Susan Buffum's Blog: Welcome to My World, page 14

Ghost Stories LIVE an Update

I'll be reading a piece at Ghost Stories LIVE at Blue Umbrella Books at 2 Main Street in Westfield, MA on Saturday evening, October 29th. The event runs from 7PM-9PM.

Originally I was going to do a reading from McLeary's Haunt which is included in the accompanying Ghost Stories LIVE anthology assembled for this event (there were a few copies available on Amazon). This story appears in my book Miss Peculiar's Haunting Tales, Volume III. It's set in an Irish pub. A male ghost haunts the basement and likes to pinch the lasses.

Then, Russell Atwood asked if I would read The Fly in the Ointment, a little bit of psychological unease prose I'd written awhile ago and included in a folder of materials at my author event this past October 8th. I agreed to read that instead since it's always been one of my favorite little creepy pieces.

And then...while assembling a new collection of tales, 13, I came across The Hour of Phantoms which is a ghost story and more in line with what will be presented the night of the 29th- ghost stories old, new and real. I sent an email to Russell who is hosting the event and heard back today that I have the green light to read this eerie little piece of prose instead...therefore, this is the final selection.

I will be reading The Hour of Phantoms on the 29th.

I don't know if the event will be recorded on video or not. Russell was practicing with the technology at my event earlier this month. If it is and it makes it to UTube I'll let you know. Otherwise, what I'm going to read is included in 13. The Fly in the Ointment is also in this collection. 13 will be available on Amazon after November 7th.

And when that happens I'll be moving from the haunting season into the holiday season (while writing a NaNo novel simultaneously and working full time...I am a busy bee!)

13 Transformed

I completed the final proofreading and little punctuation and so forth fix-ups on the interior copy of 13 last night. At 2300 hours I uploaded the new file on CreateSpace and then took another look at the cover I'd designed and hated it. So, at 2310 hours, instead of shutting off the computer and going to bed like a sane person who has to get up at 6AM and be at work for 8AM, I scraped the cover (votive candles, orange and yellow) and redesigned the whole thing. By 2330 hours I had a new cover design. This time around I chose a luna moth photo because to me the luna moth has always seemed more like a little supernatural being than an insect. There was a luna moth with battered wings one night outside the LEGO molding hall where I was working the night shift in the late 80's early 90's. It was lying on the grass. I'm guessing it might have tangled with an exhaust fan. I scooped it up, moving it off the lawn where it was an easy target for predators, settling it under a pine tree on a soft bed of needles. It wasn't so damaged that it wouldn't have been able to fly when it had recovered enough to do so.
So that was why I chose the luna moth. Then, instead of orange I chose black for the cover. Next for the title box and the back cover copy I chose dusty luna moth-green to tie it all together. It's a striking cover- much better than the too Halloween-y original I knocked together.
This is what I love about CreateSpace. I can go in and change whatever I want and no one pitches a hissy fit or says, you can't do that! I'm totally in control of my own project- all aspects of it. I like writing, but I also like designing my covers and writing my cover copy. When I get braver I'l use my own photographs that I've taken or my own art for the covers. I'm not quite ready for that step yet. Maybe next year. (That's what's holding up The Fairlawn Investigation, the first novel in the Ghost Chasers Paranormal Investigation series. I have the cover already done, thanks to a good friend's son who photographed one of my favorite houses and then photo-shopped it to make it look haunted. It's an awesome cover...but I have to figure out how to incorporate it and get the spine copy in vertically and the back cover done. I hate reading any kind of directions...not my thing.
I also know a few photographers in town...maybe they could shoot a cover for me one day?
Anyway, now I'm going to go and check the whole thing out and order a proof copy...or if it looks ready, it'll go right into the marketplace. We'll see.
13 is coming!

Coming Soon...13

Well...yesterday was an odd day. I was up late writing more of Black Knight, White Rook Friday night and was not happy with the direction it was going.

Saturday afternoon I was thinking about working on it, but then decided to leave it alone for now and do something creative. That something creative turned out to be assembling the interior of a new book featuring thirteen tales of ghostly hauntings, supernatural happenings, and psychological unease. I chose thirteen already written stories that do not appear anywhere else in book form and created a new book, 13. I designed the cover, wrote the back cover text and put it onto CreateSpace. Now I'm going through the proofreading process. I should be done with that with all the little punctuation and spelling fixes by the end of the week- just in time for Halloween and All Soul's Night! I needed a distraction prior to NaNoWriMo and the current novel was not enough to get the job done.

Some of the stories are from my archives (aka the filing cabinets chock full of stories) and some are more recently written, like last year's and this year's annual Halloween stories. A few were destined for Miss Peculiar's Haunting Tales, Volume IV, but I think that has run its course. 13 is a little darker in tone, a little more disturbing than the tales in Miss Peculiar. (Well, 11 of the tales are, two are lighter in nature.)

Will post a notice here when 13 is available on Amazon later this week.

I Felt Bad Doing It, But...

I felt bad doing it, but he had to go. I killed a character this morning while eating a bowl of Frosted Flakes prior to heading off to work. He'd served his purpose. I really didn't expect him to be back in this sequel, but there he was working as a spy, dealing with some very dangerous persons. And he got himself killed while sitting shirtless at the kitchen table having his injuries treated after appearing to make a report in Romney and Ivy's home. He'd rescued the white rook earlier, leaving it in their yard.

This sequel is darker and more difficult to write because so many bad things are happening to the people we met in the first book, Black King Takes White Queen. Romney and Ivy are dealing with Ivy's sister Holly this time. She's come back from Wales with a truly evil black warlock husband and they want the same treasure hoard that Rayna wanted in the first book and will stop at nothing to get it. They've murdered a relative right in front of Ivy and her little boy, then kidnapped Ivy and Ezra. Ivy managed to get away but not before she'd suffered quite an ordeal. Romney is struggling with a powerful rage that threatens to destroy his marriage and the unity between black and white magic arts practitioners he and Ivy worked so hard to establish. They're both suffering. They both want their little boy back before he can be corrupted by Trowbridge and Holly.

I still have mixed feelings about knocking him off, but there must have been a reason...it just hasn't been revealed to me yet. That's how it is with my elusive muse.

On The Prowl For Books

Kelly drove us over to Barnes & Noble this evening after dinner. The new Jonathan L. Howard Johannes Cabal novel was released today. We couldn't find it in mysteries where his books are sometimes shelved, but she found the new Flavia De Luce novel by Alan Bradley for me. I continued to poke in mysteries while she went off to Fantasy/Sci Fi. I then wandered into fiction and was looking at a book when she came up to me. I asked if she had found Howard's book yet and she goes, you're standing right in front of it. It was the book right next to the one I had picked up and was looking at! Duh!

I brought home four books, three for me, one for John for Christmas, and the moleskin journal I actually went there to buy so I can record all my notes for Spindrift, my upcoming NaNoWriMo novel in it to take with me to write-ins and maybe on a short trip to the ocean to take a break from what has become a hectic life. The cover of the journal is a beautiful ocean blue. The novel will be set on the rocky coast of Maine...so maybe a trip to Maine is in my future?

I will consult my crystal ball later on that.

Kelly also came home with an armful of books. She is thrilled by all the Sherlock Holmes books by various authors that were strewn throughout the mystery section new releases. She has always been a huge Sherlock fan and an avid reader of Laurie King and others who include Mr. Holmes in their books. She plans on going to New Hampshire so will buy the rest of the books that caught her eye up there where there's no sales tax.

Meanwhile, I jumped on the computer when we got home. Ghost Stories LIVE, an event at our little local indie bookseller, is coming up October 29th. The man putting it all together also assembled an anthology of old and new ghost stories that will be available at the event. My short st0ry McCleary's Haunt from Miss Peculiar's Haunting Tales, Volume III, is included in this anthology. So I went to Amazon Books, typed in Russell Atwood and lo and behold- there was the book Ghost Stories LIVE! You can view the back cover, so I selected that and there I am included under new stories by X,Y, & Z authors. I can't wait to see the actual book. I'm excited about this. It's been 21 years since I was last included in an anthology with Monsters No More that I wrote for Kelly when she was three to address those monsters under the bed and in her closet with humorous and creative ways to deal with them.

Had a fun book buying excursion with Kelly who had trouble putting the Cabal novel down when she should have been on her way to bed. Jonathan Howard is just too droll! (British humor- it's so much funnier than our vulgar, obscenity-laced American humor!) He's a very nice man who does respond to emails. We're also fans of his serial novel Goon Squad he publishes on Smashbook for download from Barnes & Noble- we're up to Goon Squad #12.

Back to Notes for NaNo Novel before I hit the hay...

If You Missed This Before...

A new giveaway starts TOMORROW, November 18th for six signed first edition copies of Miss Peculiar's Haunting Tales, Volume I. If you entered but didn't win a copy the last time then here's your next shot at a copy.

I just did an author event and book signing featuring this book on the 8th. I did readings from four of the six stories in the collection. I wish I could have read the entire book aloud but there were serious time constraints in place- I was allotted an hour and a half, and I cannot read that fast! But it was fun...especially my trying to imitate how I hear Mr. Needy's voice in my head. He has a peculiar accent blending Cockney, Scottish and a wee bit o' the Irish in the way he speaks- it's his own language, very difficult for me to mimic, but I gave it my best shot and did okay.

I always find it fascinating to hear an author read their own work aloud. You learn a lot by listening to them because how you read a paragraph or chapter and hear the character's voices in your mind can be vastly different from how the person who actually wrote the paragraph or chapter hears it in their own mind, so when they read it aloud using that voice in their head it can be pretty wild

The giveaway ends October 25th. I'll try to get the books in the mail October 26th.!

A Difficult Task

I reached an unexpected sharp curve in the road while writing the sequel to Black King Takes White Queen. The sequel is tentatively titled Black Knight, White Rook. The Black Knight is Romney and Ivy's nearly three year old son, Ezra. The white rook refers to the white rook that attacks a creature and helps save the toddler's life at the very beginning of the novel.

This novel deals with another family relationship gone bad with an arrogant, dominant, and ruthless foreign black warlock thrown into the mix. This volatile combination with tear Romney and Ivy apart at a critical time in their marriage. Ivy will be driven to the brink of despair while Romney will be nearly consumed by a fury he will at times be unable to control.

Both of them want their lives to go back to how they were but neither of them has much hope that such a thing will be possible.

I have two weeks to work on this novel, and then beginning November 1st I will have to set Romney and Ivy aside and begin my NaNo novel that will require my full attention for the following 30 days as I take the challenge to write a 50,00 word or more novel by November 30th. This is my fifth year doing NaNoWriMo. The planned novel is sprawling in content and densely populated as the setting is an old grand resort hotel on the coast of Maine during the year or so when it's fate will be decided as the elderly CEO's health fails and his son who has a successful career as an architect in Boston takes the reins with it's closing in the forefront of his mind, but the young Public Relations Director/Events Planner has something else entirely in her mind-a renaissance for the grand old hotel.

Lots of writing ahead of me in the next month and a half before thinking about this year's annual Christmas story!

Prepping for NaNoWriMo

I spent a little time after dinner tonight updating my author bio on the NaNoWriMo site, then entering the title and a brief synopsis for this year's NaNoWriMo novel. Here's the synopsis:
The struggling grand resort hotel, Spindrift, on the coast of Maine has a new public relations/events director who is bringing fresh and new ideas to the antiquated hotel. The elderly owner and CEO's health is failing so his architect son who lives in Boston has been summoned to Maine to help determine the fate of the landmark resort. Seth Sherbourne has no interest in the resort that he and his sisters have referred to as "the old dinosaur" since they were teenagers residing in the family apartment there. But young, recently hired Lydia WIndsor is full of bright ideas. She has a fiery passion for the sprawling hotel. Elliott Sherbourne sees her as the future of the Spindrift, but his son disagrees, scoffing at her every idea, wanting to just close the hotel and be done with it as soon as his father passes away. Seth's mother, Grace Sherbourne, sees her younger self in Lydia and hopes that the girl's enthusiasm and love of the Spindrift will rub off on Seth before it's too late to save "the old dinosaur" from extinction, but the two young people only seem to rub one another the wrong way, leaving the future of the Spindrift looking very bleak indeed.

Let's see if I can pull this one off in 30 days or less!

Catching Up

I decided to do another giveaway for Miss Peculiar's Haunting Tales, Volume I after doing an author event here in town featuring that book and the other two in the series, plus Medea and Halloween Story, a young adult novel and a young reader book written under my pseudonym Victoria Bell. It's the perfect time of year to read supernatural/suspense stories.

I submitted this year's Halloween story, You Can't Go Home Again, to saugus.net's annual Halloween story contest. In 2014 Blackstone's Menagerie, a story published in Miss Peculiar's Haunting Tales, Volume I, won second place in the adult category (other categories are high school, college, etc) Blackstone was originally written under Victoria Bell but then I decided to use my real name for my adult fiction and my pseudonym for young adult and young reader books.

Now I'm getting ready for another brief appearance and reading at Russell Atwood's Ghost Stories LIVE on October 29th at Blue Umbrella Books. He's asked me to read from one of my stories, so I chose McCleary's Haunt set in an Irish pub. It's about a ghost that haunts the basement of the pub who likes to pinch the bar girls/servers who have to go down to the cellar to get supplies.

The sequel to Black King Takes White Queen is taking shape. It's maybe half written. I seldom go back and rewrite unless I scrap an entire novel and start over. This one might require some inserts of material here and there, but I won't be entirely certain of that until I do the first read through once I'm done.

NaNoWriMo is rapidly approaching. I have a NaNo novel idea in mind for 2016. It will be a contemporary novel based on a novella in Always Christmas in My Heart called The Winter Solstice Ball. The setting is an old grand resort hotel on the coast of Maine. I have to go t the NaNo site tonight and plug in the info for this year's Novel Writing challenge so I'm ready to go when November 1st arrives!

I love autumn! It energizes me!

My To Do List

There are a hundred things to do on my To Do List. Tonight I accomplished one of them. I went on Amazon and put together my Author Page. Well, sort of two pages, actually. My author page under my real name, Susan Buffum, is linked to nineteen books (9 story collections- 3 romance, 3 supernatural/suspense, 3 Christmas books) and 10 novels (4 in the Talon grim reaper series, 2 in The Archetypes series and four stand alones, although Black King Takes White Queen will get a sequel perhaps later this year, and there may be a sequel in the future for My Magical Life. No sequel is planned for Life Skills or The Subtlety of Light and Shadow). My Victoria Bell Author page is linked to young adult novel Medea and young reader book Halloween Story.
Kelly usually does all my computer work but she was busy doing her own thing tonight so I took a deep breath and did it myself!
Meanwhile, had a nice email from my new neighbor, goodreads author and Amazon author Sonia Ellis.
Westfield seems to be developing a nice little writing community!