New Beginnings

The New Year is traditionally a time to reflect on our lives and figure out what challenges are ahead, or what changes we want to make. Do we like our living environment? Our jobs? Is our health on track or should we get a membership at a health spa?

Are we happy with the progress of our writing careers? Do we feel comfortable with our progress, or is it time to shake things up a bit by taking some workshops? Is it time to start a new book or a new series? Do you have a drawer full of perfectly good first draft stories that need to be edited, finished and released?

January’s Sage Challenge was to write up to 800 words on something involving beginnings or starting over in any genre. The stories/poems submitted are below.  Enjoy!

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             Authors                           Titles

• Maralie Waterman               Agnes’ Grand Idea
• Pat Walkow                           Embracing My Authorship
• Jim Tritten                            The Call
• Dita Dow                               The First Lie
• Léonie Rosenstiel                I Admit it, I’m 78 years old and in Law School
• Reza Ghadimi                      Brewing a Pot of Hope
• Ruth E. Thaler-Carter        New Beginnings
• R. U. Kidden                         Reasonable Alimony
• Sam Mooreman                   Rolling On

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Agnes’ Grand Idea

by Maralie Waterman

Agnes K. Pinklepuss announced the beginning of her fabulous new novel on a Tuesday. “It’s not eternal damnation. It’s only Tuesday,” she said to herself; never having thought well of Tuesdays in general.

I’m starting,” Agnes told her husband at breakfast.

Gerald looked up from the morning paper, his pate lustrous as a candied apple in the sunlight from the kitchen window. He blinked, “starting what, darling?”

“My new novel,” declared Agnes, buttering rye toast with the authority of Wellington dispatching Napoleon to St. Helena. “It begins with a tragic lighthouse keeper.”

“Why tragic?” Gerald asked.

“A lost love dying of tuberculosis.”

“Tuberculosis?” Gerald repeated, as though testing his footing on an icy walkway. “Historical, then?”

“Oh no,” Agnes replied, tucking an escaped magenta lock into her pencil bun. “Science fiction fantasy.”

“Ah…” Gerald sighed and wondered if it might not be time to feed the cats.

“And there are ducks.” Agnes took a decisive bite of her toast, chewing thoughtfully as she toyed with the cerulean beaded chain around her neck that kept the glasses, she didn’t really need handy at all times.

“Regular quack-quack ducks?” Gerald queried, pulling his bathrobe around a middle that kept expanding without him understanding how.

Agnes surveyed her husband of thirty-two years as though he’d lost his mind. “How interesting would that be?” She took another bite of toast and replied, “they’re communists, Gerald.”

“Of course,” Gerald replied, discarding his paper. The Sun truly had nothing on his Agnes. “How silly of me.”

“And pudding.”

“What sort,” Gerald asked, intrigued. “You know I fancy butterscotch.”

Agnes eyed Gerald, as she might one of the cats, if it picked up a pen and began taking notes. “The pudding is metaphorical.”

“Right.”

***

Agnes phoned her sister, Kate, next.

“It’s terribly exciting.” Agnes explained, “There’s a fog that talks.”

“A what?”

“A fog that talks… opinionated like the former PM. Quite rude really.”

“Agnes, are you well?”

“And an evil hat worn by the antihero.”

Kate tapped her freshly polished nails on the table. Each phone call with Agnes made her feel like she needed to up her prescriptions. “The hat is evil and worn by the villain?”

“Anti-hero, Kate,” Agnes continued. “They have very different motivations.”

“Okay…”

“But the anti-hero is only an anti-hero because of the evil hat.”

“I have another call coming in,” said Kate.

***

By lunchtime, Agnes was explaining the story to her friends Jane and Martha.

“And the ducks form a committee,” she said while arranging the cutlery, salt and pepper shakers as waterfowl. “They seek to overthrow the tragic lighthouse keeper, but he’s not really deposed. It’s more of a symbolic coup.”

“If there’s a lighthouse, shouldn’t they be seagulls?” Martha asked, straightening her glasses.

Jane gave her wife a warning look and said, “I think the ducks making a committee sounds ever so logical. You’re so creative, Agnes.”

“Does anything explode?” asked Martha hopefully, as she was a fan of all things Mission Impossible.

“Martha…” Jane began.

“Possibly a shoe… yes, a shoe,” Agnes announced gleefully.

“A shoe explodes?’ Jane repeated. “Does it belong to the lighthouse keeper?”

“Oh, no. More a metaphorical exploding shoe,” said Agnes.

“Like in Magnolia?” Martha queried.

“Was there a metaphorical exploding shoe in Magnolia?” Jane asked.

“There were metaphors on metaphors in Magnolia,” Martha replied.

“It’s a subplot,” Agnes began.

***

That afternoon, Agnes cornered a timid young man in a watch cap on the bus. The man looked around and clutched at his Greengrocer bags protectively. “I don’t usually talk to strangers.”

“Posh. We’re not strangers, or we won’t be for long,” Agnes gushed. “Now, about those ducks…”

The man jumped into traffic at the next stop, leaving his Greengrocer bags behind.

***

That evening, Agnes sat down at her desk. She inserted a fresh piece of paper in the typewriter. She waited.

“Alright. It’s just you and me, now,” Agnes informed the typewriter, the paper and the walls.

There was no reply.

“Don’t be like that,” Agnes sighed and hit the return.

The typewriter stared back, smug and silent.

Gerald poked his head in, “How’s it coming?”

“Arrgghh!” Agnes threw herself across the typewriter in response.

“I’ll come back later,” Gerald said.

“This was my bloody masterpiece!” Agnes wailed to the room at large. “Where are you?”

Silence.

Agnes rose, stalking about the room. She downward dogged and sun saluted. Perhaps some yoga to release the creative energy trapped in her chi?  Maybe Tuesdays were eternal damnation? This was Agnes’ thought as she returned to the typewriter. She glared at the sparkling sheet of paper before slowly reaching out to peck with one index finger: It was a dark and stormy Tuesday night…

~The End ~

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Embracing My Authorship

by Patricia Walkow

2026 will be a year of recommitment to my life as an author, and the year I solidify what “success” means to me.

My writing life started six months shy of my thirteenth birthday, decades ago. That’s when I got my first rejection letter.

I had written a story about the day my little sister made her First Communion. My parents hosted a party to celebrate, and the adults were talking about people of other ethnicities. And the talk wasn’t charitable. I knew their conversation did not reflect the sacred events of the day. So, I wrote a story about it.

“Why don’t you send your story to The Saturday Review?” Dad asked. “It’s the best literary magazine.”

A few weeks later, I received a rejection letter. I considered myself a failure as a writer.

Nonetheless, I dabbled through the years: I wrote my summer camp’s newsletter; three of my haikus were published in an anthology of high school poetry. As a teacher, I curated and produced an anthology of children’s short stories in the school where I taught. When I left teaching and entered the world of computer programming, I wrote technical and non-technical articles for every employer I had.

Thirty years after that first rejection letter, I came across it and read it again.

My eyes had grown wiser. The letter was kind. Helpful. The editor liked the story and gave me the name of a youth magazine. She encouraged me to submit my story to them.

But I didn’t.

Yet, re-reading the letter planted a seed.

In my forties, I got my first dog, Cheyenne. I approached our local newspaper, The Glendale [California] News Press and pitched an idea to them. Thus, my Dog’s Day Out column was born, replete with my byline and a photo of me and the dog. We took trips through California and I wrote about them, offering insights for dog-accompanied travelers. I was paid for each article, and Cheyenne became a local celebrity.

One morning, my husband and I went out to breakfast with him. Halfway through the meal, an older man approached our table and asked, “Is that the dog who writes the newspaper column?”

“Yes,” I replied. “I’m his editor.”

That little column both validated my writing and softened my youthful failure. A fringe benefit was that I got invited to things—dog parties, local canine events, and making rounds with hospital therapy dogs.

When I moved to New Mexico, my writing blossomed. I no longer allowed rejection to inhibit me from submitting stories. I co-authored a business book, wrote a few articles for The Corrales Comment, Corrales MainStreet News, and Albuquerque, the Magazine. Buoyed by seeing my name in print, I pushed onward, and became the editor of Corrales MainStreet News. I submitted short stories to anthologies and am published in at least a dozen.

A neighbor wanted to write his memoir. He formed a critique group and I was a charter member. During the group’s first year, I started a short story that turned into an honest-to-goodness full-length book. I entered it into half a dozen contests, and it won several gold medals.

I was stoked.

The writing group published six anthologies of members’ work, and I have short stories in each one. I edited or co-edited four of these collections and continue to value critiques of my work from the group.

I prefer to self-publish my work. Self publishing is great as long as you are meticulous and ensure your work is well-edited. A couple of small presses have also published my work. I can’t deny that it’s satisfying to say, “I’d love to join you for a movie on Friday, but my publisher and I have lunch planned that day.”

Since I’ve retired and no longer have a “real” job, writing has become my profession. No, I don’t make a lot of money. Sure, that would be nice. But I am driven by the need to tell a story—whether fiction or non-fiction—and my payment is in good reviews and occasional royalties. Sometimes, I get a not-so-good review, but when, as a writer, I open myself to the world, I never know what I’m going to get back.

In the new year, I have several active projects: stories to submit, stories to write, a novel to publish, more marketing activities, and speaking events to schedule.

A best-seller would be wonderful. But “success” comes in many forms, and I welcome each one: being published is success; good reviews and awards are successes; continuing to write is success; writing that first sentence is success; giving at talk at a library or bookstore or being on a radio show or podcast are also successes.

Embracing my life as an author is success.

 

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The Call

Jim Tritten

Ringgggg … Ringgggg … Ringgggg.

I looked down at the caller ID.

New Mexico …

The right side of the caller ID screen obscured the rest of the name.

But – I knew who was calling.

I’d been dreading this call.

Two Fridays ago, on a pleasant sunny New Mexican afternoon, I lay on a gurney with a medical apparatus inserted deep inside my body.

It was not a pleasant experience, but one that was necessary.

The pressure increased, and I felt a sharp instrument probe into a part of my body that would never be exposed to light.

Modern medicine has devised means to uncover hidden threats.

Involuntarily, I exhaled a moan as the probe took a bite.

Then another chunk left my body.

Twelve more around the suspected area.

I left that Friday afternoon and experienced all the physical side effects of having an internal probe remove bits of my body for a detailed laboratory examination.

I expected the worst and attempted to use the coping skills taught to me to deal with my PTSD.

My mind drifted, and I recalled a particularly good man I had known many years ago, with whom I spoke just before he passed.

Steve was a fellow Navy pilot who had earned three Navy Crosses during World War II.

Steve said to me on the phone, “Jim, you have no idea how debilitating chemotherapy is.”

This fearless man’s voice quivered, and I could hear his chest heave.

Much like mine is heaving as I pen these thoughts.

Would I be able to undergo treatment that would reduce me to such a state?

Back to the present … Ring … Ring …

I picked up the instrument and held it next to my ear.

“Mr. Tritten, this is Doctor Kaplan.”

Today’s phone call was from the New Mexico Cancer Center.

A modern antiseptic chamber of horrors.

Doctor Kaplan is a lovely person, and her dad and I were stationed on the same aircraft carrier.

We talked about life in the Navy during my initial office consultation.

I had asked her to give me the veteran’s special and to use a probe that wouldn’t hurt.

It hurt.

After listening to the kind doctor, my mind racing to what I thought she would tell me, I said, “Wait, please … what did you just say?”

She repeated some medical jargon, using terms I did not fully understand.

I focused on one phrase that was the essence of the call.

“Doctor Kaplan, I’m not sure I fully understood what you said …

… Let me repeat back to you what I thought I heard …

… I don’t have cancer?”

“Yes, Mr. Tritten, you don’t have cancer.”

Months’ worth of frightful anticipation vanished in an instant. My eyes welled up, and my breath was ragged.

My body shook … I heard these words come out of my mouth. “Please, say that again.”

“You don’t have cancer.”

My face tightened, and my stomach clenched. This time, realizing what had been said and what I was about to say, “One more time … please say that again.”

“You don’t have cancer.”

The tears rolled down both cheeks as my chest heaved, and I broke down and thanked God.

Today’s call gave me a new outlook on the rest of my life.

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The First Lie

by Dita Dow

The first thing I did after the fire was lie.

“Name?” the police officer asked, pen hovering.

“Jonah Reed,” I said.

She wrote it down. My hands were pink and peeling as I rubbed them together.

“You’re lucky. Another minute in there—”

“I know.”

The pen paused. Her eyes flicked up, then back down. A radio crackled behind me.

“Anyone we should call?”

“No.” I coughed. “There’s no one.”

She underlined something.

“Do you know how the fire started?”

“No. I woke up coughing.”

“Smelled smoke?”

“Yes.”

“Anything else?”

I pictured the match flare. The brief, holy quiet before everything caught.

“No.”

“The ambulance is waiting to check you out.”

“I’m fine.”

My skin disagreed. My lungs whistled.

Red lights flashed across the street. Someone offered me a blanket. I took it. Someone asked if I wanted to sit. I sat on the curb as ash drifted down like dirty snow.

The house behind me wasn’t a house anymore. Just a shape where something used to be. The windows were gone. The door had folded inward, blackened.

I watched the smoke thin as it climbed.

“Sir?” A firefighter stood in front of me, soot streaked across his face.

I looked up.

“You’ll need somewhere to stay tonight.”

“I’ll find something.”

I always did.

I walked away before anyone could stop me. Down the street, past neighbors who watched too carefully, past yellow tape that meant nothing once you stepped under it.

At the corner, I looked back. The fire had devoured everything that proved I’d been there. The smell clung to me anyway. It always does. You get used to it.

I cut through dark alleys and stayed in the shadows until I reached a motel—one of those flea-bit places where no one asks for ID and no one asks questions.

“Room,” I said.

“Cash.”

I slid the bills across. The clerk pushed a key toward me. No name. No clipboard. Not even a glance.

I shut the door and threw the bolt.

The blanket slid off my shoulders and hit the floor in a stiff, singed heap. I didn’t pick it up.

In the bathroom, I turned the faucet all the way cold and shoved my hands under it. The water needled my skin. Blisters had already risen, pale and tight, promising pain later. Ash slid from my hair into the sink, washing away in a gray ribbon.

I stayed until the shaking stopped.

I dried my hands on a towel that smelled faintly of bleach and looked up.

The mirror showed me a man between versions of himself. Red eyes. Soot in the lines of my face. Skin peeling at the edges of my palms. Tomorrow, this man wouldn’t exist. Tomorrow would be a new beginning. A new name. A clean start—if you ignore the smell.

I reached into my pocket.

The matchbook rested in my palm, bent soft, the logo worn thin. I slid the last match free and held it there, waiting.

I closed my eyes and saw it again: the strike, the brief bloom of light, the moment before the fire decided what it wanted to be.

That pause is everything. That’s where the noise shuts up. Where the past loosens its grip. Fire understands beginnings better than people do. It doesn’t hesitate. It commits.

I struck the match.

The flame blossomed, small and perfect, blue at the base, yellow at the tip. It leaned toward the air, curious. The heat kissed my fingers, gentle at first, like it was asking permission.

I watched it, my heart slowing to its rhythm. In that light, I understood what was required.

I lowered my hand and let the fire decide.

The flame crept closer, no longer curious—hungry. I felt the old pull, sharp and familiar, and knew where it led.

I stepped to the sink and turned on the tap.

I held the match beneath the stream. The fire bent, flared, fought for half a second, then hissed and vanished in a thin curl of smoke. What remained was a blackened stick, soft and ruined.

I dropped it and watched it disappear down the drain.

My hands were empty. No heat. No light. Nothing waiting to be fed.

I sat on the edge of the bed and opened the side table drawer.

A Gideon Bible lay inside. Beside it, a brand-new matchbook—clean cardboard, uncreased, untouched.

I closed the drawer.

Tomorrow, I would start clean.

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True Confessions
I’m a 78-Year-Old Who Just Entered Law School

by Léonie Rosenstiel

After almost seven decades of resisting becoming an attorney, I finally caved. Now I’m, as they call us a “1L.”

There’s no Guinness World Record for the oldest person ever to apply, but the oldest recorded law school graduate was 91.

I’d always told myself that I didn’t like arguments and didn’t want to go to any school full time, ever again. My earlier education should be enough for a lifetime, shouldn’t it? I thought that the “student” chapter of my life was long closed.

What changed me? I was involved in family legal issues that dragged on for more than fourteen years and started to write about them. Then, I wanted to help others avoid the hazards out there, waiting to trap us all.

“You should go to law school,” author Jack Canfield, the co-creator of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series, told me.

“Really, you should!” opined best-selling author Patty Aubrey, then the president of Jack’s self-development company.

Steve Harrison, whose PR firm worked with Jack as well as with authors Robert Kiyosaki and John Gray, and Steve’s wife, Laura, who works with him, told me the same thing. Both regularly collaborate with Jack and Patty on critiquing the manuscripts for their joint writers’ retreats.

All four were early readers and advisors for my books Protecting Mama, Legal Protection, and They’re Coming for Your Elders and Your Inheritance, volumes that deal with various aspects of law and legal cases.

Each time they read a new draft, they encouraged me in my latest effort, and this little script played out again. By 2025, I’d been writing about the law for more than eight years.

Influencers really do have a better chance of convincing you to do things. Jack and Patty and Steve and Laura are influencers ten times over. I eventually allowed them to convince me.

Considering going back to school shifted me from “expert’s” mind back to “beginner’s mind.”  Why would I do that? But then, why not, if I can? I was searching for better ways to understand and solve the legal and public policy issues I’d identified in my last three books and a good half-a-dozen essays.

I can’t be a full-time law student and do anything else! I’d believed that for years, but I learned that the passing decades have changed things.

Now there are amazing new opportunities, like being a part-time law student. I could even study law online and still be eligible to take a Bar exam! That’s a radical change. No more having to be in residence in a law school at a university and studying one single subject 24/7. The 1960s are finally over!

Now, I can be a law student and not quit creative writing, an activity I’ve been enjoying since I was ten.

My first online law school class (legal writing and analysis) on January 7, 2026, gave many attendees a rude shock. We all do other things and want to become lawyers. We had dutifully gathered and sat, staring at our computer screens, during that evening’s seminar.

Our instructor, a pleasant, professional-looking woman with twenty years of experience in various areas of legal practice, broke the bad news.

“The creative writers among you are going to be disappointed,” she warned us. “This is not a course in creative writing. You are going to be doing quite a lot of writing. But it’s legal writing.” (It turns out that I’m the only creative writer in that section of the course.)

Apart from the writing style being dry, cold, and wildly different from what I’m used to, being a law student makes me feel young again! The learning process hasn’t changed all that much. “School” was just like old times. And here, I’m talking about the 1960s and 70s.

The books didn’t arrive in time. Technology sometimes worked, but sometimes didn’t. The professors and advisors all really want to help. Actually, that attitude’s a lot better than what I had during my undergrad experience and my first graduate experience, too.

After I got frustrated with having to listen to all the video modules of the same intro-to-the-technology class twice because their counter didn’t record the results the first time, I remembered that my memory banks had built-in ways to cope with these SNAFUs. Laughter.

Something new for the new year? Yes. Time to shake my life up a bit? You betcha!

Is my 78-year-old brain still agile enough to do all the memorization involved? I don’t know. Whether I ultimately manage to graduate from law school or not, it’s going to be a voyage of discovery. (I’ll be writing more about my adventures in law school on my Substack, in a series called “Confessions of a 78-Year-Old Law Student.”)

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BREWING A POT OF HOPE

By Reza Ghadimi

*****

In these times of uncertainties

Brewing hope can be challenging

Begin by heating two cups of water of life

Heat to the warmth of the heart

Now pour in a cup of prayer to keep

Evil at bay, just in case.

*

In a separate pan

Blend four tablespoons of gratitude with

Oil of peace, slice a clove of kindness, add

Some chopped roots of earth’s blessing

With a pinch of prosperity

Brown to harmony, and set aside.

*

Mix a cup of fortitude cream with

Grated cheese of understanding

Stir well

Add to the water, let it simmer till it smells of satisfaction.

*

Finally, combine all ingredients on low heat of patience

From the herb garden of serenity, pick morsels of

Happiness, smile, love, some golden petals of contentment

Sprinkle upon your pot of hope, and serve it hot.

*****

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