Saturday Morning digital sketchbook...

Purple and Gold, Autumn Flowers in the Field

It's cooler out today, yesterday we reached into the high 80's to low 90's depending on where you were standing at the time...or lying around, I was home with a migraine so I barely enjoyed the last hot summer day for a long while, but what time I did spend in the shade of my porch was nice because of a steady breeze that kept the heat tolerable... Taking it easy again today, FMS has been a pain for the last few days (well, to be honest, for a couple of weeks now I've had an ongoing flare-up)...why? Who knows why...stress is the easiest to blame, my sleep pattern has become disrupted, peri-menopausal hormones are in flux, and there's too much on my plate and so on...the reasons are many, I just keep going forward in spite of it for the most part, but yesterday I had to have a good lie down, I just couldn't squeeze out a Friday, when the nausea with the headache hit, that's when I finally pulled the plug on the "upright and going forward" mantra. Sorry, I don't do queasy. (Who can?) So I will baby myself this weekend and I will do the things I love in my favorite place in the world, home...

On the brighter side...I have pictures that I collected from the acre to share...

Probably the last rose in my garden until next year...

An Early Morning Glory

Itsy Bitsy Spider

Newly Minted Wings

This little guy wouldn't keep them open for long, but he liked hanging around us, there were several fluttering around the acre yesterday, the field around us is full of them!

Sparks in the Sunny Spots

Shadows

Shadow me, shadow dog...he follows me everywhere!

Shadows on the wall...

Shadow of the pillar and spirea...

I had a devil of a time capturing this little guy's shadow!

Morning glory days...

You know it's the end of summer when these sky colored flowers bloom! Morning Glories have fascinated me since I was very young... I haven't had much luck growing them for a few years because of certain little bunnies seem to love eating the seedlings (but not the purple ones of which I have plenty!) or the seeds themselves have been duds (and some times they bloom the smaller purple.) These I rescued from the wee hungry bunny and kept them out of reach on the porch table until they became a less tempting size, now they're growing in an enamel bowl, climbing on a trellis made from old lath from one of our deconstruction projects in the house... I've been going through the photos that I've taken over the last two three weeks, and these were the prettiest, and seem to speak of a time of year that is winding down... lilacs are spring, morning glories are fall...


My garden is a wreck ever since that big blow we had when the last tropical storm ripped through here, today we have residual wind and clouds from Earl, it feels fall-like, in the 60's... yesterday was 90.


These two cluttered together during the early morning bloom...


This photo was taken just yesterday morning... I was shuffling around like an old woman and had a tough time keeping the camera steady... I've been having a great deal of trouble with my FMS lately, been over-doing things again, but that's my own fault, I just can't sit and let others do the work, and since I do my best to maintain my flexibility I have a false sense of "I can do it" and bang, my body is on fire by 3PM and my head is spinning, ears ringing, my stomach queasy, and all I want to do is immerse myself in a hot bath and go to bed... so I'm hoping to get lots of rest this long weekend to combat the aches and fatigue...

My new novel, The Fractured Hues of White Light, received its first bad review, a two star at Goodreads.com from one of the winners of the giveaway that I did there... it's unfortunate that giveaways tend to be random selection, so there's no telling who will be reviewing the book, and they don't necessarily attempt to match the book with an appropriate reader who would like it (or the people who sign up for the giveaway don't make the effort to research the book first before committing to the giveaway... I don't know, I'm a fussy enough reader that I would do my homework by checking the 'Look Inside' feature at Amazon to read a sample of the book to see if the writing interests me.) ...Anyway... the book wasn't the reader's cup o' tea and she said so in so many words...that's okay, it's part of the business, I can deal with that...you can't please everybody. This sort of review can either be good because it will warn off readers who share her book biases... or it will be bad because it will warn off readers who might be pleasantly surprised to read a book outside their comfort zone. Who knows. I'm running a second giveaway at Goodreads that ends on September 30th, and again, I'll hope for the best that I will get readers who will enjoy the book for what it is...

Even tho' this one is just a tad blurry, I still love the shapes in it, the movement...makes me think of a Georgia O'Keeffe painting...

Digital Sketchbook...

Cicada Wings #2

Dead Cicada (poor fellow)...
I know they're such a weird looking thing, I find them fascinating as far as bugs go...


Three Crows on the Wires... these little guys were perched outside The Gallery, they look curious...

Branch and Trunk

This is a broken branch from my friend the old maple, I love the bleached bone look of it, and the gnarly root and trunk...

Been a bit busy lately... the book signing went well last weekend, I met a few new faces, introduced them to what I do... and did a reading (I did okay)... we might post it on YouTube... might. I was told that My Fred was just aglow with pride while I was doing my thing... I had a good time... yes, I did wear my fancy shoes!

I'm looking forward to a quiet couple of days, resting... I need it.

A busy time...

A dried out burdock leaf made an interesting pattern I couldn't resist...

This little guy was in my garden feasting...


I've been out and about the acre on and off today (and yesterday)... taking a few pictures (if you can say 86 photos to be a few!)

A rose in my garden...taken yesterday...

Marks on asphalt...

I found a box of nails that were left out... I love the "wash" at the bottom of the box...

August flowers...

I finished preparations for my next art exhibition at a local restaurant (Gentile's), matting, framing, making labels, and figuring out prices, 20 pieces total, paintings, drawings and photographs...a nice mix of things for people to look at... I hope the patron's and the staff enjoy my work...I believe the installation is happening on August 6th. I'm looking forward to going there for dinner (OMG that's a belly full of yummy food!)

I just Googled Syracuse.com earlier today and found that the notice for my book signing on Saturday, August 7th 1-4 at The Gallery at Healing Art Passages in Liverpool NY has been posted, so hopefully that will bring in some new peeps to see what I've been up to... I'm pretty happy to do this little gig, and I hope to expand to other places in town or the region...

I'm proofreading chapter 3 of my next manuscript Drinking from the Fishbowl...tinkering with this and that, it's moved along too easy, I'm suspicious when that happens, so I'll revisit it again later, maybe I'm too tired to really think about it today.

At the end of our walk...with distant thunder rumbling over Syracuse in the north, my faithful dog, Max, once again proves that he does not like his picture taken... believe me, just seconds before I took the picture, he was looking up at me with perky ears and happy brown eyes...

(He's the best of good boys!)

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!

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...