For one of the group classes at the therapeutic riding barn, we start on the ground standing in a circle. Everybody introduces themselves, and chooses a word that encapsulates their state at that moment, and that word goes on a magnetized white board. We have a number of words on magnetized strips–happy, mixed, scattered, angry, et cetera–but any word is fair game for adding to the board.

Because clients are involved, I pull my punches. If I’m actually steaming mad over somebody cutting me off in traffic, I might choose “distracted.” If my daughter just safely gave birth to a healthy baby, I’ll go with “happy” instead of ecstatic/relieved/worried. I don’t give much thought to this exercise before the lesson begins, in part because the volunteers are busy getting out tack, helmets, boots, and so forth.

This week, I was bustling along the barn aisle with water bottles (each student has their own), when I spotted a stray word on the rubber mat at my feet. “Brave.” Must have fallen off the white board as somebody shuffled it out of the tack room. I picked it up and stuffed it into my pocket. The kids sometimes choose “Brave,” when they’re scheduled for their first ride or coming back after a hiatus. Good word, but my initial reaction was, “Not my word. My life is darned easy, and bravery isn’t much called for.”

But then I got to thinking about what a timid driver I became during the pandemic–me, the queen of the coast to coast to road trip. About how I dread every lab report because the news might be worse than last time. About how artificial intelligence–built largely on literary and artistic piracy–could well put me out of business as an author, and very soon. About climate change…

Maybe brave was the word I was supposed to find that morning. I realized that for those kids to simply say how they feel takes bravery. For the instructors to put the students up on 1500-pound beasties of independent will takes bravery. For all of us to get in our cars, turn on the news, and just go about life takes bravery.

So I listed brave as my word that day–it fit better than I thought it did. I call on my courage more often than I realized, and so do the people around me. Have you seen any bravery lately? Have you had occasion to call up some courage of your own? Did the universe ever present you with unexpectedly appropriate “random” food for thought?

The e-ARCs for Lord Julian’s fourth tale, A Gentleman in Pursuit of Truth, are on their way out the door. If you’d like one, email me at [email protected]. The print version has just gone live on Amazon.

So there I was, maybe twenty years old, sitting on the piano bench at the dance studio where I worked as an accompanist. My usual classes were all ballet, and I played classical music for those. Never have I grown so bored with eight measure phrases (or so good at hacking nearly any piece of repertoire into eights bars). On this particular occasion, I was filling in for the pianist who handled the modern dance classes, and those began not at the barre, but on the floor, with stretching.

“Get off that piano bench, Grace Ann,” said the instructor. “Stretch with us. It’ll do you good.”

This was a beginning modern dance class, and I’d taken beginning modern my self, so I knew the drill. Head and neck, shoulders, arms, back, and finally the big muscles in the legs. The instructor was right. At that point, I’d been spending four hours a day on the piano bench for years (practicing), and then I’d do more hours for the accompanist gig, or class reunions and wedding receptions. My young adult back was killing me, and stretching helped.

Fast forward another twenty years, and I’m married to a hardcore athlete, whose edition of Runners’ World tells me, “Stretching is the most neglected aspect of adult fitness.” We walk, we jog, we do weights, we watch what we eat, we keep an eye on sleep hygiene… we do so much, but I know that stretching rarely makes my list. Stretching helps prevent injuries, brings down inflammation, increases muscular blood flow, stimulates endorphins… for something that doesn’t entail much exertion, it’s good medicine.

And stretching, in another sense, is exactly what a well written character in fiction must do. In every book, if I do my job as an author, Lord Julian (who finally got a cover for A Gentleman in Pursuit of Truth) cannot be quite the same person on page one that he will be by the end of the book. He must risk his ego, his heart, or his safety, maybe all three. He must wrack his brains, and he must test his relationships so that somehow, he has a little better range of motion or resilience at the end of the book than he did at the beginning.

Villains don’t or can’t stretch. They shrink, getting more and more vindictive, greedy, narrow-minded, and selfish as their stories progress, and at some point (I haven’t always done this well), when they are presented with an opportunity to stretch, they refuse the challenge.

I was reminded of the crucial quality of willingness to stretch at the barn yesterday, when a student told me he knew how to say thank you in German. He was proud of this, so I taught him some more German. Please, good-day, farewell, one-two-three, my-name-is, the horse… With each word, he repeated it to himself several times, and did not care in the least that the word for the horse (“das Pferd”) can sound a little the English word fart (and maybe that’s not such a false cognate, when you think about it).

This guy was determined to stretch his vocabulary, just as he had to stretch his courage to sit on that great big beast and try to explain to it where to go.

As we enjoy the waning weeks of winter, I want to give some time and attention to stretching–physically, professionally, interpersonally. If I’m careful about it, there’s no downside, and I might have learn some cool new words.

Do you stretch? Is there an area where you’re thinking of taking on some stretching? Lady Violet Says I Do is finally coming out in audio on the web store, on-sale date of Feb. 1, 2024. I’ll send gift links to three commenters.

I like writing about Regency England for many reasons, not the least of which is that it was the last period in English history when the majority of the population lived on the land. After 1850, the balance tipped into the cities, despite disastrous results (at least for a time) for many in terms of life expectancy, infant mortality, and standard of living.

Most of my stories remain on the greener side of modern history, though by the Regency years, the British agricultural revolution was well under way (and without which, no industrial revolution would have been possible). As a species we started farming, oh, bout 12,000 years ago, and the basic plan–stick a seed in dirt, wait for it to grow into a plant, harvest the results, survive another winter–haven’t changed throughout the millennia.

People like Jethro Tull (1674-1741) and Arthur Young (1741-1820) looked at where farming was going well (French and Italian vineyards, and Northern Belgium for example), and where it struggled (much of England), and capitalized on their observations with improved methodology or technology. Tull gets credit for inventing the English version of the seed drill, which planted a seed at the correct depth, and covered it with tilled soil, in easily watered and weeded rows, and for creating a horse-drawn hoe, that aerated soil and dug up weeds.

Arthur Young was a proponent of a the Norfolk crop rotation system (borrowed by Charles Townsend from the Belgians), that did away with the an older system requiring a fallow year. By planting wheat/turnips/barley/clover in succession, the Norfolk system allowed livestock to be bred year round (turnips and clover were fodder crops), and included a legume to restore the soil’s nitrogen.

By now you are wondering, “Grace, what are you going on about?”

Crop rotation in particular has been a useful concept to me. I knew when I quit the day job that my word counts were unlikely to increase just because I had more time to write. That day job, by giving my mind very different material to focus on and allowing my writer’s imagination to rest in clover for a bit, actually boosted the efficiency of my writing.

Traveling, when I relieve myself of any creative expectations, boosts my writing. A hiatus from the blog, a big housekeeping project… if I view these writing “down times” as crop rotation (now I will  grow a more pleasant aesthetic for the living room instead of a new scene for Lord Julian), I see them as constructive. Other agricultural metaphors also apply to my writing–proper drainage, fences and gates, composting, pruning, aeration, irrigation, grazing, harvesting, weeding…

That basic idea of crop rotation–change of purpose is refreshing in itself–is central to how I manage my creativity and my life. In this dreary winter month, are there any gardening or farming metaphors that have helped keep you on track or moving forward in the difficult times?

And it’s time to start my ARC list for A Gentleman in Pursuit of Truth, the fourth Lord Julian mystery. Email me at [email protected] and let me know what device you read on if you’d like a copy. (And yes, his lordship will get a final cover any day now!)

My maternal grandmother, Mary Scholastica, was of Irish immigrant extraction, and began her married life in a tent at a Colorado mining camp. She gave birth to my Uncle Alan in that same tent nine months later. Mary had been seventeen when her mother died of peritonitis following a burst appendix. Mary’s dad was Leadville’s town doctor, but he was off delivering somebody’s twins when his wife became mortally ill. Such was life, more than a century ago.

My paternal grandmother, Ina, lost her father when he went off prospecting for oil in the wilds of late 19th century Oklahoma, leaving Ina, her mom, and sister, to eke out a living as live-in help at a vicarage in upstate New York. (My genealogist sister discovered that Granddad had a second family as the result of a bigamous union, but Ina never knew what happened to him).

Ina married a Doughboy and ended up widowed with a baby at age nineteen. She married my grandpa next, and they managed pretty well through the Depression, but infidelity and drink took a toll on the union, and Ina ran off with her husband’s brother (my uncle John). She eventually married him and dumped him too (another drinker), and at the age sixty of she opened the candy store that would support her for the final twenty years of her life. She wore faux mink stoles and bright red lipstick, and referred to the contents of her voluminous handbags as her “plunder.”

Ina was gone by the time I was thirteen, Mary lasted another seven years. I would not say I knew these ladies well, though they both lived in the same town as I did by the time they expired.

In later life, I think about my grandmas a lot. They dwelled in times that were in some ways awful for women (and no picnic for much of anybody). Ina broke a lot of rules, Mary endured all manner of upheaval trying to keep her family thriving during the Depression. Both women had an excellent sense of humor, a lot of pragmatism, and a compassionate view of humanity. The older I get, the more I admire them.

Over the holidays, my first and (given the ages involved) probably only grandchild was born. He and his parents are thriving. Mother and father are agog and slightly a-fog with their new baby, and I am hoping plane fares drop by the time virus season ends. Compared to my own grandmothers, I can’t imagine that my story will be half as impressive, should my grandson be telling it somewhere “ages and ages hence,” and that’s OK.

I’m not a mining engineer’s wife in the wilds of Colorado or a teenage military widow in the Roaring Twenties or anything much very exciting. What I do feel though, knowing that this particular small person is inheriting the world I’ve lived in for decades, is renewed determination that it should be a good world, worthy of him and his confreres. And I promise you this, bloggin’ buddies, that boy will never want for good books, and my first official act as a grandma will be to read him a bedtime story.

Were your grandparents a factor in your life? Do you have any memorable stories about them even if you didn’t know them? I’m running contests over at Fresh Fiction lately, and that’s reminded me how easy it is to do e-gift cards. Somebody who comments will recieve a $50 Amazon e-gift card (or Barnes and Noble or Kobo if that’s your jam).

One of the little lectures I used to give myself before court every Thursday was, “Eyes up and soft.” No glowering at the judges, bailiffs, or opposing counsel. No fumbling around, nose in the file, as a child tries to tell me why she doesn’t want a chambers conference with the judge. Eyes up–look where you’re going, Grace Ann, see the world around you–and soft. Not combative or anxious or pre-occupied. Look out upon the world compassionately.

“Eyes up, and soft,” was a good mantra for keeping me present, effective, and as relaxed as an attorney can be in the midst of a long day of litigation.

The mantra originated (for me) in the saddle, where at the first sign of trouble, it’s soooo tempting to look down–at the reins, the horse’s neck, the ground. If my instructor said, “Eyes up and soft,” and I could comply, the tense moment shifted in several ways very quickly. First, that bowling ball sitting on my shoulders got aligned over my spine. By moving my chin two inches up, I made the horse’s life easier.

Second, I did something affirmative at a point in the ride where my circuits might be shutting down because “He spooked!” “He’s gonna spook!” (and now that I’ve cued the horse that panic is order,) “He’s gonna spook again!” In court that equated to, “My client is pissed at me!” “The judge is pissed at me!” “Everybody’s pissed at me, and the witness is lying like a rug.” By invoking the eyes-up strategy and taking charge of even my own chin, I move one step back from the anxiety and anger.

The third benefit of “eyes up and soft” is that I relax (if I can do the soft part). Equestrians learn that it is possible to override automatic physical responses (such as, say, the urge to leap from the saddle and never ride again, or in the case of attorneys, the urge to give opposing counsel the finger). The feelings (I’m gonna die!”) and the bodily reality can be at least somewhat separated with enough practice.

Truly accomplished riders can “sit chilly” while the horse bucks, dodges, bolts, and so forth. They sit up in the saddle, patiently contending with whatever nonsense is on the horse’s agenda, and they don’t get sucked into an escalating cycle of deafness (or worse, cussing). To ride like this a beautiful super power, one that has saved many an “impossible” horse from a bad fate.

So here we go into the holidays, when dark days, disturbed schedules, finances, and family can all converge to make us want to leap out of the saddle and/or say bad words and lots of them. Do you have any go-to strategies for restoring calm? Any aphorisms or rituals than can head off the bad words or blue moods?

I will put the blog on hiatus hereafter until Jan. 14, 2024. Wish me lots of great words in the intervening weeks (Looking you, Your Grace of Dreadfulness), and not too much great cooking. I wish all of you a safe, peaceful, happy end to your year and a joyous start to the next!

I have been volunteering at Loudon Therapeutic Riding for the past six months, and lately, one question has been dogging me: Why has this place lasted fifty years, and evolved to be one of the premium operations of its kind? What’s going right here? What could other programs be replicating, if they only knew what a difference it would make? I will ask the operations director what she thinks contributes most to the program’s success, (and I wish I could ask the horses).

Horse barns come and go. The business is subject to a thousand whims of fate. Did the hay crop get rained on? Did the tireless schoolmaster gelding take a bad step and now has to be on lay up for six months? Either surprise could affect the bottom line to the tune of thousands of dollars.

For therapeutic barns, the challenges multiply with significant certification requirements, a unique client population, and enormous funding demands (wheel chair ramps, mats, adaptive equipment, annual trainings…). But somehow, LTR has not only persisted, but thrived.

I am prone to asking what’s wrong. What have I missed? Where did I lose my momentum today? Those kinds of questions have value up to a point–especially when revising a manuscript–but they assume that all problems have solutions, and diligent inquiry will reveal the answers.

And yet, the advice authors hear over and over is not, “Obsess on your flaws and imperfections,” but rather, “Play to your strengths. If you love social media, make that the centerpiece of your marketing footprint. If you are a natural networker, look for anthologies to join. Focus on what’s working, and do more of that. You will never solve the whole Rubik’s cube, but you can focus on what you do best as an author, and what processes work best for you.”

So my challenge to me, during this most wonderful time of the year (because No Bugs), will be to look for what’s going right, for what pleases me and surprises me in a good way, for what deserves a second look simply because my experience was problem-free or maybe even positive. And then I am going say something–to thank somebody, to offer a  compliment, to write a happy little review.

There are enough critics in the world, and my capacity for analytical thinking too often gets fixated on the pea under the mattress. I am asking myself to make the effort to also admire the bed hangings, the comfy pillows, and the lovely quilt going forward, and maybe there won’t BE as many stupid little peas.

What have you noticed lately going right, being done right, working just as it should or maybe even better?

Lord Julian’s series opener, A Gentleman Fallen on Hard Times, is free in the web store for the whole month of December, as is What a Lady Needs for Christmas. On my Deals page, I also list a  half dozen shorter reads (we’re busy, busy, busy these days, I know) that are free and exclusive to the web store.

The Thanksgiving holiday meant I had a week with no obligations off the property. This hasn’t happened for a while, so I decided to make it a low RPMs week. I’ve done my daily writing sessions (nothing like a new duke to get my fingers flying), and made the grocery run, but other than that I am rolling around in my own private Idaho. Wheee!

For no discernible reason, I decided that I would add to my slack days a goal of getting one thing per day cleaned or tidied up that isn’t on the mandatory routine list. I got the top of the fridge cleared off yesterday (the cats love how warm it is up there). Another day, I organized some kitchen cabinets. My ambitions are minimal: Straighten out one shelf so the little spice bottles don’t come tumbling down whenever I open cabinet door. (That minimal.)

Get after all the folded up and stashed grocery bags. They are a fire hazard, Grace Ann, and you can recycle both paper and plastic.

Compost heap the outdated food gathering dust on the pantry shelves. The raccoons, skunks, groundhogs, and possums don’t know from expiration dates, and the nights are getting chilly.

My really big accomplishment was to put a hook on the outside of the laundry room door, so the cats can’t go in there. (Took me five minutes once I found the right size nail for the hole to guide the screws.) The door closes from the inside (another hook), but I never got around to the outside work-around when the ancient door-knob mechanism died years ago.

The results of my one-thing campaign are nearly invisible to anybody who doesn’t live here, but I intend to persist. It is lovely to not have to wipe paw prints off the washer and dryer every day. It is delightful to open a cupboard without fear of being spice-bombed. The kitchen feels easier to navigate without a hoard of grocery bags crammed between the fridge and the counter.

I might run out of steam tomorrow, but so far… I am liking this trend, for two reasons. First, I’m happier in my house. I don’t see the dirt the way some people do, but I still live here, and my environment has an impact on my outlook. The endless paw prints, the flying cloves… they take a micro-toll on my energy and joy, and why pay extra tolls?

The second benefit came as something of a surprise. This is the time of year when we’re bombarded with requests for donations, when we’re exerting ourselves to be sociable to people we might honestly rather avoid. We’re subtly nudged to be nicer, more generous, more grateful. Heaven knows the world is full of deserving causes, but as we head toward the end of the year, it can feel like one big Go Emotionally and Monetarily Fund Everything.

To donate fifteen minutes a day to the longer term dignity and peace of my dwelling, to be able to say, “That’s a little better!” about the place where I live, feels good. I am deserving of a pleasant home–everybody is–and taking baby steps to bring that boon closer reminds me that charity begins at home.

What will you give yourself in the coming weeks–we’ve all been very good this year, right? What would you like from others?

PS: Miss Dramatic hits the retail shelves on Tuesday. If you’d like an e-ARC, please email me at [email protected], and let me know which device you read on.

I left the practice of law because a contract I’d held for twenty-five years (representing foster children in my county) was awarded to another vendor who had much higher prices, no experience in my jurisdiction, and no staff in my jurisdiction when all three factors were mandatory bid evaluation criteria.

Being told my services were inadequate was no fun, but I was so relieved to get shut of the political, crooked, grueling procurement process (my law school major was procurement law, and this process was black letter crooked), that I just wanted to be done. No farewell lunch, no flowers on the last day, just pack up the files and get on with life. (And a trip to the New Zealand Romance Writers conference lifted my spirits considerably!)

When my former husband asked for a divorce, I was sad and bewildered (“Did I do something wrong?” “No.”), but you can’t make another person happy, so best of luck, and off we go.

When I quit making a living as a musician, that was sad too. I was a terrible performer, but a pretty good teacher, and a competent dance class accompanist and pit pianist. I could not see myself having the stamina to succeed within the narrow band of abilities I had after years of practicing daily for hours, so… give up and move on.

I contrast these exits with my recent experience trying to find another barn where I can get back in the saddle. The first three places I’ve queried have “had no openings.” These barns are scrounging for birthday parties, but they can’t put me on a horse for an hour a week? I am, admittedly, a tri-fecta of what nobody wants in a riding student (and I make my situation plain when I query): Un-athletic, un-ambitious, and un-wealthy (by horse people standards), but still…

I did not see getting voted off the horseback riding island coming. I’ve been a lover of horses since childhood. Long before I was a lawyer, musician, writer, or much of anything… I loved horses. I was a horse girl. I am still a horse girl (the only context where I will permit my very adult self to be designated as any sort of girl). I am not done looking for ways to get back in the saddle, but I’m a bit daunted. Not daunted enough to buy another horse (yet), but pretty close.

Have you ever been voted off the island? Not picked for any team? How did you recover? ARCs for A Gentleman in Challengng Circumstances still available. Just email me at [email protected] and tell me what sort of device you read on.

When I draft a scene, the initial result is often what writers call, “Talking heads in a white room.” I hear the scene first: What are the characters saying? What are the ambient sounds? Are the birdies tweeting as harbingers of budding attraction, or is conversation impeded by somebody doing a bad job of minor scales on the clarinet two rooms away?

I will read over the scene before I close the document and leave myself a note: Where are these people, Grace? What time of day? SETTING, please. The next morning, I begin by buffing yesterday’s new words and that’s when I focus on setting.

Setting matters. Setting can be full of micro-symbols (cooing doves), foreshadowing (why minor scales, and is there any sneakier instrument than the clarinet?), or create conflict. Is Lord Hopeless trying to propose while a marching band goes by? Is Miss Villainous pouring lies into Our Hero’s ear in the same beautiful lakeside folly where he first kissed Our Heroine three scenes ago?

Readers are mighty smart, and they pick up on all those cues.

After lacing in some setting and symbolism for once this week’s scenes, I bethought myself about the settings in my life.

I love to be home. It’s my favorite place in the whole world, though my house is more quirky than lovely. And yet, I rarely get my best writing ideas at home. My happy place for plotting is behind the wheel of my car. I associate my car with safety (hard to flee a natural disaster on foot), mobility, independence, purpose, competence… all good things. I’ve driven every major east-west interstate in the country, and invariably, I did that driving in silence.

I can think in the car, My mundane burdens–do I have enough cat food? Did I pay the power bill?–don’t stare at me from the corners of the room, and neither do the dust bunnies and other distractions.

Guess Who at Scott’s Overlook, Scottish Borders

When prisons start showing nature movies in the gym, the incidents of violence go down. The side of a prison that has windows will be less violent than the side that does not. Patients in hospital rooms with windows heal faster and with fewer complications than patients in rooms without windows. Even being able to SEE somewhere else–a different setting–has a beneficial effect on us. (Another reason that setting matters–readers get an imaginary glimpse of somewhere else.)

My theory is that we were hunter/gathers for much, much longer than we’ve been anything else, and we’re predisposed to benefit from regular changes of scene. We do better for wandering around a bit, and exploring the occasional detour. Since the pandemic forced us to huddle at home for three years, anxiety diagnoses have gone up 25%. Not a straight line correlation, but might be something causal in the mix.

Hence, my question: How, when, and why do you change scenes?

I came across two ideas this week that feel related. First, in the Todoist (to-do-ist) newsletter, the topic was shutdown rituals. The eponymous app (which I have no idea how to use) is aimed at keeping remote work productive. For some people, living and working in the same place means clear boundaries between personal and professional identities take extra work, Having a shutdown ritual–good-bye, work day/hello, rest of my life–can help with that.

I have a shutdown ritual for the end of my day, but not for the end of my writing sessions, nor do I want one. I want my subconscious to know the writing tab is always open, and to be focusing on writing-related challenges (what keeps the couple in my work in progress apart?!), when I’m asleep, in the shower, or driving to the horse barn.

Then the second idea arrived, courtesy of author Charles Finch’s social media feed. Charles writes the utterly delightful Charles Lenox mystery series, which is set in Victorian England. He asked his readers: What are your-rest-of-the-year resolutions?

One of the casualties of the pandemic for me was my sense of time passing in discreet, orderly units. Days blended into weeks and months, some years went by, and now… I can mostly tell you what day of the week it is, and even get the date right too, but it’s still not automatic, and it should be. It used to be.

So I’m asking myself: What end of year resolutions will help me wish 2023 a friendly farewell? How can I use the next two months to fashion a shutdown ritual for 2023? I will get after my now dormant flower beds (yay for the first frost!), plant next year’s bulbs, probably do a wardrobe review, and take a break from writing this blog.

In the coming weeks, I’ll also be looking for ways to punctuate the farewells that happened in 2023. Farewell to riding horses (for now at least). Farewell to about 35 pounds (and may they please stay the heck gone and take another 35 with them). Farewell to hiding in the house to do my steps on the tread desk when I live in a gorgeous corner of the world.

I will think more on this business of shutdown rituals and rest of the year resolutions. Both topics help me focus on being present in the time I have, in the situation I’m in, and that’s generally a good thing.

Do you rely on any sort of bell-book-and-candle routines to switch gears? Are you hoping to get some projects completed before the New Year arrives?

PS: For the whole month of November, my Windham Brides holiday novella, Respect for Christmas, is priced at $.99 on all the major retailers. This is Henny Whitlow and Michael Brenner’s tale, and one of my faves.

PS: If you’d like an ARC copy of Miss Dramatic, due out Nov. 27 on the retail sites, please email me at [email protected], and let me know what device you read on.