Category: Behind the Stories: Inspirations and Encounters

She Threw a Dart

 I’ve been reading old drafts I never posted, looking for lost gems, and found this:

It was one of one of  those talking-to-strangers encounters so common in Truth or Consequences, initiated by a bubbly dark-haired woman in the art-installation area of the ladies room at the Brewery. She enthused about the place and asked if I was local. I said I was, and then I asked where she was from.

“LA,” she said. “I’ve been here six months.”

“Sounds like a really positive change,” I  said. “How did you decide on T or C?”

“I thew a dart.”

I must have looked puzzled. She explained, “I spread out a map and threw a dart, and it landed it here. So I came.”

Street Solos

She staggered and wove, her steps crossing each other as she traversed the steep sidewalk, aiming uphill toward Main Street in her irregular style. Heading downhill on my way home after teaching yoga, I tried not to stare at the poor drunk on the opposite side of Foch Street. And then, from seeming unable to walk a straight line, she transformed into a dancer. She spun, both arms extended, her balance perfect despite holding a large cloth bag. Then she staggered on, and then spun again.

Okay, I thought. This is Truth or Consequences. What the heck. You can express yourself.

I continued across Healing Waters Plaza and reached Broadway. While I paused for traffic, a man passing down Daniels along the side of the drug store stopped and posed, casting his shadow on the white wall of the building. He wore a backpack, and his pose resembled the position of the Turtle formation atop Turtleback Mountain,. He stood on one leg, his torso horizontal, his other leg flexed and lifted in an attitude derriere, his arms in front cupping the unseen mountain. Or so it looked to me, having struck that pose a few times to help people see the Turtle. He jogged a few steps and posed again, casting his shadow, repeating the move until he was past the streetlight and out of sight.

What was going on? People alone dancing in the streets. And not the sort of dances you’d do if the music in your head or through your earbuds inspired you to move with the beat. Was it an art event? A random coincidence? A pact or dare between friends? No one was watching or filming. I seemed to be the only audience. I can invent a story, for sure. Reading this, you may be inventing your own. Perhaps that’s what they wanted.

Inspired by Learning

Every two years, I have to renew all my certifications as a fitness professional. I enjoy the classes, including the tests, and feel refreshed as an instructor. I also take weekly classes with a yoga teacher whose skill I aspire to emulating. There’s no required continuing ed for writers, though. I could go years without learning anything new, if I wanted. But since I don’t know everything and can forget to apply what I do know, I took a class on revision and self-editing.

It made me look at my work in progress with fresh eyes and gave me an improved sequence for my revision tasks as well as new tools for analyzing problems in a book. It’s more challenging than analyzing movement but equally fascinating.

I’m now so excited about working on the next Mae Martin mystery, I had a hard time making myself pause to write a blog post. Recent encounters and experiences have made me think “blog post.” Bluebirds in the desert. Daytime coyote songs. A new gallery’s grand opening with dance performances accompanied by gongs and didgeridoo—it was so T or C.

But … I have to work on the book!

*****

If you’re new to following me, you may have missed some of my older posts. Small Awakenings is a collection of reflective essays from this blog.

Stone and Light

First, look at the art. Take your time. Explore.

Then you may understand the effect it had on me. I attended an Art Talk by Otto Rigan at Rio Bravo Fine Art, spending over an hour immersed in images of his work and stories of how he came to this unique form of expression.

After his talk, I ran on a desert trail I’ve known for years, a place so familiar I know where to step, where I’ll meet rough ground or soft sand or the perfect surface, and it looked entirely different. I saw the light, literally. Light glinting on grains of sand like tiny mirrors. Light shining back at the sun from smooth, flat stones. Light flaring from bits of reflective minerals in otherwise dull-surfaced rocks. The textures and shapes of every rock and pebble came to life. My mind went quiet in awe. A spiritual experience of stone and light.

Words that Stayed With Me

I had, as usual, inspiring encounters with art and with friends at the January Art Hop. In one gallery, I talked with a very productive artist who said he makes a new list every day to get things done. I had to confess that a few same things have been on each new to-do list I’ve made—for years. He said cheerfully, without judgment, “That’s okay. You did other things.”

In another gallery, I admired the work of a local quilt artist, mentioning how innovative and unconventional her work was. She said, “Unconventional, that’s me. Getting outside my comfort zone grows my comfort zone.”

Later in the week,  I ran the Healing Waters Trail to the New Mexico Veterans’ Home to visit my friend Bob. He used to run to visit a relative when he was a boy, so he appreciated my method of travel. We sat in the sun with a view of the mountains. In the way of the very old, he reflected on his life, acknowledging there had been some hard times. “I learned from them. But I learned the lessons later, when I could. Not while I was living the lessons.”

I’m probably living many lessons now that I will only learn later. Perhaps after I grow my comfort zone by actually doing the perennial to-dos on that list.

Shaman’s Blues 99 cent sale

No murder, just mystery.Book two in the Mae Martin Psychic Mystery series is 99 cents in all eBook stores through the end of January. The book that brings Mae to New Mexico!

 

Spinning Off

I’m letting the ninth Mae Martin Mystery rest a while, though I’ll be back to work on it soon. I’m taking an intensive course on revision and self-editing. Even after ten years as a published author, I can learn and improve. Meanwhile, I’ve begun the first draft of the first book in a spin-off series featuring Azure Skye, the Santa Fe medium who plays an important role in Soul Loss and in Shadow Family.

The creative challenges are exciting. The kind of mystery Azure will solve is different from the ones Mae is asked to handle as a psychic. Azure’s gift is communication with the dead. I’m disinclined to have her solve murders, but the question of how someone died has already come up. So far, it looks like Azure and Mae will need to collaborate to find the answer. Of course, I’m only on chapter two, and I don’t plot. I put the characters in a difficult situation and see how they react. Azure is in a situation only Mae can help her out of, and Mae has a problem she hopes Azure can solve.

The biggest challenge for me is that Azure wants to speak in the first person. I didn’t plan that she would, but that’s how she’s coming through.

Three of my novels use only Mae’s point of view, but I still had certain freedoms. I used prologues and epilogues in other points of view in two of those books. Mae’s visions as a psychic revealed events in in the restricted point of view of a silent witness. First person is the opposite of that. It gives me too much information to work with. I have to hold back some of what Azure knows, thinks, feels, and recalls about her past, her work, and the people close to her, in order to keep the story flowing. But I can share her inner life at the right moments more easily, since I never get outside her head.

Will I stick with first person or change to close third? I don’t know. For now, I’m getting to know Azure this way, like an actor exploring a role. Then I’ll have to set her story aside for about six weeks while I work on Mae’s most recent story in the revision class. Once that’s polished enough to send to my critique partners, I’ll plunge back into the spin-off.

*****

 Book two in the Mae Martin series, Shaman’s Blues, is on sale for 99 cents in all eBook stores though the end of January.

 

A Mistake—or Was It?

I meant to go shopping in Las Cruces, an hour away. I was waffling about stopping at Caballo Lake State Park, a short way from home on my way south. It was such a beautiful day, I gave in to the urge. At the park’s EV charging station, I looked for my Charge Point card and found … no wallet. I’d left it at home. One of the perils of changing purses too often.

If I’d driven straight to Las Cruces, and not stopped to indulge in outdoor beauty and top off my charge, I’d have wasted my day. I might not have discovered the missing wallet until I had all my items at the checkout. I don’t even want to imagine that scenario. I considered going home for my wallet, but that would be twenty minutes each way. I gave up.

There’s a number on the station to call for starting a charge, so I called it, changed into my running shoes, and enjoyed the winding trails. Then I walked down to the lake. Smooth and blue, it was speckled with white pelicans, gliding along with gentle pumping and pulsing motions of their necks. A few men were fishing on the shore. A restful view.

I strolled back up to the area near the visitors’ center and found a sheltered place for stretching out with yoga, then sat on a bench near my car to relax in the sun.

A park ranger stopped by to chat about electric cars, one of those incredibly nerdy conversations only of interest to current or prospective EV owners, but fascinating to us. Charge completed, I drove home even more carefully than usual because I didn’t have my license with me—and far more refreshed than if I’d gone shopping.

 

 

Whose Season is It?

I’m not talking about the holidays, but about tourist season. And coyote mating season.

The local economy depends on the human snowbirds who flock here along with pelicans and sandhill cranes and other winged visitors to our lakes and the Rio Grande. My runs in the desert are no longer solitary. I must have met six different people today, ranging from dog-walkers to a man trekking with poles. The sky was a brilliant New Mexico blue with flares of white clouds, and the sixty-degree sunshine felt even warmer reflected by rock and sand.

And then there was the coyote trotting past, trying to escape the human disturbances. Winter is the only time I see coyotes by day, out seeking a mate. I wonder how they feel when they keep hearing, seeing, and smelling us. Do we put a damper on the courtship mood?

I stopped, kept my distance, and let the animal have some space, then resumed my run. The encounter felt special compared to the polite smiles and greetings I share with hikers. Pure. Wordless. A glimpse of the wild world that still would be here if we weren’t.

More Rainbow than Rain and Another Bob Story: Two Small Miracles

I headed to Elephant Butte Lake to run on the trails on a sixty-degree day. I didn’t expect rain, but it arrived before I got the park, and it dropped the temperature a good ten or twelve degrees.  I don’t chicken out on a run because of rain, though. And for the first time in my life, I saw the foot of a rainbow. The place where the pot of gold should be. The bright arc stood with its right foot on the lake, not far from the shore. I’ve never been that close to a rainbow. They’re always out there somewhere, over the mountains.

I ran and kept an eye on it. It faded when the rain stopped. But then a patch of shaggy gray virga on the eastern horizon lit up with a full spectrum of colors. Not really a rain bow, more like rain fur, but still beautiful. It faded. Drizzle came down, and a new rainbow appeared, this one in the normal place in the distance. Gone again. Another soft blaze of rain fur followed. The ground didn’t even get wet, and yet I was treated to four displays of amazing color. Well worth sticking out the cold for the full five miles.

It gave me something to tell Bob when I dropped by after my run.

Yes, that’s right. Bob. He didn’t die, though his doctors were sure he would when he got pneumonia at his age. His stepdaughter from his second marriage came all the way from New York to see him when he was in the hospital, and he perked right up. He’s not a hundred percent well, but he wasn’t before all this. His personality, his intelligence, and his wit are intact as are many portions of his memory, but not all. And he has balance problems. He’s moved to residential care, where I visit him often.

One of the first times I arrived to visit him, I found him sitting in a wheelchair in a hallway, appearing to nod off.  On seeing me, he said, “I feel like should know you.” I identified myself and mentioned that we had often gone bat watching together. “Bat watching …” He frowned. I said we’d watched sunsets together, too. He still frowned, muttering that he should know me, then suddenly he smiled, and his eyes twinkled. “You thought I was out of my mind, didn’t you?”

To have partial memory loss and pretend it’s worse for a laugh—and to act the part so well—that says a lot about the guy. He may live to be ninety. And still make jokes.