Tuesday, February 26, 2019

Spinning Plates

Sometimes I feel like a plate spinner in a circus...I have so much I'm doing, and each thing I do requires so much of my attention...and if I forget what I'm doing, the plates start wobbling and then, of course, disaster strikes!

I have a mountain of books I want to read- stacks of books on and underneath the coffee table, stacks of books on the end table, piles of books in the dining room, on the bookcase and the floor in the bedroom, plus file boxes of books I really need to get to. I don't know if I have enough lifetime left to read all the books I've accumulated to read when I get old!

I am currently in the process of writing the fourth book in the Black King Takes White Queen series, and then in the midst of that, I started Ezra's story when he's twenty-three and meets the young woman he's destined to marry and make his princess. And I still have Garnet and Quella impatiently waiting for me to turn my attention back to their story and finally get it done! There is Spindrift and another couple of almost finished novels gathering dust in the dining room, too. Thus, plate 1, spinning and getting nowhere.

Plate 2- I started drawing in pen and ink again back in September 2018. This was a passion of mine when I was in high school and college. I taught myself after we sampled all sorts of art materials in high school- like acrylics, charcoal, pastels, pencil, pen & ink, oils, scratchboard, etc. The pen & ink spoke to the Victorian in my heart. I just loved the dip pens, bottles of ink, and the lines I could make, the dots (stippling), the cross hatching, etc. I drew a teddy bear napping when Kelly was a baby then my pen & ink materials were packed away. I took them out again last September to draw some more realistic black squirrels (having drawn the original black squirrel silhouette in pen & ink in 2000). I ended up drawing 18 different squirrels. Then I drew Kip, the fox kit that plays a role in The Worth of a Woman, that was published in late September last year. Then I began drawing other wildlife pictures and then birds. Suddenly  found myself being asked to draw people's dogs after I drew my office manager's four dogs for her for Christmas. Suddenly I was drawing way more than I was writing. Plate 2 spinning wildly, plate 1 beginning to wobble.

Work---plate 3...I need to keep that one going because it funds my writing and drawing hobbies. I tend to give away a lot of my work which probably isn't such a good idea since the materials cost me a small fortune, but it makes me happy to make other people happy...therefore, I must spin plate 3 hard!

Plate 4...health issues. This plate spins and looks great, but it's prone to suddenly develop a bad wobble out of the blue. Since the beginning of this year I have had a series of health issues to cope with while keeping the other three plates spinning. Gastritis, a nasty upper respiratory virus, an RA flare, and chronic fatigue. I have to drag myself out of bed in the morning. The back deck stairs up to the kitchen door look like the Himalayas at the end of the day. I tend to burn the midnight oil because I am a night owl by nature. Morning person, I am not! Yet, I get up at 6AM every morning to get ready for work as my bathroom time is squeezed between Kelly's and John's since they both have a longer drive to their workplaces in CT than I have (5 mils down the road) to mine.

Desert Plate 5- the cats...they are needy after being home alone all day. They have each other, but they need their human companions at the end of the day, plus treats and attention, and a little play time.

It mystifies me how I keep all the plates spinning without falling over from sheer dizziness!

I guess I just like what I do. I'm not sick of it by any means. My writing and my art are my happy places. I want to stay happy! So, I'll keep spinning the plates for as long as I can!

Sunday, February 17, 2019

Shadows on Snow

John and I went out to eat Friday evening. It was dark when we returned home. While he was putting the tonneau cover back in my SUV, I walked around behind the house and was struck by the moon shining through the trees in the back yard. Our property bordered the woods and then a ravine with a stream and beyond that a cliff. The moon was bright. The shadows cast by the tree on the still shiny (due to ice on top of it) snow were crisp, like phantom trees.

I waited until John was in the house then turned off the spotlights and stepped out onto the deck and began shooting pictures with my cellphone camera of the ghostly shadows of the trees on the eerily lit snow (faintly purplish/blue in the moonlight. I took a number of pictures, thinking about Slender Man, a creepy book I picked up on vacation and have been reading trough off and on. He sort of appears between branches looking like part of a tree at times. It was pretty spooky standing out there in the moonlight and darkness.

Then I noticed the stars twinkling in the night sky and got a shot of them, too.

I am normally apprehensive about being outside in the dark. I don't like to look up at the night sky...this is something I've struggled with since childhood. I've seen UFOs several times, at least three different ones. I have this terror of being abducted by aliens that I cannot explain. Maybe I was abducted once and have suppressed the memory and my apprehension is my subconscious mind warning me not to go there, not to open that door.

I got some awesome pictures in the two or three minutes I was outside in the dark, including ne of the bright moon behind the branches of the oak trees. I like the tree shadows on the snow- there's something eerie and ethereal about them.


Tuesday, February 12, 2019

Riley and the Plush Falcon

Kelly's soon to be released book, Hawkists, will be coming out later this month. The print proof is due to arrive tomorrow.

In anticipation of a book signing event, I went online and found a small, realistic plush falcon, the closest real looking bird I could find to a hawk, nd ordered it as a prop for the event. It arrived yesterday and it realistic enough from a distance despite it being a plush toy (Hansa makes these remarkably realistic, expensive, plush toys).

I had it in the kitchen last night to clip the booklet attached to it off it's body. Riley Beans jumped up into his chair to see what I was doing. I showed him the falcon. Cats by nature are curious. He was not afraid of it, but rather he pushed his nose against its beak several times. Kelly snapped a picture of him 'kissing' the falcon with my cellphone. I set the toy bird on the table and he lay in his chair gazing up at it.

Riley has a new friend- the falcon.

Thursday, February 7, 2019

White Bishop Among the Pawns Available

White Bishop Among the Pawns, the third book in the Black King, White Queen series is now available on Amazon as both a Kindle ebook and a print book.  Set approximately a year and a half after Black Knight, White Rook in which evil Black Warlock Wheaton Trowbridge was defeated, Romney and Ivy suddenly find themselves, their children, family members, and friends under constant attack by a faction of black arts practitioners close to home who want to destroy the alliance they have established between black arts practitioners and white arts practitioners and return to the old ways. Their journey began in Black King Takes White Queen when Ivy was only 20 years old, but it dates back centuries to the original Romney Sharpe and Ivy Greenaway who wed and tried to establish peace and tolerance between the two groups only to be brutally slain for their efforts. In White Bishop, the lessons they've learned in the not so distant past when fighting Romney's wicked witch sister (Black King) and then Ivy's sister Holly's evil husband (Black Knight) have united them more firmly, yet with violence being enacted against them again and again, and the threat of them all being killed hanging over their heads the tension and stress mounts as they struggle to find a way to survive and keep all that they've accomplished so far from being destroyed.

Tuesday, February 5, 2019

Proofreading Done

Although I'm currently bogged down with a nasty head cold, I managed to finish the proofreading of White Bishop Among the Pawns. Oops- discovered two very glaring errors in the process, so now I have to pull the ebook and fix those after getting the print book corrected and approved.

I want to move on to other projects, and do a few more drawings, but right now I really don't feel like doing anything but crawling into bed with a mug of hot tea and a good book. I need to shake this virus by Saturday for Ghost Stories Live! I don't want to be coughing, sneezing and sniffling through For the Love of Pete! Kelly will be reading her short fiction piece Face in the Snow. Not sure what Russell will choose to read- he's kicking around a couple of ideas- classic stories.

I managed to revise the WhipCity Wordsmiths membership List and was stunned to find we are nearly 50 authors & writers strong. I never imagined it would take off like it has, but am happy that my fellow authors and writers are finding the group useful, comfortable, and entertaining to boot! We are a great group of talented people with no big ego's taking up room at the tables we gather around- we're all pretty down to earth people who love to write. I am beyond thrilled that Kelly and I have created something unique in our area that keeps growing as we add more authors. It doesn't matter that some are distant- we all stay connected now on the group's facebook page which has worked out well.

Friday, February 1, 2019

Compensation for Authors

An author friend of mine wrote something to me tonight that has given me something to think about. He wrote that he has been invited to speak about his new book at a retirement community. They do not pay authors to make appearances. He's okay with that. However, they also do not allow authors to sell their books at their appearance. So, essentially, they have invited an author who has spent countless hours writing a book, proofreading and editing the book, and who has invested time and money into getting his book published to speak for free and entertain the residents, and not make a dime from any sales either. Okay, it's a little bit of free publicity for the author, very limited to that venue  and those people. Plus the author is paying for his own gas to get there, and is donating (apparently) his time as well.

When an artist paints, you can stand behind them or to the side of them and watch them work. You can see the work of art being created, coming to life right before your eyes. The same goes for most artists in various mediums. You can see a sculptor chisel away at a block of marble and bring a human being, a creature, or whatever forth out of that block of stone. It emerges right before your eyes and you can instantly admire it. Hugh Nagger is a glass artist friend of mine. You can watch him draw a shape from his torch flame and a rod of glass and create something. He made me a camel and a blue glass heart. A musician is also an artist. He can compose a song and you can sit in the room and listen to the notes and chords played on the piano or guitar. If there are lyrics, you can hear them being sung.

But, most people would be bored to borderline insanity sitting in a room listening and watching an author type incessantly n a keyboard, or write in longhand in a notebook. However, art is being created just the same. Books do not get written overnight. Sometimes they can take years to be written. A good book can move you to tears, laughter, elation, or sometimes they can be a bitter disappointment. A good author can elicit a brad spectrum of emotions from a reader. The difference between writing and other art forms? Writing is entirely cerebral. It comes out of the authors head, gets printed on paper, and is silently read (in the majority of instances) by a reader, the words flowing into their brain and being processed. It's a curious little tenuous and temporary relationship, that between author and reader. It's one on one. The artistry of the book can only be seen as it is read. Anyone can pick it up and flip through the pages, but to appreciate it, to understand it, to comprehend what the author has created, a reader needs to read it and absorb it. Mull it over. Feel its impact. Accept it or reject it.

You can't hang a book on the wall and expect company to appreciate it. You can read a few lines aloud from it, but those excerpts are mere dabs of paint on a canvas that is rich and lush with imagery.

Other art forms offer the viewer and listener instant gratification. You can sit and study a work of art for as long as you like. Your thoughts can wander, but you can command your attention to return to the painting or drawing, sculpture or whatever and it's right there in front of you all in one place for your interpretation. Not so the book with its myriad pages. If you skim through the pages you miss things that are most likely vital and essential to the plot, the story, the sequencing of events. You can't see a book as a whole work until after you've finished reading it. You can talk about it, but you can't really show it to someone else. You can lend them the book, but then you have to wait for them to read it before you can discuss it together. Instantly gratifying, it is not.

A book takes time and effort to write, just like any other kind of work of art takes time and effort. Yet, whereas musicians, singers, and bands are paid to make appearances, and artists' works may catch the viewers eye triggering a desire to take the piece home...a book has only three shots at capturing a reader- the cover art, the back cover copy/blurb about the book, and the first line or two of chapter one. A book may be the best book ever written, but if it has a boring, uninspired cover eyes will skim right over it, dismissing it. If the back cover copy doesn't entice the reader to want to buy and read the book, then it has failed to do its job. If the first line is flat and dull and it doesn't hook the reader and reel them in...strike three! You're out!. It's hard work to nail two, never mind all three.

I guess what I'm saying here is that it isn't a piece of cake to write a book. It's a cerebral exercise with a lot of self discipline and sacrifice of personal time involved, especially if you work a regular job and have a family since writing historically doesn't pay unless your name is Stephen King, Nora Roberts, etc. Most of us self published authors spend disproportionately more creating and printing our books than we will ever earn trying to sell them. So, if you invite an author to an event to entertain other people...it would be thoughtful and considerate to offer a token compensation for their time. I was happy to be fed a marvelous dinner in exchange for a talk at the Women's Club once. And maybe it would be nice to allow the author to sell a few books while they're there...that's why they publish them after all.