{"id":247,"date":"2020-11-13T13:03:50","date_gmt":"2020-11-13T13:03:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/elizabethhollandauthor.com\/?p=247"},"modified":"2020-10-13T12:57:47","modified_gmt":"2020-10-13T11:57:47","slug":"author-qa-with-t-j-hubner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/elizabethhollandauthor.com\/?p=247","title":{"rendered":"Author Q&#038;A with T.J. H\u00fcbner"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\">Author Q&amp;A with T.J. H\u00fcbner<\/h2>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">*This post contains affiliate links*<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-112\" src=\"https:\/\/elizabethhollandauthor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/Black-and-White-Beauty-Quote-Pinterest-Graphic-200x300.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"200\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/elizabethhollandauthor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/Black-and-White-Beauty-Quote-Pinterest-Graphic-200x300.png 200w, https:\/\/elizabethhollandauthor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/Black-and-White-Beauty-Quote-Pinterest-Graphic-683x1024.png 683w, https:\/\/elizabethhollandauthor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/Black-and-White-Beauty-Quote-Pinterest-Graphic-768x1152.png 768w, https:\/\/elizabethhollandauthor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/Black-and-White-Beauty-Quote-Pinterest-Graphic.png 1000w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h3 style=\"text-align: center;\">About <b>T.J. H\u00fcbner and\u00a0<\/b>A Dementia Carer&#8217;s Poems: Poems from the Heart for Caregivers<\/h3>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">It is hard to sit back and watch a debilitating illness like dementia take hold of a loved one, turning a once proud individual in to a shell of their former self.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">It doesn\u2019t matter how far gone the illness has affected the sufferer, a daily battle consumes them. This battle appears in many guises from an obsessive nature to no recollection of loved ones. It slowly takes away a person\u2019s identity and their ability to perform the simplest of tasks.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">\u00a0My father had dementia which affected his ability to remember to do certain tasks such as eating, personal hygiene and medication. He forget where he lived most of the time which caused paranoia and depression within him. This raised concerns within me, which was why in 2013 I decided to take on the role of his primary care giver.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">I never thought it would be such a complex role involving my time, patience and sanity, so I initially tried keeping a daily journal as a way of expressing my daily woe\u2019s and concerns, but this fell by the wayside.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">After taking a creative writing course and joining a writing group as a weekly release from my caring duties and to meet new people, I found a truly unexpected ability to put my thoughts and woe\u2019s in to poetic form and have now compiled some of those poems to hopefully show both the rewards and frustrations an illness can have on the sufferer and their loved ones.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe style=\"width: 120px; height: 240px;\" src=\"\/\/ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/widgets\/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&amp;OneJS=1&amp;Operation=GetAdHtml&amp;MarketPlace=US&amp;source=ac&amp;ref=qf_sp_asin_til&amp;ad_type=product_link&amp;tracking_id=ehollandautho-20&amp;marketplace=amazon&amp;region=US&amp;placement=B084VCLSKB&amp;asins=B084VCLSKB&amp;linkId=b4455abb10553bdf7cdea413dd6e655c&amp;show_border=false&amp;link_opens_in_new_window=false&amp;price_color=333333&amp;title_color=0066c0&amp;bg_color=ffffff\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\">&lt;br \/&gt;<\/iframe><iframe style=\"width: 120px; height: 240px;\" src=\"\/\/ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/widgets\/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&amp;OneJS=1&amp;Operation=GetAdHtml&amp;MarketPlace=US&amp;source=ac&amp;ref=qf_sp_asin_til&amp;ad_type=product_link&amp;tracking_id=ehollandautho-20&amp;marketplace=amazon&amp;region=US&amp;placement=B084VCLSKB&amp;asins=B084VCLSKB&amp;linkId=b4455abb10553bdf7cdea413dd6e655c&amp;show_border=false&amp;link_opens_in_new_window=false&amp;price_color=333333&amp;title_color=0066c0&amp;bg_color=ffffff\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\">&lt;br \/&gt;<\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">These poems are filled with emotions from love to loss.<\/p>\n<p>As someone who has a family member suffering from dementia, I could relate to many of the poems. Look Ahead was filled with raw emotion and yet it was a beautiful tribute to an awful time. Despite, the sadness of the topic there were a few smiles to be had. I particularly enjoyed Our Happy Days<br \/>\n&#8216;You always made my<br \/>\nchildhood fun<br \/>\nEven though I was chubby and couldn&#8217;t run&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>These poems will stay with me. Their raw emotion, beautiful words and real-life experiences are something that shines through.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><!--more--><\/p>\n<h3 style=\"text-align: center;\">1. Tell us about your writing \/ Published book(s)?<\/h3>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">I prodominantly write poetry which I only started doing at the ripe old age of forty four, but I am trying to branch out in to other genre as well.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Back in 2013 I started caring full time for my father who was diagnosed with double dementia which was a combination od Alzheimer\u2019s and vascular dementia. Been a full time caregiver can put a strain on your life, your health and your mentality, so I enrolled on a twelve week creative writing course. The course was run by a spoken word poet, so the topics were more poetry based and I found I enjoyed writing poems.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Over the next seven years as a release mechanism from stress I would write poems related to my days using the words to express what I was feeling and what I saw dementia was doing to my father. In mid 2019 the inevitable happened and my father succumbed to his ailments. Once again I turned to poetry, writing about the grief I was feeling<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>and rereading some of the poems I had written.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">With those poems in hand I decided if my poetry helped me through the onslaught and aftermath of caregiving, maybe it could help others, so I compiled fifty five poems in an anthology which I called <a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/2FQmd2j\">A Dementia Carer Poems ( Poems for the Heart for Caregivers)<\/a> and self published it earlier this year in eBook and paperback on Amazon. This is where I am now and I still write daily adding them to my website (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.tjhubnerwriting.wordpress.com\">www.tjhubnerwriting.wordpress.com<\/a>).<\/p>\n<h3 style=\"text-align: center;\">2. Where\u2019s your favourite place to write?<\/h3>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">I find I write better in a quiet uninterrupted place, so I tend do most of my writing at my desk in my home office, but I do carry a notebook with me to jot down anything that suddenly comes to mind while people watching in local coffee shops or from nature.<\/p>\n<h3 style=\"text-align: center;\">3. What\u2019s your favourite genre?<\/h3>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">I would say I don\u2019t really have a favourite genre because in the past I have read books by James Patterson, Lee Child, Bernard Cornwall and Diana Gabaldon which I suppose is a mixture of crime, mystery, history and science fiction. But most recently since starting to write poetry I have started reading a lot of books by various poets including some very talented indie authors I have found within the #WritersCommunity on Twitter. Also I have branched out in to the memoirs genre due to my connection to Dementia finding authors who have been through a similar heartache as myself like Linda Brendle and Doreen Cox.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h3 style=\"text-align: center;\">4. Do you write under a pen name? If so, tell us about how you chose it<\/h3>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">The simply answer is yes. Now how I chose it is a different answer. My pen name if you haven\u2019t already guessed is T.J. H\u00fcbner. The T is in respect of my maternal grandfather Thomas, The J is respect of my father and his father both called John and H\u00fcbner is a very old family name on the paternal side of my ancestry.<\/p>\n<h3 style=\"text-align: center;\">5. Tell me about your current work?<\/h3>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">At the moment I have three book idea\u2019s on the go. I am trying to complete a follow up book to my current published work with more poem on the subject of dementia, caregiving and grief. A second book of poetry on various topics about love, nature, politics and the pandemic. I hope to release one in November and one in December of this year. I am also writing a memoir around my life as a caregiver which faces the good and bad times encountered while caring for my father which I hope to finish by the end of spring 2021. At the moment I am debating on self-publishing or trying main stream publishing for the memoir.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h3 style=\"text-align: center;\">6. How do you approach a new book?<\/h3>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Well as I have only published one book so far, which means I am still learning. I find this a difficult question to answer without sounding na\u00efve. With my first book of poetry I simply compiled recently written poems. For my upcoming poetry books I have simply started by trying to write three poems a day on whatever my moods dictates and when I have enough poems for a one hundred page book I will reread and compile them. Yet for my memoir I have found a different approach. I have gone back through my memories picking things I believe are noteworthy, created chapter titles, then combined memories and facts to tell the story of the seven years I cared for my father hoping that by telling our story it could help others just starting to cope with the life dementia brings with it.<\/p>\n<h3 style=\"text-align: center;\"><\/h3>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Where can you find T.J. H\u00fcbner?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Website: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tjhubnerwriting.wordpress.com\">www.tjhubnerwriting.wordpress.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Email:<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 \u00a0 <\/span><a href=\"mailto:tjhubnerwriting@gmail.com\">tjhubnerwriting@gmail.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hubner_t\">You can find T.J. H\u00fcbner on Twitter.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Author Q&amp;A with T.J. H\u00fcbner *This post contains affiliate links* &nbsp; About T.J. H\u00fcbner and\u00a0A Dementia Carer&#8217;s Poems: Poems from the Heart for Caregivers It is hard to sit back and watch a debilitating illness like dementia take hold of a loved one, turning a once proud individual in to a shell of their former self. It doesn\u2019t matter how far gone the illness has affected the sufferer, a daily battle consumes them. This battle appears in many guises from an obsessive nature to no recollection of loved ones. It slowly takes away a person\u2019s identity and their ability to perform the simplest of tasks. \u00a0My father had dementia which affected his ability to remember to do certain tasks such as eating, personal hygiene and medication. He forget where he lived most of the time which caused paranoia and depression within him. This raised concerns within me, which was why in 2013 I decided to take on the role of his primary care giver. I never thought it would be such a complex role involving my time, patience and sanity, so I initially tried keeping a daily journal as a way of expressing my daily woe\u2019s and concerns, but this fell by the wayside. After taking a creative writing course and joining a writing group as a weekly release from my caring duties and to meet new people, I found a truly unexpected ability to put my thoughts and woe\u2019s in to poetic form and have now compiled some of those poems to hopefully show both the rewards and frustrations an illness can have on the sufferer and their loved ones. &nbsp; &lt;br \/&gt;&lt;br \/&gt; &nbsp; These poems are filled with emotions from love to loss. As someone who has a family member suffering from dementia, I could relate to many of the poems. Look Ahead was filled with raw emotion and yet it was a beautiful tribute to an awful time. Despite, the sadness of the topic there were a few smiles to be had. I particularly enjoyed Our Happy Days &#8216;You always made my childhood fun Even though I was chubby and couldn&#8217;t run&#8217; These poems will stay with me. Their raw emotion, beautiful words and real-life experiences are something that shines through.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":112,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Author Q&A with @hubner_t","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_wpscppro_dont_share_socialmedia":false,"_wpscppro_custom_social_share_image":0,"_facebook_share_type":"","_twitter_share_type":"","_linkedin_share_type":"","_pinterest_share_type":"","_linkedin_share_type_page":"","_instagram_share_type":"","_medium_share_type":"","_threads_share_type":"","_google_business_share_type":"","_selected_social_profile":[],"_wpsp_enable_custom_social_template":false,"_wpsp_social_scheduling":{"enabled":false,"datetime":null,"platforms":[],"status":"template_only","dateOption":"today","timeOption":"now","customDays":"","customHours":"","customDate":"","customTime":"","schedulingType":"absolute"},"_wpsp_active_default_template":true},"categories":[14],"tags":[9,13,12,11],"class_list":["post-247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-author-interviews","tag-book","tag-indie-author","tag-self-pub","tag-self-published"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/elizabethhollandauthor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/Black-and-White-Beauty-Quote-Pinterest-Graphic.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizabethhollandauthor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizabethhollandauthor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizabethhollandauthor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizabethhollandauthor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizabethhollandauthor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=247"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/elizabethhollandauthor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":547,"href":"https:\/\/elizabethhollandauthor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247\/revisions\/547"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizabethhollandauthor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizabethhollandauthor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizabethhollandauthor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizabethhollandauthor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}