One of the best things about moving to New Mexico was getting to know a fellow author right down the road. Please welcome Amber Foxx.
By: Amber Foxx
“I could live here,” said a voice in my head. It was two in the morning. I’d walked into my room at The Charles Motel and Hot Springs in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico after driving across the country in two days to make the most of my spring break, and so far I’d seen nothing of the town.
At the time, I was a professor of Health and Exercise Science at a small college in the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia. Spring there is the season of redbuds, crocuses and daffodils. Having formerly lived in Santa Fe, I knew full well that spring in New Mexico is the season of juniper pollen and dry winds blowing grit in your eyes. But I came anyway. I’d read that T or C was an affordable hot springs spa town, and I was intrigued.
The next day, I walked around with my eyes half closed because the wind was, as expected, blowing grit in my eyes, but I opened them enough to cross streets safely and noticed drivers stopped voluntarily for me at crosswalks. Strangers struck up conversations. A young woman working at The Charles taught me some cool hula hoop tricks and invited me to her apartment to look at her remodeled vintage clothing projects.
The art galleries and the unpredictable styles and colors of the mural-decorated town appealed to me. I soaked in hot springs, of course, including one with a view of the Rio Grande and Turtleback Mountain. The pollen was bad, but not as bad as in Santa Fe, and there was even one day without wind. I found a place to run, on the trails at Elephant Butte Lake State Park, and I took a picture of my feet in my five-toed barefoot-style running shoes there. I had everything I wanted. I’d found home. Or, as I later heard people in Truth or Consequences say, I’d been “caught in the vortex.”
It happens quite often. People come on vacation or stop out of curiosity about the town’s name and feel inexplicably compelled to move here. I came back on two winter breaks and every summer until I took early retirement and moved here for good.
Some people back east were puzzled by my choice, wondering how I could leave all that vegetation for such a bare landscape and such a hot, dry climate. But it was easy. In fact, irresistible. The rocks speak to me, with their subtle colors and extraordinary shapes. And I love the weather—most of the time. Our seasons are different from the four seasons back East. Fall here isn’t the season of cold crisp air and colorful leaves. It’s just weirdly perfect. Blue sky, warm days, cool nights. Winter is sort of like that, too. People escape northern New Mexico as well as Canada, Maine, and Minnesota to come to T or C in the winter. Spring is not nice, as I said, unless you like dust storms or watching parts of your car blow off. But I think of it as the price I pay for living here the rest of the year, and it does have cactus flowers.
June is a season unto itself, hot with skies full of virga—clouds trailing streaks of rain that evaporate on their way down, making mind-blowing sunsets of brushstrokes in the sky. July through September is the monsoon season, my favorite. Merely in the nineties most of the time, it’s not quite as hot as June, and we get dramatic storms, short but wild, with frequent double rainbows. And the sunsets are even better, since rain clouds linger in the area almost every day, even if they don’t always produce. T or C has full-circle sunsets with color in every part of the sky.
The protagonist in my Mae Martin Psychic Mystery series makes the move from the Southeast to this special place in the Southwest. In book one, The Calling, she struggles with her small town life in North Carolina. The next book, Shaman’s Blues, brings her to a new life in New Mexico.
A fellow North Carolinian puzzles over Mae’s choice to live in this desert state in book four, Soul Loss. He tells her, “Place looks like kitty litter to me.” In the new book, Shadow Family, the seventh book in the series, Mae’s ex-husband also doesn’t understand the appeal, asking her how long it took to get used to things being all brown. She answers, “I’m not used to it. It still amazes me … When I saw this place, it was love at first sight. And I’m still in love.” Her ex later says T or C looks like somebody spilled it. He doesn’t mean it as praise, but Mae likes the description.
There are two blue-and-purple houses on my block. One of them used to be pink paisley. Blue-and-purple number one has a Taino moon goddess painted on it. Blue-and-purple number two has a Kokopelli. (Neither homeowner knew the other was planning to use those colors, and they both repainted at the same time.) My neighborhood is a mix of colorful stucco houses like these plus trailers and old adobe buildings. I walk past some ramshackle places to get to the Rio Grande, including a trailer that seems to be occupied only by cats. There’s not a white picket fence or a cozy white clapboard cottage with shutters to be seen. And there are no lawns. One of a million reasons I love living here is I never hear lawn mowers or leaf blowers. You don’t mow rocks and dirt. Cacti and juniper don’t shed leaves.
An artist here once asked me, “What do you see in this town? It’s the ugliest place I’ve ever lived.”
I replied, “I’ve lived in pretty places. Quaint, cute places. I like T or C better. It has character.”
He said that made him feel better about it.
“Symmetry is boring,” my choreography teacher in college told us. I suspect that T or C’s unpredictable, disorderly appearance stimulates creativity, and that’s part of the attraction it has for artists, musicians, poets, and writers. A strange thing happened when I got back from my first trip to the town that’s now my home. I got serious about writing fiction.
*****
Coming in late November
Shadow Family
The Seventh Mae Martin Psychic Mystery
An old flame, an old friend, and the ghost of an old enemy.
As the holidays approach, Mae Martin thinks the only challenge in her life is the choice between two men. Should she reunite with Hubert, her steady, reliable ex-husband? Or move forward with Jamie, her unpredictable not-quite-ex boyfriend? But then, two trespassers break into Hubert’s house on Christmas Eve to commit the oddest crime in the history of Tylerton, North Carolina.
Hubert needs to go home to Tylerton and asks Mae to go with him, though it’s the last place she wants to be. Reluctantly, she agrees, but before they can leave, a stranger shows up at her house in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico looking for her stepdaughters, bringing the first news of their birth mother in seven years—news of her death.
The girls are finally ready to learn about her, but she was a mystery, not only to the husband and children she walked away from, but also to the friends in her new life. Now her past throws its shadow on them all. Through psychic journeys, unplanned road trips, and risky decisions, Mae searches for the truth about the woman whose children she raised, determined to protect them from the dark side of their family.
The Mae Martin Series
No murder, just mystery. Every life hides a secret, and love is the deepest mystery of all.
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Hi Amber. So nice to see you here. I’ve always lived in my hometown. My roots go way back. It has changed dramatically, especially in the last 10 years. I’ve never thought to move elsewhere and probably will never now that I have a granddaughter living nearby.
Vicki, good to hear from you. I’ve met a few life-time T or C residents who have roots like you do in your town. We do tend to attract people who want to uproot, though. I met a woman a few days ago who moved here from LA because she threw a dart at a map and it landed here.
That is amazing. That takes a very adventurous spirit and a lot of guts in my opinion. Loved your blog, Amber, thank you for being my guest!