My paternal grandmother was a widow with a baby at age nineteen, her husband having been a casualty of World War I. She married two more times, ditched both (drunken, philandering) husbands before divorce was popular, and at age sixty, opened up a candy store that would support her adequately until she died in her eightieth year. My maternal grandma welcomed her first born into the world in a tent at Joe Junior mining camp, and gave birth to her last-born at age 45.

These women were handed some mighty daunting challenges and had little choice but to Cope. I am much more privileged. I could choose whether to go back to school (twice); choose to be a single mom (once); choose to close the law practice and rely on writing to support myself.  Compared to my grannies, and to so many other people, I am the veriest little tadpole in the life challenges department.

So I realize that deciding to attempt the therapeutic riding instructor certification was both an exercise in privilege (in many ways), and a pretty tame effort as challenges go. I have plenty of positive experiences with learning goals. I have been around horses for decades. I had great support going into the venture, and found more support along the way. A walk in the pasture–right?

Well… yes, and not quite. I have never tried to master a large body of book learning with a geriatric brain. I have never taken on substantial physical challenges at this age, and while losing a lot of weight too quickly. I have never had to do much teaching–a few piano students, some writing workshops, a few conflict management seminars–and none of those experiences involved the dangerous instrumentality that is the horse. My attitude going in, “I can do this…” morphed into, “I hope I can do this,” and then, “I’m not sure I can do this.”

As I drove over the hills to take my final test, though, it occurred to me that getting the certification might not be the point. Because I aimed at that goal, I took my hearing loss more seriously. It’s hard to understand somebody who is speech-impaired when you have good hearing. Try it without the upper frequencies, and you’re at a disadvantage as an instructor.

I took my physical health and especially strength more seriously. A therapeutic riding instructor has to get disabled people on and off of horses safely, and that means everything from grip strength to upper body strength to walking stamina matters. Most significantly, I took a harder look at my cognitive health. Lion’s Mane supplements seem to help with my recall and retention–who knew?

The first and primary beneficiary of my jaunt down the riding instructor path was me. I  learned a lot of material that interests me, I am taking better care of myself, and I flexed my ability to ask for help (not one of my strengths). My goal was to qualify for a certification, but in hindsight, I think my goal should have been simply to challenge myself. Pass, fail, or try, try again, the challenge itself has done me a power of good.

And–icing on the cupcake–I did pass that final exam on the first try. Phew!

How do challenges figure in your life? Always on the lookout for good ones? Had quite enough of them, thank you? Somewhere in between?

I made a couple changes this summer to how I occupy my house, and I’m only realizing now some of the undesirable consequences. The first change was to put a mama cat and her four wee teeny little kittens in the upstairs half of my house. Once they are all fixed and have finished all their shots (later this month), they will be transitioned to another, much less restrictive situation.

I’ve enjoyed watching the kittens grow, and they are endlessly rambunctious and playful. The mama is sweet, and I think this set up has given them a good, safe start in life. No regrets there.

The other shift I made was to set up a desk in my bedroom (upstairs) where I could do my riding instructor studying and keep all the course materials. I could have worked at my writing table (downstairs), but wanted to be able to focus on the riding material at the beginning and end of my day, and in some place other than where I work on my books.

Initially, I was pleased with myself. I was being organized, keeping order in my house, and checking the “everything in its place” box. But as the summer wore on, I felt a sense of, “All I do is work.” Start off with upstairs cat chores, move to  downstairs cat chores, shift to writing tasks, take a break/not really a break to get in steps, head upstairs for some studying, downstairs to deal with emails and payroll, toss in more cat chores, back upstairs for more studying at the end of the day… pick the three upstairs litter boxes before lights out.

With the possible exception of the kitchen, I have work waiting for me in every part of my house. (My washer and dryer are in the bathroom, and I do a fair amount of pet-related laundry.)

Without realizing it, I organized my way out of the set-up where going upstairs at the end of the day was synonymous with leaving all the work-y stuff behind. No chores, no obligations, no should-dos once I’m upstairs. What happened upstairs–reading, resting, lollygagging–was spatially separated from all the things in my life that require self-discipline. The Task Manager part of me was not allowed up the steps, and those steps have a door at the bottom that closes the two parts of the house off from each other.

The situation will fix itself when I’m through my riding instructor curriculum, and the five foster cats go to their next billet, but I hadn’t realized how much I benefit psychologically from having a specific consistent place that is work-free. I hadn’t realized how good it feels to close the door at the bottom of the steps, and climb up to the place where I am not a writer or a student or a cat mom, but just me, who likes to read, who needs to rest, who wants to recharge before jumping back into the affray in the morning.

Do you have a place to recharge? If you created one, what about it would be important to you?

My summer reading list this year includes titles such as, Belonging: The Science of Creating Connection and Bridging Divides by Geoffrey L. Cohen, and Hope for Cynics: The Surprising Science of Human Goodness by Jamil Zaki. I’m off on this tangent in part because I’m tired of studying for my riding instructor test, but also because I want to understand how we became a society that can be persuaded, divided, and controlled by lies.

One theory posits that survival is more important than the truth, and survival for homo sapiens long depended on belonging to a tribe. How does that work? Welp, back in the day, 20-40,000 years ago, we depended on our tribe for safety. Hunting big game with one spear was a losing proposition. Expecting everybody to make their own spears, when Ogette was incredibly good at it, was perilously inefficient. We survived by virtue of cooperation and belonging, and we are still wired for that model.

Whether we crossed the river above or below the tree last year truly did not matter anywhere near as much as staying on good terms with the women who made the rafts. Be willing to let the truth slide–we did cross above, despite what Og says–and you won’t be left to entertain the lions on the wrong shore.

When we experience social rejection, our cortisol levels spike, we are more likely to view ourselves negatively, we are more prone to aggression and poor decision-making. Rejection shows up in the brain in the same place as physical pain, and people made to feel rejected are easily manipulated.

And yet, when I write Lord Julian’s tales, he almost always at some point faces a critical rejection–from friends or family who doubt him, or from somebody who’d only recently turned to him as a desperate last resort. They hit him where he’s already bruised–in his sense of belonging–and his job is to ignore the blow and keep searching for the truth.

And because I am the queen of my writing desk, Julian’s willingness to stand alone in the hope of discovering the truth always results in freedom for a formerly oppressed party and some self-affirmation for Julian. Neener-neener!

I think we need our Lord Julians every bit as much as we need our tribe. We need the people who aren’t willing to lie for the sake of popularity or likes if the lie is a substantial moral compromise. Crossing the river at the wrong point can, some years, get us all killed.

And I do know this: When I see somebody stand up, speak truth to power, and brave the lions, that person has earned my respect and trust. Those are the kind of people I want to belong to. They won’t tell me that huge sleeping cat with all the fangs and claws is a puppy, and he’d love for me to pet him. But a tribe made up of moral invertebrates bound together by lies might convince me of such an outlandish and dangerous falsehood.

When have you seen somebody speak out for unpopular truth? Might have been a character in a book, might have been back in fifth grade. Might have been you in your last HOA meeting…

I’ve spent much of July and August studying for the final therapeutic riding instructor test I plan to take in September, but this summer has also focused me on some other kinds of learning.

I am still figuring when I am tired, for example. I know when I’m exhausted, because in that condition neither mind nor body will move beyond a crawl, but the pretty-darned-weary phase before that–which can go on for days or weeks–is slow to get my attention. That I’ve posted about being irritable and grouchy, and worse than irritable and grouchy, is one sign of not resting enough (which is different from though often related to not sleeping enough). I’m on the lookout for others, such as messing up my schedule, because apparently, yawning is not an litmus test of depleted resources.

Because I wanted to study the riding curriculum, and because even I knew I needed a break, I stepped back from my therapeutic riding barn in Virginia. I’ve kept a hand in with a smaller, slower-paced barn here in Maryland, and the contrast has been edifying. The lesson for me is that being equal to a challenge and deriving benefit from that challenge are two different propositions. I could have spent the summer with the Virginia crew, on a tighter schedule, with a larger staff, and a larger client rotation (also some larger egos), but for where I am on all sorts of learning curves, the more modest operation has been a huge, unexpected exhale.

This summer has also presented me with opportunities to work on my listening skills, for want of a better term. Because I’m not spending hours on end at a barn, I’m getting in steps by walking my own neighborhood more than I ever have. In the past eight weeks, I have talked to more, different neighbors than I did in the previous eight years. One woman told me that our daughters went to school together–thirty years ago–and we have lived about a mile apart for those whole thirty years, but never spoken previously. She was an absolute delight and gave me some mimosa tree seeds (butterflies love mimosas).

My neighbors have been there all along, fretting over the same rabies outbreak I am, fretting over politics and economic challenges, but I have not exerted myself to strike up conversations with them, and have been poorer for it.

So summer school has been really interesting and rewarding for me this year. How has your summer treated you?

PS: I can’t imagine this is news to the folks on this blog, but Lord Julian’s tenth mystery, A Gentleman in Possession of Secrets, is now available on all platforms. More print versions coming soon.

For the first time in a long time, I nearly raised my voice at someone this week. Current events are enough to shorten anybody’s fuse, but on this occasion, the irritant that nearly started the bonfire was Amazon customer service.

I’d been having a pretty productive morning, but because I’d done some Zoom calling, I was on my Mac rather than my PC, and without thinking about it, I tried to log into my Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing dashboard. Stupid, stupid, stupid… Amazon saw me on a “new” (nine year old) device and demanded that I change my password. What is the FULL NAME associated with this account? Grace Ann Burrowes.

Wrong. The name under which I created the account ten years+ ago was simply Grace Burrowes. Amazon’s system did not make the leap, and lo… when I went through all the two-factor-nope-not-that-code-the-other-code, all of my books were gone. No Lonely Lords, no True Gents. Forget Julian and Violet, nothing. Not a novella. Never published a word much less a book.

I rolled up my sleeves and started with author support. “Could somebody please help me find my books?” Author support laughed politely. “It’s a log in issue, and for that you have to deal with Amazon customer service.” Round and round I go, unable to make anybody understand that I can log in, but my books are gone. Finally, I get some lady in an overseas call center, who also did not grasp the issue.

She kept crooning two things at me: “Calm down,” though my voice was never raised, I never resorted to profanity, and never made a personally disparaging remark. Over and over, “Don’t get so upset. Calm down…” while she did nothing to help but put me on hold any number of times. The second thing she said in several ways was, “I am going to solve this problem for you. Don’t worry. I will resolve this for you.”

She, of course, did not solve the problem Amazon had created, but resorted to that old dodge of, “Let me put you on hold while I verify some information…” and five minutes of horrible musak later, some clueless guy in another call center picks up, and informs me, oh, so sorry. “That’s  a Kindle Direct Publishing problem We here in customer support really can’t do anything about that.”

I might be a little less crispy about 100 books–my livelihood, that I cannot replace–going poof, were it not the case that Amazon is making record profits by the billions, yet again, some more, how wonderful. I might be even less crispy about it if I hadn’t gone through multiple iterations of, “Call back is not working at this time,” and “The chat bot is not working at the time.”

The problem is still not resolved, but I understand the wrong turn. Amazon could not tell the difference between “never heard of this person before so this must be a request to set up a new account,” and, “I just got the correct PW and email from Grace Burrowes and then asked her to change her PW. Now she gives her name as Grace Ann Burrowes. Might be Grace Burrowes? Better ask some more questions…”

All the hype about AI, and a simple password change takes days to resolve at one of the biggest tech companies on the planet. Yeah, I’m steamed.  Don’t be so upset. Calm down. Don’t worry. Billions in profit above even the projected billions but you have to stiff my print readers over tariff increases?

It’s a good thing she was on the other side of the planet. Telling me what to feel and what not feel when I am legit upset, and wasting my time while lying to me. That there’s a class one, ten years to life, no parole collection of felonies in my book…. or it would be, if I’d written any books.

What are the things nobody should ever, ever, ever say to you when you’re upset?

PS: The images this week are from my citizen journalist sortie to the front lines of the horrible crime wave affecting national parks in the DC area. This is the C&O Canal towpath, and you can see mad chipmunk cartels have doubtless run amok, undocumented butterflies have flown at will, and flowers are popping up where nobody planted them. Call out the guard! Oh… wait.

A couple of ideas collided for me this week, one stemming from Heather Cox Richardson’s interview with Gov. Gavin Newsom. She asked him, essentially, if we don’t like seeing cities militarized on a flimsy pretext or health care put out of reach for millions, what do we DO?

Newsom’s response surprised me, and it came down to this: Be yourself. Believe in what you believe in, speak up when the topic arises, stand up when the opportunity presents itself, whether you’re on the left, on the right, or all over the place. Participate in the dialogue. Just be yourself. I personally think Newsom had made some serious wrong turns as governor of California, (also some right turns), but this piece of advice struck me as worthwhile.

Then I read Austin Kleon’s lastest post Your Hobby Looks Exhausting, (paywalled), in which he references another writer who posited that one of the foundations of Britain’s resilience during WWII was… hobbies. In addition to being the kingdom of  Keep Calm and Carry On, the Brits are also stamp collectors, darts players, rose enthusiasts, knitters, bowlers, hill walkers, choir members… they had and have a vast and enthusiastically pursued appetite for private and social pastimes, which translates into an arsenal of identities beyond bomb shelter occupant, widow, or veteran.

Kleon posits that to the rose enthusiast, bowling looks like lot of noise and sitting around. To the dedicated bowler, roses are a lot thorns, dirt, and bugs. To each his own, but to the enthusiast, the hobby is very much theirs to own.

This juxtaposition of ideas, that our hobbies and enthusiasms help define us, and that knowing and acting on who we are makes for a healthy society was reassuring to me. I can water my zinnias, I can remind the nice people at the pharmacy that all this wildlife only showed in our end of the valley when that huge housing development went in a few miles to the north.

Jane Friedman added to the discussion with the notion that she doesn’t want to be remembered as somebody who responded to email quickly. She wants to be remembered as somebody whose responses, whenever they arrived, were civil and thoughtful.  Her question–What do you want to be remembered for?–help me focus on Newsom’s challenge to be myself.

I hope people recall me as a kind, honest person. They might also mention all those cats and horses, or how happy I was in a writing life, but I hope their first recollection of me is that I was honorable, albeit stubborn in my (always well reasoned) opinions, and determined on my (always wisely chosen) objectives. That glowing hindsight is something to aim for, anyway.

For what, or as whom, do you want to be remembered?

PS: First batch of ARC files has been sent out for A Gentleman in Possession of Secrets, and the print edition is already on sale at Amazon. If you’d like an ARC file, please let me know what device you read on at [email protected].

A horseback riding concept that some students struggle with is the “return to neutral.” The idea here is that once you’ve asked your horse to do something–trot, turn, stop–and the horse shows an intent to comply with the request, stop asking. Go quiet. If you were nudging with your calves or tugging on the reins, cease. Cease applying pressure on the horse’s sides, on his mouth, on his mind. He did what you told him to, now reward him with peace and quiet (or a bit of praise) while he does his job.

For riders who have problems maintaining focus, or who have abundant physical energy, or who deal with sensory processing issues, the concept of a listening, physically passive state is hard to grasp and harder to find. Neutral is not something you can get to by “achieving.” The road to neutral has more to do with allowing, pausing, silencing, and trusting.

I can’t get to neutral on a horse who is scaring me. Nopity-nope. If Thunderbolt is dancing around, snorting, propping, and muttering bad-horsey words with his back feet, I will probably be sawing on the reins, thwopping him sideways with my leg, and muttering a few words of my own. A really accomplished rider can transcend the tantrum of the moment and ride chilly–ride without getting into a power struggle–even as they chide, discuss, or suggest to the horse that this behavior gets us nowhere.

The accomplished rider is always one instant away from neutral.

I used to find that commuting to and from the law office helped me get to neutral. The drive was familiar, mostly rural, and just long enough that I could settle my nerves and breathe. I drove in silence, without companions, and that suited me splendidly.

Now, I need time by myself at home to get to neutral, preferably entire days of it. I can be plenty busy on these days (looking at you, Joshua Penrose), but intrusions are few and quiet, and usually by email rather than a text or call. The only expectations on me are my own. Give me a few of these days every week, and I can sally forth to volunteer at the barn, tag the errands-and-appointments bases, and even (!!!) do some social meals.

Deprive me of my back-to-neutral days, though, and I am progressively easier to upset, increasingly negative, and less and less fun to be around. My mother found her back-to-neutral in long walks by the sea. Other people seek it by putting their hands in the dirt, and still others just need a good, meaty crossword puzzle. None of this makes the “official list of self-care activities” that some expert can charge us for, and that’s probably wonderful.

How do you get back to neutral, and has your strategy changed over time?

During my month off, it was my unhappy privilege to attend the funeral of friend’s father. I’d known Thomas for years, and when I bought this house, Thomas was my first yard guy. He’d show up every spring, bring order to chaos, and gently argue Mother Nature into semi-submission year after year.

And all the while, I was raising my kid, running my law practice, and trying to keep house, with indifferent success on all fronts. As I was reflecting on Thomas’s role in my life, it occurred to me that he wasn’t like all those other guys.

The well guy, the firewood guy, the roof guy, the exterminator guy, the window guy, the painter guy, the yard guys who came after him… they all sized me up as a single working mom with a decent income but too much on her plate, and they adjusted their pitches accordingly. I came to expect it.

Before we talked price, the guy of the moment would assure me that Johnson grass will be the death of civilization and the harbinger of enormous fines from the weed control officer (whom I have never once seen, much less met in 35 years at this location). The barn roof was about to collapse. That Norway maple was due to fall on the house (and on my  bedroom in particular) after the next heavy rain. The well pump was so far out of warranty (because I don’t buy warranties in the usual case) that oh, geez, lady. You’d better fill the bathtub  now.

First, they’d try to scare me. Then they’d start dancing around the price, looking for any excuse to prep me for extortion. The Johnson grass was growing along the road (where it has more sunshine and irrigation than in the yard, duh). Always tricky, mowing along the road, because you have to–you know–look where you’re going. And firewood is getting harder to find despite all the windfall in recent years and the fact that fewer people even want firewood, because… well it just is.

Then they’d quote me some exorbitant number, and start adding to it. Well, if you want us to take the brush and logs away after we cut down the tree, that’s going to be extra. If you want weed whacking in addition to mowing, extra. Windows that are sealed, extra…

Maybe these guys treated all of their customers to the same song and dance, maybe women plying these trades are twice as sly about it, but I doubt it. I was fair game, and these tradesmen were happy to intimidate, mislead, do crappy work, and expect cash (though a check would be acceptable for the deposit), because they knew my back was to the wall.

And I bet you every one would mournfully shake is his head about all the angry woman out there these days.

And part of the reason I was so angry (and maybe am so angry?) is because Thomas, my first yard guy, was not like that at all. He was hard-working, took pride in what he did, asked a reasonable price, never shirked, never tried to make routine property maintenance into a grand opera, and was happy with sincere thanks and timely payment.

Thomas was, in a quiet, dependable, humble way, a good guy and my tribute to him will be to carp less about all the shysters and buffoons I’ve crossed paths with, and to more vocally celebrate the good guys. They are a little harder to see because they don’t make a constant, inner-toddler-channeling fuss, but they are there, they are bodaciously important to world peace, and I am grateful for them.

Come across any good guys in your travels?

I had been writing for a few years when I crossed paths with an old hand at the published author game, and she warned me: Don’t be too quick to quit that day job. You might find your productivity actually drops when you do.

I wanted to dismiss this as the sour grapes of somebody who lacked the self-discipline to stay focused on the writing, except nope. This warning reflected how a day job toggles the conscious writing on/off switch. From 5 am to 7 am, you write, then you head off to the day job, where all you can do for your work in progress is think about the writing, or–more helpfully–banish the writing from your awareness. The day job also provides a thousand little pings of inspiration, such as a peculiar word picked up in a meeting, or forced immobility in traffic that reminds you how easy it would be to send tempers flaring if a coach horse turned up lame.

My writing productivity didn’t drop when I closed the law office, but it didn’t go up either. About that time, I ran across another old hand at the writing game, and their lament was, “I have picked all the low hanging fruit. I wrote all the clever openings and brilliant twists I’d stored up ten books ago. My inner critic has become more and more discerning, and with every book, I use up fascinating factoids or little character quirks that I can’t use again. This is getting harder, not easier!”

And I had to agree. Yes, I am a better writer 100 books on, but I’m also a fussier writer, and a writer who is less likely to break the rules out of sheer exuberant ignorance. I’ve unconsciously absorbed reader preferences and reactions, I’ve attended a zillion “Top Ten Mistakes” workshops, and my imagination is constrained by what I’ve learned about “good writing.”

That said, a hard writing day is better than almost any lawyering day, by my lights. Even so, I think about how to keep the joy percolating, how to entertain readers with the best yet, how to twist the twists and the tropes.

I was pondering that quandary when I received my first “Images from Maine” newsletter from photographer Peter Ralston. I can’t find a web link for that particular newsletter (#235), but he recounts popping out of bed early one recent summer morning, putting his canoe into the creek, and just paddling out into the day. Lovely phlox growing along the bank, friends ambling around the dog park, a new acquaintance made on the green… Peter makes the point that when he is open–a term he does not define–he doesn’t have to seek inspiration. The images, stories, and inspirations come to him.

I have a hunch that his version of open has nothing to do with knowing all the writer rules, meeting all the deadlines, and racking up the pre-orders. Openness might instead involve NOT writing, even when I can, because it’s a beautiful morning to walk down to the highway. Or maybe openness is going to the farmer’s market, just for a look see. Or sitting on the porch with the cats for that first cuppa tea, even though it’s a writing day and I’m burning daylight.

I’m fuzzy on of the specifics, but the concept of openness landed in my ever-questing imagination like a klieg light sweeping through a moonless night. Oh, yeah. THAT feeling. That curious, trusting, exploring feeling that I haven’t felt in a long, long time. Maybe I need more of that, if the next hundred books are to be as joyful and interesting to write as the last hundred have been. Yeah. Maybe that.

So while the blog is on hiatus for the month of July, I will be enjoying more unstructured time, more rambles just because, and fewer games of cribbage and solitaire which are so comfy, and so, so deadly dead end.

Does the openness concept resonate with you? Is it something you’ve seen in others, or enjoyed from time to time?

This week was rough. I bit off a lot in terms of time and energy commitments, and while I wasn’t physically overtaxed, my zest for the day took a progressive hit as the week went on. By Friday, my humor, detachment, perspective, and other coping mechanisms were flagging.

And then, as I was hurrying to get set up for the morning task, somebody said the wrong thing, not to me, but to somebody I care about. Oh, that frosted my cookie and I started to go into Grace’s Supreme Court Closing Argument mode (I have never been licensed to practice before SCOTUS, of course).. The person who mis-spoke apologized to me, but then somebody else said another wrong thing, and I wasn’t done being huffy about the first exchange. I eventually tried to sort that second interaction out with the other party, “I did not appreciate when you said…” but ended up resolving nothing and probably making things worse.

The day was not done with me, because yet a third interaction went widdershins. Regarding this incident, I have some apologizing to do. I went about solving what I thought was a problem, but nope. I was barging in without authority–anybody viewing the evidence objectively would come to that conclusion–and I need to do what I can to mend fences. The road to hell and all that.

So now it’s the weekend, but the whole time I’m riding about the barnyard on my spiffy electric mower (the deck of which, I have already seriously bonked), that bad day is riding with me. I’m full of what the French call ‘the wisdom of the stairs,’ meaning all the things we woulda coulda shoulda said, that only occur to us as we’re going up to bed. I”m full of, “and another things!” and, “Why couldn’t he just admit…?” and, “They had no call to go there…”

One quality of a slower, more relaxed pace of life is that my emotional buffers aren’t as frequently cleared simply because the next thing on the agenda has rolled onto center stage. I can fret and stew more, and this is not good. My mom would say to simply put the bad day behind me, and then my dad would make her one of his universal remedy double martinis.

I don’t like martinis. So I’m left to ask myself: How can I hit re-set? How can I put that day aside, even though the issues raised are not resolved, and might not be to my satisfaction, ever? Time will help, some, but geez, I wish I could just shower off the day, take two doses of philosophical acceptance and wash them down with a humorous observation, but so far… my bad day and I are still roaring around the barn yard, mowing down all in our path, and leaving an uneven swath of chopped grass, whacked tree roots, and flying sticks in our wake.

How do you detach from an upset or disappointment? How do you convince yourself to give up, let go, or move on, or at least stop fretting?

PS: Happy to announce that Lord Julian’s fifth mystery, A Gentleman in Search of a Wife, is now available from the web store as an audio book!