New Years Eve

Crows in a snowstorm, 12/28/2009...imagine my surprise to see that mob outside my window! My goodness...I think our crow friend "Baby" brought everyone he knew over for breakfast (usually it's the four family members who come around)...and I slept late...what a rowdy bunch, turning the snow upside-down looking for eats...they heard about the popcorn and peanuts...cracked corn and sunflower seeds...apples and bread...and the occasional stale corn chips...yes, my acre has become the popular yard to visit...(the stalks in the foreground are mullein, the little finches and chickadees have been eating the seeds, they're about picked clean by now.) Being home all week from work has allowed me to see what goes on during the daylight hours...

It's been a long year...lots of living done...good days and bad days...I take 'em as they come.

The biggest thing was publishing my book, Dusty Waters: A Ghost Story, and I've been happy with how it is being received by readers so far, and it's pretty cool that I've sent it as far away as Australia...I'm glad that my Fred and I decided to form Field Stone Press and do it ourselves, it just seemed to be the right thing to do. Am I kicking myself for waiting so long to do it? No. I took the time and extra effort to make it right, I didn't dive in willy-nilly. How many copies have I sold so far? Well, let's just say...I gave away quite a few. Do I know what I'm doing? Yes...and I continue to learn how to do better. The beauty of it is it's mine...it's never going to go out of print, ever. I'll keep plugging along, networking, doing whatever I gotta do to get it into hands of readers. I feel content about it, there's still the self-doubts involved (is it good enough?) I'm planning to set up a "shop" soon to sell signed copies (since there's been a recent interest from a few people), I'm exploring possibilities, asking questions and such...I'm open to suggestions.

I'm working on the next book, The Fractured Hues of White Light, getting her ready to go to print soon...I'm taking one more look through the proof that my Fred made for me, checking for any problems, wrong word disasters, crazy exclamation points, extra spaces...it's so far pretty clean. I'm feeling relaxed about the whole thing, no rush, no panic, the story will get told. It's been an experience writing these stories down...many of them started with a few lines in a notebook in 2000-2001, some maybe even sooner than that...so it's been a long process getting to where I am now, and the year 2009 has been a fulfillment of a dream...there's no big publisher, no big advance, no book tour, no hype, no fuss, but that's all right, I don't want fuss...I want my book to get into the hands of readers who want to read a book, not to be part of the frenzy around a product...a franchise...maybe I'm just old fashioned. I love the written word, I still prefer to hold a book in my hand while sipping from a cup of hot tea...or a tall glass of Guinness. It's a beautiful thing reading...it's magical...and I'm afraid too many people miss out on that magic, the gift that a book gives to a reader.

I raise my glass to the written word...

Happy New Year.
This little kitty got started early...


This little kitty will not make a good candidate for a designated driver...

Be careful out there...

Looking at things...

...and seeing...
This frost was on the hood of our son's car...

A broken branch from my favorite tree...looks like old bones...

I love the texture of it...


Then there was this spot of "lace" on the ground that looked lovely in the sunlight...but because the image turned out so washed out, I played with the contrast and made it into a warm black and white...

Christmas Kitty Cookies...

Cinnamon Striped Tabbies...

Merry Christmas!

Most Favorite Christmas Movie...

A Christmas Carol, (1951) with Alastair Sim...

It is also my most favorite ghost story...

I always find it so interesting how this story remains politically timeless...as there will always be "Scrooge-like" behavior even in the most enlightened times...I think there's certain members of Congress who need to be visited by a few spirits and to be reminded that mankind is their business.

These are my most favorite scenes...unfortunately one is colorized (I prefer the movie in the original black n' white...which scared the crap out of me when I was a very wee girl (especially the scene outside the window with the lamenting spirits and Jacob Marley), but still, it was so good it fascinated me...)


Marley's Ghost




Ignorance and Want




...but of course...the Muppets are always acceptable...enjoy...Merry Christmas...

A Rusty Heart...

I photographed this old paver sitting on our back step a few weeks back, I've meant to post it, but lost the pictures, but found them again...I tucked them in a funny place during one of my "cleaning sprees" in my laptop...any way...a rusty bit of metal that I found in the flowerbed had been sitting on it for over a year, the old bit crumbled when I poked at it, and found the picture it made...

Then this leaf caught my eye just before Thanksgiving...


A lovely bit of bronze corrosion on a concrete pedestal...I love that green!



Playing with black and white pictures...grape vines this time...


And some frosty leaves...

We're dipping into the 20's...it feels extra wintery...the snow stayed north of the NYS Thruway in the Tug Hill Plateau, so here in the southern hills the acre only received a dusting of snow and a glaze of ice that is nearly all gone...lots of wind, and the old farmhouse made its usual creaks and groans...I'm staying snug and quiet, I'm very tired. I've been editing Drinking from the Fishbowl this week, I just back tracked to chapter 1 today to add in a bit that came to mind, it's a small bit, but needed to be said for a bit that comes along later...again, just a small bit, but it's details like it that make writing such a beautiful thing, it feels good to be working again. My Fred is working on the design for The Fractured Hues of White Light, he's looking for the right fonts to show me, White Light has its own personality, so it needs its own look...it's not looking like we'll be getting it out in time for Christmas...oh, well, that's okay, marketing Dusty Waters is keeping me busy enough...I just wrapped up the giveaway of 5 copies of Dusty Waters at Goodreads.com and mailed out the books yesterday...it's always a treat to meet new readers! There are times I can't believe I'm published...

psst...I love it!

Just some stuff I think about...and look at...

I went trolling through my photos today, played around looking for inspiration...I really really really love looking at stone surfaces...especially the ones with rusty deposits in their composition...along with a few fossils stamped into their face...more ideas for paintings later...or paintings in progress (which I have a few, an update at "Bliss" to come soon!)


Lichen and stone...always a pleasure...

More stony nooks and cranies with fossils...


...and then I found these leaves with such pretty markings hung up in my lilac bush a few weeks back, and yes, this incredible pale green-blue color is there...I really don't know how that happened...I even went back outside to look at them again, had a tough time finding them in the snow...but yes, there is a blue-gray tint, tho' I think the camera "saw it" differently...camera's can exaggerate reality at times...

It did snow over night, not much, but enough to leave some icy patches here and there, the night sky is clear and bright with stars...crisp...pretty...

And I'll leave you with a portrait of my little boy cat Charlie Chowder...aka Doohicky...or just Doo for short...

Sooooo innocent while asleep...but along with that handsome face, with that pink nose (he has the prettiest green eyes, but he wouldn't open them for a picture)...

...these naughty appendages...mischief mittens! My what big paws you have, Mr. Doo! (The better to knock your stuff over with!)

This and that, and more...

Another Thanksgiving has come and gone, I'm recovering from the preparation before and the day itself...lots of family, lots of food (I've been known to whip up a Thanksgiving dinner storm that is quite heavenly! But it's always amusing to me that after it's all done and on the table, I don't want any of it...hello, anyone ready to order some Chinese? Go figure.

While cleaning my house, I always wash off my collections of stones that I have around the house...the little kids are always fascinated by them...Great Aunt Laura is weird you know...she collects lots of strange old things and has then lying about in bowls and on tables...these were in a bowl on the dinner table...

The day before the day of our feast, we were visited by a rainbow...
Always a good omen...the day itself was above average good weather, lovely, mild...and then it snowed overnight...so yesterday morning, I tromped around in the winter wonderland and enjoyed the sights...and took lots of pictures...

The mist...

Peering up through the branches of my favorite gnarly maple tree...


A patient little peep in the tree...my feeder is visited daily by a variety of birds and furry critters, but the gold finch flock is quite sweet...

Snow and tree branches...I love black and white...

While I wait for my first proof of The Fractured Hues of White Light to come into being, I've started to read my next offering for Field Stone Press, Drinking from the Fishbowl...I read through the first eight pages yesterday, but I was still in too much of an exhausted state from the day before to really comprehend what I was reading...and I have to admit that my work on White Light really took a lot out of me after all those weeks working on it, and having Sammy, Sylvester, Guthrie, and Helena in my head clamoring about their concerns, it wasn't so easy to step into Georgia Sullivan's world...so today I back-tracked...yes, it's just as I remember it...I haven't seen it since October of 2008, so it's good to visit it again and to see that my hard work last year made it a strong piece...reading Georgia's poetic musings always makes me think about my poems that I have left aside for many years...maybe one day I will return to their simple pleasures...tho' I'm sure that they're not as wonderful as I had once thought (I cringe to think)...Georgia herself is a delight, a young woman with a mind full of beauty and hope...I love her naivete in spite of her book learning, she's the perfect innocent...so when Professor Mortensen Boyd asked her why she wanted to be a poet, she stumbled...she never thought about the why, but "this is what I want to do" and "this is what I've done" have been her focus...from there I take her beyond the dream to harsh reality, and then return her to the dream and the hope...it's quite the journey...I can't wait to get on with it...

With that said...I'll leave you with the other end of the rainbow...

The Birds Nest...

Today was a tangle and chaos day...not really...now that my work on The Fractured Hues of White Light is done until the proofs come through for my final inspection, I'm feeling a bit in knots and adrift...and so, I went walking around the acre with my camera and Max, and I followed his nose into the weedy tangles behind our barn...and I found a bird nest (note you can barely see the black dog in the weeds just beyond the small tree!)

It's that time of year when nests are visible, and this one was special because of the dangle of plastic that the birds must've been sooooo delighted with to add to their little home...I have no idea what kind of bird would build it...low to the ground, grass, straw, twigs, some mud...possibly one of the black bird variety, they like shiny stuff and things that are eye catching...it's quite the little construction...

I got up close and took a peek at the debris gathered inside since the birds left it...

I'm feeling a bit "on pause"...after working for 8 months on the manuscript...I do deserve a break...but I feel at a loss...restless...odd, very odd. There's an emotional process that I go through after finishing a book, some of it is not so good...if only I can avoid some of the bad parts, but I take the good with the bad, it's part of the package. There's a sadness, there's a happiness...frustration and self-doubt...back to joy...and relief. Let's just say, a pokey walk in the weeds gave me something else to think about, and I enjoyed myself immensely...while I was out there, getting into the burrs, I wanted to write something grand about books being like bird nests...but that didn't happen, I'm feeling a bit tapped out of words...but I did dedicate my new novel as follows:

This book is for those who love the written word, and for those who still prefer to hold a book in their hand while sipping a cup of hot tea...or a tall glass of Guinness. It's a beautiful thing.
(or something like that...subject to change anytime between now and the final proof before printing.) Anyway...I felt that I needed to say something in that sort of vein...just because of the current climate...tho' as an independently published author with my own indie press, I could be accused of being part of the problem...but...whatever...I'm looking forward to digging into my next one, Drinking from the Fishbowl, it's finished, but I'm going to spend time polishing this winter...I'm going to try to have it ready by April or May...

Books...bird nests...tea or beer...

Good grief, I still don't know what the cover is going to be! My Fred says not to worry, he'll come up with something. I keep thinking yellow...it's Sammy's favorite color.

The book is about love and it's many forms...it's about art, making art that is from within...it's centered on an autistic woman (Samantha Ryder) who is an artist...she's in a rut with the routines that have been instilled into her daily existence that allow her to be independent...it's also about loss...I only recently realized that my main characters each lost their mothers in some way while they were young and vulnerable, it was unintended...I guess Bambi had a profound affect on me...there's an ongoing theme about dreams and realities...we have expectations how things are, our minds construct fantasies that put the people we love on pedestals, but the reality often causes that pedestal to wobble, crumble, fall...oops...drat. I just love these characters that I created...I can't wait to see how readers receive them...

(I miss reading them!)

Well, thankfully, I have Thanksgiving to think about, a turkey to buy, a menu to consider, coordinating who's to bring what...I'm expecting 17 people...as the nieces and nephews grow up, they marry, and are having kids...my old farmhouse can handle it...the cats will hide...Max will have more ear rubs than he can stand...and then I'll have time to decompress after the turkey day is over...

What stories a dog's nose could tell...

Can you just imagine what this little guy is finding out while sniffing? Oh, what stories this dog's nose tells!


Tip of nose to tip of wagging tail, he reads a busy cast of characters!

Listen, squirrels, chipmunks...bunnies (oh, especially the bunnies, he loves the bunnies best of all)...

Deer...mice and birds...

And yes, coyotes, we heard them last night, made his ruffle stand on end, and of course, there's those other half dog-half coyotes...those are the bad ones who cause lots of trouble because they are very bold...no worries, they're not here now...(just so you know, the pictures that I didn't take of my dog was of him marking every tree, twig, leaf, and blade of grass because of the coy-dogs and coyotes that have passed through our yard leaving their calling cards!)


Max is the Best of Good Boys! (Darn it, he won't look at the camera!) My handsome boy-dog...the little black face is getting grayer...just turned eleven years old...not old yet...still a pup, right?

Today I thought about one of my favorite passages in The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje, it is about a dog's paw...yes, far from the dog's nose, but not that far, and still very much part of the beauty of a dog...and the stories they can tell...

Her father had taught her about hands. About a dog's paws. Whenever her father was alone with a dog in a house he would lean over and smell the skin at the base of its paw. This, he would say, as if coming away from a brandy snifter, is the greatest smell in the world! A bouquet! Great rumors of travel! She would pretend disgust, but the dog's paw was a wonder: the smell of it never suggested dirt. It's a cathedral! her father had said, so-and-so's garden, that field of grasses, a walk through cyclamen - a concentration of hints of all the paths the animal had taken during the day.

And so...yes, it's been a difficult week, we buried my Fred's father on Monday, and the family from out of town left, and we've moved on to the latest version of normal...we draw close, talk more, cry now and then, wait and watch, we think too much about our inevitable...which one of us will be the one left alone? We wonder, can't help but wonder...but we mustn't dwell on it...we must move on, go forward, and live life to its fullest...and always love one another especially more now than ever...we have a beautiful life together...we shall savor every day.

November photos...

Snow and milkweed pods...

Love in the Mist seed pod...I love these things...

Today, I'm going to share a collection of photo's that I've been taking lately around the acre...it's a sunny Sunday...warm...I have calling hours to attend this afternoon for my father-in-law who passed away on November 5th after a long illness...it's a bittersweet time, and the photo's reflect the season nicely, sunny and warm one day, gray and rain and then snow overnight, back to sunny...it gave me something else to do anyway...
Frost on our windshield with the sunrise shining through...

A dried milkweed leaf...

And I'm a sucker for moss...so forgive the multiple images...


This little guy was a VERY active woolly bear...he wouldn't roll up when I touched him...a caterpillar on a mission...and if you believe in the weather prediction of a woolly bear, it appears that we're screwed...


I'm in that in between state, I've finished my novel The Fractured Hues of White Light...the pre-publishing editing part, now the design part is going to be the next step...this is exciting...yet scary...I'm still uncertain that I might not have caught everything...or good grief, left something out (I don't think I left anything out, the manuscript is 515 pages long as it is, at one time it soared well over 600 and was edging toward 700...the things that I did leave out needed to be left along the side of the road, good riddance!) Or goodness forbid I left something written half-assed...but I think I got it all...I think...I've read it backwards and forwards multiple times, and have left the first paragraph of chapter 19 high-lighted in yellow last night just so I have a reason to look at it again...I fear that I'm setting it aside in kicking and screaming mode...separation anxiety, perhaps? Am I truly ready to let it go into the hands of readers? Are readers ready for it? Will the readers love my characters and their human flaws just as much as I do? I don't know. There are no ghosts in this one...well, sort of, the characters are haunted by memories...there is beauty in the ugliness of life...the uncertainty of doing what's right can be maddening...and love has a sneaky way about it that can be confusing to those who feel it (it is love in some form)...overall, I feel I've done my best with a difficult story, it's a human document...and out of them all, this is my favorite novel.

I have been trying for something with the Queen Anne's lace in the garden and haven't been happy with them straight on...so this morning I tinkered with the color and saturation...

Pumpkin colored boy cats...

The boys were snoozing by the woodstove on a blue blanket...I went outside with my camera leaving my kitty boys inside...last week our leaves were in full gold and the sky blue...


It was a gray day...
...in a weeks time we now have bare trees...

The morning sky framed by sumac and grape vine...


Milkweed set free on the wind!