​I thought I enjoyed my thirties. I mean, the events of that decade were tumultuous, but it was also the decade that saw me publish my first book and realize a dream of owning a little homestead with chickens and goats and whatnot. It was great, my body was starting to show a bit of wear and tear, but for the most part, it was still pretty well behaved. My kids were at a fun age (I mean, littles are cute and all, but they are EXHAUSTING.)  And I felt like I had a better sense of who I was as a woman.

But that did nothing to prepare me for entering my forties. Sure, I grouse about the gray hair, extra weight, haywire hormones, and whatnot. You could take a trip to Italy with the baggage under my eyes. But that’s all just superficial stuff.

I have to say, I LOVE being a 43-year-old woman. I’ve shed the people-pleasing part of me that held me chained in unhealthy relationships and places. Oddly enough, that freed me to be a better friend to the people who belong in my inner circle. Because when I stopped being such a doormat, I shed toxic people from my life. I’ve come into a truer, fuller sense of who I am.

I’ve always been the kind of person to take chances, to dream big and go after it. But there’s been in indescribable shift in me. I wouldn’t say I’m fearless, but perhaps damn close.

Don’t get me wrong: I want to shed this weight. I may not mind the gray hair sneaking its way into the mix, but I’m not one to simply shrug and say beauty is for youth alone. I want to take care of myself and stay active and vibrant and, yes, beautiful, for as long as I can.

But I understand that beauty is not the same as it was 20 years ago, and I’m okay with that.

I’ve given birth to babies. Gained and lost (and gained) weight. Been scarred, inside and out. Experienced great joy and great sorrow. I have LIVED.

There was a time when, like Josie in Elusive Magic, it scarred me to be dating at this age. Men often expect women to look like we did 20 years ago—or they opt for the younger version altogether. But 23-year-old me didn’t appreciate her worth or her strength. She wasn’t a bad person, but she wasn’t as kick-ass as later models.

All of the trials, all of the hard stuff, it’s given me a deeper sense of compassion. A sense of justice. The guts to fight for it.

Often, metals are refined by fire to remove impurities, thus making them stronger. The Bible often talks about God’s work in a person’s life as a refining fire. Whatever your faith, you know it. Our trials mold us and shape us.

Please don’t take this as me saying I’m all that. I’m not. I’m a hot mess. But I like this hot mess a whole lot better than I used to. I’m enjoying life more, too.

There was a time when I feared middle age. But I’m finding it’s a pretty good spot to be. And I look at the women in my life who’ve crossed into their 50s (and Michelle Obama and Kamala Harris—sheros!), and it makes me think even better things are yet to come.
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I consider my new release, Elusive Magic, to be my homage to women in their 40s: their strength, their power, the things they juggle every single day. It’s a celebration of friendship, an honest look at our imperfections, and a call to never stop dreaming.

​It seems like, on social media anyway, the generations are all at each other’s throats lately. The divisions between Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, Gen Z and beyond run deep. I know there are times I struggle to see things from my own mother’s perspective and she from mine.

After I finished writing Elusive Magic, which I absolutely consider to be an ode to Gen X women, I couldn’t help thinking about how my mother would respond to it. (I suspect it will not be her favorite of my books, but I could be wrong.) That led me to think about the fact that she has three daughters, and there isn’t a weak one among us. I think that says as much about her as it does about us. To have raised not one but three strong women speaks to her character.

And then I thought about my grandmother, with a third-grade education, married at 17. A mother to twins shortly after. She was so poor that by the time she had her third baby, she started losing teeth from lack of calcium. She grew up thinking her name was Norma Lee, only to find out well into adulthood it was actually Barbara Ann. How does something like that happen? Her mother wanted to name her Barbara Ann, her father wanted to name her Norma Lee. Mom was afraid of Dad, but also knew Dad couldn’t read. So, she said, “Sure honey, whatever you want” and then filled out the birth certificate the way she damn well pleased.

Maybe the seeds of my tenacity go back further than my mother.

One of my mom’s earliest memories was of my grandmother running to change out of shorts and into a skirt when Poppo showed up unexpectedly. (Poppo = the dad who couldn’t read and thought his daughter was named Norma Lee.) I could go into family lore about Poppo, but I won’t. They aren’t my stories to tell. Suffice it to say, Grandma had good reason to not let him see her breaking one of his rules. He was a hard man. But that didn’t stop her from trying, from pushing the boundaries of her world where she could.

I never met my grandma, not that I remember anyway. She died when I was one. She and I share middle names. I have her sewing kit on my nightstand. And I have her Bible, with a note in the front that says: Follow this, honey, and you’ll never go wrong.

I’ve always felt a connection to this woman. I do not know her, but I feel her spirit living on in me. The little boundaries she pushed turned my mother into the kind of woman who raised three girls alone (Daddy was in the Air Force, always off on TDY or just doing his own thing.) Once, a hurricane was descending on our stretch of Florida. She’d heard looting was bad on the evacuation routes, so she tucked an ax under her seat just to be sure she got her girls out safely.

My mother is absolutely the proper Southern lady who would tell her girls to fix their makeup and hide their crazy. But she’s also the kind of five-foot-tall warrior who would wield and ax to protect her babies.

The world these women lived in is not the world I live in. I cannot judge them anymore than I can judge my nieces, who live in a different world still. We are links in a chain reaching across the span of time, all the way back to Eve. The same chain, and yet each link so very different, subject to different environments, different stressors. So much so that it can be difficult to remember how connected one is to the other.
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All we can do, as women, is our best. We can support each other. Mentor each other. Learn from one another. And, perhaps, show a little grace.

​Some might call it a midlife crisis, but Josie Novak prefers to think of it as a midlife awakening.

With her relationship in shambles and her career floundering, Josie is at a crossroads. Enter fairy godmother aka best friend Brigitte, offering Josie a chance to make the dream of opening her own bar a reality.

 But achieving dreams is not an easy thing, especially when you’re dating over forty and helping friends through the highs and lows of marriages, babies being born and babies leaving home, and all the other things life throws at this group of women as they navigate modern-day femininity.
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Both heart-wrenchingly sad and laugh-out-loud funny, this forty-something coming of age story teaches Josie that being a woman might not be a fairy tale, but it is an elusive magic all its own.

Today, my new novel went up for preorder. More than any other, this book has been a roller coaster of emotion for me. Usually, my writing process goes something like this: I get inspired by an idea (from a dream or random thought, it varies). I research said notion, think about it obsessively, listen to music that fits, try to work out the ins and outs of the character in my mind, and once I am truly and properly ready, I sit and write. I write quickly and in a fairly linear fashion. It’s rare I know where a book is taking me when I set out. Even when I think I do, it surprises me. I self-edit as I go, so what I hand my editor is often remarkably close to the finished product. (Let me just pause right here to say my editor on this one is a freaking SAINT.)

Elusive Magic has not gone that way even a little. This book has been much more, well, elusive. It did start with a dream, about 18 months ago. I wrote like a madwoman for a while only to stop short because it started toeing up to my own story, one I was still living, a bit too closely. Then I determined to push through. Then Covid hit and suddenly writing a story about a woman opening a bar felt futile.

Any time I write a book, there is something of me in it. In many ways, it’s my therapy. It’s how I work through my life experiences, how I process. The supporting characters are often mish-mashes of the people in my world. A dash of this person, a sprinkle of that person, a pinch of so-and-so’s wit…

This book, however, relies more heavily on my own story than any book since Tumbleweed. The last couple of years have been ones of intense personal growth for me—and that was before Covid hit. So many of those experiences had to be dealt with, processed, before I could move on. Before I could write about love again.

There was a time when I talked on my blog about The One Who Made Me Smile. It turned out that he was The One Who Broke My Heart. Dealing with that, with loving someone and knowing you must move on from them, has been a lot. (You know how people joke about “Break up with Taylor Swift and she’ll write a song about you"? Apparently, break my heart and I’ll write a book about you.)

I know my books are fiction. But my belief in love, hope, friendship, finding joy even in the bad—those are real. So when I began to question all of those things, I found I simply couldn't write, no matter how much I wanted to. This book, written in the middle of a pandemic while my heart was shattered, was my path back to that.

Sometimes, I’d hit roadblocks because I would be writing Josie’s story and I’d think, “That’s not how that happened.” And then I’d remind myself that this is Josie’s story, not mine. (I promise the character Wesley Dryden is a work of fiction: snippets of charm from a man I dated in passing, a mental image of Eric Balfour—sorry Eric Balfour’s wife—and a whole lot of imagination.)

Sometimes, it was uncanny how much things aligned. I’d already written much of this book when I caught Covid and lost my job. And the woman who was half of the inspiration for Brigitte, the book’s “fairy godmother,” was the one who  anonymously stepped up to organize a GoFundMe that got us through that first month when my savings ran out and made sure my kids each had a Christmas present this year. (She tried to stay anonymous. Her elves totally gave her up, though.) Because even as I wrote those early pages, I knew she was the kind of person to go big for someone she loves.

In many ways, this book is a departure from my previous books. The language is a little coarser. There are words I debated pulling out because I know some of my long-time readers might be offended, but then I said to myself: Nope, that’s the word that situation calls for. Josie dates multiple men over the course of the book. She and her friends have very frank conversations about a whole plethora of things, some that might make a proper southern lady blush. (My mother is not going to be happy with me and I will hear about it.)

And Josie grapples with the natural cynicism that inevitably happens if you’ve been online dating for any length of time. I’ll tell readers right now: This book is classified as women’s fiction because she does not get the HEA with any of the men in her orbit.

But that doesn’t mean they don’t have a role to play in her happily ever after because they’re part of the woman she becomes. But more than the men who pass through her life, Josie’s love story is with the women she chooses to share her life with. Her love story is with herself.

So no, Josie’s story is not my own. But yet it is. And if you’re a woman reading this, her story is your story, too.

​I am struggling to adapt to life after COVID. I don’t mean the pandemic as a whole; I know that’s not over yet, however much we wish it to be. I mean my life after contracting COVID. There are the physical changes: my heart feels like someone is squeezing it most days, I get winded easily, and COVID brain fog is no joke. I’m honestly not sure I could keep up with being a full-time marketer again.

Beyond the physical changes in my body, my world has changed. My entire adult life, I’ve worked multiple jobs. For 22 years, I’ve also been mom to three boys, which meant there was always a bevy of things that needed done for them. There’s always been an insane schedule to keep, always a to-do list a mile long. Like any good American, I’ve been busy, busy, busy.

And now, not.

Don’t get me wrong, there are a myriad of things to do as I rebuild my writing career, build up my speaking engagements, and tend to my freelance clients. There are kids to shuttle until we can afford another car or two.

But it’s not the same.

Thirteen months ago, if I drank too much coffee and had to make an extra trip to the restroom, someone would comment. My days were packed with back-to-back meetings and I ate lunch at my desk to keep from falling behind.

Now, if I choose to eat my lunch in silence with my computer tucked away and my puppy asleep at my feet, I can. I even go to the bathroom whenever I have to pee, and nobody cares. Well, except the dogs, who wait outside the door for me. If I’ve had a stressful week and decide I want to take Thursday as my day off, I do.

My days are my own again.

All of this is good, but I still can’t quite shake the feeling that I’m in trouble. I’m missing something. I’ve forgotten to do something. I should be busy, busy, busy. I think for so many Americans, 2020 showed us how much we used our busy schedules to mask our pain. To avoid dealing with things we’d rather not.

On the flip side of that, I have word counts I have to make each day if I’m going to keep up with my publication schedule. Clients to take care of. Speaking engagements to polish. Corporate classes to deliver. There’s a list a mile long of things I need to do to better market my books.

But my brain just won’t behave. I struggle to focus, to clear the cobwebs. I’m reading more and more from researchers and others who are experiencing COVID brain fog. It’s very real and it’s debilitating. I truly cannot describe how much so. The simplest task sometimes feels insurmountable.

Last newsletter, I made a stupid mistake. I was certain I’d updated a link that I had not. More than once, I catch myself typing the wrong word, even though I know that I know the correct one. Frequently, I stop mid-sentence, no longer able to remember what I was saying. Everything is harder now. Compounding that, I move slower. I think slower. I am tired.

And I think many of us are struggling with the complete lack of routine. I tried to keep up with it for a while, to dress each day and hold a schedule, but somewhere along the way I just kind of stopped. And now time is the surreal construct and I struggle to meet deadlines and not miss meetings.

The added difficulties have given me a whole new appreciation for my number two son and all he went through after his accident. What I’m dealing with isn’t even close to what he overcame, and he did it with such grace and tenacity that I am compelled to live up to the standard he set.

I’m hoping warmer weather and more time outside will help. I try keeping myself on a schedule and to set more realistic goals for each day, knowing how easily I get overwhelmed now.

Here’s the thing: In many ways, COVID freed me. I was not happy but saw no way out of my hamster wheel.  Now I’m out. I have a clear vision of the life I want to build for myself as I move into this new and unfamiliar phase of life that is dictated by me and not by children’s needs. I also find I care less—not about the things that matter, but about the things that don’t. Something that would have stressed me out 13 months ago isn’t even a blip now.

I started this post last week, and then today, I got my first vaccine dose. I drove three hours round trip, but it was worth it. I feel like a weight has been lifted. My entire outlook is different already. I have hope that the end of this ordeal is near. Before I got the shot, I knew the seemingly endless nature of COVID was messing with my head, but I didn't realize just how much until it lifted.

As miserable as the last year has been in so many ways, I am a better person today than I was a year ago. I am better poised to build a happy future rather than continue to watch the years slip by as I’m bound by the tyranny of the urgent.

If only I can manage to adjust to my new world and shake loose the fog that’s lingering over my brain. It's all good.

When my middle son was five, he wanted to join the circus. My response was to sign him up for circus school. It didn't surprise me to find out that he was a natural at trapeze—he'd been swinging from the rafter since he could crawl. What did surprise me was how good he was at balancing a peacock feather at the tip of his finger.

All of the chaotic energy that was my son stilled, focused on keeping that beautiful, fragile feather balanced precariously on his tiny finger. The slightest breeze or muscle twitch would send it—and him— careening wildly.

It's appropriate that this is the follow-up post to my post about chasing dreams. Because this is the reality of it: I feel like a five-year-old trying to balance a feather on the tip of my finger.

Part of it is simply balancing priorities like immediate income and long-term dream building. Part of it is being a single mom, in a pandemic. Having Covid brain certainly isn't helping things. And part of it is my ex-husband, whose recent shenanigans have reminded me why I'm happy to be divorced.

It's been a rough 10 days or so for my little clan, and I find myself struggling to keep the books, the freelance work, and parenting from toppling over. No small part of me wants to shut down, to sit in comfy pants and drink wine while playing Farmville and binging whatever. But I have this feeling deep in my gut that if I can just keep putting one foot in front of the other, things will be better soon.

I don't know why I'm sharing this with you, only that the image wouldn't leave me alone until I got it typed up. I think, perhaps, it's for the reader out there who is also struggling to keep it all balanced. You are not alone. There's a bunch of us careening around like uncoordinated five-year-olds, trying to focus our energy on keeping our lives in balance. Which is hard enough when the world isn't crumbling around you.

But keep going. Put one foot in front of the other. Pick the most important thing and do it, then the next. And cut yourself some slack. Life is hard and you're doing better than you think you are.

In his poem Harlem, Langston Hughes poses the question: What happens to a dream deferred? In my case, it festered.

This March, it’ll be 10 years since my middle son was in a horseback riding accident that changed all of our lives. It was a devastating experience, but one that I believe God worked for our good. The story of Blake’s accident and of my dream are intertwined, for it was after I left my corporate job to care for him that my publisher found me and my dream of being an author came to life.

The next few years had their share of hardships, but in many ways, they were my happiest. We were living on a little homestead in the Missouri hills. I was in the thick of raising my boys—my greatest joys have come from being their mother. I was writing full-time, my books were doing well, and I was working for my publisher. 

I’ve actually been pretty blessed with my career. Not so much with moving up the ladder or making tons of money—I move around too much for that—but I’ve had some amazing experiences and made true friends along the way. But with Booktrope and my books, I was in my element. It was that beautiful thing where you work really hard and a lot, but you love it so much you don’t even notice. With Booktrope, I found my people.

So it was devastating to me on so many levels when they folded in 2016. I lost my job, my friends were scattered, my books were delisted, and it was the final nail in the coffin for my marriage. I went back to corporate life because kids like to eat (the divas). I self-pubbed my books on Amazon so they wouldn’t go away entirely, and I didn’t publish again for five years. The books became little more than an interesting conversation piece at the random meeting.

Don’t get me wrong; I’ve had some pretty cool jobs since then. As before, I had amazing experiences and made true friends along the way. But it was always there—that deferred dream festering in my soul.

I have journals filled with ramblings. A hard drive full of book ideas and partially finished stories. Every now and then I’d put forth a burst of effort. I’d make a promise to my readers and promptly break it because life always got in the way. But really, down deep, it felt like my dream had passed me by.

And that ate at me.

I truly believe I did well for the companies I worked for. I gave them my all, drove revenue, and learned much. But that didn’t change the fact that as long as I wasn’t doing what I was created to do, a piece of me was missing. The longer it wore on, the more miserable I became.

And then COVID happened, and I found myself at a forced crossroads. I no longer had the corporate job and I had a choice to make: scramble to find a new one or return to my books. My kids aren’t little anymore; they no longer depend on me quite like they used to. Number one is grown. Number two is moving out in the spring. Number three has a year left. I talked to all three of them and we made a family decision that it was time for me to revive my dream.

As it happened, a couple of friends who are still deeply immersed in the book world reached out because they knew of a successful women’s fiction author who needed a second set of hands to keep up with her platform. Introductions were made, friendships formed, and one thing kind of led to another. Ultimately, two big things came from that meeting.

The first is that I launched my own small business putting my knowledge of publishing, editing, and marketing to use so I could keep my head above water (and a roof over it). Dolittle Author Services got its name because friends jokingly call me Ms Dolittle and it lent itself to the tagline “Because sometimes you just need a little help,” which amused me.

The second is that my existing books got cleaned up interiors, reorganized to better align with their various genres, and they got gorgeous new covers. They’re being relaunched (this week, in fact!) in hopes of breathing new life into them before the launch of my next book.

Last week, my editor and I met to put together a game plan to get the next book done on time (I’m not making that announcement until I’m 1000% sure we can meet the goal; I will not do that to my readers again!) But it is coming. Soon. I actually have a full publication schedule mapped out for 2021. 

After a five year drought, there will be new books. Lots and lots of books. 

Because I do not want to defer my dream any longer. I don’t want it to dry up or fester because the damage done to me when that happens is too much to bear.

So, wish me luck. And, you know, buy my books.​

by: Tabitha Caplinger