The Caja Mountains from my window -- writing from home, as a retiree, is a treat. I retired early and moved to Cuenca, Ecuador to give me the time and setting for writing a book. And it's coming out soon! sk

An update on my book: The Plan is about to go to the editor. Yea! I've been working eight hour days to get the final chapters completed. The wonderful thing about digital publishing is that readers don't have to wait for a year or more to get a book in their hands.

Important News: The Writers in Transition (WIT) group is giving our  monthly reading and you are invited. It's free at the California Kitchen in Cuenca. I'll be presenting Chapter 2 of The Plan, so I really look forward to your presence. Here's more information:

WIT Presentation - Click Here for Time and Day

Just recently, new information about a horrid prison camp in the southern Andes of Chile, Colonia Dignidad, made international news. Former victims and their families are suing the state of Chile over this horrid prison that was allowed to stay open until very recently.And what does this have to do with my new book? Plenty, believe me. So I've needed a little extra time to make updates.

As an expat in Cuenca, Ecuador, I have TIME to work on this new book -- all of the time in the world. I love the freedom of being able to have my own office next to my bedroom, so that I can get up at all odd hours of the night and write. Unfortunately, my best ideas come at 3 a.m. (It's not easy being my bed partner.  Ask my husband, Fred.)

P.S. We had a sad day. Our little dog was stolen.So today will be spent taking around flyers, posting ads, etc.


Here's a quick summary of what this new book is about:

A white Vicksburg, Mississippi private detective shoots himself in the groin while perched on the corner of his bed, cleaning his favorite rifle after a dove hunt. Suicide, concludes the state pathologist, a man nationally known for his amazingly quick (and frequently sloppy) reports. Detective John D. Sullivan’s death takes place one year after leaving his temporary job in New Orleans, where he was working for his old FBI boss and friend, Guy Banister, who dies strangely just six months following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Forty-eight years pass before Clinton Moore, a quiet and effective, gay black Mississippi Delta lawyer, gives a damn about what happened to Sullivan – and only after Moore’s best friend, a black Alabama lawyer, is murdered for knowing too much about what? Mollie Johnson and Sara Mercury pick up on the case IN SOUTH AMERICA , after Moore, himself, is killed – for knowing too much.  About what? Did someone go missing in Colonia Dignidad? Who?

ISBN-10:  0-9826049-7-1

ISBN-13:  978-0-9826049-7-7

The Plan is set for publication in May of 2013. 

Place on the Tallahatchie River where Emmett Till's body was dumped in 1955. This is one of many photos I took in the Delta when doing research for Who Killed Emmett Till? (the basis for my new fiction novel The Plan. I enjoy photography and use my pictures to help give readers a look at the places that I'm writing about. You can do this too when you retire.Think about places you've gone and put the information to writing books, poetry, music, plays! 

My Paradigm Shift in Cuenca, Ecuador as an Expat -- a Retirement Transformation, a Metamorphisis. -- Finding a New Hat!

 Did you know that Panama Hats really come from Ecuador?

I needed to turn my life around (almost entirely), and I am getting there day by day as a retired expat baby boomer living in Cuenca, Ecuador. It has been a series of sharp turns in what I think and what I do, and the entire event might be loosely described as a paradigm shift, to borrow from my college science classes.

Maybe I am just looking for a new hat to wear...
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But back to this idea of a paradigm shift.

Back in the 1960s, my professors used this term to describe what scientists are sometimes forced to do when facing a number of competing unique and immeasurable solutions to a problem that has already been “solved” (at least by science).

The scientist must swallow pride and be brave enough to take another square look at all of the information she has been avoiding, and ultimately allow much of it into her small world to be studied and then accepted before issuing any further scientific edicts about this topic.

Once this paradigm shift is completed, more unique ideas are accepted as legitimate and become part of the science world to be used as science progresses, and gradually this change of thought brings dramatic change to a culture and even to the entire planet.

In 1962, Thomas Kuhn, an American physicist, historian, and science philosopher, wrote The Structure of Scientific Revolution, coming up with this revolutionary and controversial idea, arguing that scientific advancement is not evolutionary, but rather is a "series of peaceful interludes punctuated by intellectually violent revolutions", and in those revolutions "one conceptual world view is replaced by another".

Kuhn knew that change does not just happen, but must be driven by something – a person or event that we call, in business and in science, an agent of change.

Think of those brave change agents who fought the belief that the earth was at the center of the universe. Because of their insistence, the prevailing truth was ultimately tossed out the window, resulting in a paradigm-shift that put our planet in its proper place, with the sun in the center. The dramatic result of this shift moved science from Newtonian physics to Relativity and Quantum Physics.

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See my retirement photos on Pinterest
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Or consider the printing press and how the printing of books in large volume gradually changed cultures and had a direct affect on the scientific revolution. Johann Gutenberg's invention in the 1440's of movable type was an agent of change. Books became more available, smaller and easier to handle and less expensive than scrolls. Far more people were able to access the scriptures and attitudes began to change as people were no longer under the dictates of the church, people luck Martin Luther.

Today’s change agents are driving paradigm shifts that are all around us. 

Just think of how the computer and the Internet have changed our personal and business lives, resulting in a paradigm shift for publishing. Do you visit a newspaper website? Read eBooks?
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So where does Cuenca, Ecuador come into play as some of my current paradigms are starting to slip slide away? 

This is what I will be addressing in this blog – and I invite you to come along this journey, sharing you thoughts and experiences. 

I want to hear your comments, ideas and stories about this topic (and other retirement issues). So please send them to me and get published!

Meanwhile, I am going to visit the Panama Hat store today and take some photos to share -- and maybe even look for a new hat!

Thanks, and take care.

Susan

(Be sure to visit my retirement photos on Pinterest. And please add your own pins!)

Next time -- talking specifics about change. For me, changing how I live with diabetes has been a battle, but I am winning. Learning to speak Spanish, another shift. 

Do you have a similar change in your life to share? Has retirement provided a good time for this to occur? Please comment here.