Yellow Highlighter ...

… orange or lime green … take your pick from the pallet of hues for giving emphasis to points you want to remember when you’re reading. I can’t imagine life without these handy tools to help me see at a glance what’s important. They are memory joggers I have used ever since I can remember (high school? college?). They are even bigger godsends in these days when our minds are increasingly stuffed with too much information.

But there are other markers for highlighting, and they are figurative, not literal. They work as a cosmic hint for getting our attention--or as bookmarks for a place in memory that we need to note for later follow-up. They can mark a specific incident or verbal exchange. In the moment, they stir a feeling of discomfort or significance, often that we can’t yet identify.

Here’s a recent example, which takes a little intro:

My close circle of women friends—my spiritual support team—take an annual trip near Lake Tahoe to the cabin of one of our members. Over the past couple of years, we have started to do Soul Collage, a great artsy and intuitive way, essentially, to make your own personal tarot deck. If you’re familiar with tarot and know the collage based Voyager deck, think of a process where you create your own unique version.

Running late, as ever, I was eating my cereal the morning we were leaving for Tahoe. In-between spoonfuls, while chewing, I was cutting last-minute images out of magazines for our Soul Collage session at the cabin the next day. An ad with a $100,000 bill caught my eye. I said to myself, “That goes in one of my cards,” and I snipped it.

I had these errands left to do: chiropractor, get gas, get coffee, and get cash. I hoped to combine coffee with cash, thinking that if I used my ATM card, they’d give me cash back. Not Starbucks’ policy. Drat.

That meant that I’d have to go a few doors down to the Safeway and hit the ATM. My bank, Wells Fargo, has a branch inside the grocery store. After getting my 40 bucks, I put my purse on the little podium with the ATM envelopes and various banking program brochures.

Something caught my eye … a brochure with a $100,000 bill on the cover. The $100,000 bill I had clipped less than an hour before out of that magazine was still in yellow highlighter in my visual memory. I picked it up.

It was a contest for financing your dream, and the bank was giving a $100,000 prize for the best short essay … but the deadline was that day. There were only two ways to enter, by mail and online, and it was too late to post something …

… so I phoned ahead to my friends and asked someone to take their laptop on the trip so I could spend an hour cranking out my 250-word essay. With a little help from my friends—we have great synergy—we titled it Banking on Boomer Insights. It’s a proposal to create a press that would help me and other boomers write and distribute our memoirs and books on other topics of interest to the More Experienced (ME) Generation.

As I say in Hot Flashbacks, we need to reclaim the custom of indigenous people everywhere of giving back our wisdom to our communities … of teaching them how to really live …

… and if learning is the subject, we’ll need those highlighters. I can almost hear them squeaking …

Not only do I hope I win the contest; I’ll be just as happy to know I illustrated how opportunity is in plain sight if we only learn to play the symbols. Think of the chances we pass up just because we don’t get the hints the universe puts right in front of us every day.

Here’s to having the eyes to see yellow—and the ears to hear that delightful squeak!

It's Done!

Crack open the champagne! Hot Flashbacks, Cool Insights—the book—is done!

I’m midway through my first full read-through with edits; then, I’ll send it off to several volunteer readers while I beef up the plan to find an agent and/or publisher--or decide to self-publish. I sense that the right road to take will be revealed in the next few months. My earlier attempts to find representation may have been premature. Like working a complex puzzle, I didn’t get the complete picture of what the book was meant to be until most of the pieces fell into place. Therefore, I couldn’t pitch it in a way that fully conveyed its aim and impact. So much for outline versus “writing by the seat of your pants.” In my experience, a bit of both is best and produces the most creative results.

Here’s my bestseller list blurb (think big!):

New Tagline
Eat, Pray, Love meets Sex in the City, Boomer Edition. Don't get old. Get ready for your next phase of fabulous and fulfilled.

Target Audience
One of the big clarifications that came into focus the closer I got to the finish line: The target audience of this book is definitely women baby boomers. While there is plenty to interest men and up-and-coming younger women (as long as you live an average life span, everyone will age), boomer women are the pioneers with the motivation and skills to reinvent aging. We are not only the unique generation that survived the ‘50s Happy Days and the ‘60s Counterculture, those polar opposites in our somewhat schizophrenic coming of age. We also have always done it our way, one of the reasons we have been called the Me Generation. Now we are morphing into a new ME Generation, which stands for and celebrates our age group as Most Experienced.

The skills that often come naturally to women because of their hormonal make-up—intuition and insight—are half of the equation needed to find your own personal path to cool later living. The formula is Intuition + Insight + Analysis + Synthesis = A Sensational Seasoned Citizen. Hopefully, watching how I worked the formula in my own life will inspire you to mine yours for all its worth and to discover not only your personal curriculum to a fulfilled life, all the way, but also how each lesson learned opens the path for the next hint on how to have more adventures in fine living.


Title/Subtitle
When it comes to naming your book baby, writers must accept that our brilliant christenings are what they call in the publishing biz working titles. Often the publisher’s marketing department has the last word on which title sticks based on its selling power. My first working title for this book, which I still love and in many ways prefer, was Hot Flashes of Insight! The reason it wasn’t a keeper:

“So, what is it, a book about menopause?”

This was the initial reaction of a young male guest editor in an online class I took in the mid-‘90s. (Yes, I’ve been incubating this project that long.) For many of us, the less said, read, or experienced about “the change,” the better. The only role hot flashes played in my life were to heat up my already warmed-up intuition to boiling. The emphasis is on the insight. Hot flashes were only the vehicle. And, besides, if we’re talking about the years approaching and beyond Social Security, for most women, the flashes are long gone. I did not want it to be mistaken for a book, humorous or otherwise, about surviving the Great Hormonal Transition.

My original subtitle for Hot Flashes of Insight! was Flashbacks on Passion from the Fast Lane to Social Security.

Today’s working title and subtitle:

Hot Flashbacks, Cool Insights
Hints in Plain Sight for a Cool Later Life

I would welcome your feedback on these titles/subtitles. Say, for instance, you just love that first title. I could easily be persuaded to go back to it, as long as the subtitle deflects any bad memories or future fears of the menopause from hell. Then, if it’s not my future editor’s favorite, I can produce proof that my earliest readers beg to differ. After all, it is your reaction they are trying to anticipate.

AARP Contest
I am a nut for writing contests, my version of roulette or playing the slots, an indulgence I seldom allow myself. I’d have to admit on objective analysis that I’ve probably lost more on writing contest entry fees and won less money in them over the years than on my casino trips. Casinos I only do once or twice a decade. Writing contests? Usually several times a year.

I don’t spin three cherries in contests as often, either, but once in awhile, coins kaching in good volume out of the literary one-armed bandit. (Try writing with one hand.)

In 2005, I won $200 and first place in the Yosemite Writers Contest for a mini-proposal of Hot Flashbacks, while it was still called Hot Flashes of Insight! The real “in” it gave me was incentive—to retire early and get this show on the road.

My latest contest is Borders & AARP’s Your Next Chapter short essay competition. It celebrates AARP’s 50th anniversary and focuses on what people over 50 are doing with their next leg of life. Hot Flashbacks is so on target with the contest subject matter, I’m hoping for a fighting chance to win. My book even features a chapter called The AARP Card—a reprise of my reactions to receiving my membership card as I approached the big Five Oh, primarily of screaming denial that I might be getting older. Who knew this was the year AARP would become eligible to receive its own membership in the 50+ club!

Next Steps
I’m brushing up my short forms of the book—synopsis and chapter outline—for the annual writers contest at California State University, Sacramento. There I’ll have a chance to do a whistle stop or speed date with several agents and editors. This is an opportunity for a one-on-one pitch. The last time I did this, I was very early into the project. With a finished product, I have a lot better chance to make meaningful connections. And we have established, three years ago, I didn’t know completely where this book was headed. Here’s to the excitement and wonder of discovery. That’s one of my favorite parts about writing.

How to Help Make It So
The photo is of me signing Capital Crimes:15 Tales by Sacramento Area Authors at our March 2008 book launch for the mystery anthology published by my local Sisters in Crime chapter, Capitol Crimes.

In indigenous cultures, women often give birth in a circle of other women who support and cheer them on through their ordeal of delivery. It is a ritual of shared joy and experience that not only bolsters the new mother; it also honors the truth that all creations belong to the community. “It takes a village,” Hillary Clinton told us in her book title, to raise children. Same goes for nurturing our ideas and stories that make up our larger cultural reality. I now realize that in creating this blog, I have replicated that circle of support. Thank you for being my midwives!

On the spiritual level, what we see is what we get when it comes to manifesting our visions, and visions held collectively are even more powerful in the Dreams Come True Department. So, memorize this image of me signing books and see it in your mind often. Send good energy. How can I lose with friends like you and a mind meld so mighty?

Turn on the Lights!

In the beginning was Creativity.

It expressed itself as Light.

It wasn’t just any light; it was the biggest bonfire in the universe. It shone so brightly, it was eternal. It could never be put out.

But being the Light in the Dark was lonely. Shining was fun, but it would be more fun to reflect the light off others and to share it.

So Creativity divided and cast off sparks of Itself.

But Creativity also spawned Intrigue. The sparks could not know they came from the bonfire. They had amnesia. The game would be to rediscover—using their own creativity—they were part of the Original Light … and, ultimately, to return to the Light.

Along the way, these individual sparks would almost touch the truth. They’d join with other sparks and create a brushfire. It was exhilarating!

As they lived their lives, made mistakes, and righted themselves on their course through experience, the sparks would—now and then—have a get a glimmer of a bonfire. These were times when they would join lights and create the biggest fire they had ever seen so far. They were times like births, deaths, weddings—anytime love is reflected in large quantities for them to feel a part of.

Ultimately, the good players got that everyone is a spark of the Great Altogether—of Creativity Itself.

Once the light dawned, their time on Earth was nearly as bright as it would be on the day they would return to the Biggest Bonfire in the Universe—to Creativity—and Love—Itself.

Here we are in the Season of Light. I hope I have just told a Creation Story that can appeal to anyone, regardless of belief.

In one way or another, all major religions celebrate light as we approach the darkest day of the year on Winter Solstice—December 21st. Some do it out loud; others more quietly.

The earth religions honor the Sun god at the Solstice and pray for his safe return, knowing all life evolves around light.

In a play on words too good to pass up, Christianity celebrates the birth of another Son … the one who told us, “You are the light of the world.” Certainly, he was a light, but notice, he made a point of telling us we are also the light.

Jews celebrate Chanukah—a miracle of light—of lanterns that kept burning and saved the day when they should have run out, a kind of loaves and fishes story with the element fire …

Lastly, Muslims celebrate Hajj, the annual trip to Mecca all adults of sound mind must do at least once in their lifetime. The ritual promotes the bonds of brotherhood and sisterhood by showing everyone is equal in the eyes of Allah. Sounds, to me, like an affirmation of the One Light.

So, you have to wonder why so many people on the planet still don’t get it.

Don’t let that get you down—the wars over differences in religion, opinion, or other ridiculous things we fight about as human beings.

This holiday season, do the one and only thing you can really do about it. Just go out there and let your light shine. Turn on your lights! Fire spreads in a divine domino effect …

… and remember every time you see a light, to be a light …

Ultimately, the good players will get that everyone is a spark of the Great Altogether—of Creativity Itself.


Once the light dawns, your time on Earth will be nearly as bright as it will be on the day you return to the Biggest Bonfire in the Universe—to Creativity—and Love—Itself.

Author's note: Some of the basic concepts in this essay come from channeled material called The Michael Teachings. If these ideas intrigue you, please visit this link or one of the many sites devoted to this spiritual slant on the universe that has always made so much sense to me. I was introduced to these teachings by Stephen J. Cocconi, who also has a fascinating site on the Teachings.

Blog Referral CONTEST!

Now for a request for help, a challenge, and a little contest. (Did I mention fun?) The success of my book, blog, and website depend on sharing. To encourage new members of my Yahoo Group, I am sponsoring a holiday contest. The reader who refers the most new sign-ups to my Yahoo Group by midnight January 1, 2008 will win free, signed copy of the anthology soon to be published by my local Sisters in Crime Chapter. We expect it to be available in February. Capital Crimes: 15 Tales by Sacramento Area Authors includes some twisted mystery short stories and some pretty funny ones, including my own wacky "Digital," the saga of some very weird goings-on in a fictional Mexican fast food joint near Sac State University.

Here’s how you play: Every time you refer a friend or friends, e-mail me at hotflashbacks@gmail.com with the e-mail addresses of those you have referred to me. You can cc me as you send links to your friends or just save the addresses all up and forward them in a single e-mail. Whatever is easiest for you. Names aren’t as important as e-mail addresses, but both are fabulous. I will keep tabs on who referred whom, as those names pop into my Yahoo Group. I will announce the winner in my first post of 2008.


Yahoo Group members get some extra perks--more behind-the-scenes info about Hot Flashbacks, the book in progress and the online community--and the opportunity to participate in contests and other special events and offers.


Good luck, and rest those weary dogs from all that holiday shopping by telling your friends we're here, ready to bust the old Old, and ready to make the rest of our lives a booming blast!

Happy Autumn Equinox!

While I may not practice astrology professionally anymore, I have integrated many aspects of it into my life for good. One of them is celebrating the change of seasons at the solstices and equinoxes. It was easy for me to appreciate those turning points: I was born on the cusp of autumn. Bet you can’t guess my favorite season.

You don’t have to be into astrology to know that the quarterly shifts in weather are a crossroads and sacred time. Many people don’t realize how much the earth religions have influenced other religions—the ones that revere nature and just such changes--including Christianity. There are many parallels between them, including the recognition that outer changes mirror inner growth. Most of us know the Bible quote popularized in the early ‘60s song by Pete Seeger, Turn, Turn, Turn:

“To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heavens. "

--Ecclesiastes 3:1

I have always been a seeker, and I have enjoyed a rich spiritual life since Day One, thanks to my family and my own Virgo tendencies toward perfection—my desire to live life to the best and fullest. Combine that with a lot of planets in Libra, the sign that craves balance and harmony, and it’s not surprising that my spirituality has been eclectic. It’s easy for me to see the best of many different traditions. After all, I want to find what we can agree on and appreciate about each other’s perspectives.

Now you have the context for how I started a group of women in the late ‘80s that celebrates the change of seasons. Many of us attended an annual candlelighting service at our local Unity Church. We loved it but wanted more. We were still in the afterglow of the Harmonic Convergence, that August 1987 event where people went to various sacred sites on Earth to pray for peace and harmony. It was a time of ecumenical spirituality and oneness, and celebration of the Winter Solstice seemed the most all-inclusive to us; so, that’s where we started.

Soon, our circles once a year just weren’t enough, and we expanded them to the other quarterly solstices and equinoxes. As often as possible, we celebrate at the river, the outdoor cathedral of God/Goddess/All That Is. Our members have varied beliefs with a shared faith in open-mindedness. We borrow from every tradition you can think of—Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, pagan. Our rituals are nothing if they are not creative, and various women take turns putting them together. Even though it’s a circle of women, we owe our nickname, the Solsisters, to a man. (Thanks, Evan!) He was the boyfriend of my close friend and my primary partner in creating these events out of ordinary time. I don’t know if he feels it, but I think Evan gets a blessing every time we say the word.

Over the years, a backbone of liturgy has been borne out of our group efforts. Each celebration has the same basic sections, but the content is completely original. As originator and long-time leader, my Catholic roots could not help but shine through, especially in calling the sharing section communion. There is nothing like checking in on each other’s lives quarterly and watching how we grow.

As individuals and in community, those check-ins are so vital to seeing our own milestones as works in progress. We laugh, we cry, we go to dinner together afterwards (another communion) … but the most important thing is that we have created a support system, a community of spirited women who care about each other on the physical, emotional, and spiritual levels. You can have one, too! Just find a few kindred spirits to get the ball rolling. The Internet is oozing with ideas for rituals and celebrations. The Internet is our most important, silent Solsister.

I wanted to share this history early on, because the Hot Flashbacks, Cool Insights phenomenon is more than a series of books and blog posts to me. It is an extension of what I started with the Solsisters, which would be nothing if it weren’t for the others who joined the party.

We have the power to create partnerships, circles, and to celebrate life however we want. We have tools literally at our fingertips.

My vision is to create a planetary shift where we join intentions to change outcomes, just like the original concept of the Harmonic Convergence. All the Earth is sacred. It doesn’t matter where you live. Start where you are.

The tarot deck I used to read from, the Motherpeace, has a card that reflects my vision called The World. It shows lots of people dancing around a Pied Piper-like Earth Mom. Another image I love and recently purchased is from Shiloh Sophia McCloud, called Dancing Our Prayers. Let’s do the prayer dance of peace around the world!

Women are wired for peace as the birthers, nurturers, and ultimately, crones or wise women. Sally Field said it at the Emmys recently, whether or not she was bleeped for cursing the war.

Men, too, have these qualities—some more on the surface, some more deeply hidden. As they age, that side of men often emerges. This is true for women and qualities we regard as “masculine.” As we round out as human beings, we express the best of both complementary energies. That’s why boomers can do so much good. We have arrived at a time when our inner opposites are more in balance. We have made peace within ourselves. Now we can take on the world.

Let’s put peace on the wire, the Internet, and send it around the globe to create a circle of love, friendship, and practical problem solving.

Have a gorgeous autumn! It is, after all, the season of harvest and fulfillment. I hope you share my dream.

Boomer's Hot Flashbacks Contain Instructions for a Cool Rest of Her Life

Hot Flashbacks, Cool Insights is the title of my upcoming memoir. This blog offers regular posts that are preview hot flashbacks—and cool insights, too! I want to find and warm up my audience before I bring on this book, the first in a trio of memoirs. I hope they will keep you laughing and learning for years to come.

Hot Flashbacks—the book and the blog--has a message for boomers and younger “kids:” You don’t have to wait till you “go to the light” to let your life flash in front of you. As much inspiration as slices of my unusual life, Hot Flashbacks shows how to reinvent aging so it works for the only generation with “baby” in its name. If you learn to play the symbols hidden in plain sight –now—you can make the rest of your days on Earth the richest in your personal history. My formula?

Hot Flashbacks + Cool Insights = Seasoned Sizzle!

To wrap up the preview, Hot Flashbacks, Cool Insights has three distinct parts:

Part 1, Hormonic Convergence: I tell how I discovered passion as the theme of my life during my first hot flashes following an emergency hysterectomy.

Part 2, Hot Flashbacks: Passion is more than sex, which I explore plenty in my flashbacks. I relive figurative passions, too—who and what I care about most, especially what I can’t die without doing.

Part 3, Sexugenaria: After reliving all those earlier episodes of my life—this time with their meaning clear—I see a lesson plan for living a cool rest of my life—and facing head-on my AARP card, hearing loss, and the other nuts and bolts of aging.

Entertaining, deep, and often hilarious, Hot Flashbacks is as much inspiration as memoir. It recounts a life so full of meaningful coincidence; it could only be a divine comedy. It doubles as a handbook for keeping the flames of passion fanned all the way to the finish line.

Visit my blog often for slices of writing that are similar to my book and a few flash forward excerpts. I’ll keep you posted on progress in the publishing process.