Welcome to my blog Upstate Girl, (a.k.a Follow Your Bliss Part II), I am an independently published author. This blog is all about writing and the stuff that inspires me to write, the joys and obstacles that come along with the writer's life, and my fascination with the psychology of people and what makes them tick...the human condition, as is...and my love for words, playing with them and making sense of them...and I throw in a few photos from my acre of the world just to make things pretty...sometimes there are things I have no words for, only pictures will do.

*Copyright notice* All photos, writing, and artwork are mine (
© Laura J. Wellner), unless otherwise noted, please be a peach, if you'd like to use my work for a project or you just love it and must have it, message me and we'll work out the details...it's simple...JUST ASK, please.

Sunday, September 29, 2013

My two "girls"...


These are my two “girls”…I just want to announce that I’ve signed them up for the Kindle Matchbook program the other day, so when a reader buys a paperback copy of The Fractured Hues of White Light or Dusty Waters, A Ghost Story through Amazon.com, the Kindle edition comes free…It went live today, so please indulge if you feel inclined…

Even after all this time, I’m really squeamish about this self-promotion stuff, it’s really weird…especially when you're raised a certain way, and told not to be such a "show off" or whatever...but it must be done so you know what I'm doing or that I've done something…

I do love my two little books...still do! They are my girls, Dusty and Samantha. I love what I do and I feel very fortunate that I have accomplished what I have accomplished thus far…the girls sell from time to time, I make a little pocket money. I've had readers leave me nice notes telling me how much they liked what I've done and I've had some readers leave behind some venom in their dislike...it's part of the territory, so I don't mind so much anymore. I have no illusions about becoming famous or being "set for life"... I'm not going to delude myself that this is a get rich quick scheme. I have an honest perspective about how I want my life to be, everything that I have, I've worked hard for, and it has very little to do with being famous and having gobs of money. I'm content with my life and making the time to be creative...I have creative freedom to write and design them as I envision them...that's what I want.

My third novel (my third 'girl'), Drinking from the Fishbowl is still in an editing marathon that started three years ago, its been an epic effort to get it ready. I really butchered it back in 2007 when I bloodied it with red ink and threw away chapters of nonsense, so much of my work as I go along involves some rewriting where I'm filling in the gaps that I created years ago. Honestly, I'm loving it, I love watching this little-big book about Georgia Sullivan mature...

I've learned so much since I first started writing about her during that muddled period of inspiration between 1999-2003 when I filled up salt n' pepper notebooks with the initial plots, lists of characters and smatterings of dialog, flailing around with early drafts and thinking I could find an agent with the mess I made in double space 12 point Times New Roman, perfectly formatted to the proper specs for submissions to the various slush piles in NYC. Oh, those were the days...I've learned a lot since then. I've become a better writer from the years of experience, plugging away, muddling along, feeling my way through the process, most of the time going with my gut...it's part of being honest with myself. I feel confident that when I'm finished, I'll be glad to have spent the time to see it through... to make it right. It's part of the craft...it's part of the art of writing.

Writing a book and having the patience to accept the responsibility for the entire process before publishing in paper or electronic form, it is not a task for the faint of heart. Yes, there is always hope that one of my books will do well, that one will stand out a little more than the rest. Fishbowl has been in the works for ten years or more…I have no idea when I’ll finish it as I creep along line by line, tweaking words here and there, writing a new paragraph, but I’ll keep you posted when the time is right and I’m happy with the result...

I'm actually thinking about how I want the book cover to look, so that's an indication that I'm "getting there"...

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