My Debut Novel – and I’m 72 And never once has a publishing professional asked about my age There are a few, vanishingly rare, incidents in life when the stars line up in such a way that you begin to doubt the evidence of your own senses. As in, I’ll wake up soon, because this can’t really be happening. I call these iceberg moments, when a sparkling spire juts above the water line, dazzling in
Adjusting to the Now, Over and Over Again Last week I attended a conference in Santa Fe, Quest 2026, all about vivid aging for older women. One of the speakers was Kat Miller, a counselor and pro-aging activist who talked about falling in love with impermanence (“Crazy, right?” she said). Kat urged each of us to buy a bouquet of flowers and keep it until the petals turn to dust, to photograph each stage and
The Gray New Deal My first published novel, The Gray New Deal, is appearing as I turn 63. In the novel, seven seniors who shared a college co-op in Austin fifty years ago reunite to create another co-op. Together, this intentional community navigates Trump 1.0 and the first years of the pandemic. They’re a diverse group racially, in economic assets, and in sexual identity. They collaborate on household chores, concocting “econo-meals.” They make friends with
Artificial? Yes. Intelligence? Maybe. Years ago my son bought the house Marion Zimmer Bradley owned at the end of her life. She lived there in community with the writers who ghost wrote many of her later novels. Those books, published under Zimmer’s name to take advantage of her established readership, really did literally take advantage of her readers. The quality was uneven and so was the voice. Standing in my son’s living room, I vowed
How Can an Old Biddy Become an Author? I’m an old biddy who released her first book at the age of seventy-one. I want to share my story of becoming a traditionally published author of four humorous nonfiction books after retiring from a forty-year career. We older women need to tell our truths. We have much to say, wisdom and experience that younger women could not possibly know. No one else could ever tell our
Let’s Shine Our Light: Crone Authors Together The issue of “stay small, sweet, quiet, and modest” sounds like an outdated problem, but the truth is that women still run into those demands whenever we find and use our voices. —Brene Brown, Daring Greatly We live in a time of massive change, including huge changes for authors. Print on Demand and online sales have upended traditional publishing. Access has opened up, and voices of marginalized
