Opening night at The Gallery...

June 25th 2010 6-9PM

Me waving 'hi' to the camera...welcome to our big night at The Gallery...

The little corner desk (Painted by Suzanne) with my little books on it...

Another of the many crowd shots...

Will you just look at that awesome art?


This is the four of us, Ken Nichols, my Fred, me, and Suzanne Masters!


Me n' my Fred...my paintings and his stone sculptures...

How about that awesome moonrise?

Hanging out outside near the end...before the mosquitoes chased us inside...

And I wore my 'birthday shoes' and showed them off to anyone who I thought would find them cool...most women did...what woman wouldn't want a pair of 'fancy shoes'?

The end of the night... we were tired, buzzing with the last bits of energy, and all of us very pleased with our opening...

I did get to wear my author hat a few times during the night, there was a good deal of interest in that little stack of books on the desk...one fella was pondering the books, and said to me he always wanted to write...I told him, "Just do it." Well, you know, it ain't going to happen if you don't...don't let you stop you from following your dreams, your bliss... Last night was all about that...this little shop turned into a gallery and what was once a flight of fancy became a reality, the crowd proved that it can be done... but there's lots of hard work ahead to keep it going, we can't just let it go... a book signing event is going to happen...a possible reading... and other activities...fun stuff...

Vacation...

The view from my porch...it appears that my daisies are growing dog ears... but it's just Max lying there watching the world go by... he has the life, right? He's the best of good boys.

I spent a good share of the week between the garden and the porch, when it was raining, I was inside writing, reading, painting...I'm getting into the proofreading groove again with the next novel I'd like to publish from my "stable" of stories, Drinking From the Fishbowl is on deck again, and I'm nearly done with chapter 1.

I started a Q&A at Goodreads a couple of days ago, I'm talking about my book The Fractured Hues of White Light, doing "readings", it isn't easy to discuss a book no one has read yet, soooo I'm having a one-woman discussion...that's okay, I don't mind, in a way this is good practice for me to learn how to talk about my books and it gives curious lurkers a chance to see what it's about before they commit to putting it on their 'to-read' list... here's the link should you decide to lurk or join the discussion...

http://www.goodreads.com/group/show/34801.Q_A_with_Laura_J_W_Ryan

Yeah, I know, there's going to be a few smirks around the Internet, "Who brought the weird girl?" Hey, I fly my weird girl flag with pride... at least I have the tits to do it (well, since I don't have 'the balls', I go for what I've got, right?)

There's going to be an opening of The Gallery at Healing Art Passages in Liverpool (I'm one of the featured artists in the exhibition, with my Fred and our two friends Ken and Suzanne, here's a link to my art blog http://ohdrat.blogspot.com/) so I'm preparing for that, I have paintings up, and I have a small bin for flat work, in which I tucked a few original drawings and a selection of photographs, some are mounted and some are loose in bags. If you're in the area stop by on Friday night! I'll be doing a book signing there at some point this summer, and possibly, if there's a big enough turn out for the signing, I'll do a reading from one of the two books...

There's a thunderstorm passing through, cooling things down (or possibly making things stickier, it's a crap shoot at this time of year) It's mid June, the bee balm is starting to bloom, it's my favorite time of year!

Photos from my acre of the world...

There is an old box in the garage...I love it's old painted surface and the rusty ring, I photographed it multiple times this past week, there's so much to chose from, so I picked this picture for today...

I just realized that my last post was my 100th for Upstate Girl... it's kind of cool that I had my 100th when I announced that I published my second novel...I want to thank everyone who stops by regular (or even not regular) and the new peeps passing through to peek at what I do...it's been a great experience sharing my thoughts, my books, my photos, my art, my tales of woe and joys... every day is a story...thank you, I appreciate the support, the comments, and such...

I popped in earlier this week and put up the sidebar photo of my "Birthday Shoes" by "Toe", this chick really needs to do this as a business...the shoes are just sooooo cool.

Today looks stormy, so I'm staying in and catching up on things, like my blogs...

This is the peony that my son gave to me for mother's day...I'm so glad I shot the pic's when I did, the early hot weather took it's toll on it, and then the rain came and destroyed what was left... drat...
Every garden must have a toad...this little dude did not want to sit still for his portrait, so I didn't get a very good one, he was gone within seconds after I took this pic...I lost him in the mat of May flower leaves...

These are some rusty old nails that were in a jumbled pile of 'finds' that I left lying on a stump... digging around this acre I find a lot of stuff buried...it's an ideal archeological dig site in my garden, pottery shards, marbles, silverware, bottles, broken bits of this and that...eventually, I'll find all of the pieces to that flow blue plate and put it back together...

Another find...the acre was once part of a cow farm, so where there's cows, there's cow bones...I dig these things up all the time... this one is part of my stone path in the garden...


This lovely bit is a door in the old chicken coop...I do love that old blue/green paint! I snapped a bunch of photos, and will probably spend more time looking at them and photographing it again and again...that's the beauty of digital cameras...I couldn't do this sort of thing with film...

I've started work proofreading my next novel, Drinking from the Fishbowl...I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed by it because it's another doorstop sized manuscript with a lot going on, and although my last time reading through was the brutal editorial phase in which red ink flowed like blood, I fear that I will be cutting more as I go along, tho' yesterday while I tinkered around in chapter 1 I added a page...well, dang, that's not supposed to happen! But you know, that's how it is after the brutal editorial phase, you cut, and then you have to go back and smooth out the rough edges. It's been over a year since I last looked at it, so I'm settling down into the proper mental mode for writing again. I'm immersing myself into the world of a poet named Georgia Sullivan and shepherding her on a journey...