voice upbeat by using his nickname. We all had nicknames. Our real names were saved for being in trouble.

“I think we need to move up your way. Can you help us find a house?”

“What’s going on?”

“We need to be closer to you and better healthcare. Mom has colon cancer, and I have bladder cancer.”

My mind immediately created on image of bacon circling in the microwave while two cigarettes smoldered in an ashtray. But it wasn't the time to spew out a healthcare lecture.

That phone call was only the beginning. Over the next six months, my Dad added congestive heart failure to his health rap sheet, my Mom had her own heart attack after her cancer surgery, and my younger sister had a breakdown and attempted suicide. For a few of those months, three members of my small, close family were on the brink of death in the same hospital. 

My first book, Stitches, was in the gestation phase, and I feared my inspiration to write would be relegated to a mere pipe dream. Days were spent making the rounds in the hospital: Oncology, Cardiology, and the Psychology wings. The medical staff became an extension of my familial network with their words of encouragement.  My older sister and I stuck together like glue on the phone, but she lived too far away to help me in real time. 

Every day I’d sit for a couple of hours in each of my family member’s rooms with my laptop, attempting to heal with my story's theme of a found magical artifact that holds the secret of immortality—The Thin Man meets History Detectives with a twist of magic. 

Writing quickly became therapy. And the nurses took ownership of Stitches with me.

I believed that my story could give my family everlasting life, written in silence at their bedsides and read aloud when they stirred. And then something really did start to happen. In the darkest moments, my prose became progressively lighter and more humorous. Words became super fuel in the form of a simple return smile, a brightening of eyes, or a chuckle. The healing had officially begun.

They say that laughter is the best medicine. I can say with conviction that it’s true. And remaining true to the rules of writing craft, I hefted my protagonists over the hump of “all hope is lost” to land them squarely on their feet with courage and conviction. The hospital rounds of therapy dogs, meant for patients, elevated me, too, with each stroke of their fur.

Dad lived long enough to see Stitches in print. I lost him soon after its publication. And my Mom . . . well . . . she’s an Energizer Bunny. At eighty-five, she’s independent and indestructible, and seven years and six books later, Mom remains cancer free with a resilient heart. My little sister recovered and regained her independence. And to keep the inspiration going, I wrote the fictional Dushane Sisters Trilogy with Mom and my two sisters in mind. The trickster therapy dogs in that series were a celebration of my hospital time too.

The original manuscripts for all my published books are locked in Mom’s cedar chest, because she’s convinced that I’ll be famous one day. That's a mom for 'ya. I guess I really did have the ability to make my family immortal on the page. And in my next book, Big Sky Talk, Dad will forever live up to his nickname in the form of a reincarnated grizzly bear. We'll get to have another indelible conversation.

The light of Inspiration is brighter when emerging from the dark, but it takes a healthy dose of love and sacrifice to realize the reward.

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. She spent 28 years as 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."

The Long Journey of Imagination

By Courtney Pierce

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Audiobook now Available!

Check out all of Courtney's books: 

courtney-pierce.com and

windtreepress.com 

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

Available Now!
Book 3 of the
Dushane Sisters
Trilogy

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

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

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

‘Volunteer’ Parents—Heroes to Children in Need

By Linda Lovely

In the spirit of our monthly blog topic—celebrating heroes—I’m saluting all the wonderful people who voluntarily take on parenting roles and provide love and support to children who don’t happen to be their biological offspring.

My hero candidates include all people who adopt or provide foster care to unrelated children. I’d also like to give special recognition to the many relatives who step in to provide loving homes to members of their families. 

• Grandparents

Since I’m old enough to be a grandparent myself, I have added admiration for grands who are retired or near retirement age, and still willingly take on the responsibility of raising young children. I know of one case where the parents were killed in an automobile accident, orphaning six young children (including a set of four-year-old twins). These seventy-something grandparents do everything for these kids. In fact, due to changing times and chauffeuring needs, they probably have more parental duties than they had for their own children.

These grandparents attend school conferences, and cheer at every soccer, softball, and basketball game. In fact, they often split up so grandma can root for a child playing soccer, while grandpa cheers a softball star at a different field. The grands help with homework, read bedtime stories, and seek out every resource to help the children cope with their loss and succeed in the future.

In the process, these grands forgo many of the leisure activities and vacations they planned for retirement. As a topper, they bank the Social Security benefits for the future of the children, refusing to touch a dime though money’s tight. The cost of new sneakers at the beginning of the school year and a week’s supply of milk for six growing kids would make anyone gasp.

 

• Siblings

In another case, a man and woman were arrested, tried, and convicted for dealing drugs. Their baby was only a few months old, and the couple had three other children. The felon's sister and her husband took in all four children. Money’s tight but there’s no shortage of love for every member of this blended family.

So here’s a toast to these heroes. When these children are grown, I hope they recognize how lucky they were to have such loving and selfless guardians.

If you’re the parent of underage children, have you made your guardianship wishes known in case you’re unable to care for your offspring? If not, you might want to do so today.

 
Are you acting as a parent for a relative’s child? If so, are the challenges and rewards different than they are/were in bringing up your own offspring?