Pat Taub
GUEST POST by TONI KIEF
The day I turned sixty I collided with a shocking revelation. I didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up!
I was single again, living alone and on my way to meet my women friends for vodka and cake. The thought wouldn’t stop; it kept repeating.
I drove to the party, and took inventory. At eleven I wanted to be an archeologist. Then as a senior in high school I gave up the dream of college so my dad could go; he was a disabled fire fighter with a 185 IQ. I bought classes one at a time.
The author around the age when she would have gone to college
Now I have twenty-three years of community college, and no AA degree (it’s the math, okay.) When I retired I had upward of forty years working an ex-husband’s job. I was the first woman outside casualty insurance adjuster in Florida because his business needed help and no one applied. Even after the divorce I continued in claims as I raised our adopted son.
Since I lived alone, I was joining groups, and then it happened. A metaphysical support group I belonged to was breaking up and one of the members said he wanted to write.
So as the quiet, retiring flower that I’m not, said, “If you write, I’ll write.”
Beginning a writing career late in life
It had never crossed my mind before. In a month we teamed up with his wife and wrote a cookbook based on women of history and myth, Dangerous Dishes and the Food They Inspire. It still isn’t published, because life, as it does, got in the way.
I enjoyed the creativity of the project so much that I joined a writers’ Meet-Up group of two people. The organizer of Writers Kickstarter, quit after a couple months, so I took it over. We still meet, having grown to 20 members while writing 500 word flash fictions. So far, fourteen books have developed from the group.
My first novel was born when driving with my granddaughter and spotting an older woman stomping down the side of the road. She was agitated, carrying on a conversation with herself. I looked at my granddaughter and remarked, “I gave him 49 years; he ain’t getting 50.”
The author’s first book about an older woman’s coming-of-age
From that off-handed remark, my first novel, Old Baggage, was born. After it was released, I had four old (literally on the “old”) boyfriends check to see if they were in it. One expressed regret for our breakup as described in the book, so I explained the definition of fiction and suggested he owed someone else that heartfelt apology.
One of the members of Kickstarter had an expensive bad edit. From hearing the repeated horror stories of publishing and marketing, Susan Brown, another Kickstarter member and I founded the Writers Cooperative of the Pacific Northwest where we focus on developing quality manuscripts, publishing and marketing as teams. We now have our own literary catalogue with close to 50 authors, adding more every month.
The author and Susan Brown, founders of The Writers Coop of the Pacific Northwest
Soon after releasing my first novel, I was taking a shower and the name Mildred Petrie hopped into my consciousness. After I got the soap out of my hair, I started Mildred In Disguise With Diamonds about an older woman forced into change. Both novels are a coming-of -age story for older women, kind of like my life. There are now three Mildred novels, she was just a name, and now a major motivation for reviews on casino buffets.
Today, I’m working with my granddaughter on a historical fiction about our great x 8 grandmother, Susanna Jackson-White-Winslow.
The author with her newest collaborator, her granddaughter, promoting Toni’s books.
