Susan Buffum's Blog: Welcome to My World, page 21

Final Few Hours of Giveaway!

We're into the final hours of the My Magical Life Giveaway (second one for this urban fantasy/romance novel. It would make a great beach or relaxing in the backyard by the pool read.

Good luck! Five people will receive signed first edition copies at the conclusion of this giveaway.

Moon & Clouds

I'm known for always looking at the sky, searching for images in the clouds. My husband shakes his head every time I grab my camera and run out the back door as the sky darkens with an approaching storm. I have many awesome shots of the swirling cauldron of dark clouds that precede thunderstorms.

Tonight the sky was a beautiful azure blue full of fleecy white clouds. The near full moon was a bright white orb suspended just above the woods. I went out on the deck to try to get a picture of the moon but of course ended up shooting a series of pictures of the clouds.

Above the house was an interesting cloud formation that strongly resembled a rather cherubic form complete with curly locks and a face with all the usual features- eyes, nose and mouth. It appeared to be flying not quite horizontally from left to right with its hands thrust out before it. It didn't have defined wings, but there was a wing like appendage where it's left calf was. This shot is going into the keeper collection!

Meanwhile, Kelly, who loves to take pictures of the moon grabbed her somewhat better camera and came out to take pictures of the moon. It had a somewhat oval shape tonight since it's a couple of days from full moon phase. Her pictures were awesome- bright moon in a clear blue sky with craters visible!

Later she went out when it was fully dark to get some additional pictures. There's a planet visible in close proximity to the moon this time of year and she was able to capture that as well. (I really need to upgrade to a better camera!) She tried to get a picture of the Big Dipper but the stars weren't bright enough.

I can watch clouds in the sky all day, but I have a definite apprehension about looking up at the night sky. I like the moon, stars and planets like she does, but I have always had this irrational anxiety about looking at the night sky...I think it's because of a couple of UFO sightings when I was young. I've seen two different UFOs in daylight but I can deal with that better than nighttime sightings!

I wrote a short story called The Abduction years ago, about a girl who's camping on a mountain with friends when she is abducted by aliens while her friends sleep in their tents at night. They don't believe her and think she's had a vivid dream or is making it all up. (These aliens had a fascination with socks.) I think this story is slated to be included in Miss Peculiar's Haunting Tales, Volume IV.

So, I take cloud pictures and leave the moon shots to Kelly! Between us, we have enough pictures to make a beautiful book! Maybe one day....

Fireflies

While I was sitting in the kitchen tonight editing the new novel, Kelly was sitting down the hall in the dark den just looking out the window and doing some thinking. She has one vacation day left before starting her old job only as a United Technologies employee (blue badge) and not a contracted employee (yellow badge), complete with a big jump in pay and a sign-on bonus. She knows she'll be working longer hours but she likes her job as a quality engineer...I think she was remembering her trip to Portugal last year and wishing that she'd had someplace interesting to go this year, but her best friend was tied up with her studies at Brown University (biomedical engineer going for her PhD.)

So, Kelly comes to the kitchen and says, "There're these really bright flashes of light outside. I thought they were plane lights (we live near a municipal airport with an Air National Guard base on it so there are always planes in the night sky.) "I finally figured out they're fireflies."

So out onto the back deck we go to watch the fireflies. At first we didn't see many, but then there was a bright flash in the tall arbor vitae hedge between our house and the neighbor's. Then another flash near the shed. Then a very bright flash in the oak tree just off the deck, and a series of twinkling flashes along the woods. Watching the fireflies is something she and I have done ever since she was three or four years old. It's like watching fairies flit among the dark greenery.

Usually by this time of year we also have the nightly non-stop call of the whip-poor-will, but the woods are eerily silent this year. The whip-poor-will and his kin have been in the woods here since my family moved here in 1973 and there were hardly any houses on the mountainside. As the neighborhood expanded, he adapted and stayed, moving deeper into the woods. John and I moved a street away from where I used to live in 1989. Kelly was born in 1991. We've always heard the whip-poor-will.

When Kelly was younger she and I would grab the Maglite off the kitchen counter and go out onto the deck when the whip-poor-will was in the yard next door. He liked to perch on the treehouse roof there. If he wasn't up on the roof we could find him perched on the chain link fence between our yard and theirs. His eyes glowed orange in the light. He didn't seem to troubled by being spotlighted while we got a look at him. (We didn't leave the light on him for long, just enough to catch sight of him.)

All we've been hearing in the woods lately are owls. There's even an owl that hoots during the day- sounding ticked off (maybe bothered by crows and jays?)

We heard the fox yipping earlier this spring and would see it trotting up the path from the brook every morning just past seven o'clock, but not recently. Even the spring peepers are suddenly silent.

Sudden silence in the woods....kind of creepy in a way. Unnatural nature.

But, at least we have the joyful flashy fireflies!

Two Quick Quotes from New Novel

Have been working on the editing and wrote these two quotes down to share here:

If you keep agitating the water it never becomes calm.
and,

"Pottery doesn't last. It can get broken," she says.

"That's true. You have to be careful with it." Just like hearts can be broken. You have to be careful with them, too.

The novel is about witches, warlocks, and wizards in an area similar to the Berkshires of Massachusetts (practitioners of both white and dark arts) and a war that pits brother against sister over control of a collection that can destroy the world.

Rough Draft Done!

Finished writing the rough draft of this new urban fantasy novel. It came to an end at 276 typewritten pages, 151, 874 words.

It doesn't have a title yet.

Neither does the other book I recently finished writing (also would be classified as urban fantasy) that wound up at 147 typewritten pages, 85,468 words. I really need to fill in some more to flesh this one out so the story is a little more coherent.

Then, there's the one begun back in January (based on characters in a holiday short story therefore would be contemporary fiction like Life Skills) that reached 180 pages, 91,528 words and stalled because I had a panic attack about the ending that needs to happen and have not been able to work on it since!

So, I'll work with the two that are finished and then see where my muse takes me next!

Following

I follow three of my favorite authors on Twitter. It surprised me when one of those authors turned around and now follows me! She and I were in Maine at the same time last September and never managed to hook up...the day she had a spontaneous book signing at her hotel my husband got us lost in the boonies while antiquing in an area neither one of us was familiar with. He trusted the GPS and not his human co-pilot who could read the signs, even though he could also read the same signs that I was reading! He still took a wrong turn and got us into a crazy detour loop that we went around three times before I yelled at him to stop going in circles and take THAT road! (He has no sense of direction. I have a terrific sense of direction and have never gotten lost while driving or hiking.) We made it back to where we were staying in time for a late dinner, too frustrated and tired to drive up to Portland where we'd gotten lost downtown the day before. He never lets me drive. He thinks he knows where he's going all the time. I can't count the number of times he's driven past places we're going to, streets we need to take, exits, etc. He is VERY experienced with three point turns, finding unoccupied looking homes in which to pull into their driveways to turn around, and so forth. He doesn't seem to know how to use the brake and slow down as we approach our destination. He always blames the guy behind us for "being on our butt" and about to hit us...evidently everyone who ever follows us anywhere is out to tail end us. I say, "Well, we have insurance." He says, "Well, they probably don't." Okay, we have different driving experience- I learned to drive from my mother whose father was a truck driver. In my twenties I went to the State Police Academy in Framingham and learned defensive driving while working in law enforcement. He learned to drive from, oh, I would guess, his grandmother who could barely see over the steering wheel and could hardly reach the gas pedal. (I don't really know who taught him to drive but he's had a lot of accidents while I've had only three, and none of them were my fault since I was sitting still in traffic in a Mazda Protege and larger, taller vehicles (pickup truckwith what looked like Monster tires on it and another time a Ford Expedition) backed into me because they couldn't see me! Now I drive an SUV- no more small cars!)

I don't know how I veered off on a tangent here...just following my thought train tonight on following...

I didn't get much sleep last night...that brings the silly out in me!

Giveaway Starts Friday, June 10th!

On June 10th a new giveaway for 5 copies of My Magical Life will begin. This will be the second giveaway for one of my most popular books about a witch and a vampire seeking their happily ever after.

I will be doing a book signing at the Agawam, MA Public Library on June 20th from 6:30PM-8:30PM for their READLocal program. My featured book will be My Magical Life. It's the perfect beach read!

I'm happy to see that my new acquaintance Marcy Heath Robitaille will also be at this event promoting her book, Wish You a Goode Journey. Marcy and I sat side by side at the Articulture event here in Westfield on April 30th and became fast friends. Her book is about the loss of her 17-year old daughter in an accident and how 6 people's lives were changed due to the organ donation program she'd signed up for when she'd gotten her license. It's about finding the strength to move forward after a tragic loss, healing and the spiritual bond between mother and daughter-a very moving and beautiful book.

Other authors at this event will be Linda Cardillo, Tamara Fricke, Carol Heath (VC Russell), Gerald McFarland, Bob McMaster, Matt Norris, Gail Olmstead, Tim Parker, and Jacqueline Sheehan.

If you didn't win a copy of My Magical Life in the first giveaway I hope you'll sign up for a copy this time around! They're first edition and will be signed.

Good Luck!

225 Typed pages in and ACK!

I just reread the 225 pages I've written so far of this new novel (while the previously written one cools its heels on the dining room table...poor thing!) and I am on the fence as to whether or not to scrap the whole thing and start over, or just do a major overhaul of what's here with the hope of it all making sense in the end. Kelly says, just finish it. She wants to know what's going to happen as it's almost finished. I'm wanting to make it darker. I have three ordinary yet evil objects suggested by people who responded to the request for input. They'll get signed copies when its published for their inspiring ideas, but I think I have to go with what got worked into the story- the under study has taken over the leading role, in this case. But I'll use the objects suggested by responders in the novel elsewhere, and credit their contributions in the acknowledgments.

I guess I'll finish this version before starting version 2. I think I wrote four versions of Talon:An Intimate Familiarity before I was happy with it...although all of the different versions had their merits. It also reminds me of the thirty or so stories I let Remy and Lissa ramble around in while working out their story for last year's NANO novel, Life Skills. Sometimes you just have to bear with the characters while they get themselves sorted out!

Colored Pencil on Bristol Board

I tend to forget that I'm also an artist.

Last night Kelly asked me if I would draw a picture of a trolley car for her for her 25th birthday later this month. I told her to show me what she wanted- turns out it was her restoration project car at the Connecticut Trolley Museum, an 1894 Brooklyn Rapid Transit car (#169) that she is one year into restoring.

Today, while she was at the museum, John was painting the rest of the house. My friend who was supposed to come up from CT to spend the day and go to the Art Walk here in town with me was unable to make it. So I spent a few hours editing my current in-progress novel, and decided to trash it and start over- same story but darker and denser.

John came in and ate then asked if I wanted him to go with me to the Art Walk, so of course I said, "Yes!" We went and I saw a lot of fantastic art- beautiful paintings, fabric art, prints, drawings, metal sculpture, glass, origami, etc. I bought a new rooster print to go with the one I'd bought at the end of April at the Articulture event- same artist, Steven Jones.

During the ride home I psyched myself up. I used to draw in pen and ink, mostly back and white but I also had a rainbow of colored inks at one time. I'd painted murals on two children's bedroom walls when I was younger. I did the Black Squirrel art for a line of products sold here in town where we're known for our black squirrels back when I worked at Conner's Inc (around 1999-2000) - I saw those items in the Rinnova Building and know there're also available at Westfield Feed...it all served to remind me that before I really got into writing I was also a fairly decent artist.

So- once back home I rummaged through the file cabinet drawer label Art Supplies, pulled out a piece of Bristol board, then dug out all our colored pencils for our adult coloring books that Kelly and I have been coloring in for fun since Christmas. Years ago I drew her a nautilus shell and hand-colored it. It's hanging on her bedroom wall. She wanted color and suggested the pencils. So..in about three and a half hours time I drew her the trolley car and colored it in. It came out pretty well.

Her birthday isn't until the 26th but I was still working on it when she came home from the museum so I let her see it- the smile on her face told me everything I needed to know. Tomorrow we'll get a mat and a frame for it and then it's up to her to find room on her wall to hang it.

To me, I'm just a medical secretary, a wife, a mother, a sister, a friend...but occasionally I'm reminded that I'm also an author, a writer and an artist.

These are the moments that bring me the greatest joy-when I create something that makes someone smile like that.

Art & Music Event

This Saturday here in Westfield, MA there is a huge art and music event all along Elm Street- both sides, and satellite sites also. I'm looking forward to see the artists again who were at the Articulture event at the end of April. I'm taking a friend from Enfield, CT with me, and after hiking up and down the street enjoying what Westfield haves to offer we'll head up to my house on the mountain on the other side of town and start brainstorming a book we talked about writing in the past, and a new book we were kicking around ideas for the past weekend. Brain flexing- it should be fun.

Meanwhile- I'm nearing the end of the new novel I've been working on. I started reading it last night and had to forced myself to go to bed at 12"16AM so I could get up for work at 6AM. It sounds late, but at 12:45AM the phone woke us up-wrong number from Indiana!! Just had us shaking our heads...hate those kind of calls, especially when there's a frail elderly parent in poor health...you're always waiting for that particular call, so it jump starts your heart.

Looks like it's going to be a nice weekend!