EPISODE 726 - Eleanor Vincent - Disconnected, Portrait of a Neurodiverse Marriage

Author and memoirist Eleanor Vincent joins Dave from her home in the San Francisco Bay Area, reflecting on a life shaped by place, creativity, grief, and late-life love. She traces her journey from snowy Midwestern roots to California, where a long career in journalism taught her the discipline of daily writing and the power of working alongside other writers. That early newsroom experience became the foundation for her later work as a creative writer and memoirist, and she now champions community and “hive energy” as essential antidotes to the loneliness of writing.

Eleanor describes how a childhood steeped in books, theater, and nightly reading aloud opened the door to literature and showed her that a life in the arts was possible. Stories became both inspiration and survival tool in an emotionally unstable home, teaching her early on that reading and writing could be forms of healing, escape, and hope. That understanding would prove crucial decades later when tragedy struck.

Her first memoir, Swimming with Maya, grew out of the devastating loss of her nineteen-year-old daughter after a horse-riding accident. Rather than simply recording events, she spent a decade shaping her grief into a crafted narrative that others could enter, emphasizing that memoir is an art, not just catharsis. Writing was only one strand of her healing; therapy, spiritual practice, movement, friendship, and time all played vital roles. The book ultimately became both a tribute to Maya’s life and a testament to organ donation, showing how her daughter’s death helped save and transform other lives.

Eleanor’s new memoir, Disconnected, reflects a more seasoned writer grappling with a very different kind of heartbreak: a late-life marriage to an undiagnosed autistic partner and the unraveling of that relationship during the pressure cooker of Covid lockdown. She explains how neurodiverse couples often live inside what therapists call the “double empathy problem,” where both partners are trying hard yet neither feels safe or understood. Shutdowns, masking, and associated traits like alexithymia and demand avoidance created a tragic dance of miscommunication that conventional couples therapy could not repair. Ultimately, Eleanor chose to leave the marriage, drawing on hard-won resources and support that many partners in similar situations lack.

Throughout the conversation, she returns to her core motivation as a writer: to transform difficult experience into page-turning stories that genuinely help people. Whether writing about child loss, organ donation, or neurodiverse relationships, she aims to give readers language, context, and companionship for situations that can feel isolating and impossible.

Key takeaway: Memoir becomes most powerful when it combines emotional truth with craft, transforming raw pain into a story that offers understanding, companionship, and practical hope to others walking through their own seasons of loss, love, and change.

https://www.eleanorvincent.com/

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EPISODE 725 - Veronica Iniguez - Captain and Me at Sea! Sometimes, the greatest mysteries are hidden in plain sight

About the author
Veronica Iniguez is a debut author, born in the vibrant heart of Mexico and now embracing the desert magic of Arizona. She is a proud mother of six wonderful children. As an educator, she is passionate about inspiring young minds through learning and discovery. When she’s not homeschooling her little ones, she’s helping other children learn to read and develop a lifelong love of books. This book reflects her passion for storytelling, creativity, and helping children thrive.

Book - Captain and Me at Sea! - Captain and Me at Sea! is an adventurous picture book chronicling Captain, a brave pirate, and a feathered companion, Me. Captain and Me are on a mission to navigate the sea to seek a mystery! During their journey, they get themselves into a tangled mess, encounter a scary storm, and then find themselves exhausted. Despite the obstacles, Captain and Me complete their mission, realizing the mystery was their own shadow all along! Captain and Me at Sea! is a story that reminds us that sometimes, the greatest mysteries are hidden in plain sight, waiting to be discovered with open hearts and curious minds.

https://www.inispress.com/

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EPISODE 724 - Ellen Meeropol - Literary Late Bloomer and Author with a Love for Island Life

Ellen Meeropol is the author of six novels (Sometimes an Island, The Lost Women of Azalea Court, Her Sister's Tattoo, Kinship of Clover, On Hurricane Island, and House Arrest) and the guest editor for the anthology, Dreams for a Broken World. Her work has been honored by the Sarton Women's Prize, The Women's National Book Association, and the Massachusetts Center for the Book.

A literary late bloomer, Ellen Meeropol began seriously writing fiction in her fifties, but her first publications came much earlier. At age twelve, her essay, "I am a Square Dance Orphan," was published in a national square dance magazine and she wrote a monthly feature column for her high school newspaper in the Washington, D.C. area. Ellen studied art at Earlham College and the University of Michigan.

After working as a day care teacher and a women's reproductive health counselor, Ellen became a registered nurse and then a nurse practitioner, working at a children's hospital in western Massachusetts for 24 years. During that time, she authored and co-authored two dozen articles and book chapters about pediatric issues and latex allergy. She was honored for excellence in nursing journalism by the nursing honor society Sigma Theta Tau and received the Ruth A. Smith Writing Award for excellence in writing in the profession of nursing. In 2005 Ellen was given the Chair's Excellence Award from the Spina Bifida Association of America for her advocacy around latex allergy and spina bifida.

In 2000, after decades of reading voraciously and thinking that "someday" she would write, Ellen started writing fiction and studying craft, earning an MFA from the Stonecoast Program at the University of Southern Maine. In 2005, determined to spend more time with the characters demanding her full attention, she left her nurse practitioner career.

https://www.ellenmeeropol.com/

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EPISODE 723 - Terri Lewis - From Ballet to Authorship - Words That Dance, That Fly

In this author conversation, Terri Lewis shares how dance, history, and family have been woven through every stage of her life and writing. Now speaking from Florida while her Colorado garden sleeps under snow, she reflects on the two passions she held in high school: ballet and writing. Knowing a dance career had a limited window, she chose ballet first, becoming a professional dancer and choreographer, then gradually transitioned into writing while honing her craft, learning how to truly tell a story and build a novel.

Terri describes the importance of literary community and feedback, encouraging new authors to join critique groups, attend workshops and conferences, and bravely share their work even when it feels vulnerable. She emphasizes kindness and reciprocity in the writing world, urging writers to really listen when asking others about their work rather than talking only about themselves. For her, repeated feedback is a signal: if two people say the same thing, pay attention; if three do, you have a problem to fix. She also shares how one early mentor’s simple note affirming that she could write a publishable novel became a treasured encouragement that she still keeps.

Her love of history and research runs through her novels. Her first book, inspired by a medieval woman abducted by King John and later reunited with her original fiancé, grew out of her fascination with the everyday lives of people in the Middle Ages rather than just kings and battles. Her second novel began with a candy box of family artifacts: letters, photos, and documents about her grandfather’s World War One service, shell shock, and the long fight her grandmother waged to secure his pension. That story, told through both grandparents’ perspectives, deepened her understanding of their courage, especially her grandmother’s strength in an era when women’s choices were tightly constrained.

Terri’s latest ballet-centered novel draws directly on her own experience as a dancer. It follows two friends and rivals in a 1970s ballet company whose pregnancies unfold on opposite sides of Roe v. Wade, exploring how legal, bodily, and artistic choices shape their careers, relationships, and identities. She aims to show the behind-the-scenes reality of dance: exhausting rehearsals, painful lighting calls, and the emotional strain beneath the glamour, while also portraying the different strengths of her two dancers and how their friendship is tested over time.

Throughout the conversation, Terri returns to the idea that mastery in any art takes about ten years, and that you never truly arrive. She is still revising a novel she began a decade ago, recognizing how much she has grown as a writer and how each revision makes the work stronger. She encourages listeners to capture their own family histories with simple tools like audio recorders at gatherings, preserving stories that might otherwise be lost.

Key takeaway: Terri’s journey shows that creativity is a lifelong practice of persistence, community, and curiosity, where every experience, whether on stage or in the archives of a candy box, can become meaningful story material if you keep showing up and doing the work.

https://terrilewis1.com/

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Episode 525 - Richard DeVeau - Light's Out - We Paint a Picture of a special forces veteran, CIA officer, and leader of Boston's Homeland Security team

About the author

After majoring in marketing at Bentley University, Richard spent a career as a copywriter and creative director serving such clients as Red Lobster, Ducati Motorcycles, Marriott Hotels, and Clorox. He also brought his writing skills to bear for communications agencies that serve nonprofit organizations, including American Red Cross, Wounded Warrior Project, Toys for Tots, CARE, Special Olympics and many others. And he was a frequent editorial contributor to Fundraising Success Magazine.

In 2000, he helped launch acclaimed author Stephen King’s internet publishing debut and the world’s first mass- marketed e-book, Riding the Bullet. Richard wrote the online ad campaign that prompted more than 400,000 people to purchase and download the novella.

His screenplay, Graven Image, placed in the top twenty percent of the Academy of Motion Pictures’ Nicholl Fellowships international screenwriting competition in 2014.

Richard is also an accomplished fine art painter. Over the past thirty years, he has exhibited work in numerous solo and group shows. His work was represented by two commercial art galleries in his native Boston and is now represented by a gallery in Chicago, where he currently resides.

Richard and his wife have four adult children and two grandchildren.

Book: Light's Out

A retired couple are murdered in their Wisconsin home - art and other valuables are stolen. A Lake Michigan oil tanker explodes and sinks that same night.

Eve Taunt - special forces veteran, CIA officer, and leader of Boston's Homeland Security team - believes there is a connection between these two events.

She and her team quickly find themselves in pursuit of a domestic terrorist - an M.I.T. educated, military trained missile genius with Ted Bundy-like psychopathy - to stop him before he carries out his next devastating attack. This one is even more lethal than the overhwelming inferno he just unleashed on Boston.

As Eve closes in, she discovers these attacks are orchestrated by a US senator and a powerful cabal of highly placed leaders and lawmakers with a hidden agenda.

https://a.co/d/2yD92bj

Episode Date - Monday, April 14, 2025

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BONUS - Share Your Story, Poem and Writings Here on Living The Next Chapter

Thanks for supporting this podcast! I am putting in place a new way to support authors, writers and poets in their writing journey!

I want to feature your writings here on Living The Next Chapter. Share your poem, a portion of your chapter, something that you are working on - and do so right here on the podcast. The opportunity to share your work in progress with the world!

Go to my website, click on the "Speak Pipe" link right there on the website and record up to 5 minutes of audio (use it multiple times if need be) and read us your poem, snipit or portion of your work in progress for listeners of this show to hear.

If you want to avoid recording audio, then siimply email me what you want to have read and shared on a podcast episode featuring your work and don't forget to include how a fellow listener can connect with you - social media link, website, email - you never know who might hear your work in progress, your poem etc.

I will make an episode just about you, sharing your writings right here!

Looking forward to putting the spotlight on you!

https://poets.org/anthology/poems-your-poetry-project-public-domain

Original Date: Tuesday, December 10, 2024

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Episode 360 - Bob Young - True Golf - the story of Moe Norman and a new song with Bob's brother Neil Young

Our Guest - Bob Young was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada in 1942. He was a member of the Canadian Professional Golfers’ Association for nearly three decades and first met Moe Norman in the early 1960s.

Like Norman, Young has always been intrigued by metaphysics and has had access to the leading trance mediums.

Young’s brother is Neil Young, the internationally recognized singer-songwriter.
Book: Mind Golf: The Troubled Genius of Moe Norman - At one of a series of clinics that former USPGA teacher of the year Craig Shankland staged, he asked Moe Norman in front of about 300 people, “What’s it like to hit perfect shots, Moe?” Moe paused and looked at the audience. Then, in jest, said, “You will never know.”

Mind Golf assembles and ignites the mental energy of the image of the shot-to-be. Moe “Pipeline Moe” Norman was a Canadian professional golfer and the best ball-striker the world has ever known. Author Bob Young met the eccentric golfer and traveled between Canada and Florida from the early 1960s to 2004, where he was able to observe Pipeline Moe for decades.

At the heart of the episode is Bob’s long relationship with legendary Canadian golfer Moe Norman. Drawing from decades spent practicing and playing alongside him, Bob offers rare insight into Moe’s extraordinary ability as a ball striker and his unique mental approach to the game. Moe’s concept of a “quiet mind” becomes a central theme, not as a mystical idea, but as a disciplined way of filtering out distractions and staying fully aligned with intention.

Bob explains how this mindset translates into a practical method for improving performance. By visualizing the full flight of the ball, from launch to apex to landing, and “feeling” the shot before executing it, golfers can create consistency and precision. He connects this process to a broader idea of energy, suggesting that the same creative force behind music, visualization, and peak performance is accessible when focus and awareness align.

The conversation also touches on Bob’s book, his experiences within golf culture, and the evolving ways he is sharing this knowledge through audio, video, and upcoming projects. Along the way, he reflects on Moe Norman’s life, his challenges, and the recognition he eventually received, painting a portrait of a misunderstood genius who stayed true to his path.

This episode ultimately explores the intersection of discipline, creativity, and awareness, showing how mastery in any field often comes from learning how to see clearly, think simply, and trust what you feel.

Key takeaway: Peak performance comes from aligning a clear mental image with a quiet, focused mind, allowing your body to execute naturally without interference.

https://bobyounggolf.com/

Published:

May. 01, 2024

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Episode 352 - Tammy J Cohen - Text Messages to My Sons - How to Connect Deeply with Your Kids in a Digital World

In this episode, Dave sits down with author Tammy J Cohen to explore a deeply relevant question in modern parenting: how do we truly connect with our kids in a world dominated by devices?

Tammy shares the unexpected origin of her book Text Messages to My Sons: Connecting Deeply in a World of Devices. What began as a simple desire to reach her three sons evolved into a powerful daily practice of intentional communication. Living in Manhattan and observing how deeply people are absorbed in their phones, she realized that traditional forms of connection were no longer effective. Instead of resisting technology, she chose to meet her children where they already were by sending meaningful, consistent text messages.

The conversation reveals how this small shift created a profound impact. Tammy’s messages moved away from reminders and discipline and toward encouragement, love, and shared wisdom. Without expecting responses, she focused on expressing what mattered most, reinforcing her sons’ worth, resilience, and value. Over time, this consistency helped reduce tension, strengthen their relationship, and create a lasting emotional connection.

Tammy also emphasizes the importance of accountability as a parent. By acknowledging her own struggles, past reactions, and personal growth, she allowed her children to see her as human. This honesty deepened trust and opened the door for more authentic connection. Her approach models a key shift in modern fatherhood and parenting as a whole: moving from authority alone to vulnerability, presence, and emotional awareness.

The episode also highlights how these messages extend beyond the immediate moment. Tammy reflects on the lasting legacy of words, suggesting that long after we are gone, it is these expressions of love and encouragement that remain. Her sons’ decision to write the foreword of her book speaks to the real impact of her efforts.

For parents listening, Tammy offers a simple but powerful invitation. Start where you are. Keep it natural. Be consistent. Whether it takes ten minutes or less, the act of showing up daily with intention can reshape your relationship over time. The goal is not perfection, but connection.

This conversation ultimately reframes what it means to be a good parent today. It is not about control or constant correction, but about creating a steady, meaningful presence in your child’s life, even through something as simple as a text message.

Key Takeaway:
Consistent, intentional communication rooted in love and honesty can transform your relationship with your children, proving that even small daily actions can leave a lasting emotional legacy.

@textmessagestomysons

FB text messages to my sons

The Book: Text Messages To My Sons - At the start of 2020, I began to immerse myself in a learning journey incorporating good health, spiritual and emotional intelligence, and personal growth. I needed to share this with my three sons, who are everything to me.

https://tammyjcohen.com/

Published: Apr. 12, 2024

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