Tag Archive for: TK Thorne

A Brave Thing—by T.K. Thorne

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Writer, humanist,
          dog-mom, horse servant and cat-slave,
    Lover of solitude
          and the company of good friends,
        new places, new ideas,
           and old wisdom.

 

 

 

 

My daughter recently posted this on Facebook.  

Dolly, I did a brave thing. During the pandemic, I started painting. That wasn’t
brave, because nobody was looking over my shoulder pointing out my
mistakes (the paintings did that!) 
But I really wanted to contribute
something to the Pulpwood Queen Book Club’s silent auction for the Pat
Conroy Literary Center. So here’s the brave thing—I did a “Low Country”
painting and gave it to the silent auction.

It started out very ugly. (A good lesson for the drafts of our novels.) I was thinking that I might have to just throw it away and start over, but I decided I was having fun and just kept going. (Another lesson for writing.)

When I paint, I am often drawn to go “visit” the project while passing the studio (library/book storage/printer/extra-closet room).  As a painting dries, the colors lighten and the perspective changes. One night, I made my normal stumble to the bathroom in the middle of the night. Drawn to the studio on the way back to bed, I looked at the painting in the dim light of the hall nightlight and insanely decided the color of the water wasn’t right. 

You have to understand, I am fortunate to find my way to the bathroom in the middle of the night (and the morning, for that matter.) Not bothering to sit, get my glasses, or turn on decent light, I grabbed a brush and started “fixing” it. 

The next morning, I braced myself to look at what I had done, certain it would be a disaster.

Amazingly, it looked okay.

When the painting was finished, I was happy with it. Then I panicked, realizing to meet the deadline, I  had to send a photo in to the auction. (A familiar panic, as it happens with every manuscript when I hit “send” to the editor.) I stalled as long as I could and then, with great trepidation I sent it. 

It was received kindly. But how else would polite people react? We praise a child’s art efforts no matter how primitive and stick it proudly to the refrigerator. The few friends, sister, amd hubby with whom I had shared my attempts had been encouraging. But this was different. People who don’t know me were going to be looking at this, and I didn’t think they would want to pay to stick it on their refrigerator.

I berated myself:  You’re a writer, not a painter.  What were you thinking?

The auction was for a good cause and was open to the public, so I did my duty and posted it on Facebook with an invitation to the auction. I told myself the worst thing that could happen was that no one would bid on it and no harm would be done. I’d just go back in the closet as an artist and continue painting just because I loved doing it.

The response on Facebook was immediate: 

To say I was blown away by the warm and excited comments is an understatement. In spite of the fact that I am a Writer (took a long time and several books published to own that word), it slowly bloomed in me that perhaps I could be an Artist too. Tears repeatedly came to my eyes that so many people thought what I had created was beautiful. Some of them were “real” artists. At that point, it really would not have mattered if no one bid on it.

However, they did. In fact, there was a bidding war! The executive director of the Center said he “thought there was going to be a bloodbath over it.” It received the highest bid of any item (and there were great things there).

When you finish a book, there is a certain sadness, a letting go, a goodby to the characters you have lived with for months, sometimes years. Tomorrow, I will put my little painting in a box and send it away to a stranger who lives on the other side of the country. I am happy/sad. 

I wonder if all joy has an element of sadness. The joy of seeing a child grow up and go off into the world mixes with the sadness of losing something precious. The joy of accomplishing a goal mixes with the sadness of having accomplished it. The joy and sadness of creating . . . and finishing. 

Many wise people have said this better: It is not the destination that brings us happiness, but the journey. 

Speaking of which, I think I will finish this blog and go start another painting . . . .

“Low Country”

T.K.Thorne is a retired police captain who writes Books, which, like this blog, go wherever her curiosity and imagination take her.  More at TKThorne.com.

Thankful!

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       Writer, humanist,
          dog-mom, horse servant and cat-slave,
       Lover of solitude
          and the company of good friends,
        new places, new ideas
           and old wisdom.

 

 

 

Hope you had a great day yesterday with those you love, celebrating all the things you are thankful for. I am grateful for many things, family and friends in particular. But this year I am also thankful to have a new member of our family.

This is Nicki-Jones in February of this year (2021) when she arrived from a
“kill lot” (next step dog food in Mexico) in Louisiana to a quarantine
pasture. She was lame and had a large wicked scar on the front of her left back leg and a patterned scarring on the back of the other leg that makes me think she got tangle in barbed wire at some point. The circular sticker on her withers was her lot #. She had a brand under her mane from the track, so I was able to confirm that she was a 16 year-old Standardbred. She was sweet, but had no idea what a treat was or even that eating out of a human hand was a possibility, which speaks to her former life as a work horse—pulling a sulky (a one-person cart) on a pacer race track and then with the Amish, where I assume she pulled a cart or wagon. I don’t know how long she had been at the kill lot, but they don’t keep them long because feeding her is an expense.

 

We
took her in with another mare to give our gelding a companion and her a safe place to
grow older and get loved on. Never thought I would be riding her! But she put on weight and gloss and healed up and definitely knows what a treat is now! Her coat even changed from brown to black this summer.

 

This is the first time I’ve been on her. Wasn’t sure what she would do, as I don’t know if she’s ever had anyone on her back, only pulled things. She caught on quickly, though, and I was really happy on this beautiful day to be in the saddle! It’s been a long time for the old lady on the top. Not sure Nicki-Jones felt the same way, but hoping we have some adventures ahead of us on the trails and lots of years to get to know each other and to be thankful for.

 
 

 

 
 T.K. is a retired police captain who writes Books, which, like this blog, go wherever her interest and imagination take her.  More at TKThorne.com

 

Following a Rabbit —T. K. Thorne

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Writer, humanist,
          dog-mom, horse servant and cat-slave,
       Lover of solitude
          and the company of good friends,
        New places, new ideas
           and old wisdom.

 

 

 

 

I follow rabbit trails when I am writing because they often end up in the most unusual and interesting places.

Here are three tidbits I learned writing about an unnamed woman who was married to one of the most famous men on Earth:

*Written on stone, the oldest story known is from the Middle East (Babylon) and predates the Hebrew Bible. The Epic of Gilgamesh tells a tale with many parallels to the story of Noah and the flood. 

A man named Utnapishtim survived a flood that destroy the earth after being warned to build a boat and gather his family and animals because the gods were unhappy with mankind—not because of sin, but because they were too LOUD!  (Love it!) Utnapishtim sent out a dove (the ancient symbol of the Mother Goddess) to try and find dry land.

*The earliest known deity was female!  The role of the feminine in the divine was entwined with early Judaism and keeps reappearing throughout history.

*The explorer John Ballard got money from the U.S. government to hunt for the wreckage of a secret Russian submarine in order to pursue his true desire to find the wreck of the Titanic. He found both. He also discovered the remains of an ancient flooded settlement about two miles into the Black Sea, preserved because of a lack of oxygen in the depths.

Writing Noah’s Wife was an adventure (with many rabbit trails) that took four years. I don’t regret a minute. The characters are still in my mind and come alive every time someone picks up the book. Despite its controversial challenges to traditional interpretations, it won “Book of the Year” for Historical Fiction and—more importantly to me—readers continue to let me know how much they loved it.

 

Available as print book, e-book, or Audible book. Click on image.
T.K. is a retired police captain who writes Books, which, like this blog, go wherever her interest and imagination take her.  More at TKThorne.com.

 

Dickens, Aliens, and Me

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My first ambition was to be an astronaut. My dream was to make first contact with aliens who could take me on a private tour of the galaxy. I
would check out the window every night to see if a UFO had landed in my back
yard. (Surely, they could sense that I was waiting for them. . . ! ) For various
reasons, it never did, and I didn’t get a chance to go looking for them, but
that has now changed.

 

You might know that most of Charles Dickens’ novels were
published in monthly or weekly installments. He pioneered the serial format of
narrative fiction, which became the dominant mode during the Victorian period for
novel publication and still exists in some magazine formats. 

 

The advent of print-on-demand technology in the 1960s turned
the publishing industry on its head. It spawned the giant, Amazon, but it also wrested
the ability to publish out of the hands of a few big publishing companies and into
the hands of indie (independent) presses or even the authors themselves. This
has had positive and negative side effects (a story for another day).

 

A couple of weeks ago, Amazon launched a new platform using
serialization called “Kindle Vella.” The author can publish an episode
(chapter) at a time and leave comments for the reader.  Readers can give a heads up for the chapters
they like.  In that sense, technology is bringing
the readers and authors closer together.

 

Also, it puts more power in the readers’ hands.  Instead of taking a chance on an entire book
that you might end up hating or bored with, you can read at least three episodes
for free. (As a special Amazon is now giving you 200 free tokens, which means
you can really read about 15 chapters first.) Then you purchase tokens (at a reasonable
price; the total book is about what a new release e-book would be) to “spend”
on chapter-episodes of books that you really like. You start at Amazon.com and
can read it there or (after you read your first episodes and purchase tokens)
it will also be available to download onto Apple devices (Kindle Reader app or Kindle device)
or you can keep reading right on Amazon.com.

 

Back to meeting aliens and venturing into a new space . . .
literally.

 

Motes (short for Mozart) is an extraordinary young girl born
on Mars. When a boy is found dead in her dorm room, the private Martian school
for gifted students expels her. Motes has nowhere to go besides the remote
planet of Veld where her estranged father is studying mmerl, the native
sentient species, some of whom are mysteriously disappearing.

 

 

 

This is a story close to my heart. I rewrote it during the Covid
pandemic, and I’m really excited to be able to share it directly with readers
this way!

 

You can check out SNOWDANCERS (the entire novel is uploaded)
at “Kindle Vella” on Amazon.com at   https://www.amazon.com/kindle-vella/story/B096R3YF29

 

Hope you enjoy Mote’s amazing adventure!

 

T.K. is a retired police captain who writes Books, which, like this blog, go wherever her interest and imagination take her.  More at TKThorne.com


 

 

Behind the Magic Curtain – by T. K. Thorne

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Writer, humanist,
          dog-mom, horse servant and cat-slave,
       Lover of solitude
          and the company of good friends,
        New places, new ideas
           and old wisdom.

 

 

Four men who loved the city of Birmingham, Alabama asked me to write a
book. I look back on that day when I met them in the high-rise office
of a prominent attorney. They were all strangers, decades older. They
had lived through “pivotal nation-changing days.”
Three of them had been in the thick of happenings.  

As I sat at the polished hardwood table, I thought possibly they assumed
I was a scholar of civil rights because I had recently written a book
about the investigation of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing that
killed four young black girls in Birmingham in 1963 (Last Chance for Justice),
but to my surprise, the gentleman who invited me to that meeting said
he had done so because of a totally different book, a historical novel
set thousands of years in the past in ancient Turkey (Noah’s Wife).
I had to ask him why he thought that qualified me. He said, “If you
could write a book about Noah’s wife and make me believe that was what
really happened, then you can tell the true stories of what happened
here.” 

To say I was reticent was an understatement. What they were asking me to
do seemed a huge commitment, and so much had been documented about the
era, what could I possibly add? Then one of the men sent me his notes
about a day in 1962 when he pushed through the double glass doors of The Birmingham News, weary from an all-night stakeout with police, and
his eccentric, powerful boss shouted for him to join him for breakfast.
What was said at that breakfast changed a young reporter’s life and
affected the tangled web of history.  

I was hooked.

After the better part of a decade, it is done. Regretfully, three of the fine gentlemen who trusted me to write this did not live to see it. I only hope I have been true to their vision.

 

 

What folks are saying:

Behind the Magic Curtain: Secrets, Spies, and Unsung White Allies of Birmingham’s Civil Rights Days is a remarkable look at a historic city enmeshed in racial tensions, revealing untold or forgotten stories of secret deals, law enforcement intrigue, and courage alongside pivotal events that would sweep change across the nation.

T. K. Thorne has hit another home run with Behind the Magic Curtain. For five and a half decades we have read accounts of the civil rights era in Birmingham and Selma written by those with a particular ax to grind. Thorne is an excellent reporter, recognizing the nuances that “outsiders” or opinionated writers could not see or chose to overlook. Her reading and especially her interviews over the past several years have been remarkable, allowing her to give far more accurate details than we have seen before. For those who want to know the secrets of what really went on behind the “magic curtain” in those pivotal nation-changing days, days that brought the Civil Rights Bill in 1964 and the Voting Rights Bill in 1965, this is an important book to read.
—Douglas M. Carpenter, Retired Episcopal minister and son of Alabama’s Episcopal Bishop, C. C. J. Carpenter.

In Behind the Magic Curtain, T. K. Thorne introduces us to
those who operated behind the scenes in the civil rights movement in
Alabama, shedding light on the individual moral complexities of these
participants—some firebrands, some reluctant players, and some predators
who worked for their own gain. This journalistic exploration of a
complicated time in Alabama’s social history will sit comfortably on the
shelf next to histories by Dianne McWhorter, Glenn Eskew, and Taylor
Branch. — Anthony Grooms, author of Bombingham and The Vain Conversation

Deeply engaging, Behind the Magic Curtain tells a forgotten part of the Birmingham story, prompting many “real time memories” for me. The lively and descriptive writing brought the characters and settings to life, while diving into the white community’s role in all its complexities. This is a treasure trove of stories about activities and perspectives not well known to the general public. In particular, journalist Tom Lankford’s sleuthing and the machinations of the Birmingham Police Department, along with the risk-averse role of the local newspapers, and a full blown portrait of the inscrutable Birmingham News VIP, Vincent Townsend, make for a fascinating read.
—Odessa Woolfolk, educator, community activist, and founding president of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute

“T.K. writes like a seasoned news editor, meticulously hunting down facts and laying out the context in a colorful, intriguing way. Behind the Magic Curtain documents many untold stories and faithfully relates my own personal, unforgettable memories of a time of racial transition in Birmingham.”
—Tom Lankford, journalist for The Birmingham News

 “Novelist and former Birmingham Police Captain T.K. Thorne demonstrates
there was more to Birmingham of the Civil Rights Era than Bull Connor,
Klansmen, and African-American protestors.  Behind that “Magic Curtain,”
an ethnically diverse group from downtown to the surrounding bedroom
communities of ministers, priests, rabbis, newspaper reporters, and
housewives comprised a community belying monikers like ‘Bomingham’ and
‘Murder Capital of America,’ and fighting for justice in the Magic
City.”
—Earl Tilford, author of Turning the Tide: The University of Alabama in the 1960s

 Available for Pre-order now!

NewSouth Books
Amazon.com
BarnesandNoble.com


T.K. is a retired police captain who writes books, which, like this blog, go wherever her interest and imagination take her.  More at TKThorne.com


Wisteria Wars and Creativity in the Time of Covid—by T.K. Thorne

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     Writer, humanist,
          dog-mom, horse servant and cat-slave,
       Lover of solitude
          and the company of good friends,
        New places, new ideas
           and old wisdom.

Most people assume, as a writer, that I’m eating up the hours a little virus has bequeathed to us by WRITING. They would be wrong. Yes, I am working on a novel, but it’s in the editing stage. That means I’m calling on some craft skills, but mostly just plain old boring, repetitive checking for errors.
This piece is the first thing I’ve actually tried to pull from the creativity well, and I have no idea where it will go. But that is okay. I give myself permission to ramble and see if anything worthwhile will arise. (I encourage you to do the same.)  So here we go.

I’m fortunate to live on several acres of property surrounded by beautiful woods. Our nearest neighbors are cows. For the ten years before we moved here, I lived in the city, and tried to grow on a tiny patch of land what I felt was the most gorgeous of plants—a wisteria vine. For whatever reason, the one I planted with hopes of it gracefully climbing the crosshatch wood panel on the side of my front porch and spilling grape-like clusters of blossoms—never bloomed. When we moved, I dug up a piece of the root and planted it in my front yard, determined to keep trying. The ground was so hard, I ended up cutting off most of the taproot and throwing a small piece of it into the woods on the side of my house.

Thirty years later, that little piece of discarded taproot has been . . . successful.  That is like saying a virus replicates. It did bloom, draping glorious purple curtains from the trees.

At first I told it, “Okay, as long as you stay on that side of the path.” It didn’t. Then, I rationalized, as long as it stayed behind the fence in the backyard. (I didn’t actually go in my backyard very much, being busy with life stuff.)  But I looked one day after covid-19 hit, and it had eaten over half of the back yard.  I couldn’t even walk to the fence line. Two huge trees went down, strangled, and too close to the house.

It was time for war.

This engagement, like those in the Middle East, will never end. Wisteria sends out shoots underground and periodically forms nodes that may change the direction or shoot out its own horizontal and/or vertical roots, so each section can survive independently and pop up anywhere.  Of course, I have the most pernicious variety, the Chinese kind that takes over the world (challenging even kudzu, which fortunately, hasn’t found my house yet.)

My first priority was to save the trees near the house. The vines were so thick at the base, no clippers would suffice. I girded myself with a baby chainsaw and determination. It hurt to cut into those old, twisty vines, to destroy something so beautiful, but the trees were more important. I imagined that with each cut, the tree could feel the release from the vine’s embrace, the reprieve.  I was taking life, but I was giving it too.

I sprayed the growth in the yard and pulled up (some of) the root systems.  If you want a mindless, exhausting, frustrating, impossible task—pull up established wisteria roots. It will take your mind off anything, even a pandemic.

One side benefit of the fallen trees was that a little more light found its way into the yard, and I decided to try growing vegetables. Another feature of my backyard is an old fashion clothesline with rusty steel posts. Periodically over the past decades, I’ve thought we should take them down as they are eyesores, but another part of me (the part that worried what young girls with flat stomachs would do during the famine) worried that we would have a pandemic one day or some kind of disaster that would require actually hanging clothes out to dry, so I left them, as well as the abandoned rabbit hutch in the far corner.  We would be ready, if not attractively landscaped.  And worse case scenario, maybe the hutch, in a pinch, would hold chickens.

I thought my creative well was dry, but looking at those old steel posts, the pile of wisteria roots, the vines I had pulled up and cut down, and a package of bean seeds that has been sitting in a drawer for a few years, something started stirring. Beans need something to climb.  One of the fallen trees had taken out actual wire lines of the clothesline, but the poles were set in cement. They will be there when I am dust. The pole surface might be too slick for a bean to be able to curl up, but maybe—
And so, as a product of WWI (Wisteria Wars Episode I) and covid-19, I found that the outlet for creativity isn’t always words on a page. If my beans grow, they will be beautiful and feed me, and if they don’t, I will at least have a couple of funky art pieces in the backyard.

Foreground: Metal pole with wisteria roots and vines. Background logs
from tree felled by wisteria, the carcass of another felled tree, and
old rabbit hutch.

T.K. is a retired police captain who writes books, which, like this blog, roam wherever her interest and imagination take her.  Want a heads up on news about her writing and adventures (and receive two free short stories)? Click on image below.  Thanks for stopping by!

https://tkthorne.com/signup/

What is Normal?–by T.K. Thorne

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   Writer, humanist,
          dog-mom, horse servant and cat-slave,
       Lover of solitude
          and the company of good friends,
        New places, new ideas
           and old wisdom.

When I was writing my historical novel, Noah’s Wife, I realized my central character had Asperger’s Syndrome. At first, I rejected the idea, but a wiser part of my mind prevailed, and I let her be who she was. I added researching the condition to my digging into the ancient Mid East culture, geology, and archeological findings that shaped the background for my novel about the wife of Noah. 


Na’amah’s disabilities turned out to be strengths I never suspected, and I wrote in the author notes that I thought it was possible we were looking at this condition from a prejudiced and skewed perspective. 

Maybe we all carry genes that can express these abilities and difficulties in various ways, and they are part of our evolutionary inheritance. I thought I was going out on a limb, so stumbling on this video (link below) about neurodiversity was of great interest. Maybe we need to take another look at how we define what it means to be human.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWxmEv7fOFY


 ~T.K.

T.K. Thorne’s childhood passion for storytelling deepened when she became a police officer in Birmingham, Alabama.  “It was a crash course in life and what motivated and mattered to people.” In her newest novel, HOUSE OF ROSE, murder and mayhem mix with a little magic when a police officer discovers she’s a witch. 

Both her award-winning debut historical novels, NOAH’S WIFE and ANGELS AT THE GATE, tell the stories of unknown women in famous biblical tales—the wife of Noah and the wife of Lot. Her first non-fiction book, LAST CHANCE FOR JUSTICE, the inside story of the investigation and trials of the 1963 Birmingham church bombing, was featured on the New York Post’s “Books You Should Be Reading” list. 

T.K. loves traveling and speaking about her books and life lessons. She writes at her mountaintop home near Birmingham, often with two dogs and a cat vying for her lap. 

 More info at TKThorne.com. Join her private newsletter email list and receive a two free short stories at “TK’s Korner.”

The Collapse of Compassion –T.K. Thorne

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   Writer, humanist,
          dog-mom, horse servant and cat-slave,
       Lover of solitude
          and the company of good friends,
        New places, new ideas
           and old wisdom.

In police work, tragedy was a daily affair. I learned how to erect a professional wall between my personal emotions and what I encountered—abuse, rape, murder. Without those walls, I couldn’t have functioned effectively. I couldn’t take every abused child home. I couldn’t even ensure the abuser I put in jail would stay there and never hurt another. I survived by focusing on my job and trying to do it the best I could, while staying alive myself and trying to ensure the same for my fellows.  

I didn’t change the world. Did I affect lives?  I think so.
The tragedy in our world is still a daily affair and still overwhelming—war, famine, disease, disaster. I still have barriers because I can’t absorb the hurt of every other human in a personal way. For years, I couldn’t bear the thought of the Holocaust and refused to visit a Holocaust museum. Frankly, I feared fully acknowledging the weight of what had happened would disintegrate me. What if I couldn’t put myself back together? (Eventually, I visited the amazing Yad Yashem–The World Holocaust Center in Israel and I survived.)
Those of us who are fortunate enough to have security for our basic needs can be assaulted by guilt and confusion when we’re confronted with stark poverty, rampant disease, the results of natural disasters, or abuses humans visit upon one another.  We are told by TV ads that a cup of coffee a day can buy health for a child on another continent or a new life for a pitiful dog in a cage.  How do I drink my coffee without a crush of guilt? 
Far more often than not, I simply shake my head. There is a label for this—collapse of compassion. We simply cannot emotionally process the ills of the world.  

In The Book of Joy, the Dalai Lama–perhaps the world’s model for compassion–recalls an event where he was in severe pain. On the way to the hospital, he passed a man on the side of the road who was clearly in worst straits than he.  The lesson he took from this was one of perspective on his own pain, but when I read this passage, I wondered why he didn’t stop and help the man, despite his pain.  Wouldn’t that have been the truly compassionate thing to do?
The Dalai Lama must see people worse off than he every day. He also hears of the world’s wrongs. I imagine at some point he too has collapse of compassion. It is a survival mechanism.
We tend to perceive and process everything, including our values and morality, through the lens of circumstances and group psychology. The death of thousands or millions is an in-absorbable statistic that leaves us bewildered at how to exercise compassion in the face of the enormity of the pain or the impossibility of changing it. So we turn a blind eye. According to Max Fisher and Amanda Taub in a recent NYT article, “It’s not that we can’t care about a million deaths, psychologists believe. Rather, we fear being overwhelmed and switch off our own emotions in preemptive self-defense.” 
But we can identify with the pain of one person, especially if circumstances present a doable solution that doesn’t cost us “too much.” If we discover a homeless child or dog on our doorstep, we are more likely to open our door than send money to a far-away charity of possibly dubious nature or to be a “drop in the bucket” of a crushing need. If the Dalai Lama had not been rushing to the hospital, he might have stopped to see if he could help the man on the side of the road. When the media covers stories about a single person’s tragedy, we are more primed to react, to actually do something.
Our values of compassion are deeply rooted in our cultural and evolutionary heritage, but they are  called on in a way that is outside the framework of their evolutionary origins. For most of our history, we have lived in small communities that could absorb the needy stranger or widow, but today we are exposed to and confronted with problems on a global level—refugees from terror and economic scarcity at our borders, victims of warfare, disasters of fire, flood, wind and earthquake. All of these have been with us for millennia, but we have previously only faced them on a local level. Now we are aware (bombarded) on a daily basis, of what is happening in the world and with that comes a seemingly overwhelming burden of responsibility, so we switch it off.
Our first commitment is to our own well being and security. It makes no sense to let ourselves or our children starve in order to feed the homeless. My father told me often to remember the story of “the richest man in Babylon.” He taught to give yourself (save) the first 10% of whatever you make and that preparing for the future security for yourself and your family is a noble and worthy goal.


On the other hand, religious leaders have warned about clutching all of what we have too tightly (“It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.”) And they have provided a practical response in the 10% tithe rule. In Judaism, this is expected of everyone, even the poor, because giving is such an important part of becoming a fully-realized member of the human family.  It is not important how much, just that we do it.
The conflict and guilt and helplessness we feel at tragedy is human. Our walls are also human. Our inaction is human. Our actions to fix the things we can is human. How we choose to respond is an individual decision. There is no “right” or “wrong” way. You may volunteer coach. You may run for political office. You may be a philanthropist. You may speak out about the ills of the world or your community. You may, like the Dalai Lama, focus on being a joyful, compassionate human being and sharing how to do that. You may pick up trash along a river bank. You may write stories.
Just find your way.  

A retired police captain, T.K. has written two award-winning historical novels, NOAH’S WIFE and ANGELS AT THE GATE, filling in the untold backstories of extraordinary, yet unnamed women—the wives of Noah and Lot—in two of the world’s most famous sagas. The New York Post’s “Books You Should Be Reading” list featured her first non-fiction book, LAST CHANCE FOR JUSTICE, which details the investigators’ behind-the-scenes stories of the 1963 Birmingham church bombing case. Coming soon: HOUSE OF ROSE, the first of a trilogy in the paranormal-crime genre. 

She loves traveling and speaking about her books and life lessons. T.K. writes at her mountaintop home near Birmingham, Alabama, often with two dogs and a cat vying for her lap. More info at TKThorne.com. Join her private newsletter email list and receive a two free short stories at “TK’s Korner.”

Stiletto Heels, a Witch and a Deadly Dinner–TK Thorne

/in /by



   Writer, humanist,
          dog-mom, horse servant and cat-slave,
       Lover of solitude
          and the company of good friends,
        New places, new ideas
           and old wisdom.

I love the idea of vicariously wearing stiletto
heels because that is the only way that will ever happen!  What Rose Brighton discovers, however, is
they might very well be good for something else.

Rose is a police officer who discovers she’s a
witch of House of Rose. She’s received an invitation to dinner from a
devastatingly handsome man, a warlock of another House of Iron. All she knows
is that someone from his House has been trying to kill her and wipe out her
family.

So, of course, she goes—

The Club (pronounced with emphasis on “The”) is a private
dinner club atop Red Mountain overlooking the city. Very posh. I wear my black
dress and a pair of heels I bought, which are killing me. How do women walk in
these things? I let the valet park the car, because I don’t think I could make
it all the way across the parking lot.
In spite of the fact that she is dead, I can hear Aunt Alice
in my head protesting how dangerous it is to meet Jason Blackwell anywhere. I
wonder if any of my family members were prone to do dangerous or impulsive
things. If so, I inherited it, and it’s not my fault, right? Besides, I’ve got
to have info, and I’m not going to get any sitting on my butt.
So, for the sake of gaining intelligence about House of
Iron, which I know nothing about, I am practically standing on my toes trying
not to fall on my face. My sympathies to the Chinese girls whose feet were
bound in ancient times to keep them small for the aesthetic taste of Chinese
men. Thinking about that horrid practice makes me angry. Why am I torturing
myself on these stilts for the pleasure of men?
By the time I make it to the private dining room, I’m
scowling.
“Ciao, Rose!”
Jason Blackwell greets me, rising from his chair at a table by the expansive
window. “You are beautiful even when you look ready to eat the first person in
your path.”
“I look like that?”
“Indeed.”
“It’s the shoes.”
“Ah.” He pulls out my chair, and I sit . . . gratefully.
A bottle of wine chills in a bowl on a small stand by the
table. I’ve seen setups like this in movies, but this is way out of my comfort
zone. Jason gestures at the wine. “I took the liberty of ordering. It’s a fine
year. Would you like to try it?”
“Yes.”
He lifts a finger and a waiter I didn’t even see glides to
our table and opens the bottle, pouring a small amount in Jason’s glass. It
would be nice to have a touch of James Bond sophistication with wine at this
point, but I can see it’s a French white from the label, and that’s about the
extent of my wine knowledge. Fortunately, Jason seems at home with the
requirements and takes a sip, savoring it on his tongue for a moment before
nodding assent at the waiter, who pours my glass first, then his. I watch all
this with fascination, and because I am afraid to look at my date. He almost
hurts the eyes.
Suddenly Becca’s voice is in my head: Oh my God, Rose. Does he have a brother?
That breaks the spell and I smile. Thank you, Becca.
“So, has anyone tried to kill you lately?” Jason asks,
turning his attention to me.
I laugh and chastise myself for being so easily charmed.
This man, I remind myself, may have lived a lot longer than I, despite his
youthful looks.
“Actually, I have managed to outwit a sniper since we last
saw each other.”
His face, which I am now watching carefully, hardens. “I didn’t
know that. He missed, I assume.”
“How do you know it was a ‘he’?”
Now it is his turn to laugh. “Be easy, detective. I do not
know that. It was a chauvinistic guess.”
The waiter sets down a basket that smells heavenly. Jason
folds back the white linen to reveal the warm breads inside. “You must try an
orange roll, house specialty.”
I bite into it and close my eyes. After I swallow, my tongue
finds the bits of crystalized sugar on my lips.
Jason clears his throat. “I’m not sure if I wish to eat or simply
watch you eat.”
I open my eyes, my earlobes burning, and snatch at the menu.
I order fish, and he orders lamb. Appropriate. I feel like a
lamb stalked by a wolf and wonder if I used enough deodorant to last through
dinner.
Jason’s gaze drifts to the huge window that looks down into
the valley. “It is a beautiful view, isn’t it?” Below us, the lights gleam like
multicolored gems.
“It is.”
“Sometimes,” Jason says, “when I cannot sleep, I look down
on this from my bedroom window.”
Warning bells ding in my head. This personal revelation is a
bit of intimacy meant to make himself appear more human, a little bait thrown
out to gain my sympathy.
 I can play the game
as long as I know there is a hook beneath the bait . . . right?
“You have trouble sleeping?” I ask.
“More often than I’d like.”
I wonder what his
nightmares are about.
I take another swallow of wine and decide it is time to stop
flitting around. “I have a question.”
He arches a brow.
“Who is trying to kill me?” I ask.
For a swiftly passing moment, his face tightens. Anger? Then
the lines smooth and he considers me.
“I do not know.”
“You have no idea?”
“No.”
Was there the slightest hesitation before that answer? He
takes my hand and lightly rubs a thumb down the inside of my wrist. My pulse
jumps. ‘Jump’ is the wrong word, more like catapults.
. . . I take a deep swallow of wine and feel it burning into
my chest. “Are we going to have an honest discussion?”
His mouth crooks again. “That would be novel.”
“Answer the question,” I demand.
“Yes. Yes, we are going to have an honest discussion.” He is
amused again, which is irritating.
“You know more about who might have tried to kill me than
you are telling me.”
“What makes you say that?”
“I’m a detective, remember?”
“I think you are prejudiced against the House of Iron.”
“Maybe.”
He leans back. “I honestly don’t know. At times I’ve thought
it could be someone in my House, but I’ve no proof of any kind. Most of my
youth was spent in Italy where my father had a villa and a mistress. After his
death, I remained there. It is still my primary residence.”
“So who comes to mind when you think that?”
“Let us not play this game. I have no knowledge that my
family is involved. If I ever have, I will tell you. I find I have a desire to
keep you alive.  Frutti proibiti sono i più dolci.”
“Which means?”
“Forbidden fruit is the sweetest.”
My ears burn again. “Is that a promise, Mr. Blackwell?”
“It is a promise.” He smiles. “Enough of that. Now, let’s
talk about you.”
My defenses rear up. “What about me?”
“I take it you are not a social butterfly.”
“Was it the shoes thing?”
He laughs. “In part. You are intriguing, Miss Brighton,
though forbidden fruit.”
I sip my own wine. “Forbidden? In what way?”
“House of Iron and House of Rose never . . . intermingle.”
“Really? Why is that?”
“Let us call it a strong cultural tradition. Both Houses must
marry outsiders.”
His reaction makes me suspect this prohibition is more along
the lines of prejudice, and my jaw tightens. “Them” and “us” exist even among
the witches and warlocks.
. . .Our food comes at that moment. It is beautifully
presented, with a small sprig of cilantro and a lemon wedge cut artfully in a
spiral design, and I realize I’m starving. While he talks, I eat, feeling his
eyes on me again. I want to believe he had nothing to do with my family’s
murder. I can’t explain why. I just do. Maybe because his eyes are so blue.
When our plates are whisked away, I excuse myself from the
table to powder my nose and wobble my way down the hall. “If I ever try to wear
heels again, just shoot me,” I mumble aloud.
A platinum-haired lady exiting the women’s restroom gives me
an odd glance. I smile and point to my ear. She sniffs in disapproval of the
concept of people talking on invisible phones in public and walks on with her
nose in the air.
Once inside, the first thing I do is kick off the shoes, sit
on the toilet seat and rub my arches. I linger just long enough to give my feet
a reprieve, wash my hands, and reapply lip gloss. Lipstick requires far too
much aim and control. My hair is curling wildly from the moisture outside, but there’s
not much I can do about that. I wash my hands and dry them in the curls, a
temporary taming technique. Reluctantly, I slip the heels back on.
In the hall, a girl with freckled skin and bony elbows steps
carefully around the corner, balancing a tray of glasses. Unbeckoned, a surge
of living-green sweeps into me. The girl freezes, and a shadow girl steps ahead
of her, slightly out of focus, moving in my direction. I am seeing the future,
moments from now.
A portly shadow man exits the men’s room, which is next to
the women’s room where I stand, and bumps into the girl, spilling her tray. He
turns on her, angry and wobbly, probably drunk. I can’t hear anything he says
to her, but it isn’t necessary. The slump of her shoulders reflects his abuse.
The whole thing fades, and the girl in my universe or time-line resumes walking
toward me.
Without thinking about it, I step to the men’s room and lean
against the door. Someone on the other side pushes to get out, but I set my
weight into it.
“What the hell?” he slurs from inside.
When the waitress is safely past, I move away from the door,
and it bursts open. The man staggers out like carbonated foam pent up in a can.
At that moment, the headache that seems associated with seeing into the future
hits me, and I just happen to step on his foot with my heel. “Oh, I am so
sorry,” I say and leave him cursing and limping in a circle.
These shoes might be good for something, after all.

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A retired police captain, T.K. has written two award-winning historical novels, NOAH’S WIFE and ANGELS AT THE GATE, filling in the untold backstories of extraordinary, yet unnamed women—the wives of Noah and Lot—in two of the world’s most famous sagas. The New York Post’s “Books You Should Be Reading” list featured her first non-fiction book, LAST CHANCE FOR JUSTICE, which details the investigators’ behind-the-scenes stories of the 1963 Birmingham church bombing case. Coming in November: HOUSE OF ROSE, the first of a trilogy in the paranormal-crime genre. 

She loves traveling and speaking about her books and life lessons. T.K. writes at her mountaintop home near Birmingham, Alabama, often with two dogs and a cat vying for her lap. More info at TKThorne.com. Join her private newsletter email list and receive a two free short stories at “TK’s Korner.”



The Eye of the Beholder –TK Thorne

/in /by


   Writer, humanist,
          dog-mom, horse servant and cat-slave,
       Lover of solitude
          and the company of good friends,
        New places, new ideas
           and old wisdom.

Some things have confused me for a long time, such as why flowers are beautiful and spiders are not. What is beauty anyway? And is there any importance in asking or answering that question?
Obviously, there are some people who find spiders beautiful (yes, really), so the quality is not inherent in the object. I lost my father recently after a long illness and was thinking about my loss while walking to the mailbox. A crop of slender blue wildflowers on the road’s edge, caught my eye, their beauty an instantaneous salve to my grief.
How? Why?
Somewhere in the heart of a forest, an exquisite orchid is blooming, and no one is there to see it. Is it beautiful? No. Beauty is, indeed, in the eye of the beholder. Without the eye, it does not exist. The orchid exists, of course, but it is not “beauty” to the creatures that see or smell it, even those insects that it is meant to attract. If no human notices the wildflowers and deems them beautiful, they are just wildflowers.
A sense of responsibility followed this thought. Nature is harsh, relentless change. It is “eat and be eaten.” In our stellar neighborhood, two galaxies are colliding, gravitational forces ripping apart whatever life may have painstakingly evolved. Our own galaxy is destined to collide with another, our sun to die, our loved ones, ourselves.
We may learn that whales or elephants or other animals share our awareness of mortality, but, as far as we know now, people are the only creatures to seek meaning to life, perhaps because of that awareness. It is a burden. It is a privilege. In this chaos of change we call life, humans seek meaning, personal meaning.
The concept of beauty may be one of the unique perceptual structures of the human brain. Why did it evolve? Of what evolutionary value is it? Is it just that spiders pose a threat, so we instinctively recoil from them, while flowers pose no threat and may signal a source of food? Perhaps, but some people truly find spiders fascinating and beautiful. There are spider enthusiast groups. Honest.
Perhaps the concept of beauty is just an odd byproduct of the complexity of our minds, our thought processes. Or perhaps not. Perhaps it came into being to give us something we crave—meaning. I have occasionally been told that my book, Noah’s Wife, was “beautifully written.” This puzzled me. It is written in tight third person from the perspective of a young woman with what we now call Asperger’s Syndrome. She sees the world in literal terms. Looking at her straightforward words on the pages, I was befuddled at how they could be considered “beautiful.”

Le Rêve- Picasso

Woman with Mandolin-Picasso
But perhaps it is not the words themselves, but the fact that they create meaning for some readers, truths about being human, and that renders them beautiful, in the same way that Picasso’s art is beautiful to some eyes.

His paintings force us out of our typical perceptions, whispers in ways we may not be able to voice, even disturbs, but speaks the language of meaning and (some) find that beautiful, even in the harshness or starkness of his lines, just as some find beauty in abstract art or different types of music . . . or spiders.

Beauty is observable by all our senses, including our ability to see a beautiful act of kindness or a beautiful scientific formula. If we are uniquely capable of determining beauty, then we have a responsibility to see it, to open our eyes to it, to find meaning in it, our uniquely human meaning.


A retired police captain, T.K. has written two award-winning historical novels, NOAH’S WIFE and ANGELS AT THE GATE, filling in the untold backstories of extraordinary, yet unnamed women—the wives of Noah and Lot—in two of the world’s most famous sagas. The New York Post’s “Books You Should Be Reading” list featured her first non-fiction book, LAST CHANCE FOR JUSTICE, which details the investigators’ behind-the-scenes stories of the 1963 Birmingham church bombing case. Coming soon: HOUSE OF ROSE, the first of a trilogy in the paranormal-crime genre. 

She loves traveling and speaking about her books and life lessons. T.K. writes at her mountaintop home near Birmingham, Alabama, often with two dogs and a cat vying for her lap. More info at TKThorne.com. Join her private newsletter email list and receive a two free short stories at “TK’s Korner.”