Super Boomers

By Courtney Pierce

I create baby boomer characters who embrace their middle-ageness with gusto, of which I am one. We have superpowers―we’re invincible, embrace change, and are immortal―in our own minds. These qualities make for rich layers of emotion that reflect our polarized history of innocence and disillusionment. The conflict sits under the skin like embedded shrapnel. 

Growing up, I wrestled with foiled rabbit-ear antennae to pick up signals of a black-and-white, perfect world. Color bloomed in my imagination. Assassinations and racial violence were quickly turned off in favor of spinning vinyl that snapped, crackled, and popped.

Simplicity. It becomes a superpower in the digital age, a power riddled with the buckshot

of change that comes too fast. Sixty years of generational history shaped our baby boomer uniqueness: Civil Rights, space travel, dropping in and dropping out . . . and Bewitched. Anything was, and is, still possible with the twitch of the nose.

As I finish the final installment of my trilogy about the Dushane sisters, Indigo Legacy, a new tale is beginning to take shape. Future Past will be the story of a middle-age woman, whose gift of future sight is clouded by the past. When her visions turn from benign to dire, only reconciling her baggage will thwart the reality of her own impending death. A vision worthy of a good fight. Of course, this new book won’t be as dark as it sounds. A spunky Jack Russell terrier named Rudy serves as the lightning rod for supercharged predictions. This little hero’s insight surpasses that of humans. As is my style, the humor in the story carries a poignant message: “Make the most of every minute because none of us knows what will happen to change our lives in the future.” Could be good. Could be bad. And sometimes, a baton is grabbed with only trust and determination as a guide. Then we run as fast as we can.

It's an author's right to project fact into fiction. My books reflect layers of personal experience in real time. Characters get to discover a new beginning at the same time I do. At the ripe age of fifty-seven, I will marry a man who'll restart my life. And with the utterance of a vow in June, I’ll become a mother, for the first time, to an eleven-year-old stepdaughter and four grown stepchildren . . . with kids of their own. Me? A mother and a grandmother without paying all those dues? It’s as if I twitched my nose and the love of my new life appeared in front of me, complete with the richness of a family. How do I even begin to write on the page of what I'm experiencing inside? None of this was even a glimmer on the horizon just six months ago.

Even an attempt at capturing on the page makes me feel like a superhero. 

No matter what extraordinary gifts I give my characters, I believe the ability to risk everything to step into the unknown, purely on faith, is the true superpower that shines through the prose.

Courtney Pierce is a fiction writer living in Milwaukie, Oregon, with her bossy cat. 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, She Writes, and Sisters in Crime. 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 2017.

Burst into Spring

By Courtney Pierce

There’s a reason Stravinsky wrote the “Rite of Spring” back in 1913. The shock of the new. Dissident and harmonic. Smooth and violent. The piece embodies our inner core

of change from winter to spring with all its raging hormones.

The spring season begins and ends with weather, the tease of one warm day after a crust of morning frost. The birdbath yawns to reject the decomposing leaves. Heat waves whirl and retreat, but not enough to push back dormant eggs of hatching insects. In the early morning hours, birds awaken with a piccolo call for their species. If one stands in the dark to listen, breath won’t make a sound as it streams and dissipates. In an instant, clouds boil and blacken to drop an opaque curtain of hail.

I love the spring season, the renewal of it the earth, the savagery of its power to awaken

our primal instincts. The promise of fresh vegetables begins with taking a chance on the wild weather: tornadoes, wall clouds, and flying fat snowflakes. I’m never more motivated and childlike than with the unpredictability of spring. Grab a spade and join me to dig in the dirt, grounded in mud. The earth comes out of cold storage and rises up to fertilizer-heated starters of broccoli, carrots, beans, and peas.

With spring, too, there comes an unseen energy that powers animals from within. Romance is in the air, at any age. I can attest to this. At 57, I’m getting married in June, and I feel like a teenager. The pull of a mate is indescribable, and not just to take out the garbage or fix a faulty electrical outlet. This mate's a keeper for airy and heavy conversation, wishes and dreams, and for fantasies of life. I'm a lucky girl this spring.

For thousands of years, not much has changed in our internal commitment to the change of season. Well...maybe one exception . . . the post office. What ever happened to “No matter rain, snow, sleet, or hail, the post office will deliver the mail”? In this last snowstorm, it took two weeks to get my mail. For some reason, though, it only to took days to get my WiFi and cable TV back. And even less for the only entry in the mailbox: my honeymoon lingerie. Hmmm....the old and the new.

Courtney Pierce is a fiction writer living in Milwaukie, Oregon, with her bossy cat. 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, She Writes, and Sisters in Crime. 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 early 2017.