My novel...

The Fox Sister's homestead site, photo c. 1985

 This is a post to promote my novel, Dusty Waters, A Ghost Story...so, please, forgive me, every now and then I feel that I must dive in to promote my novels, so allow me to indulge as it is a necessary evil as an author in this day and age…especially those of us who are indie and have to do it ourselves…honestly, I’d much rather be doing something more fun…but I'm in bed with a crappy head cold so...anyway...

Dusty Waters is a ghost story, there is no doubt about that because I wrote it that way. I’m telling you this just so you’re not mislead to believe otherwise—it is a ghost story, but it isn’t the typical ghost story in the paranormal/supernatural genre that jumps out with a “Boo!” I wanted it to be more than that. Expect it to be different, leave behind all preconceptions of a ghost story when you enter this one. It is a ghost story, from a long line of the telling of ghost stories, which I adore, but I wrote it my way, to tell a story about a young woman, who possesses the ability to see and communicate with ghosts. Her ancestral home is full of the spirits of her relatives who have not moved on for whatever reason, her sweetheart, who died too young, waits for her at their favorite meeting place—she grows older, he remains the same 17 year old boy who she loved with all her heart. As he tells her to live her life, he has sworn to wait for her. It is a book about life as much as it is about the dead, it is about the metaphorical ghosts that haunt her, haunt others, haunt all of us. The ghosts of our past are a natural element of the human condition—so you see, it is more than just a ghost story.

The book…the zygote of the book rolled around in my brain for many years, pieced together from bits of stories that I made up as a kid, part of a fascination with the supernatural, part of it fascination with some of the old houses on my street, (Lyons is an old town full of history), and part of it I wanted to write about someone on a life journey, one that is not finished yet. A woman alive and well among the living, and able to speak with the dead…one of the elements that I wanted to explore in this novel was how someone who can see and speak to spirits deals with that, is it a gift or is it a curse? I could only imagine that it is a burden and could have a negative impact on them...it's a character building ordeal, I'm sure.

 With that said, let me give a little bit of the back story about the making of the book. The book cover, designed by my Fred, and conceived through photographs that I took at the Fox Sisters homestead site in Hydesville, New York, the birthplace of Spiritualism. I grew up in Lyons, New York, just a few miles away from this place and the idea of the rappings and séances inspired me. Many years ago, (over twenty) I went with my family to the old homestead and photographed the site as it was at that time; the cottage had been burned, vandalized, neglected and eventually torn down. When I heard that it was gone, I made certain to keep these photos safe thinking someday they’d be of use to me in a project (I was young and full of grand ideas at the time.) I wish I had more photos, but this was a time before digital cameras and 4GB memory disks, I had a roll of 24 shots and most of the roll was full of photos taken up at Sodus Bay...

Doorway with birds nest

The burned door

Monument outside the house near the road

There is no death, there are no dead…I’m so glad that I photographed the monument at the time…life is consciousness, the consciousness never dies, this is one of the beliefs of the spiritualist movement…I don’t align myself with any particular religion, but I am a spiritual person with my own beliefs about the way things are, and the idea of the body as a vessel of the soul is a very evocative belief for me.

The cover design

Once I decided to bite the bullet to publish independently, my Fred started to work on ideas for the cover, and I pulled out these old photographs of the Fox Sister’s homestead site. As soon as he presented the design to me, there was no turning back, the cover is its birthmark, it is home—every author can only hope to have the right cover for their book. I’ve heard so many authors complain how they hate their book’s cover—that must be heartbreaking, to put all that work into a novel and get to the publication part, only to have a cover that isn't what you imagined or clearly looks like the designer had no clue what the book was about. I love this cover…it is gorgeous. It means a great deal to me because of the place and time, and what it represents. It isn't a girly book...quite a tomboy.

Dusty Waters is a book steeped in history, lots of it made up history overlapping with history of a time and place, but it's a history created for this book...a book about a young woman, growing up in a small town, surrounded by the ghosts of the past...and she has a pooka named Lucy in the shape of a Chinese dragon living underneath her bed to block bad dreams.

"Around her quiet streets, voices seem to murmur the refrain, 'once upon a time.' Once upon a time, men who moulded the destinies of the frontier lived in the pillared brick colonial houses on the hills above the town. Later on, in Lyons's commercial heyday, other powerful men built the more ornate Victorian mansions under the stately trees. There, once upon a time, flowered an old regime, a gracious way of life, a social elegance, and cultural interest that was distinctively Lyons." - Arch Merrill, The Towpath

I could say more, but I will leave it here for now. 

Dusty Waters is available in paperback original through Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble (or just about anywhere you want to order the real deal paper books.) It is also available for Nook and Kindle for those who prefer e-reading.

When it rains, it pours...no shit.

Discarded No. 1, 8/9/2011

Discarded No. 2, 8/9/2011

Discarded No. 3, 8/9/2011

Discarded No. 4, 8/9/2011

First of all, thank you for your kind comments and emails to me, I really appreciate your wishes and sympathies...it does help in that quiet way, I did receive some sense of buoyancy.from your thoughts.  The month of August has been a very strange period in my life...the loss of my mother was the major, life changing event, and then three weeks later my poor father had an accident at home, breaking his right hip...not a good thing for an 84 year old man to deal with at this point in his life while still suffering from the heart ache of losing the love of his life...but perhaps the nasty irony is, he's now forced to think of himself in a different way. During the days following the funeral, he had been managing all right, being forward thinking, and learning that being alone at home with his new reality...my father is a very contemplative and curious fellow, and yet, has managed to maintain a sweet innocence about life that is very matter of fact. The good news is he made it through the surgery to fix the hip, the surgeon was please with how everything went together, but now the long unknown road to recovery commences. His long term chances are 50-50. His survival will rely on his spirit and the determination to return home...he's made it known that he hates lying around, and he wants to go home...baring complications, I believe he will go home. Now the hard part for me was leaving him to take care of me. Between the crappy FMS flareups and troublesome sciatic nerve pain because of that dang bulge in the L4/L5 disc in my back I'm quite the little pain-ball at the moment...most of it being my own fault for not being good to myself during this difficult time. Thankfully, being my father's daughter, it is my stubborn spirit and determination that will keep me going forward in spite of adversity...

Discarded No. 5, 8/9/2011

The photos are from my parent's yard in Lyons, NY...of all things, their compost heap. These are perhaps the last things that my mother clipped and tossed in there before she passed away... and as of yesterday, the lawn mower man came and has since added grass clippings on top of the discarded flowers from the funeral, of which I did not get to photograph before I left yesterday...

Loss...feeling lost...

My Mother's bed 8/2/2011

 My Mother passed away on August 3rd due to the inter-cranial bleeding from a stroke that put her into a coma on August 2nd, Janie was 80 years old. She got up that morning, made her bed, went about her daily routine until she complained to my father that she didn't feel well, and suddenly she fainted, and never woke up. Although it was very unexpected, I believe she knew her time was coming. She hadn't been ill at the time, she had been doing well since she had a TIA last January, a warning shot over her bow you could say, she had briefly lost her eyesight but gained it back quickly and resumed her life as a folk artist, painting was one of her joys in life. Her doctor was monitoring her and I believe she was due for an appointment in September...although some of us had noticed some forgetfulness and repeating herself during conversations, she seemed to be chugging along fine on her own steam, she was such a lively little lady no one suspected a thing...we knew if she didn't feel good she'd say so because she was a squeaky wheel when things weren't right in her world. My poor father has been left behind, and the rest of her family and friends in shock, who would've thought that she would up and die so suddenly, but yet, this would be the way she'd prefer it...to leave the world while still in motion, she would have made a terrible patient...

A is for Angels...this was in the Comfort Room where she spent her final hours...it was very appropriate as she loved angels.

We buried her on August 9th, and the sky opened up and poured rain almost all day long, it was pretty awful out, and I'm sure Janie would have been ticked off by the "shitty weather" on the day of her funeral.

The flowers from the funeral 8/9/2011

 We brought home the flowers and set them on the front stoop as we unloaded them from the cars, they looked so pretty there we left them as a tribute...

The garden

 This is the house that I grew up in, my father built it...of course with the help of several local craftsmen and laborers...it is a sweet little house, tho' at times I wonder how five of us lived in there without killing each other...I was outside most of the time, a roamer from dawn to dusk...I came home for meals and when the street lights came on...my mother had an iron school bell to call me home with when I was needed...I could hear it from a mile away...if not more. I've been told on more than one occasion this past week how much I resemble our Janie...I am, after all, Laura Jane...what a rebel name...yes, I am my mother's daughter, and there were times we didn't see eye-to-eye, there were times it seemed we couldn't exist in the same space because we were too alike and sometimes that isn't a good thing, but as we've aged we've gotten on better, and I loved calling her up and letting her talk because she was such a treat to listen to, a chip off the old block of her father, Gordon...I'm just the latest version of them both and Great Grandma too, but with a good blend of my father to balance things out just enough so the chip isn't so jagged that I'd miss the block too much...

Impatiens in an enamel coated metal colander, she planted these special this year and was very pleased about how well the flowers were doing in this arrangement...

I saw this the morning after she passed...a sweet little still life in the garden

 

The porch, with all of her things...

Although she's gone, she is everywhere we look in her house. Goodness knows, I will miss her every day for the rest of my life...I've had to "talk" to her a few times to ask her "What did you do with your wedding picture, Mom?" I found it tucked away in a photo album, the frame must've gotten broken...it took only patience to find it, and I found a second copy of it in a paper bag in the hall closet, full of photos from her mother's house after her father died...I am the finder of lost objects, except when it's my own things...(I do find them eventually in the last place I look, just like everybody else.) The photos that I found are treasures that will be comfort to us all...

My mother was a folk artist, she painted many beautiful things, usually on old wooden boxes, boards, bowls, benches, stools, chairs, and other odds n' ends that she'd find...and she won prizes at the New York State Fair. My sister and I will make certain that her entries are delivered this week as scheduled, she would've wanted us to do that...

Her final piece.

This is the last piece she worked on, it is the lid of a picnic basket, featuring historical buildings in our home town Lyons NY where she lived all of her life. All that was left to do is to finish the Wayne County Courthouse, and I've been asked to finish it for her...I couldn't work on it yet, but I will make a special trip home to take care of it...I need a little time to fill the hole left in my life, get back to something resembling "Normal"...and help my siblings settle our father into his new routine without his Janie, this isn't going to be easy, we're playing it by ear, hoping he can stay at home for as long as he wants to and for as long as he's able.