The Cowboy Junkies & Being My Best Writer Self

The music takes me back to those winding Virginia roads and dark mountain nights.

Peg took this picture of me in 1996 near Goshen, Virginia

I drove fast in those days, around the bend in the mountain roads.

My favorite part of the drive from Washington, D.C., to a tiny town in Virginia, in the Shenandoah Mountains, was when I left the highway and the night was darker, my headlights brighter, as I leaned into the turns on the way to Peg’s farm.

Peg and I met in grad school, all tears and heart, poets feeling onto the page. Peg was the breast-cancer-surviving single mother of six who lived on a farm in the lap of the foothills, hills rising up from every viewpoint out her small windows. She invited me and a handful of other grad school friends, all within a three-or-so hour radius of driving and we’d spend weekends there, writing and reading and drinking wine and watching our breath puff in the cold dawn.

I played the Cowboy Junkies loud on my car radio as I drove to Peg’s. Loud. Leaving behind the full days of my work week at a weekly newspaper and my post-war apartment with books stacked on the floor of my room, I became my best self as the miles peeled away and the quiet of the country appeared.

Last week, I saw the Cowboy Junkies with my youngest son in a lovely Detroit theater. I’d seen them live 30-some years earlier, at the 930 Club in DC, and that place was packed. This time, most of the audience had white hair and they sat the whole time and the theater was half-full.

Pics of me from the late 1990s and early 2000s

But the music took me back, which is perhaps why any of us were there. Suddenly, I was back in that car, driving fast and leaning into the night. I was writing poems about every feeling and every experience, and my friends were crying over my words.

I was full of dreams and hopes and what-ifs and some-days. I yearned for an on-again, off-again boyfriend who was never The One, but was very exciting nonetheless. I wanted to do big things, be someone of importance, make a life of meaning.

Have I succeeded? I don’t know. Maybe.

Shenandoah Blue Ridge Mountains - a great place to write

But I still have some years left, and I’m determined to fill them with words that start meaningful conversations with many people. Maybe you. Maybe someone I don’t know yet.

It is incredibly brave to feel onto the page and show it to another person. There’s risk there—maybe the words are good, maybe they’re not. Maybe the reader will get it and cry along with me, and maybe they’ll just stare blankly or turn the page.

Writing is risky. And glorious.

Back then, at Peg’s farm, I felt so alive. So full of possibility.

Today? I feel even more alive than I could have imagined. Isn’t that a gorgeous thing? To have years unfold with stories to tell. To become bigger, brighter, to get it more in time.

Happy Book Birthday!

My first novel and ninth book, WOMAN OF VALOR, has been in the world for a year now - hurrah!! If you’ve read it, thank you! And if you’ve reviewed it, double thank you! If you haven’t read it yet, please support a working writer and buy a copy today!

It has been an honor to speak to audiences around the world about this story, and I have a full calendar of events ahead of me. I hope to see you at one of them!

Special Opportunities for YOU

Right now, CAVE OF SECRETS is FREE on Kindle for a short time. Help me reach bestseller status by getting your copy TODAY!!

And, if you’ve read either WOMAN OF VALOR or CAVE OF SECRETS and enjoyed it, would you mind writing a nice review on Amazon or Goodreads? I’d be so grateful!!

Finally, my writing program, The Writers Community, has 2 spots open for the 2025 session. Learn more here and if it resonates, please apply!

Oh, and my FREE monthly Writealong is this Saturday! Please join me to get some good writing in among a community of supportive writers.

Thanks for reading the Rebel Author Newsletter! I’m grateful that you’re here. If you like what you read here, please consider becoming a paid subscriber, sharing this post to others who might find it meaningful or sending me a message! See you next week.