Camden Lake Released

 I have not been hibernating this winter, I've been writing!

Camden Lake was released December 13, 2020.  Readers have already asked for a third in the "Lake" series, which I hadn't intended to be a series (the first was apparently Bolt's Landing published May 2020, although The Subtlety of Light and Shadow published in June 2015 is also set at a lake), so Dalton Cove is half written. Dalton Cove is it's working title so it may change, but for now it works.

I'm also writing a companion novel to Black King Takes White Queen, Black Knight White Rook, and White Bishop Among the Pawns. This spinoff focuses on an elite group of warriors for King Romney Sharpe known as The Bowmen, and a young female potions master whose life is endangered when a madman seeks to kidnap her and extract all her inherited potions knowledge (including the most dangerous potions known to all and kept top secret) so he can mutate them to serve his own nefarious purposes. This one will be titled The Bowmen and will be the story of Bowman Ardis Locke and potions master Marabe Breton. Characters from the Black King Takes White Queen series appear in The Bowmen but not as central characters.

Rookdale, a book about witches in Maine, is still on the drawing board, already partially written as is the romance novel set at a grand resort hotel on the coast of Maine titled Spindrift. I've also been writing and adding ghost stories and eerie little tales to the upcoming third ghost stories anthology A Haunting We Will Go, tentatively scheduled for release by Halloween 2021.

I continue to work full time in a busy medical office where we're all trying our best to deal with COVID fears and now the urgency to get everyone vaccinated. It certainly has not brought out the best in people. I'm incredibly grateful to have my writing to turn to after a stressful day of being yelled at by people who think their primary care has all the questions when it's the state that is regulating the distribution of vaccines and who can get them and where. Our state is particularly chaotic right now with most of our area told to find sites 45 minutes away that have already been booked solid for a month, and might not have enough vaccines for all those who have already obtained them to receive their second dose before many have even had their first. Very frustrating for everyone!

So, a writing I will go, escaping into the world of fiction where I can control what is going on in the worlds I create! 

Keep reading! Hopefully the real world will level out and we will all either go back to normal or adapt to the new normal-whichever way it goes, reading is a great way to relax and escape from day to day worries and frustrations.

A New Christmas Ghost Story

 

The Christmas Tree by Susan Buffum

 

The wide floorboards creak and crack beneath the worn, faded wool carpet, its pattern barely perceptible. Raw wintry air seeps beneath the weather-bowed sash. There is nothing but moonlight beyond, passing through wavy panes of glass, stretching tendrils of pale light toward the dark corner where an ancient Christmas tree tilts, slouch-shouldered, defeated, brown needles in a ring on the floor beneath its skeletal branches. A tin star droops from the top most branch, waxen tears from the candle within having adhered it to the bough, brown needles jutting through the now age-tanned wax. Shards of broken glass ornaments litter the floor, dull glinting blades poised to cut and pierce the tender flesh of unshod feet.

But the feet that trod these boards, this rotting carpet, feel nothing anymore. Their steps are more a glide, a drift, a draft of smoke or bank of fog in motion. They are silent, yet the floorboards protest as if a living soul strides forth toward the corner where the relic of Christmas past stands forlornly, its memories of a holiday long ago shattered and shed.

The faint laugh of a child fills the room and then fades to silence. A woman’s voice comes from another corner near the crumbling fireplace, the hearth spattered and stained by the droppings of birds that have found their way down the flue and vainly sought the ascending pathway toward freedom to no avail. Small piles of feathers and bones litter the floor beneath the windows where the promise of sunlight had drawn the trapped, winged creatures, where the cruel glass had broken fragile neck bones and bodies had fallen. A man’s voice calls from another room, his words muffled, unclear.

The wisps of mist drift nearer the tree, yet nothing that lies in that magical circle of brittle brown needles, dully glinting glass shards, and rigid droplets of  hardened wax is disturbed by the small feet, formed and visible now beneath the mist.

From the swirling mist a child’s legs and torso take shape and then its arms. The head is next and a circlet of mist drifts in a lazy spiral around it, obscuring any facial features that may have appeared. One arm rises. Clutched in a tiny fist formed of denser fog there is a small candle, the flame having burst into bloom, a dancing orange and yellow lily of light that shines upon the barren boughs, its light just reaching the wall behind. The light wavers as the child appears to light candles that no longer exist in this world.

The woman’s voice exclaims. Near the doorway, a man clears his throat. The child’s laughter is a musical peal of delight and excitement. And upon the desiccated branches small spheres of light begin to glow.

Invisible arms lift the phantom child, its misty form moving here and there, more spheres of phosphorescent light illuminating as if fireflies have landed upon the needleless branches and settled in at some unspoken command. A woman’s gasp, the sudden clap of hands as the light reaches the top most branch of the forlorn tree.

For one shimmering moment the tree is there in its corner, standing tall and proud, aglow with the light of dozens of candles, ornaments glinting among the boughs. A brief glimpse into the past and then the ghostly child coughs harshly, the candles shiver in their holders among the boughs. The child of fog and mist begins to dissipate as the spheres of light blink out like stars at dawn as the sun rises above the sea.

There is nothing there in that corner any longer but the skeletal remains of a tree shrouded in shadows that drape around it like a pall. The pale tendrils of moonlight recede. The room grows darker. The wind moans beneath the sash. The room grows colder still.

The floorboards crack and creak, and then a door opens, aged hinges protesting against the unwanted separation of warped door from weathered jamb. Cold air rushes into the hall while outside the soft, crisp, crunch of footsteps in frozen snow retreat from the granite stoop and fade. An owl hoots.  The moon slides from behind a cloud to reveal faint fractures in the snow, the gaping maw of the door as it stands ajar.

Then, from inside the house, a soft clattering sound, a gentle sighing whoosh, as the Christmas tree of yore at long last succumbs and falls to the floor amid the scattered debris of its former glorious self.

 

 

MEDINA RELEASED WITH NEW COVER!

 I was finished all the corrections and revisions to Medina and was about to release it in its original rather bland blue marbled cover when author friend Melissa Volker surprised me and totally blew me away with a brand new cover for the book. Her design was eye catching and only needed a bit of tweaking before it was perfect. This cover now graces the newly released 590 page Medina. I had a cover for the ebook that I had designed that was okay, but not very exciting. So Melissa jumped right in and resized the new cover for the ebook version. Book versions are available on Amazon. 

Medina is an epic novel about three men all in love with the same young heiress. I wrote it back in 2006 and finished it in 2007. It was supposed to be a surprise birthday gift for my friend Darlene. The surprise was it took 13 years to put a copy in her hands!

The Haunted Hayride

 Here is this year's Halloween story!

The Haunted Hayride by Susan Buffum (Copyright 2020 Susan Buffum) 

It was just supposed to be a fun thing to do, the six of us heading out to Blackburn Farm for the haunted hayride. The school bus drove us past the farm all the time. They grew pumpkins there. There was an orchard to one side that went up a slight rise. At the top of the rise was an old windmill made of brick that had fallen into ruin, its sails tattered, the skeletal framework of its blades broken in places. In the fields across the street they harvested hay.

It didn’t seem strange that there were just the six of us who climbed into the wagon. It was a raw night with a lot of ground fog. Grisly old man Blackburn, with his straggly, long, gray hair, had hitched his team of big, shaggy, black horses to the wagon. He was all dressed up like an old-fashioned undertaker with top hat and tails. His son, Creepy Charlie, we all called him, hung a lantern on a pole on the front corner of the wagon and then gave us a maniacal grin, wishing us a “Safe journey through the orchard,” before stepping back into the shadows near the barn.

I was sitting on a bale of hay behind old man Blackburn who was perched on the driver’s seat. The others were scattered in the wagon, sitting on hay bales like I was. Tom was at the back as the wagon rocked and creaked along the rutted road. Soon, a heavy bank of fog came from out of nowhere. I thought they might have a fog machine, but it was a weird, almost viscous fog that seemed to cling. I had to wipe it off my face. It felt slimy. Somewhere a dog howled, most likely one of the hounds back in the farm yard. There was a strange thud, the wagon rocked. I threw my arms out to the sides, but there was nothing to grasp onto. I fell off the bale into loose hay on the wagon floor, scrambling to get back onto my seat. When I looked up, Tom was gone. “Hey!” I cried, but no one paid any attention to me. They were taking pictures of one another on their cellphones and laughing.

Jenny disappeared next. Old man Blackburn shouted, “Heads down!” and we all ducked. At least I assumed we all had. Low branches scraped and scratched across the sides of the wagon making an awful sound that set my teeth on edge. Jenny was gone when I sat back upright on my hay bale.

“We lost another one,” Ronny grinned. “This is so cool!” An eerie yellow light seemed to be bobbing toward us through the twisted, stunted trees. It looked vaguely human in form, but then it suddenly came at us fast. I ducked as it swept right over the wagon. When I looked up, Ronny was gone.

Sandy, Kayla, and I looked at one another. They shrugged and then they smiled. “It’s a haunted hay ride, what do you expect?” Sandy remarked.

Up in the branches over our heads there came a rustling and flapping sound. I peered up through the now wispy fog and saw hundreds of crows settling into the tree tops. “Ya know what that’s called, don’t ya?” old man Blackburn cackled raspily. “A murder of crows.” Great.

The crows made those freaky, ratchety sounds. A number of them cawed raucously. I put my hands over my ears. If Kayla shrieked when she disappeared I don’t know because all I could hear were those crows!

“Who’s next? You or me?” Sandy asked, leaning toward me, an almost crazed glint in the depth of her eyes.

“It’s not going to be me!” I cried as we reached the rise, the abandoned windmill right there in front of us. I threw myself face down in the hay at the bottom of the wagon bed. From there I heard the creaking and clattering of old wood, the flapping of torn, deteriorated fabric as the blades began turning rapidly.

When I dared pick myself up off the floor, Sandy was gone.

“Ya enjoyin’ the ride?” cackled old man Blackburn.

I sat back down behind him without saying a word as the wagon began the slow and twisty descent down the backside of the rise. There was a rutted dirt lane that would circle back behind the orchard. It ended at the barn. All I could do was sit and wait…wait to join my friends wherever they had gone.

Medina

 The first novel I ever wrote and wrote and wrote...you get the idea, will finally be out on Kindle this week, but I need to warn you, it has a staggering 170,000 plus word count (and this was after cutting it in half!) The title of the book is Medina, which is the name of the main character, a young heiress of Irish-American descent.

Back around 2007 or so what I wrote it I knew nothing about writing a novel. I'd written poetry and short stories. I'd tinkered with writing a novel, but never really accomplished anything. I decided to write a romance novel for my best friend for her birthday. She finally got a proof copy of the novel 10 years later, an epic 585-page love story about one young heiress tasked with renovating and restoring the sprawling Graham family estate while recovering from a near fatal accident. Basically, as a teenager she was exiled to the family estate in Galway after she shocks and angers her wealthy, snooty family by having a scorching one-night fling with a rock singer/guitarist pick-up in a bar. Seven years later she's put in charge of restoring Greenhaven. A young man with a lot of piercings and tattoos she meets at the local supermarket deli directs her to his older brother who has his own renovations and restorations construction business. Although she has some misgivings and a volatile relationship with Giancarlo Murphy, she hires him for the work. Giancarlo is jealous and bothered by his kid brother Sebastiano's friendship with Medina. And then there is the suave, polished family retainer, Seth Sheridan, himself from a monied family, trying to change Medina's mind about having hired Murphy. All three men are attracted to the fiery redhead. Giancarlo and Sebastiano have a difficult relationship that is strained by Sebastiano's closeness to Medina and Giancarlo's company rule about not fraternizing with the clients. Then there's Seth who is also interested in Medina. The big problem is that Medina is engaged to a writer in Ireland who wants her to come home.

A lot of things happen as relationships grow, shift, and change throughout the book. Despite all the men surrounding her, Medina cannot find true love and it is a bitter disappointment to her when her friends meet, fall in love with, and marry members of Murphy's crew. There's deceit and treachery shadowing her as the restoration work progresses. Her family contests Cathryn's Graham's will, causing a prolonged court battle. She's attacked by the man she's come to rely on at Greenhaven...or was she? And then, just when she's about ready to give up, the man she has realized she loves the most shows up n the doorstep and the past and the present are reunited.

That's a very brief nutshell version of the novel. I'm working on the print book still, but the Kindle book is going to be in the Kindle store by tomorrow.

Overall, about 11 years in the making, her is my very first novel following close on the heels of my 23rd novel, Minx Marvel.

Minx Marvel

 The print and Kindle ebook versions of my new novel Minx Marvel are now available. Minx started out as a novella, but then bloomed to over 64,000 words so had to be classified as a novel.

This book falls into the same category as The Worth of a Woman. Both books deal with the sexual exploitation of young females. In The Worth of a Woman, 15-year old Jade is sold at auction to the highest bidder and basically becomes that man's sex slave in a dystopian future society. Jade just cannot be untrue to her own self and constantly angers and frustrates her owner. In being her own self she discovers a plot against him at the risk of her own life, which doesn't go unnoticed. Not knowing what else to do with her, Archer sends her away to learn the healing arts. He discovers the worth of a woman in Jade.

In Minx Marvel, Minx is the now twenty-three year old daughter of a controversial but talented artist. She returns home from studying art and painting in England, renting her former family home while she plans the path into her future. Only a man shows up wanting paintings her father had made of her when she was a child. The shocking details of her childhood, when she was sexually abused by her father and other adult men between the ages of three and eleven, rocks the town. Minx never intended any of the past to be exposed, but when the man is killed in an accident on the property the stain of the past begins to spread and threaten her future with the one man she has ever fallen in love with, the one man she trusts, a book shop owner. Child pornography and the sexual abuse of children is not an easy subject to write about. It saddens some, it angers and fills others with outrage. This is Minx's story, a work of fiction. She's been victimized by men in the past, and is again victimized by the public as a victim of that abuse. As she begins to confront the shadows and demons of her past she finds a safe home, a new family who loves her and supports her. As shocking crimes against other young women who were victims of the same child pornography ring further rock the community Minx finds out who her real friends are. In order to move on, she needs to deal with the past. And as a result of staying, not running away and going into hiding, she discovers what her path in life will be.

Minx Marvel will not be for everyone. I tapped into my criminal justice background for this one.

The Lakeside Manor Investigation, Book 3 in the Amberton Paranormal Investigation Society series is in the Works!

 After rereading The Fairlawn Investigation and The Victoria Wayfarer Investigation, the first two books in the Amberton Paranormal Investigation Society series I went searching for the partially written third novel in the series, The Lakeside Manor Investigation, and found it in the files! I've just finished reading what I've written so far, so the next step is to go back and take some notes from Fairlawn and Victoria Wayfarer and what exists of Lakeside Manor and then continue the novel. What I forgot about this third novel is that I'm borrowing characters created by my daughter Kelly in her first paranormal novel Parapsychology, having her characters join my characters in this investigation of a very haunted mansion in St. Albans, VT. 

We'll see how this goes, as I might have to reread her novel again to get the voices, descriptions of Milo, Holly, and Jacob, and their mannerisms to match.

I believe she gave my characters from the Kensington Research Center at Hawthorn University in Burlington, VT where the Amberton Paranormal Investigation Society is located a passing nod in her novel, or it could have been in that novel's sequel, Empathic Touch.  

It promises to be interesting merging our characters in our separate series!