It's been a 'real' week...

Admiral with wings closed...his bright pretty stuff is on the inside, but I think love the subtle patterns on the outside of the wings more...

Two Tiger Swallowtails...

It's so hard to "catch" one flutterbye holding still, but two within inches of each other, tougher, man, I'm tellin' you, I was clicking the button faster than the little Fuji could keep up, I knew I'd get at least one photo of the moment worth saving...

So here is my cluttered old drafting table where I work...yup, that is paint stains on the table top from paintings made long ago...


I had the dreaded Blue Screen of Death visit my laptop last week Wednesday, and now it's back, fixed and has gained two little brothers, a Dell Mini (that I bought immediately with the little bit of money I've saved for a new computer) and a 500GB portable hard drive (thank goodness I had just gotten paid)...it could've been a virus or an error in the mechanism that tripped up the gadget...whatever, the good news is none of my writing or photos were lost (most everything was backed up), tho' my email and address book is gone, bookmarks missing, which is very annoying, all necessary software is reloaded...I'm heading back toward normal operations. Tho' I'm still cringing every time I turn it on now...if I happen to be not listening for it and miss the Windows start-up chime, I become concerned...that will wear off eventually...

Live and learn...always...

Writing a book and putting it out for people to read is one of those major 'live and learn' lessons...I updated my Q&A at Goodreads this morning, and added another excerpt from The Fractured Hues of White Light for readers to browse...after I pasted the piece into place, I noticed the word 'mediations' on page 66 ...dang, darn, drat and damn! Did I use the wrong word? I think I meant to say "meditations", but suddenly I'm not sure. I'll tell you now, it's been that way for years, as soon as I found it, I dug into the archives and found it consistently written as 'mediations' all along! ARRRGH! But in my mind, today, I read it as 'meditations' and now I'm second guessing myself. How does one miss that? Easy, the mind fills in what isn't there while you're reading along, no matter how careful. I'm not going to make myself nuts about it (tho' I know I will because that's how I am, I am totally obsessing about it that's why I'm writing about it.) Just in case I'm wrong about what I meant to say, I've marked it for changes later with a post-it note tucked in my proof copy, I'm sure I'll find more changes to make and it will be better to do it all at once rather than piece meal changes that wind up costing money and time. No matter how careful I am, I still miss stuff...and this was proofread by another pair of eyes too, so she could've caught it way back during that early draft. Good grief. I suppose in some in context, it works, Sylvester could be 'mediating' within himself (relaxing mediations) while he was fly-fishing in the stream and thinking about the stuff bugging him, but no, I think I meant 'relaxing meditations' because he was trying to find a zone of comfort within himself. Ah, well, nobody's perfect. Well, I'm in good company, there are books published by the best and biggest publishing houses with grammatical slip-ups and wrong words and they have paid editors working on it (usually very overworked and also very human), so I shouldn't be kicking myself for being sloppy... but I tend to hold the bar for myself higher than most...it's just the way I am (If my name's on it, I want it to be right!) I know toward the end of the process I was becoming a bit cross-eyed from looking at it for so long. I'm not overly anxious to proofread it again right away...but I know I will be picking it up sooner rather than later...

I heard about this website called I Write Like (http://iwl.me/) in which you paste a sample of your writing and it compares your writing to samples of the famous in their database (tho' I'm sure it's limited)...so for the heck of it, I tucked in a small sample from chapter 1 of Dusty Waters (it was a dark and stormy night last night, so it was a fun thing to do) and it came up that I write like Nabokov... I'm not sure what to think of that...it's good, but a little intimidating...I can see this being a time wasting sort of thing...probably addicting...so I stopped at that and probably won't go back...it might say I write like Stephen King next...not that there's anything wrong with that...

I'm glad to have my laptop back, and I'm glad to be working on my blogs again...last weekend I was so out of sorts...

Sunday afternoon...

The bee balm explosion in my garden...there's so much of it this year the hummingbirds have no reason to squabble over it, but they still do anyway... at any given time I could have at least four or five buzzing throughout this area, all is well until one bumps into another or a sixth bird shows up...then all hell breaks loose and the chipping and shit spraying begins...(yes, they spray poo!)

There is a wee bunny living in that tangle too...but I guess I haven't downloaded that batch of photos...when I do, I'll add it in...(promise!) Although I know it's the little shit who ate my morning glories, I rescued a few of the seedlings and have them growing in a pot on the porch out of wee bunny's reach...(edit later: here's the bunny!)



I just added my new widget at the top for The Fractured Hues of White Light, a free read of chapter 1 for anyone interested...I've been slowly adding "readings" and discussions to my Q&A at Goodreads, it's a little slow, but it should pick up once readers finish reading it and have things to talk about...and of course, I'll do another giveaway as soon as the current one is over...

I had fun on Thursday night at The Gallery, Suzanne put henna tattoos on my feet...I'm enjoying them...but once in a while I forget and catch a glimpse of this "stuff" on my toes and say...What the hell is on my foot? (That's a hell of a rash.) Oh, good, it's just henna...

I've been relaxing a lot this weekend, between the unbearably hot weather and just being on the go all last week, I'm beat. I'm still feeling a bit rough around the edges...Monday is coming too soon...

I've been working on chapter 2 of my next novel in line for publication Drinking from the Fishbowl, proofreading is a slow process, I read the chapter forwards last weekend, and now I'm reading it backwards, I just go paragraph by paragraph, page by page, scene by scene, once I'm satisfied that these bite-size bits are "settled" I move on to the next...I'm always suspicious when I glide through without a hitch...did I read it, or did I just scan it? I'm shooting for next June to publish (seems like the pattern.) It is a fairly clean manuscript, but I want to take my time to fine tune and catch anything dumb that I might've done...I maintain that if my name is on it, it's got to be at its best...

I keep poking around looking for more photos...the ones I haven't downloaded yet...guess, that means, I'll be back later! (Here's more pics, bumble bees!)

This little guy on the catnip has an orange stripe...

This little fellow seemed to be taking a nap on this flower...

Summertime...

Fatty Woo Hobbes has taken to staring at himself in the mirror...and purring very loudly while doing so...and at times, has laid down in a plump little crouch and dozed off... he's 13 years old, I'm wondering if the little old dude is getting a bit funny in the head... no matter, he's adorable, and I love the squishy little fatty fur ball!

You know its summertime when the roses bloom in the garden...

I'm always on the look out for interesting things to photograph around the acre, but today I'm posting a couple from the city of Syracuse, well... it's just the small area outside the door on my way out from work where I wait for my Fred...

Some spray paint on asphalt caught my eye...I suspect this is the remains of an art students project...

I stepped out the door one afternoon and caught this photo...it reminds me of a Georgia O'Keeffe drawing from her time spent in NYC...

I've been coming down from the high at the gallery last week (was it really just last week?), it was a magical time...but back to doing things again...making new art and writing and proofreading...promotion of books is ongoing...

On my Goodreads Q&A for The Fractured Hues of White Light, I've written a bit about where my characters come from...well, I grow 'em in that special part in my brain that churns out characters and stories, of course! But it's not that simple. It's always a fine line that authors walk on their words when making up people and situations. Readers always wonder who these people are "supposed to be"...I really don't write them to be anybody but who they are in the book, they have their fictional life...granted, I've cherry picked from the buffet of things that I've learned about human nature from my experiences, but I never set out to write a character who is a specific person with the name changed to protect the innocent... it gets a little hinky whenever a writer does that sort of thing... I guess it's the difference between a novice and an experienced writer.

Once a friend said to me, "You're Katharine, right?" I laughed. "No, I'm Jonathan." Yes, she did a double take...and I poked her that no one has to be me in this... yes, they do come from me, I'm telling the story, there's a difference between the author's voice that is doing the telling and the author as a person separate from the story. I think readers often forget to keep the two separate... books tend to take on a special life of their own because they get under your skin and inside your head, capture the imagination. Sometimes during the writing of them, the mental immersion involved is quite intense, dreamlike, and can be disorienting because I've been crawling around inside my head trying to figure out the workings of someone else who I've made up out of bits and pieces (operating instructions not included.) Oy vey, you have no idea.

Writing about Samantha Ryder was difficult, trying to stay within the parameters of Autism and keeping her believable, and then working out the perceptions of the other three characters who also weigh in on her with their ideas and ideals about her... Sammy is like the elephant being examined by the blind men, each one has their own perception of what they've touched. Samantha has her own ideas...and they don't often jive with what others think...it was tough writing her...but I love her, she's very special to me.

Any time I'm working with facts from experience, I cinch up the literary waders and go in deep, make up as many lies as I can to get away from the truth, and then tweak it to sound believable. Everything I write in my books are lies...cross my heart, it's fiction!