Regina Buttner on A Humorous Look at NOT Dating Over 50

by: Regina Buttner

If you should happen to do an internet search for “Dating over 50,” you’ll find tons of advice, most of it geared toward middle-aged women. Your search will yield bullet-pointed lists of issues for the mature dater to consider as you “get back into the game.” Dating in our fifties is different from what it was in our twenties, the experts caution, and we must take that into consideration as we re-embark on our search for love. We are wiser and more experienced now, and our tastes and needs have changed, too.

Well, I certainly hope so! There are some people who yearn for a magical elixir that will restore them to the glory days of their youth when they were wild and free, and their future was a blank page. Not me, though. I enjoyed plenty of good times with my girl crew during our teens and early twenties, going to concerts, taking random roadtrips, partying into the night. We went out with guys who were definitely The One, might possibly be The One, or had no chance at all of being The One. We met guys who we prayed would call us, and guys we hurriedly ghosted, long before “ghosting” was even a thing.

Yes, I had lots of fun in my younger days, but I eventually settled down, got married and started a family. Unfortunately, after the marriage had run its dismal course, I found myself single once again. Learning to socialize as a divorcee was a whole new world for me. Each time I joined my married siblings and their spouses for a dinner out, I felt like I was doing perpetual penance as a third or a fifth wheel. “Why don’t you try one of the online dating sites?” a successfully re-dating friend suggested. “Everyone’s doing it now. It’s not just for losers anymore.”

Thanks, girlfriend. I did eventually agree to give online dating a shot—which turned out to be an apt metaphor. It was like shooting in the dark at a moving target. After a few weeks of scrolling through countless profile photos and reading enlightening bios about Gabe who prefers steak over pizza, and Marcus who was “looking for someone to spend time with” (isn’t that what dating essentially is?), I was ready to pack it in. My inbox was full of messages from catfishers, narcissists, obviously married men (duh, your wedding band is showing in that out-of-focus golf pic), and a disturbing number of outright weirdos. Thank you for your interest, gentlemen, but I’m good!

Time for a paradigm shift. I gave my single situation a great deal of deep reflection, and decided it wasn’t so bad after all. As an unattached person, I have the freedom to do as I please, whenever I please. I can stay up reading till midnight if the mood strikes me, or take off to the beach on a whim. I can cook myself a nice meal at dinnertime, or not bother to eat till midnight if it suits my mood. My dog can commandeer the entire other half of the bed if she wants to (and she often does—she’s a corgi, and corgis have long bodies). Sour grapes? Nah. Those fish can stay in the sea. I’ll be paddling over their heads in my kayak, enjoying the solitary ride.

Regina Buttner is a registered nurse-turned-writer who was raised in beautiful upstate New York, where she spent many years exploring the small towns, winding back roads, and scenic hiking trails in the Adirondack mountain region. She recently traded the snowy upstate winters for the sun and surf of coastal Florida (but in my heart, I'm still a North Country girl!) Her favorite pastimes in the Sunshine State are kayaking among the mangroves, walking the gorgeous beaches, and attempting to teach tricks to my crafty little corgi, Pekoe. Down a Bad Road is her second novel, with more to come!

Alenka Vrecek on Healing and Rebuilding Life

By: Alenka Vrecek

In solitude I found a very different kind of strength, one I’d never experienced. I was purging poisons from my body and mind. I was cultivating the soil in which fresh seeds of life could be planted again. And for that, I needed to be alone, as painful or as lonely as it sometimes felt. 

I wrote these words a month into my 2500 mile bike journey. Every day I would spend endless hours pushing my bike up impossibly steep and long climbs, following Sierra and Baja Divide through remote and often hostile environment. I needed the physical pain, the raw feeling of vulnerability on the fringes of life and death, precisely so I could feel alive. During the long stretches of alone time, I created space into which fresh life energy could flow. I captured my thoughts by typing them into the iPhone on the side of a dusty trail, or at lunch break, or laying exhausted on a deflated pad in my tent at night before they vanished. Just like on my long, difficult, and often dangerous bike journey, I was healing during my writing process. Each day I learned something new; I was reinventing myself. 

The idea to ride a bike from my home in Lake Tahoe, to my second home in Baja, Mexico, was born on a short bike ride between my daughter’s games at the soccer tournament in Medford, Oregon. My husband of fifteen years and I were in the process of a complicated divorce. There was plenty of sadness, confusion, fear, and uncertainty. Desperate for a change and an adventure, I wrote the idea on the back page of my Rumi poetry book, which was my constant companion. 

Years went by and life with work and three kids was busy. Then I met the man of my life and six years later we married on the top of the mountain overlooking Lake Tahoe. It was a crisp, sunny, winter day. We found happiness in a home we created for our blended family. The kids were growing older and one by one they left for college. Then, all at once, life unraveled. A devastating ski accident ended my thirty-year-long ski coaching career and with that I lost my identity. While recovering and still on crutches, I felt the lump on my right breast and instinctively knew it was not supposed to be there. Surgeries, chemo, and radiation followed. During the last round of chemo, I had my first routine colonoscopy. It revealed a carpeting of polyps. I was fifty-two-years old and facing the end of life for the second time in the same year. Everything was slipping away in a hurry. While waiting for the removal of my entire colon for which the date was already set, my husband announced he had Parkinson’s. His self-diagnosis was confirmed by doctors only a handful of days later. 

One day, lying in bed and feeling sorry for myself, I reached for my worn out Rumi poetry book and it just so happened, it opened on the page where I wrote the words fifteen years earlier. The idea of riding my bike from Tahoe to the tip of Baja Peninsula was now an inner command. I had that many more reasons to follow my dream and go on this long and crazy bike ride. 

The kids were grown up and didn’t need me much anymore. My cancer and my husband’s Parkinson’s diagnosis gave me full permission to do something greater than myself. Sick of hospitals, I deferred the removal of my colon. I was running out of time and I did not want to have regrets. 

On my two month-long journey I wrote a blog to share the experiences with family and friends. People I didn’t even know, encouraged me to write a book. Sure, I thought, what a great idea. I’ll just turn my blog into a book, send it to a major publishing company and they will love it so much, offers for the book deal will rush in. Ha!

I quickly learned how wrong I was. Receiving rejection letters one after another, made me realize how much I had to learn. I asked for help and received it. I wanted to learn more, and I took every opportunity to do so. I continued honing my writing skills by taking as many online courses as I could and attended writing conferences. 

COVID insinuated itself into our lives, and I had no excuse but to write. It was a cathartic, cleansing and a healing process. Collaborating with accomplished writers and working with editors, I was learning, creating and experiencing personal growth. Word after word, page after page, She Rides was born.

Life throws challenges at us all, and even in the darkest of hours, we somehow find the way to survive and the strength to move on. Like the parched desert after the soaking rains, we spring back to life. We all have to find our own way, but reading stories about adventures, struggles and triumphs of others, can inspire us and show us we are not alone. I hope that by sharing my story, others will relate and find the strength to get out of their comfort zone and follow their own long forgotten and deeply buried dreams. 

Alenka Vrecek was born at the foot of the Alps in Slovenia, a part of former communist Yugoslavia. Born with a spirit for adventure, she came to America at twenty years old with a backpack, a pair of skis, and a pocket full of dreams. She was a ski coach and a director of Pedagogy for Squaw Valley and Alpine Meadows Ski Teams for thirty years. Alenka owns Tahoe Tea Company and lives in Lake Tahoe, California, with her second husband, Jim, their four children, three grandchildren, and a Golden Retriever named Monty.

Kerry Chaput on Fresh Drafts, Intuition, and Inspiration for 'Chasing Eleanor'

Inspiration is a funny thing. It can come to us like a lightning bolt, through the lyrics of a song, or in the fog of a dream. Ask any writer where their stories come from and you’ll get a myriad of answers, and in that vein I created the WHAT (What the Hell Are you Thinking?) interview. 

Today’s guest for the WHAT is Kerry Chaput, author of Chasing Eleanor which releases on June 15

Ideas for our books can come from just about anywhere, and sometimes even we can’t pinpoint exactly how or why. Did you have a specific origin point for your book?

I’ve always dreamed of writing a manuscript set during The Great Depression, but never had a clear idea of what the hook would be. I started to freewrite a few scenes about a teenager named Magnolia in 1936. I had very little direction, until three chapters in when research led me to the time Eleanor Roosevelt visited the inn where my character worked—at the same time my story was set. As Eleanor has always been my favorite historical figure, it felt like serendipity! I rewrote the story that would become Chasing Eleanor. At its heart, it’s an admiration letter to Eleanor as seen through the eyes of a strong, lost, hopeful girl trying desperately to put her family back together. 

Once the original concept existed, how did you build a plot around it?

I’m a sucker for the found family trope, so I knew Magnolia would go on a great journey with friends who could heal each other (also a nod to my childhood obsession with the movie The Journey of Natty Gann). I began by introducing Eleanor as a symbol of hope for Magnolia before the two have a chance encounter. In historical fiction, staying true to research goes hand in hand with crafting plot. I read dozens of memoirs to prepare for this book, and they all had similar experiences. Families losing jobs, putting food on credit, leveraging their houses, begging, bartering, often homelessness and usually broken families. Magnolia steps into the role left by her troubled parents with the youthful assumption she can manage the house and her brothers. She believes she can give them the life they deserve. Until reality hits—as it always does—and all Magnolia’s best intentions lead her down the same road. Although she begins to lose everything she cares about, her fighting spirit won’t let her give up. She must find something to hold onto, and a promise from the First Lady is as good a hope as any. After that, I crafted Magnolia’s journey through 1936 America, with dust storms and hunger, and all types of characters, including her new friends Hop and Red, who face their own struggles for survival. Chasing Eleanor explores friendship, family, and love as these orphans face the terrifying world together. 

Have you ever had the plot firmly in place, only to find it changing as the story moved from your mind to paper?

I don’t plot. I’m a pantser all the way. Rewrites don’t intimidate me, and I love when characters guide me in a surprising direction. Every story I’ve ever written unfolds as I’m in the pages. I don’t know what the plot will be until I’m in it, feeling my character’s choices and motivation. It can be unnerving to write without a plan, but I find the purest moments when I keep all possibilities open. My first draft of Chasing Eleanor was missing something. Magnolia was so close to my own struggles, yet I felt a distance in her words. I knew Magnolia deserved the best I could give, so I moved all 87,000 words to the recycle bin and started over. The next day, I jumped right in on a fresh draft. I stumbled, but I never gave up, inspired by the very protagonist I was trying to understand. This time, I yanked open the part of me I hadn’t realized I was protecting. I cried my way through that next version, but as I wrote The End, I knew I had left it all on the page. 

Do story ideas come to you often, or is fresh material hard to come by? 

New story ideas are my fuel! I always have 2-3 ideas floating around and keep a folder of everything that comes up. Most ideas take months or years to form, so I like having a few to choose from. I’m like a mood reader with my own stories! Interesting ideas for character or setting frequently pop up in my dreams, so I make sure to have a notebook ready at my bedside. Ironically, all those ideas find their way into my manuscripts in some way, even subtly as character backstory or motivation.  

How do you choose which story to write next, if you’ve got more than one percolating?

Intuition, mainly. When my character slides into my dreams and wakes me up at night, I know I’ve found my next project. Those ideas always transform into something quite different, so I never get too attached to any one thing. In true type A fashion, I usually draft two projects at a time to allow my brain to switch gears if I ever feel stagnant. The break helps me every time.

I have 6 cats and a Dalmatian (seriously, check my Instagram feed) and I usually have at least one or two snuggling with me when I write. Do you have a writing buddy, or do you find it distracting?

I have two! My black Labrador is my good luck charm. I write at 5am every morning and he loves to join me on the couch. I like to believe his cuddles ensure a successful writing session. We share a blanket, and he snores while I work so it’s a perfect setup for us both. I also have an adorable golden retriever puppy who comes and goes for attention, but doesn’t appreciate that I’m not constantly playing with him. I always break for puppy hugs. I would be lonely without my buddies. They certainly make the process more fun.  

Kerry Chaput is an award-winning historical fiction author. She believes in the power of stories that highlight young women and found families. Born and raised in California, she now lives in the beautiful Pacific Northwest, where she can be found on hiking trails and in coffee shops. Connect with her at www.kerrywrites.com, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter.