Monday, September 4, 2017

Art Drop Day and Catching Up

Tuesday, September 5th is international Art Drop Day. It's basically been for artists, but this year in Westfield we're including literary artists because writing is an art form. An author creates a story, a setting, a cast of characters that through the use of words alone they bring to life in the reader's imagination in a vivid, realistic or fantastical manner that leads the reader on a journey into a world created solely out of words.


Kelly and I will be dropping off books at certain locations around town tomorrow and posting clues on social media as to the location of the books so they can go and be discovered.


It's a wonderful scavenger hunt type of event with beautiful gifts from artists and others who participate that are yours to take home and cherish.


My book is a prototype, one of a kind cover, copy of Black King Takes White Queen, my shortlisted for the OZMA Award 2016 fantasy novel set in a fictionalized rural northwest corner of Massachusetts where white arts and black arts practitioners have lived their separate lives for centuries. It is also a story about families and friends and the bonds they share. It is young Ivy Greenaway's coming of age story as she suddenly finds herself married to a black arts warlock who is now the King when his father is murdered and his sister also wants him dead. Ivy and Romney must find a way to unite the two very different groups of practitioners o fight the evil Rayna Sharpe has released in the world as she seeks to destroy her brother and claim the treasure hoard he protects for the sake of all practitioners both black and white, as her own.


Kelly will be placing her novel Teleport, a sci-fi thriller someplace in Westfield on her way to work tomorrow.


On the home front- Kelly and I cleaned up the interior file copy of her trolley motorman/writer friend's first book, a collection of five connected trolley ghost stories set at the Connecticut Trolley Museum in East Windsor, CT that he wrote earlier this year. He's self-publishing his book this month and using a photo she shot in Ohio, I believe, on the cover. We knew he had a book in him all the while he was doubting his ability to sustain the stories beyond the first one. He did a great job...and not surprisingly, is planning his next book!


I beta read two other books in August and both are being published. Yea!


As for my own work- I haven't written anything new lately. I've been preparing for the launch of our (Kelly's and my) writer's group, WhipCity Wordsmiths which will be Saturday, September 23rd at 3PM at Blue Umbrella Books, 2 Main Street, Westfield, MA. We have a great group of writers and authors onboard so it should be interesting!


I self-published five books beginning at the end of July to clean up projects lying around on the dining room table. The Fairlawn Investigation and the Victoria Wayfarer Investigation are the first two novels in a paranormal ghost hunters series started back in 200?, and finally written in 2011 and 2013. It was way past time for them to be completed. Then Bending Birches was finished. It's two connected novellas set seven years apart and set at a fictionalized Mount Holyoke College, and also Amherst and Stockbridge, MA. Then I put together a collection of stories in which cats, kittens, dogs and puppies play a role, Life, Death, Love, Cats & Dogs. On my mother's side of the family there are distinct dog lovers and distinct cat lovers. We had both when I was growing up, and my sister has a dog and a number of cats. Recently one of my mother's cousins, a dog lover, took in a cat and now loves both. Lines are being blurred! These stories are for animal lovers who also like romance. There are even a ghost dog and a ghost cat story in the book! Finally, after lengthy debating and numerous proof copies and revisions, my vampire romance that is also about tolerance between different groups of people, has had a soft release. Out will be officially released at my author event October 21st at Blue Umbrella Books at 2PM.


This long Labor Day weekend I've been putting together holiday novellas for Christmas. I have been writing annual Christmas stories for family and friends since around 1997. The best of them have been collected in Yuletide Stories, Always Christmas in My Heart, and Together for the Holidays. The three Christmas stories volumes were put aside at the beginning of the year when I revised the interior copy layout and cleaned up minor grammar and punctuation issues in ALL my other novels and story collections. I left the holiday books for later in the year- and the time has arrived to clean them up so this has been accomplished over the past two weekends. Always Christmas in My Heart and Together for the Holidays received revised covers in the process. The cover of Yuletide Stories also received a little tweaking in the back cover copy but the rest of the cover is the same as it was.


The weekend I've been creating 5x8 inch stocking stuffer versions of holiday novellas and novelettes. The Winter Solstice Ball, The Red Velvet Suit, and A Major Production are all in the proof stage. I photographed the cover image for The Red Velvet Suit myself yesterday morning. I'm now trying to use some of my own photographs for covers (butterscotch-a collection of stories and Life, Death, Love, Cats & Dogs have my photos on the covers.) I have maybe two more stocking stuffer size books to create- one of inspirational holiday stories, the other of family holiday stories.


Also, I have revamped a young reader chapter book for Halloween. The book was originally written using two lines of text I'd written when Kelly was in grade school. "I woke to the now familiar hollow rattle and racket that came clearly through the thin walls. Yes, definitely, it was Mother in the closet again, cleaning the bones." The bones being cleaned belong to four skeletons that are hung from hooks on the front porch of the Doorlin home every Halloween. Isabel Doorlin is a 12-year old, soon to be thirteen. This is the Halloween when she will be inducted into High Tor Coven where all her female ancestors have been esteemed witches through the centuries. Once initiated, Isabel returns home where mischief makers are frightened by a skeleton brought to life who chases them down the street, a less than friendly classmate Isabel has cast her spell upon who comes begging for her assistance in finding her lost little brother as it grows late, assistance from her phantom father, several visits from the local patrol officer, and a surprising discovery about her parents. Isabel's Initiation: A Halloween Story will be available for Halloween this year.  I also have a new adult novel that may be revamped in time for Halloween also.


I have begun working on an anthology of ghost stories with Russell Atwood who edited the first anthology last year. I have about six stories to review and prepare for publication while he works on interior artwork and images. We hope to have it available for the next Ghost Stories LIVE! event on October 28th at Blue Umbrella Books.


Finally, on August 12th I was nominated and voted in as a director of Artworks of Westfield, Inc. I'm excited to be a part of this non-profit group that helps promote cultural arts of all types in the city. They are a huge supporter of artists, photographers, visual media arts, multi-medium arts, literary arts, musicians and bands, etc. in Westfield, helping to organize, host or co-host, or support, and promote local cultural events in Westfield.


And I sit around in free moments thinking that I'm not accomplishing anything in my life!

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