Susan Buffum's Blog: Welcome to My World, page 9
March 17, 2017
Have to Share this One!
In my personal email this evening I found one from Amazon.com. I am still laughing about it- they sent me a book recommendation based on my recent Amazon activity. The book they recommended to me? It was my own book- 13 (a volume of ghost & other supernatural stories.)
I would offer them the suggestion that they try to sell the book to readers of the genre other than the author!!
Best laugh I had all day!
I would offer them the suggestion that they try to sell the book to readers of the genre other than the author!!
Best laugh I had all day!
March 16, 2017
Black King Takes White Queen Giveaway ends tomorrow!
There's still a little time left to enter the giveaway for one of four signed first edition copies of my OZMA book Award shortlisted novel Black King Takes White Queen! Appropriately dressed for St. Patrick's Day in its green cover, this is a great read if you're into witches and warlocks, family and friends, and a love that has lasted through time.
Good Luck to you!
Good Luck to you!
March 10, 2017
Twelfth Novel Nearly Ready
While laid up with a shoulder injury last week that prevented me from writing because I couldn't move my left arm and had a lot of pain I needed something to distract myself, so I grabbed a binder off the dining room table, one of five pending projects and read it, making all the proofreading and editing corrections necessary.
Wednesday night, feeling better and able to type again, I sat down and began amending the text. I finished that yesterday morning before work. So that left me free last night to create the book.
The book is a sort of unique twist on vampires and is part romance, part social commentary, a little bit horror, which is something I don't usually write. I really can't say much more about it right now. Waiting for the proof copy to arrive so I can recheck it before it hits the marketplace in April.
This one will most likely be my 2017 OZMA Awards book entry, and I may enter it in the Writer's Digest Self Published Book Awards contest also.
Wednesday night, feeling better and able to type again, I sat down and began amending the text. I finished that yesterday morning before work. So that left me free last night to create the book.
The book is a sort of unique twist on vampires and is part romance, part social commentary, a little bit horror, which is something I don't usually write. I really can't say much more about it right now. Waiting for the proof copy to arrive so I can recheck it before it hits the marketplace in April.
This one will most likely be my 2017 OZMA Awards book entry, and I may enter it in the Writer's Digest Self Published Book Awards contest also.
March 7, 2017
My Magical Life Cover Redesign
I just finished an interior file upgrade of My Magical Life, lowering the chapter headings which was a suggestion from a Writer's Digest Self Published Book Contest judge. Advise taken. While in CreateSpace I decided to give the book, one of my personal favorites, a cover upgrade- same image in a new layout.
The Subtlety of Light and Shadow just underwent the same sort of upgrade/revision with a new exterior main cover color (deep pink) from periwinkle blue. The chapter headings were lowered on the page also. And some punctuation errors were cleaned up in the process. MML and TSOLAS were some of my first attempts at self publishing so I was happy to apply some of the new things I've learned in my journey as a self published author to make them even better.
I will be working on The Archetypes-First Generation, The Archetypes-Shockwaves, and the four Talon books in the Talon grim reaper series in the near future.
The Subtlety of Light and Shadow just underwent the same sort of upgrade/revision with a new exterior main cover color (deep pink) from periwinkle blue. The chapter headings were lowered on the page also. And some punctuation errors were cleaned up in the process. MML and TSOLAS were some of my first attempts at self publishing so I was happy to apply some of the new things I've learned in my journey as a self published author to make them even better.
I will be working on The Archetypes-First Generation, The Archetypes-Shockwaves, and the four Talon books in the Talon grim reaper series in the near future.
March 5, 2017
Recovering
I am not posting much due to a left shoulder injury sustained at work on February 28th that has sidelined me in all aspects of my busy life. I am out of work on workman's comp, but this has also stopped me from writing because I've essentially lost use of my left arm, which renders typing a painfully slow right hand only process as I cannot lift my arm up to table height without it causing substantial pain.
Catching up on reading while I recover. Hoping to begin physical therapy this week. The characters in the two books I am writing simultaneously are crying out for attention!
Meanwhile- the Giveaway for 4 copies of the shortlisted Black King Takes White Queen began yesterday. (The third book in that series is waving a flag to try to capture my attention also...hope to be writing again soon!) the Giveaway ends on St. Patrick's Day! Good Luck!!
Catching up on reading while I recover. Hoping to begin physical therapy this week. The characters in the two books I am writing simultaneously are crying out for attention!
Meanwhile- the Giveaway for 4 copies of the shortlisted Black King Takes White Queen began yesterday. (The third book in that series is waving a flag to try to capture my attention also...hope to be writing again soon!) the Giveaway ends on St. Patrick's Day! Good Luck!!
March 1, 2017
On Shirley Jackson
My brand spanking new copy of Ruth Franklin's Shirley Jackson A Haunted Life arrived in the mail today from Amazon. Did you hear my life screech to a halt as I sat down to crack the cover and dive into this new biography of my favorite American author?
I first encountered Shirley Jackson in (and this will date me for sure) junior high (7-8th grade-the term middle school did not exist then) when we read The Lottery. It was a disturbing little story, and I didn't really care for it, however, I did like the writing style of the author. There was something unsettling and edgy to her writing. You could feel anxiety and resolution radiating off the printed page.
In one of my high school English classes we read an excerpt titled 'Charles,' which is a chapter from Jackson's book Life Among the Savages. It was wildly amusing. I couldn't believe the author of The Lottery had written this funny story. I believe the high school drama club put on the play The Haunting of Hill House in my junior year. It was very well done.
And then Shirley Jackson kind of slipped back into the sea of authors lapping at the shores of my life until 1991 when my daughter was born. I began selling off the bulk of my huge teddy bear collection. I met a young woman from Albuquerque NM by mail. She bought some bears and we became pen pals, writing frequently to one another. She was a huge fan of Emily Dickinson (and so jealous that I lived a short drive away from Amherst, MA) and an even bigger fan of Shirley Jackson. During the course of our correspondence she bemoaned the fact that some of her Jackson books had been donated and lost so she no longer had the whole library of the author's work. I made it my mission to track down copies of the books she was missing and replaced them on her birthday and at Christmas. In doing so, I also bought copies for myself and built my own Jackson library, remembering that I had enjoyed her writing in high school- I basically rediscovered her. My collection grew to include Jackson biographies, Jackson story collections that have been released over the past 15 to 20 years, and a typewritten copy of a play she'd written for school aged kids (it's in a cabinet in the den, but I believe it was about the Salem Witch Trials.)
If any one writer has influenced my own writing, it is Shirley Jackson. A long time ago, pre-2000, I wrote a story titled Such Pretty Eyes. It was about an ordinary young housewife in the early sixties who keeps house, takes the bus downtown to shop, and occasionally has lunch out. She's married to a man who is rather self-absorbed, a company man who brings work home with him, and who basically neglects her, takes her for granted. She's a pretty young lady with extraordinary eyes other men often compliment her on. In her home she feels invisible, unseen...and resentment begins to eat away at her psyche like an acid. One night, after dinner, she stabs her husband to death.
OMG! I let my mother read this story and she hated it! "What did you write this for?" she'd demanded. I'd replied, "It's just a story!" You'd have thought I'd killed a real person or something!
But then I got to thinking about it. My story had gotten a rather volatile reaction from a woman who read a lot, who was a nurse and dealt with people, who had done part of her nurse's training at Northampton State Hospital so therefore had rubbed elbows with the insane. Authors do not write stories to lull readers to sleep. They write stories to jab and poke at social, emotional, psychological and other issues and evoke a reaction in the reader, even if it's just to make them think for a moment. Even if you throw the book aside in disgust I have done my job by prodding something that you've reacted to and you've made the conscious choice to ignore it.
I evoked a response from my mother, that's for sure. There was nothing graphic in the story- just a slow unraveling of the young lady's psyche until she reached the point where she spiraled out of control and committed an act of violence which to her, in that moment, was the only way in her mind that she could resolve the bad marriage she was trapped in.
I learned to write at the phantom knee of Shirley Jackson. She died when I was still a little girl. I sometimes like to daydream about having been born sooner, of driving up to Vermont, finding her home, being invited to sit down at the kitchen table for coffee while she smoked cigarettes and talked about her family, her writing- in between trips to the stove to stir something that was cooking and hanging laundry out to dry in the bright sunshine, nudging cats aside with her ankle. She was an ordinary woman with an extraordinary talent.
Every author (whether they admit it or not) has an author idol- and Shirley Jackson is mine.
I first encountered Shirley Jackson in (and this will date me for sure) junior high (7-8th grade-the term middle school did not exist then) when we read The Lottery. It was a disturbing little story, and I didn't really care for it, however, I did like the writing style of the author. There was something unsettling and edgy to her writing. You could feel anxiety and resolution radiating off the printed page.
In one of my high school English classes we read an excerpt titled 'Charles,' which is a chapter from Jackson's book Life Among the Savages. It was wildly amusing. I couldn't believe the author of The Lottery had written this funny story. I believe the high school drama club put on the play The Haunting of Hill House in my junior year. It was very well done.
And then Shirley Jackson kind of slipped back into the sea of authors lapping at the shores of my life until 1991 when my daughter was born. I began selling off the bulk of my huge teddy bear collection. I met a young woman from Albuquerque NM by mail. She bought some bears and we became pen pals, writing frequently to one another. She was a huge fan of Emily Dickinson (and so jealous that I lived a short drive away from Amherst, MA) and an even bigger fan of Shirley Jackson. During the course of our correspondence she bemoaned the fact that some of her Jackson books had been donated and lost so she no longer had the whole library of the author's work. I made it my mission to track down copies of the books she was missing and replaced them on her birthday and at Christmas. In doing so, I also bought copies for myself and built my own Jackson library, remembering that I had enjoyed her writing in high school- I basically rediscovered her. My collection grew to include Jackson biographies, Jackson story collections that have been released over the past 15 to 20 years, and a typewritten copy of a play she'd written for school aged kids (it's in a cabinet in the den, but I believe it was about the Salem Witch Trials.)
If any one writer has influenced my own writing, it is Shirley Jackson. A long time ago, pre-2000, I wrote a story titled Such Pretty Eyes. It was about an ordinary young housewife in the early sixties who keeps house, takes the bus downtown to shop, and occasionally has lunch out. She's married to a man who is rather self-absorbed, a company man who brings work home with him, and who basically neglects her, takes her for granted. She's a pretty young lady with extraordinary eyes other men often compliment her on. In her home she feels invisible, unseen...and resentment begins to eat away at her psyche like an acid. One night, after dinner, she stabs her husband to death.
OMG! I let my mother read this story and she hated it! "What did you write this for?" she'd demanded. I'd replied, "It's just a story!" You'd have thought I'd killed a real person or something!
But then I got to thinking about it. My story had gotten a rather volatile reaction from a woman who read a lot, who was a nurse and dealt with people, who had done part of her nurse's training at Northampton State Hospital so therefore had rubbed elbows with the insane. Authors do not write stories to lull readers to sleep. They write stories to jab and poke at social, emotional, psychological and other issues and evoke a reaction in the reader, even if it's just to make them think for a moment. Even if you throw the book aside in disgust I have done my job by prodding something that you've reacted to and you've made the conscious choice to ignore it.
I evoked a response from my mother, that's for sure. There was nothing graphic in the story- just a slow unraveling of the young lady's psyche until she reached the point where she spiraled out of control and committed an act of violence which to her, in that moment, was the only way in her mind that she could resolve the bad marriage she was trapped in.
I learned to write at the phantom knee of Shirley Jackson. She died when I was still a little girl. I sometimes like to daydream about having been born sooner, of driving up to Vermont, finding her home, being invited to sit down at the kitchen table for coffee while she smoked cigarettes and talked about her family, her writing- in between trips to the stove to stir something that was cooking and hanging laundry out to dry in the bright sunshine, nudging cats aside with her ankle. She was an ordinary woman with an extraordinary talent.
Every author (whether they admit it or not) has an author idol- and Shirley Jackson is mine.
February 26, 2017
NEW GIVEAWAY Begins March 4th
There will be a new giveaway beginning March 4th and ending March 17th for Black King Takes White Queen to celebrate it's semi-finalist (shortlisted) status for the OZMA book AWARD. This novel was self published July 23, 2016. I entered it in the contest October 30, 2016, with no great expectations, but a little flicker of hope in my heart. In January 2017 I received an email that Black King Takes White Queen had attained finalist status, was in the pool from which the semi-finalist (shortlisted novels) would be chosen from. In February 2017 I received a congratulatory email informing me my novel had been shortlisted. Am currently waiting to see if, from the 22 shortlisted novels, it will be selected as one of the five finalists for the award. The Grand Prize winner is selected from the five finalists chosen from the shortlisted list.
To say I am honored, astounded, and thrilled is an understatement.
Watch for Black King Takes White Queen to appear on the giveaway list March 4th and put your name in for this introductory novel to the series. The sequel, Black Knight, White Rook is already in the marketplace and I'm getting positive feedback on this book as well.
To say I am honored, astounded, and thrilled is an understatement.
Watch for Black King Takes White Queen to appear on the giveaway list March 4th and put your name in for this introductory novel to the series. The sequel, Black Knight, White Rook is already in the marketplace and I'm getting positive feedback on this book as well.
February 23, 2017
New Novel Emerging
Although I have five novels sitting on the dining room table awaiting my further attention, and one book pulled from Amazon.com to clean up chapter heading spacing issues, as in put them lower on the page (per suggestion of a Writer's Digest Self-Publish Book judge- I do take advice with grace and action), new characters were whispering in the wings and have now taken the stage in my imagination- and we (the characters and I, as their scribe) are currently into chapter seven of their story. This book will intersect in a arc with Life Skills, using characters from that book to come to the assistance of these current new characters who are struggling in ways similar, but not exactly the same as Remy and Lissa did in Life Skills. Remy & Lissa will involve their family in helping Jade and Dylan find their path out of the past and toward a brighter, more promising future.
February 13, 2017
What it Feels Like to be Shortlisted
I am a drop of milk in a glass bottle when I submit my novel, hopeful of rising above the sludge (slush pile) at the bottom.
I rise toward the top of the bottle as my novel is named a finalist.
Being shortlisted (short list semi-finalist) is like reaching the bottom layer of the cream at the top of the bottle.
Now, my novel has to push through the cream (all the semi-finalist's novels) to reach the top of that layer in the bottle to attain one of the coveted five first place category positions.
At the very top of the bottle, pushing the lid off is the position of Grand Prize Winner.
I still have a ways to go with Black King Takes White Queen
I rise toward the top of the bottle as my novel is named a finalist.
Being shortlisted (short list semi-finalist) is like reaching the bottom layer of the cream at the top of the bottle.
Now, my novel has to push through the cream (all the semi-finalist's novels) to reach the top of that layer in the bottle to attain one of the coveted five first place category positions.
At the very top of the bottle, pushing the lid off is the position of Grand Prize Winner.
I still have a ways to go with Black King Takes White Queen
February 11, 2017
Black King Takes White Queen Short Listed!!
Just received an email this afternoon informing me that Black King Takes White Queen made it onto the Short List for the OZMA Book Awards!
I am absolutely beside myself with joy! I love this book! (That's probably a crazy thing for an author to say, but writing books is like creating something that seems very alive somehow- it's something I created out of what I was born with, somewhat akin to having a baby without feeling fat and suffering through labor and delivery. Yes, there is labor involved, but it isn't physically painful!)
Black King Takes White Queen was a birthday gift to my incredible daughter- what a gift it has been to me in return!
#CAC17, #SeriousAuthors, #OZMAShortlister, @ChantiReviews
I am absolutely beside myself with joy! I love this book! (That's probably a crazy thing for an author to say, but writing books is like creating something that seems very alive somehow- it's something I created out of what I was born with, somewhat akin to having a baby without feeling fat and suffering through labor and delivery. Yes, there is labor involved, but it isn't physically painful!)
Black King Takes White Queen was a birthday gift to my incredible daughter- what a gift it has been to me in return!
#CAC17, #SeriousAuthors, #OZMAShortlister, @ChantiReviews
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