How to Cook Dinner and Start a Book--T. K. Thorne

 

Writer, humanist,
          dog-mom, horse servant and cat-slave,
       Lover of solitude
          and the company of good friends,
        new places, new ideas
           and old wisdom.

 

 

My husband recently had shoulder surgery for a torn rotator cuff.  He is the chef in the house; I, the consumer. In fact, I’m not normally even allowed in the kitchen (a survival thing, so I don’t burn down the house or poison him). But he would be out of action for a while, so I . . . panicked.

My anxiety centered not around the actual cooking, but  coming up with something to fix for dinner for several weeks. I think that can correlate to worrying about writing a book. The task seems enormous, requiring a large amount of creative energy.  Where do you start?  How do you make all those decisions?  I needed a plan for at least a week with a list of ingredients and grocery shopping (which husband has been doing since 2020).

I freaked out and employed my best strategy, finely honed over the years—Procrastination.

People who would like to write a book, but are overwhelmed with the idea sometimes ask me  —“Where/how do you start?”

My honest reply is “with the first word.”  

I have started a book based on an image, a phrase that popped into my mind, a vague sense of who my character is, a statement from a character, or a random idea. Sometimes, I know where I want to end up, especially if it is already a story, like the biblical tales that loosely formed the basis for Noah’s Wife or Angels at the Gate (Lot’s wife). With the nonfiction book, Last Chance for Justice (about the 1963 16th Street Church bombing case), I knew I would end up with the trials and convictions of the Ku Klux Klan members who planted the bomb.  

It is very handy to know where you will end up (like having meals in mind when grocery shopping.) But even if I do, I have no idea how to get there. I need to create and feel out the characters, make sure they are interesting enough to intrigue me and make me want to live with them for the many months or years we will be working together. I say working together, because it is a partnership. Once a character is conceived, it’s my job to figure out what to throw at her and her job to react as appropriate to who she is.

I’m sure many other authors feel this way, as if their characters are alive in some intangible but real way. At some point, I daydream as far ahead as I can and work toward that, but sometimes everything comes to a halt and I don’t have a clue what’s next.  

At that point, I pull out my well-honed strategy and go clean the kitchen, read a book, or talk to a friend.  Eventually, my character subtilely tickles my fancy, politely knocks on the door of my mind, or hits me over the head with an idea and I a back to it.

The End

Postscript: My fears were ill-founded. Husband knew what was in the freezer and what he wanted, so he just ordered dinner menu and then stood over me, “guiding” every step.  Piece of cake. 

T.K.Thorne is a retired police captain who writes Books, which, like this blog, go wherever her curiosity and imagination take her.  More at TKThorne.com

Thankful!

 

       Writer, humanist,
          dog-mom, horse servant and cat-slave,
       Lover of solitude
          and the company of good friends,
        new places, new ideas
           and old wisdom.

 

 

 

Hope you had a great day yesterday with those you love, celebrating all the things you are thankful for. I am grateful for many things, family and friends in particular. But this year I am also thankful to have a new member of our family.

This is Nicki-Jones in February of this year (2021) when she arrived from a "kill lot" (next step dog food in Mexico) in Louisiana to a quarantine pasture. She was lame and had a large wicked scar on the front of her left back leg and a patterned scarring on the back of the other leg that makes me think she got tangle in barbed wire at some point. The circular sticker on her withers was her lot #. She had a brand under her mane from the track, so I was able to confirm that she was a 16 year-old Standardbred. She was sweet, but had no idea what a treat was or even that eating out of a human hand was a possibility, which speaks to her former life as a work horse—pulling a sulky (a one-person cart) on a pacer race track and then with the Amish, where I assume she pulled a cart or wagon. I don't know how long she had been at the kill lot, but they don't keep them long because feeding her is an expense.

 

We took her in with another mare to give our gelding a companion and her a safe place to grow older and get loved on. Never thought I would be riding her! But she put on weight and gloss and healed up and definitely knows what a treat is now! Her coat even changed from brown to black this summer.

 

This is the first time I’ve been on her. Wasn’t sure what she would do, as I don’t know if she’s ever had anyone on her back, only pulled things. She caught on quickly, though, and I was really happy on this beautiful day to be in the saddle! It's been a long time for the old lady on the top. Not sure Nicki-Jones felt the same way, but hoping we have some adventures ahead of us on the trails and lots of years to get to know each other and to be thankful for.

 

 

 

 

 T.K. is a retired police captain who writes Books, which, like this blog, go wherever her interest and imagination take her.  More at TKThorne.com

 

Peleliu by T.K. Thorne

 

Writer, humanist,
          dog-mom, horse servant and cat-slave,
       Lover of solitude
          and the company of good friends,
        New places, new ideas
           and old wisdom.

This month, 77 years ago, American soldiers began a battle for an airstrip on a tiny island in the Pacific. 

I had never heard of it, but I watched a documentary where the last surviving Marines told of the battle predicted to take four days that lasted over two months—the bullets; the mud; of forcing their foes from underground positions with flames; the small strip of hard-baked dirt won at such cost of blood; and a victory that was deemed, in the end, of negligible value. 

It was a memory that haunted them and forged unbreakable bonds. One old man told of a simple offering  by his fellows that moved me to tears and to write a poem. I'd like to share it in honor of the Marines who risked and gave everything, and in tribute to the Japanese soldiers who did the same for their country . . . and in the hope that we will do war no more.

 

 

 

Peleliu, 1944
by T.K. Thorne

 

 

Thirst scrapes the back of the throat

tasting of gunpowder

and shattered dirt,

lips like parched earth

cracked open for an offering of blood

thirst cries out

from every cell.

 

We are walking Thirst

in a waking Hell,

traversing a field of Death.

Nothing here

of Home

or Cause—

 

Only the man to the right

And left.

 

One says,

“I have water.”

 

All turn

with longing

never felt for food

or glory

or even a woman.

 

With that declaration

Thirst intensifies

from burn to conflagration.

 

Hand atremble,

he offers his canteen

received by the next

with same and solemn fear,

all eyes watching.

 

One swallow,

one holy swallow

taken in sacred silence.

 

No one could stop him

if he took another or

drained it dry

but he takes only one,

enough to wet his mouth

but not slake aching cells.

 

With both hands, the communion canteen

passes to the next man.

all eyes follow.

 

One swallow.

only one,

all around.

 

 T.K. is a retired police captain who writes Books, which, like this blog, go wherever her interest and imagination take her.  More at TKThorne.com

 

 

Following a Rabbit —T. K. Thorne

 

 

Writer, humanist,
          dog-mom, horse servant and cat-slave,
       Lover of solitude
          and the company of good friends,
        New places, new ideas
           and old wisdom.

 

 

 

 

I follow rabbit trails when I am writing because they often end up in the most unusual and interesting places.

Here are three tidbits I learned writing about an unnamed woman who was married to one of the most famous men on Earth:

*Written on stone, the oldest story known is from the Middle East (Babylon) and predates the Hebrew Bible. The Epic of Gilgamesh tells a tale with many parallels to the story of Noah and the flood. 

A man named Utnapishtim survived a flood that destroy the earth after being warned to build a boat and gather his family and animals because the gods were unhappy with mankind—not because of sin, but because they were too LOUD!  (Love it!) Utnapishtim sent out a dove (the ancient symbol of the Mother Goddess) to try and find dry land.

*The earliest known deity was female!  The role of the feminine in the divine was entwined with early Judaism and keeps reappearing throughout history.

*The explorer John Ballard got money from the U.S. government to hunt for the wreckage of a secret Russian submarine in order to pursue his true desire to find the wreck of the Titanic. He found both. He also discovered the remains of an ancient flooded settlement about two miles into the Black Sea, preserved because of a lack of oxygen in the depths.

Writing Noah's Wife was an adventure (with many rabbit trails) that took four years. I don't regret a minute. The characters are still in my mind and come alive every time someone picks up the book. Despite its controversial challenges to traditional interpretations, it won "Book of the Year" for Historical Fiction and—more importantly to me—readers continue to let me know how much they loved it.

 

Available as print book, e-book, or Audible book. Click on image.

T.K. is a retired police captain who writes Books, which, like this blog, go wherever her interest and imagination take her.  More at TKThorne.com.

 

Dickens, Aliens, and Me

 

My first ambition was to be an astronaut. My dream was to make first contact with aliens who could take me on a private tour of the galaxy. I would check out the window every night to see if a UFO had landed in my back yard. (Surely, they could sense that I was waiting for them. . . ! ) For various reasons, it never did, and I didn’t get a chance to go looking for them, but that has now changed.

 

You might know that most of Charles Dickens’ novels were published in monthly or weekly installments. He pioneered the serial format of narrative fiction, which became the dominant mode during the Victorian period for novel publication and still exists in some magazine formats. 

 

The advent of print-on-demand technology in the 1960s turned the publishing industry on its head. It spawned the giant, Amazon, but it also wrested the ability to publish out of the hands of a few big publishing companies and into the hands of indie (independent) presses or even the authors themselves. This has had positive and negative side effects (a story for another day).

 

A couple of weeks ago, Amazon launched a new platform using serialization called “Kindle Vella.” The author can publish an episode (chapter) at a time and leave comments for the reader.  Readers can give a heads up for the chapters they like.  In that sense, technology is bringing the readers and authors closer together.

 

Also, it puts more power in the readers’ hands.  Instead of taking a chance on an entire book that you might end up hating or bored with, you can read at least three episodes for free. (As a special Amazon is now giving you 200 free tokens, which means you can really read about 15 chapters first.) Then you purchase tokens (at a reasonable price; the total book is about what a new release e-book would be) to “spend” on chapter-episodes of books that you really like. You start at Amazon.com and can read it there or (after you read your first episodes and purchase tokens) it will also be available to download onto Apple devices (Kindle Reader app or Kindle device) or you can keep reading right on Amazon.com.

 

Back to meeting aliens and venturing into a new space . . . literally.

 

Motes (short for Mozart) is an extraordinary young girl born on Mars. When a boy is found dead in her dorm room, the private Martian school for gifted students expels her. Motes has nowhere to go besides the remote planet of Veld where her estranged father is studying mmerl, the native sentient species, some of whom are mysteriously disappearing.

 

 

 

This is a story close to my heart. I rewrote it during the Covid pandemic, and I’m really excited to be able to share it directly with readers this way!

 

You can check out SNOWDANCERS (the entire novel is uploaded) at "Kindle Vella" on Amazon.com at   https://www.amazon.com/kindle-vella/story/B096R3YF29

 

Hope you enjoy Mote’s amazing adventure!

 

T.K. is a retired police captain who writes Books, which, like this blog, go wherever her interest and imagination take her.  More at TKThorne.com

 

 

The Paintbrush and the Pen—by T.K. Thorne

 

Writer, humanist,

          dog-mom, horse servant and cat-slave,

       Lover of solitude

          and the company of good friends,

        New places, new ideas

           and old wisdom.

During the pandemic I edited several books and started two novels, both of which seem stuck somewhere near the beginning and are sitting around waiting for me.  I don't know if it was the stress of the year or I just burned out.  

A friend introduced me to a form of art doodling called Zentangle, which is usually done on 3x3 inch pieces with a pen and pencil shading.  Looks like this:

I decided I wanted to color them and bought some colored pencils.

Then I stumbled across water color pencils. Who knew?  Got some of those and the color intensified.

 

So I ordered tube water colors and real water color paper and "got serious." I started painting scenes out of my head. This one went to my new grandchild:

 

And then from photographs:

My nine-year-old nephew said he wanted a painting of outer space.  

"I like planets." he said.

Which one is your favorite?"

With a wicked grin, "Uranus!"

He didn't get Uranus (I think he just liked to say the word! :-) This is what he got:

My other nine-year-old nephew liked space but opted for a type of dinosaur I'd never heard of—a Spinosaurus, which has a huge head and jaws and likes water. I threw in an eclipse to cover the space interest.

Connections between painting and writing have evolved along with subject matter. Since I had no idea what I was doing, I developed a silent mantra to keep me brave enough to try things—Don't be afraid of the paint. Writing is like that. You can't let fear of not having the right words stop you. There are ways to fix what you don't like in both fields, but you have to put something down on paper first. (I think I am talking to myself here....)

Painting has expanded my "notice meter." I look at the world differently, trying to take in how light plays in the tree canopy or on a field or a face, and I note how that affects my inner world. Writers look for physical, emotional and mental nuances, motivations, and behaviors. But we also are called upon to describe the world in terms of our senses and I suspect this "arting" thing is going to enhance my ability to describe the visual world.

One major lesson is that nothing exists without contrast. Light requires dark, even if it is in shades. An arc of character must, likewise, have contrast, a setup if you will.

A painting, like a story, takes on a life of its own. Not everything goes the way you "planned" it, and that is okay. Sometimes you have to let the colors and water do what they want to do and go from there.  The same for a story. A character you planned to grant a minor role may become a major player.  A plot can go off in a new direction. Your characters may say or do unexpected things.  These are part of the challenges and joys of writing and painting.

Science says creating art can help depression and PTSD, stimulate alpha (relaxing) brain waves, and reduce the stress hormone cortisol. They also say that learning new things creates new connections in your brain. I don't pretend to be anything more than a beginning amateur at this, but I am loving this new passion. My words got stuck during the pandemic, and I don't know when they will come back, but meanwhile I am determined not to be afraid of the paint and to see where it takes me.

T.K. is a retired police captain who writes Books, which, like this blog, go wherever her interest and imagination take her.  More at TKThorne.com

Roses are Stealthy by T. K. Thorne

 

 Writer, humanist,
          dog-mom, horse servant and cat-slave,
       Lover of solitude
          and the company of good friends,
        New places, new ideas
           and old wisdom.

Roses are following me around. 

In my first mystery/thriller/crime/urban fantasy, I named my police officer-witch, "Rose." 

Names are a funny thing. When you give one to a character, it can instantly color them and lead to interesting places.  I don't know why that name popped into my head at the critical moment of creation. I've tried to figure it out:

Was it a subconscious play on my last name, "Thorne"? 

Was I thinking of my grandmother whose name was "Rose"? 

Or was it just that it was fun, because as Rose herself says, 

"'Rose' is a difficult name. For one thing, it made me a target throughout childhood for “smells the same” taunts. For another, it sets up an assumption that fails to describe any part of my nature, conjuring an image of a tiny gray-haired woman. I am neither tiny—standing barefoot at 5’8”—nor gray-haired—dark curls minimally tamed per Birmingham police uniform regulations—and I’m more prickly thorns than soft petals."

A one-armed man gave me the climbing rose in my yard (not that one-armed man, if you are of an age to have watched "The Fugitive"). It is in full bloom as we speak. That rose bush taught me valuable lessons (See "The Rose Wars.")

Rose (the police-witch) got this for a cover:

 

All sorts of roses seem to show up in my life—a painting from a friend, a favorite scarf I never noticed had a black-and-white rose pattern, the two dozen long-stemmed roses my ex-husband (#2) sent me when he wanted to make up. That last one may be cheating since it was long ago. If my current husband sent me roses, I would definitely freak out (you have to read House of Rose to know why.)

Book two of the Magic City series is finally making its debut as House of Stone.

 

Just want to be clear, that is a red diamond in there—in case the universe wants to do that "Law of Attraction" thing, I'm good with it!

Here's a  promo moment for the new novel:

Witches and warlocks abide in Birmingham, Alabama in three ancient Houses—Rose, Iron and Stone. They arrived over a century ago to draw their powers from the abundant ores beneath Red Mountain. Rose Brighton, a Birmingham police detective, is the last witch of House of Rose and possibly the most dangerous thing since the hydrogen bomb. A terrifying encounter with House of Iron has mentally crippled Becca, her best friend. While Becca struggles to find herself, Rose battles to control her own abilities and the supernatural attraction that pulls her to a mysterious, handsome warlock.

 

When magic kicks in at the scene of her first homicide, she learns that her partner—the mentor and friend she depends on—is lying to her, and she is on her own. Unraveling the murder entwines Rose in a web of greed and profit involving a promising new medicine. Someone is willing to kill to keep a cheap drug from the market. Not only do countless lives depend on Rose’s skills as a detective, the fate of a unique race of people facing extinction also rests on her shoulders . . . and some of them are determined to kill her.

 

Praise

“Thorne delivers a spellbinding thriller, an enthralling blend of real-world policing and other-world magic. It’s a wild ride of high stakes that pits the warm humanity of Rose and her friends against chilling powers of darkness in a battle that is both ages old and totally of today.”

—Barbara Kyle, author of The Traitor’s Daughter

“A deftly crafted and riveting read by an author with an impressively deft ability to hold the reader’s rapt attention with her original fantasy novel “House of Rose.” Readers new to her will look eagerly forward to the next title in her new Magic City Stories series. While very highly recommended for personal and community library Contemporary Fantasy Fiction collections, it should be noted that “House of Rose” is also available in a digital book format.”

—Midwest Reviews

“Rookie cop Rose Brighton never imagined that a simple suspect chase into an alley would lead her into dark passages where she would question her definition of reality, her own identity, and whether she was pawn or prey. HOUSE OF ROSE is a gem.”

— DP Lyle, award-winning author of the Jake Longly thriller series

“The life of Birmingham, Ala., rookie cop Rose Brighton, the narrator of this promising paranormal series launch from Thorne (Noah’s Wife), veers into the extraordinary one night. . . . Thorne, a retired captain in the Birmingham PD, grounds the fantasy with authentic procedural details and loving descriptions of the city and its lore. Readers will look forward to Rose’s further adventures.”

—Publishers Weekly

“T.K. Thorne is an authentic, new voice in the world of fantasy and mystery. THE HOUSE OF ROSE blends the realistic details of police work with magic. The result is an explosive story that will keep you on the edge of your seat as Rose learns of her true heritage…and the dangerous powers that are her birthright. Pick up this story—you’ll thank yourself over and over again.”

—Carolyn Haines, USA Today bestselling author of the Sarah Booth Delaney, Pluto’s Snitch, and Trouble the black cat detective mystery series.

“Although “House of Rose” is speculative fiction, a kind of fantasy, T.K. Thorne is so knowledgeable about Birmingham and law enforcement that it is also, truly, a police procedural and a thriller—something for everyone. House of Rose” is the first of a series which should be a hit.”

—Don Nobles, reviewer for Alabama Public Radio

T.K. is a retired police captain who writes Books, which, like this blog, go wherever her interest and imagination take her.  More at TKThorne.com

What an Old Horse Can Teach—by T. K. Thorne

Writer, humanist,
          dog-mom, horse servant and cat-slave,
       Lover of solitude
          and the company of good friends,
        New places, new ideas
           and old wisdom.

 

 

This winter during the Covid pandemic, I did a crazy thing.  I got two rescue horses. I was only looking for one mare to keep our lonesome gelding company. Still can't believe I bought a horse from a photograph on Facebook! But a local rescue organization directed me to look there, and I saw a beautiful bay thoroughbred named Foxy who had raced for a couple of years and then was sold at auction. A place in Louisiana had bought her at the auction. Their aim was to sell her again, but such places, though they claim to be rescuing horses, are often not really focused on that. The real rescue organizations call them"kill pens." As the term implies, if they can't resell a horse, they send it to Mexico for dog food. It’s illegal to buy or sell a horse for food in the U. S., but not in Mexico. And there is a steady stream of unwanted horses from the U.S. for that purpose.

Foxy traveled from Louisiana to Alabama with several other horses who had been purchased the same way. One of her fellow travelers from the kill pen was an older black Standardbred mare named Nickie Jones. Originally raced at a track (pulling a two-wheeled one-seater called a “sulky”)  and then sold to the Amish who had her pull a carriage or wagon. The Amish had sold her to the same Louisiana kill pen. Had someone not bought her in the same way I had, Nickie’s next stop also would have been Mexico.

 

She turned out to be lame and had a terrible scar on her left back leg (something not disclosed when her would-be rescuer bought her. Nickie Jones was no longer wanted by the person who had purchased her. The rescue organization couldn't keep her, because there were stallions on their property, and mares cause a lot of stir. (No comments from the peanut gallery, please.)

So, to make a long story short, I took in Nickie Jones too. Both horses were not in great shape, but Nickie was really undernourished. 

Nickie Jones Arrival Feb 2, 2021

Whatever she had gotten into (barbed wire?) to leave an awful scar, seemed to be causing her pain, but when my vet examined her, he said t was her other leg, the hock (back “elbow”) that was swollen and the reason she was lame. I gave her Bute, which is horse aspirin, as a powder mixed in her feed for about ten days, and she was fine. Putting some weight on her took longer. A special senior feed and lots of hay. She gobbles it down and is the first one to the three piles of hay we lay out for them. The bony top of her hip is starting to round. 

Nickie Jones April, 2021

Horses are social creatures, and they adhere to a hierarchy each group works out. Nickie Jones is at the bottom of line. Big boss man in this herd-of-three is Apollo, our paint (brown and white) quarter horse. He is ordinarily congenial, but food aggressive. When food is present, he turns into a bully. We quickly learned we needed to put him in the round pen to eat until the other two are finished or he will run them off from their buckets and help himself to their grain.

The routine is to give all three grain in their individual buckets. While they eat, we put out the hay in three piles in a rough line against the barn wall. Usually Nickie Jones finishes first and heads for the hay. Then Foxy joins her. Then we let Apollo out of the pen. When released, he exits the pen with his ears flattened back, charging the girls. They scatter. So, he gets first choice of the three piles of hay to munch. Sometimes he will choose the hay on the far end, sometimes the other end. He never chooses the center. Foxy uses her position as horse #2 to claim the end farthest away from Apollo, putting Nickie Jones between her and the grumbly gelding.

Smart girl.

Nickie Jones has disadvantages. We don’t know if she was born into them or if personality, age, or injury created them. There is not much she can do about that. But even though she has the least social status and control, knowing she will end up in the middle of the hay line, she uses the moments when she is first to the hay—before Foxy finishes her grain and Apollo is released—to snatch at a pile, and she never eats from the middle pile, which is where she will end up. 

Foxy is the second to finish her grain and go to the hay. If Foxy runs Nickie Jones off from an end pile, Nickie goes to the other end, getting a few snatches of that pile of hay before Apollo comes out and everyone reshuffles and ends up in their final hay-eating positions. Nickie Jones always has an untouched pile of hay in the center to munch.

There’s smart and there’s smart.

Left to right: Foxy, Nickie Jones, Apollo

T.K. is a retired police captain who writes Books, which, like this blog, go wherever her interest and imagination take her.  More at TKThorne.com

The Path to Sanity—T.K. Thorne

 

 

Writer, humanist,
          dog-mom, horse servant and cat-slave,
       Lover of solitude
          and the company of good friends,
        New places, new ideas
           and old wisdom.

 

The world fell apart in March 2020. I was at a writers conference in California on the opposite side of the country from home (Alabama). One day after the start of the conference, I flew home. Two people in the airport wore masks. The rest of us tried to follow the advice “don’t touch your face.”  My nose has never itched so much.

Over the year, my grandson was born  . . . without me. Another daughter had to spend months in the hospital with her dying father . . . without me. Many people suffered much worse. So far, I have not lost any family. Actually, I’m am very close to the oldest in what’s left of my family. In the past year, I have been inside exactly one public place. How bizarre.

My mind has done some kind of trick where I can now see the death numbers posted on the side of the T.V. without feeling like I can’t breathe. That’s a good thing, right?  Maybe not. I try to not to watch the tributes to individuals because then I can’t breathe again.

Where lay the path of sanity?  It was a windy one. The muse deserted me.  I could not put pen to paper except to edit and to write this blog. Fortunately, I had a lot of material to edit, but the more days that have turned into weeks and month, the drier the well of creativity seemed. I had finished my police-witch trilogy (book two, House of Stone) and the eight-year nonfiction project (Behindthe Magic Curtain: Secrets, Spies, and Unsung White Allies of Birmingham’sCivil Rights Days. I finished a rewrite of an old manuscript and had no idea where to go next. I felt aimless, adrift.  Everything had a surreal quality.

The first thing I did that gave me a little peace was plucking debris and tiny plants from the green moss on the brick walk from the driveway to the front door.  It took hours; its only purpose was to create a little temporary beauty, but doing it calmed something inside me.

Then I took up the WW, the war on wisteria, a vine that had eaten half my back yard and uprooted several trees. This took months of back-breaking work.  Wisteria sends vines out underground that pop up yards away, making nodes along the way that each grow deep roots straight down. You can pull up one section, but any piece that survives can and will repopulate. I learned to know and love a tool called a mattock. Some days I could only do a tiny amount. But the harder I worked and the more exhausted I was, the better I slept and breathed. But I don’t recommend this as a therapy. Never plant wisteria, at least not the Chinese or Japanese variety.

The Wisteria War lasted through the summer and into fall. I decided to let the back yard become a wildflower garden (except for wisteria) and planted some old seeds that had been sitting out in my garage.  We’ll see if they germinate.

One thing I really missed was my twice-weekly martial arts class. Sometime in November, I decided to learn tai chi, which is practiced solo. You have probably seen old people doing it in a park. I learned it from Youtube videos, and whenever I felt trapped or anxious, I went through the movements. I did it three or four times a day, and it focused me on the present.

Over the winter, I lost my mind and adopted two rescue horses off the track, a Thoroughbred and a Standardbred—Foxy and Nickie Jones. I bought Foxy sight unseen from a Facebook picture at a “kill pen” in Louisiana. Her next step would have been dog food (in Mexico). She is a beautiful bay, although we’ve been working on a skin infection that even affected an eyelid. It’s all getting better. Nickie Jones was an older lady who traveled with her but when she arrived in Alabama, her purchaser backed off because she was injured and malnourished. So, we took her too. Preparation for their arrival took weeks of cleaning out the old barn and working on the overgrown arena and round pen.  Focusing on preparing for them and taking care of them has occupied me and my husband for several weeks now. But I am smitten!

Then a good friend introduced me to a form of art called Zentangle. It is done on little 3x3 inch pieces of stock paper—tiny art. I played with it and decided to add colors. Because it is so small, it is not intimidating like a big canvas would be. I’ve never done any "art thing" beyond doodling, but I’ve always wanted to.  They may not be great masterpieces, but the world fades away when I am working on one.

 

But still fresh words eluded me. No stories pushing to be born.

Then a friend I never met at that writer’s conference in California (we were supposed to be on a Law Enforcement panel together) emailed me and asked if I were interested in submitting a short story to an editor in Australia who is putting together a crime anthology featuring law enforcement authors and wanted some submissions from women. I am both of those things—an author and a cop, a retired one anyway, a short, gray-haired old lady. I agreed to submit a story. The catch is I had to write it. I had to create it. I told myself—this is like the tiny art. It's a short story, not a novel. Even so, I was totally blank. But I promised, so I had to do it. One word at a time.

I was delighted and surprised that the words came. It’s about a short, gray-haired old lady who is an ex-cop, a martial artist, and a horse woman who witnesses a murder. I've sent it off. Maybe I'll do another short story or maybe I have found a character who could support something longer?  

I hope this helps you find your way through.

 

T.K. is a retired police captain who writes books, which, like this blog, go wherever her interest and imagination take her.  More at TKThorne.com