Susan Buffum's Blog: Welcome to My World, page 27

Coffee, Tea and Me

Well, the doctors where I work decided they want coffee and tea available for the patients in the waiting room. I never drank much coffee (only when out to dinner or an iced coffee once a week from wherever- we never had coffee in the house) until I bought a Keurig single cup brewer for my husband for Christmas 14 moths ago. I found a coffee I like (Maxwell House Breakfast Blend) and he has one he likes, and Kelly has one she likes so we have coffee maybe two or three times a week. The java bean plantations are not getting rich off of us.

Anyway- for someone who doesn't drink a lot of coffee and didn't even know how to brew a pot of coffee when I started working in this office, I suddenly find myself the brew mistress making the majority of the pots of coffee for my co-workers (let's not mention that humiliating first brewing of a carafe of clear coffee, or the time I forgot to put the carafe on the burner and it ran everywhere...those days are behind me now!), and now coffee for the patients. Plus I do all my other work which seems to have lost all importance because keeping staff and patients supplied with coffee has consumed the past two days of my life.

We have already observed that the majority of coffee drinkers are the AM appointment patients. They blow through the carafes quickly. The afternoon patients kind of ignore it- some saying if they drank coffee in the afternoon it would keep them awake all night! We even had the air conditioning blasting tis afternoon with patients huddled in their coats in the waiting room, and one patient bundling his little dog in his scarf...yet no one went for the hot coffee. Interesting. (When the person in charge of the thermostat realized it was the AC and not the heat that was rectified- we didn't deliberately chill the patients.)

The only problem encountered so far is random cups of coffee left behind in the waiting room- there is a trash can but these cups are still pretty full. Guess we need a slop bucket now!

My husband has been teasing me about using a Sharpie and a brown bag and writing "Susan's Special Blend" on the bag and dumping some grounds into it so patients will think they're getting something unique- well, thy are. They're getting someone who doesn't usually drink coffee making their coffee for them! It's all just rather ironic to me that making the coffee for all the coffee drinkers has become the job of the one who seldom drinks it. (I doubt I would know a cup of good coffee if it walked up and introduced itself to me!)

That's the kind of week I've had. It's always something!

And now it's 11:05PM and I have not written a word tonight except this blog...have been writing 13 days straight and I needed to come up for air.

And now I need to go lie down....and get some sleep!

RE:My Magical Life

My best friend and former college roommate has a number of my books that I've gifted her but she had not had time to read them, until after her surgery on the 15th that is. She messaged me last night that she read My Magical Life and she loved it! ("You're an awesome author!" is what she wrote) I guess, knowing me for 40 years she's just really never seen me as an author, just as her best friend, probably because I hardly ever shared anything with her until recently, except an annual Christmas story. Maybe I should have told her I was writing novels? Well, she was pleasantly surprised that her buddy who did some crazy stuff with her in the past can write! I was happy to provide the entertainment during the post surgery recovery phase. Now that's she's read one book maybe she'll read the others and be surprised all over again by the stuff that comes out of my head because each novel is more or less a nonstop rollercoaster ride!
(And I love Jazz! The coolest cat ever written! She loved him, too...but maybe we're just crazy cat ladies??)

Thank you Giveaway Winners

I just want to post a thank you to all the winners of my giveaways. I appreciate your interest in my books.

I would also like to thank the giveaway winners who have posted ratings and text reviews. I am sincerely grateful for your opinions, thoughts, critiques and for taking the time to rate and review the books.

I am a firm believer in feedback- a writer cannot grow and develop without praise, encouragement, criticism and the insights of readers. It is the reader who matters most to an author because without you all our words would be for naught.

Thank you!

Miss Peculiar's Haunting Tales, Volum III Giveaway

The giveaway for 6 signed first edition copies of Miss Peculiar's Haunting Tales, Volume III starts on the 19th. I'm kind of excited about this giveaway because it goes back to the format of the first volume with 7 shorter stories and also has one novella included. If you're looking for horror you won't find it in Miss Peculiar- these stories are more suspenseful, disturbing and creepy but not gruesome or out for shock value. And there's always some romance in them, too.

I am currently working on a novel based on one of the stories in this volume- developing the idea and theme at this point and working on characters, places, settings and events that will transpire during the course of the novel-which is something I rarely do- plot and plan a book. My normal writing style is to just sit down at the computer and let it fly straight out of my head. I don't know if this will work out or not...most likely I'll start off using notes and then the novel will veer off in a direction sort of beyond my control as my muse kicks it into overdrive! I never know what's going to happen when I sit down to write!

I will be scheduling a couple more giveaways in March- copies of the sequel to The Archetypes-First Generation (a five star rating and review were posted here by a giveaway winner, and another five star rating was given on Amazon.com by a different reader-thank you so much!!) which is The Archetypes-Shockwaves. Shockwaves is another thrill ride and also includes the bonus Rex Family Christmas story (I'm known for my annual Christmas stories for friends and family which have been put into three books so far, and I generally write a Christmas story based on characters in my novels that gets included at the end of the novel or in a sequel as a bonus feature). The other giveaway will be for my new book Cupid's Dart's: A Sweet Hearts Collection (15 short stories). So, watch for those in March. Early feedback from advance readers of Cupid's Darts has been positive-always a good sign!!

Valentine's Day

I gave a copy of my new book, Cupid's Darts: A Sweet Hearts Collection, to my best friend Darlene on Friday. Last evening I picked her up to go to a co-worker's baby shower and she told me that she'd started reading it- had read three stories and then she complained, "I get to the end of the story and I don't want it to end! I want to know what happens next!" So I told her to pick her favorite story from all 15 of them when she finishes the book and let me know what story that is and I would write her a novel using those characters so she'd have their whole story and not just a peek into one episode in their lives.

I hope she does that because it would be interesting and fun to develop a novel from one of those stories.

Happy Valentine's Day to All!!

(Frigid cold in the Northeast today-a good day to stay in and curl up with a good book!!)

Gifted the Gals Today

If you've read my bio you know I work full time as a medical secretary. It's a multi-practitioner office with two MDs, one DO, two Nurse Practitioners and three Physician's Assistants plus an LPN. It can be stressful at times so every now and then I try to do something to relieve the stress, something nice for my co-workers. Today, for Valentine's Day, I gifted seven of my closest co-workers with brand spanking new copies of the just self-published Cupid's Darts: A Sweet Hearts Collection, signed and personalized for the gals who make my job easier because they make me laugh every day. Then five of us had lunch together. It was a nice day overall.

Meanwhile, Kelly was home early from her job today after working long days Monday thru Thursday due to an audit where she works. It was a nice surprise to come home to find she had uploaded Cupid's Darts onto my blogspot blog site and sent me the picture of the book so I could upload it here. That saved me some work!

Finally, I packaged up the five copies of My Magical Life that are heading tomorrow to the giveaway winners. Last night I set up the giveaway for Miss Peculiar's Haunting Tales, Volume III. It begins on either the 16th or the 17th of this month.

Sorry-brain-fried tonight! Have been plugging away at a new novel since last Saturday. Probably will work on it a few more days then stop and read what I've done so far. My novels are character driven and these characters have taken me to places I hadn't expected to go when I started writing this book. It'll be interesting to see where this goes. This novel doesn't have a real title yet, just a working title of Pandora's Bells.

Need to get some writing time in tonight- starting to get late!

Not What I Intended

I sat down last night to start a sequel to a Christmas story from 2014. 31 pages later I shut down the computer and went to bed after realizing that I was not writing a short story, I was writing a novel. Wrote some more today after finishing the new Darynda Jones novel The Dirt on Ninth Grave. This is so not the project I thought I was working on...I had intended to write a short story, and then a novel based on a short story in Miss Peculiar's Haunting Tales, Volume III about vampires. Sometimes my muse just messes me up so bad! I swear to God he drinks way too many caffeinated products!!

Two Questions Tonight

Question 1: There is a Miss Peculiar's Haunting Tales, Volume III. There are eight tales in this book. Next Giveaway? Yes or No.

Question 2: I have ten more copies of Miss Peculiar's Haunting Tales, Volume I kicking around the house. This book drew the most interest so far of all the giveaways I've had. Offer it one more time? Reply Aye or Nay to this question!

1840's House

Today I had the opportunity to visit my friend Lisa who recently moved into an historic 1840's reek Revival house in the downtown area. Often my story ideas begin with a house- a particular house. I love architecture and am especially enamored of Second Empire mansions (think Psycho house on a grand scale). I visited Lisa's house years ago when it was an antiques store, before the next owners had done some renovations and way before Lisa and Bill bought it. It was interesting to walk through the house today-it's gorgeous inside! It was rather primitive still when I was last there and bought an antique woven reticule I found in a room on the second floor that is now Lisa's bedroom. I was excited today because she took me down into the basement where I could see all the original hand hewn beams, all the nails from the hardwood flooring on the first floor poking through the wide plank subflooring. The lower portion of the oldest part of the basement is stone with brick above. The ceiling is low and the water pipe running diagonally across the floor was built into the original cellar staircase at the front of the house.

It was a gloomy, rainy day today with lots of fog appearing later in the afternoon as a warm front gusted in with winds of up to 40 MPH. Lisa and I had lunch at the Pierogi Café downtown- the same place Carol and I had lunch in January. It's a wonderful little place with great food. We got caught up on things and she mentioned she'd always thought she'd liked to write a book one day. She is a big time scrapbooker. I encouraged her to just write what she knows best and have fun with it.

I love her house and was thrilled to be given the basement to second floor tour today to see how it looks now. I am going to give her the little woven textile bag I bought there years ago because it looks like it belongs to her house more than it belongs to my 1978 ranch-style house!

Came away from today's visit with lots of ideas for new stories.

Robins on Groundhog Day

It was 64 degrees on Christmas this year. A few days before Christmas I saw robins. They usually fly south in October. Today I saw flocks of robins. It was 53 degrees. We really haven't had any snow to speak of this winter in this part of western MA. I was just wearing a fleece jacket today, with the sleeves pushed up. It was like spring outside. I don't know whether to call this a mild winter or a very early spring; one that started immediately after autumn! I kind of miss the snow on one hand, but like the nice weather on the other. Certainly am not missing slush, road salt and going through gallons of windshield washer fluid in order to see through filthy car windows!

Robins on Groundhog Day- how weird is that? (And yes, I suppose they saw their shadows since it was sunny...so six more weeks of sunshine before the real spring waltzes in with who knows what in store for us!!