What Can Happen When a Writer Retires , by Kathy Lynn Emerson

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I was delighted to catch up with Kathy Lynn Emerson at this June's Maine Crime Wave. As we were chatting (and I was trying to not look like I was eating all the tiny spinach quiches, which I was) she dropped a bombshell on me. 

She was retiring! 

I'm afraid I gaped in a very inelegant way (and probably with green between my teeth.) Kathy Lynn (and Kaitlyn Dunnett and Kate Emerson) has been part of the national and New England mystery scene forever. I read Face Down in the Marrow Bone Pie as part of my home-made crime fiction education back in the late nineties, and of course her Liss MacCrimmon series, set in the wonderfully named Moosetookalook, Maine are required reading in my neck of the woods. 

Of course, as she explained to me, she had some very good reasons. And as you'll see here, it's not quite like she's resting on her laurels...

 

 A question I hear a lot these days is: Why did you decide to retire? There isn't just one answer. I'm well over the traditional retirement age of sixty-five. I have arthritis, making long hours in front of a computer painful. The publisher of the two cozy mystery series I wrote as Kaitlyn Dunnett dropped both of them during the Covid lockdown and wasn't interested in the only other suggestion I had for a new series. No other publisher was exactly beating down my door, begging for a new book by Kathy Lynn Emerson or Kaitlyn Dunnett or Kate Emerson. After having had sixty-four books traditionally published between 1984 and 2021, I wasn't interested in writing something I wasn't enthusiastic about just to make a sale, especially if acceptance would mean committing to spending more time promoting a new book than it took to write it. I exaggerate, but not by much!

 

But the real reason I decided to call it quits was that, in spite of all the extra writing time available to me during Covid, I couldn't come up with a single new story idea. I still can't. Apparently, I've already used all the ones that appeal to me, some more than once. If I were to try to write another novel, I'd end up reusing plot devices, or settings, or character types, and possibly all three. I've always believed in recycling bits and pieces of discarded writing, but not to that extent!

 

That said, my career as a writer didn't exactly end. Even before Covid, I had started work on several self-publishing projects—all material I'd already written but which had never found a commercial home, in particular my grandfather's memoirs and a collection of over 2300 mini-biographies of women who lived in England from 1485 to 1603. I'd posted the text of both The Life of a Plodder and A Who's Who of Tudor Women online for free for years, but let's face it, those files really do disappear after a while. For—well, let's call it my legacy—I wanted a more permanent format. The Who's Who has too many pages for a print edition to be feasible, but works well as an e-book. For other projects, I was able to produce both e-books and print-on-demand trade paperbacks.

 

Oh, yes. There were more. My earliest published books were written for young readers. I wrote more of those than I sold and still had the unsold manuscripts. Plus I issued new editions of the ones that were traditionally published back in the 1980s. Then I put together a collection of essays (originally posts at Maine Crime Writers) titled I KillPeople for a Living, and a collection of short stories featuring pet photographer Valentine Veilleux, the character I'd once hoped would be the sleuth in a new cozy series.

 

 

At that point, I was still calling myself semi-retired, but people were traveling again. Conferences were back on. Invitations to speak at libraries in person started to reappear. And I realized that I didn't want to do any of that anymore. It's not that I don't like people. I do. But even Zoom programs are exhausting. Worse, prep time, travel time, and the usual pre-and post-performance second-guessing myself would take time away from working on my "projects." That's when I started saying "Sorry. I'm retired."

 

By then I'd branched out into creating e-book omnibus editions of my backlist historical mystery series—three volumes of novels and stories from my Elizabethan-era Face Down series and a one-volume collection of the Diana Spaulding mysteries set in the U.S. in 1888. Next up I planned to create an e-book omnibus edition of the three historical romantic suspense novels I wrote for the Harper Monogram line of paperback originals back in the early 1990s. And that's when things took an odd turn.

 

While I made a few changes to the other books before issuing those omnibus editions (mostly getting rid of excessive use of 'tis and 'twas), they held up well. I expected the first of my romantic suspense novels, Winter Tapestry, to be the same. It didn't quite work out that way. The more I read, the more I itched to make changes. To make it better. To take it back to the mystery  novel it had started out to be all those years ago. I ended up rewriting the whole thing, including reducing the number of point-of-view characters from many to one. I might not have had any fresh ideas for new books in years, but suddenly I had plenty of ideas for making an old story better.

 

I ended up with a new novel. Sort of. It isn't considered a new book by traditional publishers, or so my agent informs me. Since they would feel bound to reveal that it had been previously published, they would lose the opportunity to have it reviewed as a new title. Therefore, no one was interested in buying it. If I hadn't already been into Indie publishing, I might have been discouraged. As it is, Death of an Intelligence Gatherer (formerly Winter Tapestry) is available now for pre-order and the release date as an e-book and trade paperback is August 9.

 

Did I mention I've also created print-on-demand editions of two of my backlist nonfiction titles? How to Write Killer Historical Mysteries is already out and The Writer's Guide to Everyday Life in Renaissance England 1485-1649 releases on July 19.

 

I may be retired, but I'm busier than ever . . . and loving every minute of it.

 

Kathy Lynn Emerson has had sixty-four books traditionally published under several names and has self published others. She won the Agatha Award and was an Anthony and Macavity finalist for best mystery nonfiction of 2008 for How to Write Killer Historical Mysteries and was an Agatha Award finalist in 2015 in the best mystery short story category. In 2023 she won the Lea Wait Award for "excellence and achievement" as a Maine writer from the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance. She was the Malice Domestic Guest of Honor in 2014. She is currently working on creating e-book omnibus editions of her backlist titles. Her website is www.KathyLynnEmerson.com

 

Getting Older...Really?

LUCY BURDETTE: I have a bit of a shocking birthday coming up next week and it has me pondering. How old is old? Have our expectations for what we can do as we get older changed from previous generations? (Definitely, I’d say.) We know life is finite, so how should we spend whatever time we have left? Is it all right to feel ambitious and want to work like a demon, or would it be better to adopt a slower pace and call it retirement?

All this had me thinking about people I admire who are old enough that they certainly could have retired. But they haven’t, and they keep on doing amazing things. 

Jacques Pepin, a well-known chef and cookbook author, isn’t slowing down much at 87. Along with his daughter and son-in-law, he’s founded the Jacques Pepin Foundation. (Have you read his autobiography, The Apprentice? It’s extraordinary.) This year he published Art of the Chicken: A Master Chef's Paintings, Stories, and Recipes of the Humble Bird—we went to a showing of his watercolors at our local library in Connecticut, some used to illustrate this book. He's so lovely and humble...

Judy Woodruff, who recently stepped down as anchor of the PBS Newshour, could have retired, but instead is going on the road to interview Americans about what they want and need and how the divide in our government might be repaired. (John and I utterly adore her and clung to her nightly news reports during the worst of times in our country (Covid and politics.) In fact John wrote some of his famous doggerel during the pandemic and sent it in. We didn't hear anything back, but I like to think she loved it. It began like this:

Judy, Judy,  what would we do

On the nightly news if we didn't see you?

Your cheerful greeting is always a pleasure

You tell us the facts, and that we treasure.

You probe for answers

Extract what matters

You strive to pull meaning

from double talk and blathers.

Dorie Greenspan (75) has published 12 cookbooks, written for many magazines and newspapers, and recently founded a new Facebook group for bakers and food lovers, called Bake and Tell. 

Mystery writer Ann Cleeves is 68 and writing the best books of her career (in my opinion.) Lots of politicians seem to be trending older too. (No need to comment on politics here, but I really can’t imagine wanting to run the country at age 80.)  The New York Times also recently ran an article about older workers. You can read about them here. 

My hub recently wrote an article about this on his Top Retirements blog, and I was so struck by this poignant comment from one of his readers who’d had a stroke and now considers his career to be recovery. He said: “Well, work if you must, but keep in mind that life is short and we’re fragile beings.”

Some of the way our older years unfold has to do with health, and luck, and enough money to live on. Some might say that working to the end costs in other ways, such as family relationships. Others might say that working gives meaning to life...

I don’t have any answers on all of this, but would love to hear your thoughts on the subject!

Creativity in the Third Act, a guest post by Amanda Le Rougetel

 JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: If you hang out here at JRW daily (and if not, why not?!?) you'll know we have a real community of commentors, and I think we all feel like we know each other in ways small and large. So I was embarrassed to learn that our own Amanda Le Rougetel has a blog devoted to writing, creativity, and - pertinent for today - how to focus on those pursuits in retirement. Shoutout to Celia Wakefield for pointing me toward Five Years a Writer.

Retirement is much on the mind for many of my group as we all approach the age. For my author friends, the question is: do writers retire? Do artists? Musicians? Amanda says no - and that if you haven't started yet, retirement is the perfect time.

 

 

Julia, thank you so much for the invitation to be on the front side of the blog. I am honoured and delighted.

 

You know that question we ask little kids? The one that goes, What do you want to be when you grow up? Well, I think we should ask that same question of people who are heading into retirement: What do you want to be when you retire from the rat race? But do you know what I was asked, more often than not, when I was heading towards retirement? How are you going to keep busy? The little kids get a question all about hope and promise and dreams. The retirees — what do we get? A question about filling time. And that doesn’t sit right with me.

 

For me, retirement is my Third Act (capital T, capital A) and I want to play it out on a stage that is bright and active and, well, if not exactly loud, then I want to make some noise and I want to be heard. No invisibility for me. This retiree won’t be going quietly into the night…No. This retiree is figuring out how to build community through writing and art and how to translate those heretofore ‘hobbies’ into meaningful and satisfying work.

 

I spent 40+ years in the full-time paid workforce, first in various communications-related jobs and occasionally climbing a step or two up the promotions ladder, then in the education sector as a college instructor for the final years. Teaching was the most creative work I had done and the students, while occasionally frustrating, kept things fresh. Those final years of my formal career turned out to be the springboard into my Third Act as a Creative.

 

I am now ten months into retirement and thoroughly enjoying it, though I didn’t find it easy at first. The abrupt change in routine and schedule threw me for more than a loop; it blindsided me. I was so unused to having so much time on my hands that I could not find my rhythm for using it all. But then I remembered what May Sarton, the famous journal writer, said about time and routine and schedules: “A body without bones would be a limp impossible mess, so a day without steady routine would be disruptive and chaotic.”

 

I took Sarton’s advice, stopped whiling away the time and, instead, harnessed it for all those things that I had been longing to be able to focus on. As a Creative — someone who finds both joy and satisfaction in working with words and images — I no longer needed to squeeze those activities into the interstices of an organizational work week. I could use full days to write and to collage and, yes, even to read. Wow. What a revelation!

 

I had been planning for decades to arrive at this point in my life. I had been diligent about saving money and living within my means, so the money side of retirement was not the issue for me. Though this doesn’t mean I’m wealthy; far from it. I’ve never been wealthy, so it’s no surprise that I’m not wealthy now! Though I am rich — very rich — in that most precious commodity of all: time. And I want to get the very best payback from it I can.

 

For me this means continuing to work. Not as an employee, not in a larger organization with all the constraints that such an arrangement inevitably must bring. No. I am continuing to use my knowledge and experience and am leveraging my skills to develop and deliver writing workshops in the community with my long-time friend and creative collaborator, who is also retired and also a Creative. We have so much fun with this work, it is an endless source of amazement and joy for us. 

 

 

So, when people ask me how I’m keeping busy in retirement, I just shake my head. Because Creatives don’t retire — not from work, though we may, if we’re lucky, leave the rat race. Once we are free from the limits of the boss’s nine to five regime, we are able to work at our craft for as many hours a day as brings us pleasure and satisfaction. These days, that work feels like play to me and it’s certainly the most fun I’ve ever had working!

 

My schedule may be full, but I do not feel busy. I am happy. In charge. Productive. A Creative, retired from the rat race, still working, and totally engaged by living on that bright active Third Act stage.

 

Dear Reds and Readers: What are your post-work plans? Who do you want to be — or who are you already — in retirement?

 

 

Amanda Le Rougetel reads, writes and does collage art in the heart of the Canadian prairies in Winnipeg, Manitoba. She blogs at Five Years a Writer, and teaches writing workshops through Writing as Tool. She is a long-time reader and commenter on the JRW blog and is a loyal fan of the JRW authors.

Movies about Retirement @topretirements @LucyBurdette

Terrific blog in a second. but first:

BREAKING NEWS: TRUST ME  is $1.99! by Red Hank's psychological thriller was on all the best-of lists as one of the year's buzziest books--the starred review from Booklist said: "A knockout." Anyway! May we say: grab it now? Here's the link. 
And now back to our regular programming!

John and Lucy at Marigold Hotel

LUCY BURDETTE: I’m super-excited about today’s guest too—and not just because I’m married to him! When my husband John Brady retired from his regular job 13 years ago, he decided to try building an Internet-based website. He had the smart idea of helping Baby Boomers figure out their best place to retire. TopRetirements.com has grown to feature reviews of 4000 towns communities, and a weekly newsletter, free to subscribers. His articles are about all aspects of retirement from the serious - when to take Social Security and how to test your social security IQ or how to survive if you haven't saved enough money - to the whimsical - worst places to retire, bucket list items, and the seven deadly sins of retirement. (PS from Lucy, I won't ever forget the day I answered his phone and it was the office of the Governor of Illinois--unhappy that the state ended up on his "worst" list.) Today I invited him to share one of his favorite topics. Welcome John!

John Brady (aka Mr. TopRetirements): Coming of age movies like The Graduate, Midnight Cowboy, Easy Rider, and 2001: Space Odyssey became cultural icons for us baby boomers, back in the day. Producers of these blockbusters found huge audiences among our generation. Hollywood is still making movies for us today. Many aspects of the plots and characters are the same (love and loneliness, finding yourself), everybody is just a lot older! 

Here are my top 10 movies (including one TV series) for baby boomers that touch on the topic of retirement. I hope that you will add your favorites too. I started the list with more recent movies, then go on to some oldies but goodies. Most are classics, definitely worth watching again.

The Leisure Seeker. (2018) Academy Award winner Helen Mirren and two-time Golden Globe winner Donald Sutherland star as a runaway couple going on an unforgettable journey in the faithful old RV they call The Leisure Seeker. Their destination? Key West, and the Ernest Hemingway House. (Note from Lucy: We were so excited to see one of my writer pals featured as a guide in the Hemingway Home!)

The Quartet (2012) Once-popular opera diva Jean Horton (Maggie Smith) creates a stir with her arrival at Beecham House, a home for retired performers. No one feels the uproar more than Reginald (Tom Courtenay), Jean’s ex-husband, who still smarts from her long-ago infidelity.

Cocoon (1985). An all star cast includes top-drawer stars like Jessica Tandy, Don Ameche and Hume Cronyn. Fabulous story of people in a retirement home who discover a fountain of youth – courtesy of aliens who have invaded a swimming pool. Directed by Ron Howard

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2011). Great cast of retired Englishmen and women seeking a retirement haven at an Indian Hotel that is a little short of what it promised. Love and loss. Judi Dench, Celia Imrie, Bill Nighy, Ronald Pickup, Maggie Smith. The sequel is The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.

In Her Shoes (2005) Cameron Diaz, Toni Collette, and Shirley MacLaine). Based on the novel by Jennifer Weiner, a lost adult daughter comes to live with her mother in a Florida retirement community. She definitely livens things up for the old guys as she finds herself. Meanwhile her relationships with her mother, sister, and grandmother go in many different directions.

The Bucket List (2007) Old guys out for some last kicks before one of them, terminally ill, checks out. The Bucket List is a 2007 American comedy-drama film directed by Rob Reiner, produced by Reiner, Alan Greisman, Craig Zadan and Neil Meron, written by Justin Zackham, and starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman.

Under the Tuscan Sun is a 2003 American romantic comedy drama film written, produced, and directed by Audrey Wells and starring Diane Lane. Based on Frances Mayes’ 1996 memoir of the same name, the film is about a recently divorced writer who buys a villa in Tuscany on a whim, hoping it will lead to a change in her life.

Grumpy Old Men (1993). Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau are a pair of widowers who live lonely lives but enjoy some activities together. The character played by a beautiful Ann-Margret revs up jealousy between them. Darryl Hannah and an IRS Agent enrich the plot.

Mr. Belevedere Rings the Bell (1951). An urbane, sharp-tongued expert (Clifton Web) on how to stay young interrupts a lecturing tour to prove his theory at a dilapidated old people’s home. We haven’t seen this one but our movie expert friend Deb said: “I highly recommend Mr Belvedere Rings the Bell. It is much of a mindset on retirement years. I saw it when I was 15 and it made a huge impression on me”.

Grace and Frankie (TV). Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin are newly divorced, and their ex-husbands are a new couple. Funny and pithy in LA and Malibu. Netflix. There are at least 5 seasons.

What are your favorite movies that have some kind of retirement theme? (And another PS from Lucy, John is happy to answer any of your questions about retirement today, too.)

And you can sign up for TopRetirements free weekly newsletter here.

Lunch with Mr. Top Retirements (aka John Brady)

Lucy and John

LUCY BURDETTE: In 2007, my sweet husband retired from his regular job and moved home to start a website for Baby Boomers trying to figure out where to retire. As most of you know, I’m a writer. And I had grown accustomed to having the house to myself, except for the pets. In other words, lots of space—and peace. 

On that first day, he clattered up from the garage with boxes crammed with file folders and photographs and mementos from trade shows--all the junk packed up from his previous office, which he proceeded to unload in the dining room. 

his desk, I kid you not!

I caught him spreading his computer and piles of other miscellany out on the dining room table—the first thing every visitor to our home would see.

“Oh no you don’t,” I said. “You can’t set up your office there.”

“It has to be somewhere,” he said. “And don’t think I’m going to be eating lunch with you everyday, either.”

“I wouldn’t dream of having lunch with you.”

Mr. Top Retirement's summer office

After some more heated discussion, we agreed that he might enjoy sitting out on the porch—a nice view for him and out of sight for me.

“But what will I do when it gets chilly?” he asked.

“Think layers,” I said.

Nine years later, things have settled down quite a bit. He still has his spot on the porch, but he also has a perfectly nice office upstairs out of view. And sometimes when he sees what I’m making for my lunch, he asks if he can join me.:)

Besides that, he’s developed his idea into a major retirement website (with 20,000 subscribers to his weekly newsletter), having written thousands of articles about every aspect of retirement ranging from all kinds of best places to retire lists (best towns for bookstores, best places for walkability, etc.) to when to start taking Social Security, over 4,000 reviews of places to retire. I’m very proud of what he’s done and thought you might like an inside look.

LUCY: When you started out, how were you imagining the shape of the project? Are you surprised at how far you’ve come?

JOHN BRADY:  I wanted it to be a project available on the Internet and pertinent to baby boomer retirement, since I am a Boomer and I had just retired from my longtime job. My initial goal was a little vague: Get it started and see what happened.  The process of conceiving it and watching it become a real website with real people coming to visit has been really fun. My financial goal was that if it made enough money to pay our taxes that would be great.  It turns out that lots and lots of people found it useful. We get over 140,000 visits a month and sometimes close to a half million page views - that is pretty good. And the revenue is a lot better than I ever imagined. Pretty lucky.

LUCY: how about sharing some advice about the process? What were some big turning points? Or ideas you had that didn’t pan out?

JOHN: My previous experience in online publishing was a big help.  Without a disciplined process of putting down on paper what each web page would look like, and how each page would lead to the next in the navigation, the project never would have gotten anywhere. To save money I outsourced the technical development to a firm in India. I had to imagine and write down every detail very precisely, because they, or no one really, can read your mind.  It was a great exercise in imagination and in follow-through. Of course sometimes I was way off, but the team was able to either interpret or suggest a better way.

I thought that most of my revenues would come from active adult or 55+ communities purchasing enhanced listings. Turned out that Google Adsense was a much more important revenue source, and easier.  I also had a lot of ideas for developing other sites - BestAssistedLiving.com, BestPlacesinUSA.com, etc.  Although I thought they were great ideas, not many visitors agreed!  They still exist, but they are only marginal compared to Topretirements. What I learned from that is that getting a big idea is lucky  - enjoy it if you are fortunate enough to get one!

Hackers are a problem I didn't foresee. Having been hacked several times, I’ve learned there are people in Russia and China whose full time job is trying to hack into successful websites, either to steal traffic or plant malware. Finding a web developer who can successfully defend against these villains is absolutely critical (I have been lucky to find one, this time in Connecticut, not India).

LUCY: I know this is impossible, but can you give some quick tips about how to figure out the best place to retire?  And maybe some links to a few of your favorite articles?

JOHN: I am always getting asked, what is the best place to retire? And I always try to respond that it is a very personal decision.  It is all about knowing the criteria that are important to you - do you want to be near your grandchildren; how cold can your winters be; how important is culture, town size, walkability; how important are taxes and what is your budget. The answers to all of these questions and more help you narrow the possibilities and point you to some good choices. Lucy helped me write this free Ebook, which has been probably been downloaded 1 million times by now –
  

It contains short checklists which are designed to help you (and your significant other) narrow down the other possibilities.
In 10 years I and some faithful contributors have written a lot of articles.  Here are some all-time favorites:

Best Places to Retire for 2016 

Worst States for Retirement 

Dueling Carolinas: North vs. South Carolina for Retirement 

11 Affordable Places to Retire on theWaterfront 

Wow, Your Bucket Lists are Amazing 

What You Think You Know About Social Security Could Hurt You 

Thanks for having me. Jungle Red Writers has given me a lot of reading pleasure over the years, keep up the good work!

LUCY: Reds, John will be around today to answer your questions about retirement or even starting a business…and ps, I'll tell stories about him too. Like the time the Illinois Governor's office called his cell the day after Illinois made the #1 spot on the "Worst States for Retirement" list...

And if you'd like to sign up for the FREE Top Retirements weekly newsletter, here's the link.