Pen Name:
Vicki Kay Turpen
Genre:
Articles, Biography, Essays, Mystery, Crime, Stage Plays, Young Adult, Bible History, Women’s History, Christian History, Personal, Family, Healing, Memoir
Social Media:
Amazon Book Page: The Delicate Balance
Amazon Author Page: Opelika Opiate
Interviews:
2019: The Delicate Balance
2024: Opelika Opiate
Bio
Vicki Kay Turpen lives with four of her five children on an intentional family farm in Albuquerque, New Mexico’s South Valley. She has an MA in education. Vicki co-founded the Durango Lively Arts Company in Colorado. For over 20 years, she taught junior and high school drama, producing plays and musicals. She has published articles for The Christian Science Publishing Society. In 2019, Vicki published her first work of fiction, The Delicate Balance, co-authored with one of her daughters. She is a member of both Rotary del Sol and SouthWest Writers in Albuquerque.
About Her Books
Opelika Opiate
My daughter Kelly helped me with the original ideas that formed my second book. I wrote Opelika Opiate because I got tired of women using the media to accuse men of evil actions that occurred so far in the past that often the event could not be proved. My heart goes out to any woman who spent her whole life thinking of herself as a victim. My own experience took me in just the opposite direction. I decided to admit my own ignorance and thoughts before the incident and protect myself from ever allowing any opiate (sleep, alcohol or drug) to lead me there again. I proceeded to lead a life creating my own standards. I took my experience and created a fictional story where the villain loses and there is a hero. In the book the young woman uses her own thoughts of love, marriage, and family life to make good decisions. She admits her short comings while examining the world around her. She gains inspiration and insight from the Gideon’s Bible.
Today’s society infuses many confusing theories and poor legal and educational decisions concerning youth affecting both girls and boys. I sent my original draft as a Young Adult Book to Austin Macauley Publishers, New York, New York and they published it.
The Delicate Balance
For over 20 years my daughter Shannon Horst was the CEO of an international environmental company, Holistic Management. Their center is in Zimbabwe, Africa. She and her sister Kelly toured and taught ranchers and farmers in continents around the world. All the changes in atmosphere were obvious to her and the company way before they became global news. She and I decided to write a book that would awaken readers to the deep importance of land, plants, and animals. We knew scientists were technically writing, but we wanted to tell the average citizen what was happening, deforestation, desertification, and animals diminishing as well as water disappearing. We wrote a mystery, political story of conflict and how the change of atmosphere will affect real people’s lives. We used her technical knowledge, then we added all current news that supported the truth in her conclusions. We created the characters together. SouthWest Writers gave me the opportunity to do an elevator pitch that year and GWB publishers called me right away and published our book which came out just as the pandemic demanded the world’s attention.
Today our world needs to find good ideas in truth, and I see so much trash and allusional evil even in the media. We need books that share ideas and good answers for what is changing around us. Our characters are good people in conflict with weak government and leaders. It will challenge us today to make better decisions in the face of climate change.
More From Vicki
Dear SouthWest Writer Friends,
Today my SouthWest Writers’ page features my young adult book Opelika Opiate because as a mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother I am concerned. Today we have a society that promotes overt sexuality on film, in media, and schools. Whether a child is male or female, adults in their lives should want to help them find the truth amid confusion, chaos, and fear. Once they reach puberty confusion, chaos, and violence ensues.
We also have many who think it is the responsibility of the government to raise our children. Articles in much of our media assume that parenting and family are obsolete and therefore others must make laws, invoke theories, and even medically govern children.
Statistics today tell us 40% of American homes are minus a father. That means that 60% of our homes are supported by mothers. That does not include the many copulating couples where there is no home, and no child was wanted or expected. History tells us without morals and ethics there is no safety for children. Today we have fewer marriages, and often no one is home.
Books
Title: Opelika Opiate
Published: June 23, 2023
“Opiate” – to induce sleep; to stupefy; to hijack the brain and change its normal function.
Opelika, Alabama – where cars, men, and race collide to unhinge the life of a young woman. Piecing it back together will require figuring out the role she played, and who she really is – or wants to be.
Available for Sale
Amazon
Page One Bookstore, Albuquerque
Title: The Delicate Balance
Co-author: Shannon Horst
Publisher: Terra Nova Books (May 26, 2019)
Genre: Climate Change Fiction
The Earth is dying—its life forms bound for extinction—unless the most fundamental of changes is made: Carbon-based fuels must be abandoned.Chaos results—migrating hordes of starving people, abandoned hospitals and prisons (patients and inmates still inside), and deserted cities where only cockroaches still live. Jesse Forester, the U.N. scientist responsible for the changes that survival demands, finds hints that the data at the core of the new global policy may be flawed. Key people are murdered. Rushing headlong into a frantic search for the truth, Jesse and his team discover pockets of people who are living rich and satisfying lives in Eden-like landscapes without any use of carbon fuels. Jesse becomes more desperate. Can these flourishing communities help avert humanity’s slow death from the poisonous fruits of climate change growing at its doorstep?
Available for Sale
Short Stories/Essays
Title: Holes in Our Hearts: An Anthology of New Mexican Military Related Stories and Poetry
Publisher: Independently published (May 29, 2023)
“Military Moments in a Marriage”
This collection of prose and poetry was gathered and created by SouthWest Writers and funded through a grant from the State of New Mexico Arts Agency. These stories were written and contributed by New Mexican Veterans, their family members and caregivers including: Rosa Armijo-Pemble, Joseph Badal, Rebecca Black, Steve Borbas, E. Joe Brown, Laurel Burnett, Sherri Burr, Ivan Calhoun, John J. Candelaria, Judy Castleberry, Brenda Cole, Brinn Colenda, Joshua Colenda, Mark Fleisher, Paul David Gonzales, Linda G. Harris, M. Elder Hays, A. Michael Hibner, Carl Hitchens, KE Hopkins, James Houston and Molly Houston, Carol Kreis, Caroline A. LeBlanc, Jacqueline Murray Loring, Butch Maki, Elaine Carson Montague, Sam Moorman, Evelyn Neil, Thomas Neiman, C.L. Nemeth, Paula Nixon, Harper O’Connor, Jeffrey Otis, Donna Pedace, W. Howard Plunkett, Léonie Rosenstiel, Earl W. Rugen, Lynne Sebastian, Barb Simmons, Ted Spitzmiller, Dale Swetnam, Jasmine Tritten, Jim Tritten, Lawrence Trujillo, Vicki Turpen, KL Wagoner, Regina Washington, Dan Wetmore, Ben White, Josephine White, J. Allen Whitt, Circe Olson Woessner, Norbert Wood, Kay Yoest.
Available for Sale
Articles
Christian Science Publishing Society, Boston, Mass., U.S.A.
I began writing these articles for the use and distribution to their readers in the 1960s, at that time my husband and I were living in Albuquerque with our five children. When I write for the Christina Science Periodicals the items are published in the Monitor, Journal, or Sentinel and are carried online from Boston. Each magazine is distributed to Christian Science Reading Rooms and individuals around the world. Some have been translated into other languages. Anyone can go on-line and read them at any time. Search for ‘Vicki Turpen’ at JSH.ChristianScience.com for a complete list with links. Here are five of the dozens I have written for Christian Science Periodicals:
“Don’t Cry, Listen!” ♦ June 18, 1966 Issue
“Saved from fatality” ♦ August 31, 1998 Issue
“What we gained when we lost everything” ♦ February 22, 1999 Issue
“Women’s Rights; Expanding Visions of Hope”
“Fear not, little flock” ♦ January 14, 2013 Issue
“Separate but not Equal”
Albuquerque Journal
The following articles were published in the Albuquerque Journal. Most of them are from my observations as a parent and teacher.
“Major Problem with schools is parents” ♦ 1966
“Addiction Recast in Disguise of Recreation”
“Inspiration Can Lift Humanity”
“Laws Don’t Make Better Kids”
Plays
I have written several short plays, but never published them. My advanced drama class at Valley High School performed The Children’s Hour which I wrote showing the problems with education through the eyes of 34 other teachers. We all received our master’s in education. The play was presented at a celebration sharing our ideas and pride in accomplishment.
