“The secret of being a writer: not to expect others to value what you’ve done as you value it.
Not to expect anyone else to perceive in it the emotions you have invested in it. Once this is understood, all will be well.” Joyce Carol Oates

GIVEAWAY AT GOODREADS! http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6574084-dusty-waters-a-ghost-story

I'm currently giving away 5 copies of Dusty Waters: A Ghost Story, giveaway ends December 10, 2009.

My Other Blogs

Upstate Girl http://upstategirl-laurajwryan.blogspot.com/
I write there to stretch my literary arms and legs...one more place to go to follow my bliss...

Updated 11/14/09 A photo essay starring the Best of Good Boys, my one dog named Max!

Follow your bliss... Joseph Campbell

My Blog about bliss and my artwork:
http://ohdrat.blogspot.com/

Updated 11/15/09...Celestial Autumn, Blue and Gold...

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"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science." -Albert Einstein

November 19, 2009

It's been a good day...one of the rare pain-free days, so I guess my latest flare-up has run its course, who knows what tomorrow might bring, I just go with the flow these days, it was nice not to feel the elephant on my chest...I must've done something right? (Who knows.) Anyway, the news is...
my Fred and I are feeling super-charged, we met a friend of a friend last night she's a fellow
artist/supporter of artists, who wants to display our paintings at her shop and we're going to be doing an exhibition at a local restaurant the first week of December, that's way awesome! And even better, she's interested in my doing a reading and book signing at her store! Yippee!!

My manuscript The Fractured Hues of White Light is officially declared "done", now I'm going to be handing off the files to my Fred for his design magic and soon I'll have another book wandering the world for readers to read... it's been a long time coming, but the 8 month trip getting to this point has been worth it!

November 14, 2009

It's been a real week...we're working on getting back to normal, each day is something different, decompressing, relaxing, back to day job, and then a Fibro flare-up because I'm not sleeping all that great and my back is being a pain, and now...Saturday...it's a gray day with blue jays at the feeder...drizzle... so a fire in the woodstove to hold off the damp...I want things to get back to normal. Working on it... I'm returning to Chapter 19 of White Light today, hoping to find it better than I last left it... even tho' I've opened it nearly every day at least once to look at what changes I've made, I've closed it down only because my head wasn't into reading, I've been too out of sorts. I think I'm all right today, tired, but feeling like I'm ready to get back down to business, finish this manuscript, and prepare it for my Fred to work on the design when he's ready.

In the midst of funeral doings and family gatherings, I heard rumors about the PW Best Books of 2009 and the all male top ten...I'm getting caught up on what's on the list and what the broo-ha-ha is about...I never really put a whole lot of emphasis on these popularity contests... but once in a while, I find something new to read that I wouldn't have found out about otherwise, and what I saw on the list were all fine books... it's just too bad that it seems EVERYTHING has to be PC these days (everyone's a winner!) I'm not going to stamp my little 6 1/2's and say "The nerve of them!" just because I'm a woman. I'm a writer, and I'm always pleased to see when other writers receive a well-deserved pat on the back by this difficult industry. But that list and being on the list is so brief, if I've learned anything these last few days is this...life moves on... last week's PW is already in the recycle bin and done... I've already forgotten what's on the list and I'll have to fetch it back if I want to remember...or go to the website to look it up...

Moving on...

Coyotes have been around a lot, so I've been keeping kitties inside... Max's nose has stories to tell, he's been extra sniffy lately... he found a small brown field mouse inside a bucket on the porch the other day... poor little guy, the little black beads looked up at me (I'm sure that little heart was beating faster than ever!) I took the bucket outside, turned it on its side and the little critter just ran around inside... not too bright, so, I gently tipped the bucket over and dumped the little dummy out... it hid, and Max found it again, his nose inspired it to go hide... it's time to walk the little bright-eyed doggy again, he's giving me that special look... ears in full bloom!

November 6-7, 2009

As I write this I'm straddling the two days... it's almost midnight and I'm sure I'll see past midnight before I'm done...

There's snow on the ground tonight, it snowed early AM Friday, and throughout the day little squalls came and went, but they were nothing too significant, it's measurable, but just a sugar coating...pretty, and the smell is delightful, fresh, cold...almost a Christmas smell... my Fred has been kept busy with funeral arrangements for Monday, I've been holding down the fort at home, he's staying at his mom's tonight, our son has been watching out for me, and seeing that I'm okay... it's rare to be separated from my beloved, and we've both have had that inevitability on our minds of late... it's scary to think about being without the other, we come as a pair... but we're not going to waste our time together worrying over it...

White Light is done, I just need my Fred to design the book and work on the cover... we just need things to settle down, the man needs to decompress and relax...the book can wait... I continue to browse over it, not much left to do, running extra spell checks, scanning through, picking random paragraphs in random chapters, nothing to change, or if I do it's nothing too terrible, a different word choice perhaps... I did finish up chapters 18-19 that were troubling me previously, and I do believe these last minute changes made a world of difference, they were small changes, but worth the extra effort to make the improvements... much more intriguing. Such an odd book, but I really love it.

I tinkered a bit with the new book, Layers of Illusion, Elly had something to say these last couple of days so I listened to her, and wrote it down...there's still so many questions about this one, I'm certain about some of what I'm doing with it, but some of it...well, not so sure...some of it is too close to home, some of it is so way out there in the "I just made it up" world that I fear that if I don't do it right, it might be pure nonsense... time, time, time...patience...patience...patience...

I'm really enjoying The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery, what a delightful book! Very timely...and timeless. And yes, elegant at the same time it's prickly...hee hee... I did some light housekeeping, baked bread, made chicken soup, and napped in spite of my physical restlessness and the constant phone calls and emails... the night is long, and I'm so tired...

November 5, 2009

My Fred's father passed away this morning, peacefully. The previous night, a gathering surrounded him, and in the wee hours, the three sons stayed by him, when the time came, he left the world with only Fred by his side. Sometimes that's the way it is, just quietly.

Thunder and rain this evening, possible snow in the air and on the ground by morning...

November 1, 2009

Twilight came early... after a balmy Halloween, a switch was turned off and the chill of November arrived along with the fall back of time, but it was quiet... the sunset was pink and blue, with a pale green peeking through, and the darkness had a different feel to it, like velvet... different color, the angle of the light...

READ A BOOK!

I couldn't resist providing a link to a bit of Saturday morning cartoon wisdom from the classic
show The Tick:

http://www.thetick.ws/wavs/ep13/read8.wav/

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Now available through CreateSpace and Amazon.com, independently published by our very own Field Stone Press:

https://www.createspace.com/3388369

Dusty Waters
Laura J. W. Ryan
Field Stone Press, ISBN: 098249162X
designed by Fred Wellner

Review on Amazon.com:

"Extraordinary (literally AND figuratively) tale told by an accomplished storyteller. Even the characters who do not speak are rich and fully-realized. With a dazzling array of personalities, from the quiet, marred Asher, to the sequined flamboyant Dede, there is a favorite here for every taste and consideration. All of the troupe are wrangled by the gravel-voiced, straight-talkin', 6 foot, 3 inch proprietress of Dusty Boots Records. Accompanied by the slap/twang of her guitar, of course.

There are scenes in this book that are unforgettable, so well-written the words drift into your permanent psyche. The plot moves as swift as a spring river, and some of the devices used are unique, which is hard to find for a constant reader. How does an author "show" a reader that it's hard to pick one ghosty voice out of many? Laura Ryan does it, deftly and engagingly.

I'm going to recommend this book to all my reader friends, and I'm going to read it again. It's like a gift to yourself! Thanks, Ms. Ryan!"

Linda Robinson, South Lyon MI, author of Chantepleure

THERE IS NO DEATH, THERE ARE NO DEAD

For three years after Dad’s death, his ghost remained seated at the kitchen table, puzzling over why no one but me could see him; being just a little shit at the time, I didn’t have the verbal tools to explain — or to comfort. Of course, no one believed me, because “there are no such things as ghosts” — or so I’ve been told. Only Dad would have believed me if he were alive and could come to my defense. So, I identified his classification as a such thing — I separate the words now, but at the time, it was one word suchthing. It’s kinda funny how a child’s mind processes what they are told; it’s dreamlike, words have a visual substance to them — I tried to picture their meaning — at least, what I thought they meant in context with the feeling expressed by the speaker.

I knew Dad was dead—his body dead and buried, but as a suchthing, he was still there, only I could see him. I never really mourned losing him, because I hadn’t really lost him, just the part of him that I could touch. I guess you can imagine my Ma and siblings thinking I had gone off my rocker because I’d sit at the table directing conversation to the empty chair where Dad’s physical life ended and his metaphysical one began. After all, seeing is believing — if you can’t see it, you don’t believe it — I saw him — therefore, I believed.

Synopsis

Years of taped conversations between Katharine and Dusty have accumulated enough material for a memoir, it is through this arduous process that Dusty Waters comes to terms with events in her life that have made her who she is in the present.

Dusty Waters, the ugly duckling with big feet, frizzy hair, and a big nose grew into a swan of a different feather. This unassuming woman standing at six foot three is a striking figure as she belts her socially polarizing songs in a folk-punk fusion that resonates with compassionate rage and a distinctive sense of humor. Born at the tail end of the Baby Boom generation, Dusty grew up during the Vietnam era with a different perspective than her older siblings (she is the second to the last in a brood of seven). This difficult history affected her psyche and her edgy point of view about the human condition places her as a distinguished bookend for her generation; her fans cheer her honesty.

Dusty believes in ghosts because she can see them. When she was almost four years old, her father died from a brain aneurysm; his ghost lingered at the kitchen table long after the body left. Although no one believed her when she insisted that he was there, no one sat in that chair. Eventually, she learned not to talk about the “no such things”, only her best friend, Emmett James, wants to believe in ghosts.

After her father’s death, her mother inherits the family legacy “Tanglewood” from Aunt Mabel Lamoureux. The sprawling mansion was built by her great-great-great grandfather the eccentric architect, Cornelius Lamoureux. The history of the Lamoureux family lingers as spirits trapped in their final moments; Aunt Mabel’s ghost sits by the window in the parlor. Dusty asks her: “Why do I see these things—I can’t touch anything in this house and not have it talk to me—” But Mabel refuses to answer. Upon finding Mabel’s diary, Dusty learns that her “gift” is inherited, Mabel could see ghosts too, and had run away from Tanglewood several times to escape the hold the house had on her.

When Emmett drowns in a fishing accident, his comatose body becomes separated from his spirit, but Dusty finds it difficult to confront his damp visage that haunts her, and upon Emmett’s declaration that she needs to live her life, she leaves Tanglewood with her boyfriend, Percival with whom she shares a passion for music.

After years away from home, and separated from Percival, she returns to Tanglewood to take her place in preserving the family legacy. Emmett James’s family finally removes his body from life support, but his ghost remains a fixture in Dusty’s life.

When Katharine finishes the memoir, Dusty says it needs an ending. “But it’s a memoir, life goes on after the book.” Katharine laughs. “Just humor me,” Dusty says as she follows one final dream to come to terms with Emmett’s ghost, and the flesh and bone existence of Percival.

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The Novels

This book is for all of us who pursue the phantasmagoria of personality. Wonderland by Joyce Carol Oates

Although I have always thought of myself as a writer, and loved the act of writing, I studied painting first. As a painter, I learned from my pallet experience that in order for light to exist on the two-dimensional canvas, there must be dark. It always fascinated me how human nature is rife with these tonalities, the comedy and tragedy mix in a intense tempest of emotions until a resolute calm befalls, concluding with the end that is actually a beginning; life goes on even after the final page. My novels are slices of life—lives—I have created a community of characters who share histories, and they overlap in a contact that leaves after affects that last a lifetime as they forge ahead toward a wide-open future in which anything can happen because of the present convolutions tormenting them.

There isn’t a linear ‘first, second, third, fourth’ book in a series, there is only the order in which they’ve been written; they are individual. I strive to write intelligent stories that will endure with time, and I also want to entertain; therefore, my novels possess a ‘you have to laugh at yourself or you’d cry your eyes out if you didn’t’ sense of humor in spite of the grim themes concerning the human condition such as mental illness, addictions, obsession, and crimes of passion. These books are human documents written in a plait of words from the perspective of a character’s dreams and realities, and then delving into the psychological and philosophical fabric of life.

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“It is the first vision that counts. The artist has only to remain true to his dream, and it will possess his work in such a manner that it will resemble the work of no other man—for no two visions are alike...Imitation is not inspiration, and inspiration only can give birth to a work of art.” Albert Pinkham Ryder.

The Fractured Hues of White Light

515 pages/180,000 words SOON TO BE PUBLISHED INDEPENDENTLY BY FIELD STONE PRESS

Synopsis

Samantha knew on her wedding day that her marriage to Preston was doomed because she feared that she would never learn to love him. She’s tried hard to garner an emotional interest in his being, but the excitement that his presence produces is just the same old need to please someone. Sammy’s always trying to please someone: Whitley, Helena, Will and Marie at the gallery, clients who want her to make pictures, even Sylvester, who asks very little of her. If Guthrie were around, she’d bend over backwards to please him too. It’s all part of the routine, adding Preston to that routine recipe should be easy-peasy, but things have gone wrong and turned scary, she can’t hide behind the excuse of her handicap, her survival relies on her full attention. “Pull your head out of your ass, Sammy.” She can hear this in Guthrie’s voice, and she can see him, deep - set blue eyes veiled by dark eyebrows and his frowny mustache that keeps his smile a secret. He might be physically gone since Whitley kicked him out, but his impression lives in her mind.

Once doctors diagnosed Samantha’s withdrawn temperament as autism, her mother and father, Lenore and Whitley Ryder, instilled routines into their daughter’s days with the hope that she would grow up self-sufficient enough to live as close to a normal life as possible, but Lenore never lived to see their daughter thrive. When Sammy was six, Lenore disappeared during her morning jog; three days later, her body washed up on the beach where she was last seen. Noah Valentine, a former lover she had jilted to marry Whitley, confessed to the murder because he didn’t want “him” to have her — everyone assumed “him” to be Whitley. The devastation of the loss seeps into the family grain, and pools below the surface of their lives.

After Lenore’s death, Whitley made use of Samantha’s savant-like artistic gift as a moneymaking scheme, which Lenore had forbid him to do. Eager to please him, Sammy willingly creates miniature copies of the art historical greatest hits, and she achieves an unexpected fame as wealthy clients clamor for the little girl’s novelty talent to give them their heart’s desire. At the age of twenty-eight, she feels enslaved by the constant demand, but the steady routine sooths her compulsive nature. It is her dream to create something from her own inspiration“…I will paint it big...” she declares with her arms held open wide; but so far she is unable to see it. “What I have in my head is much too big — I don’t think I can ever paint it...I might as well be blind like Beethoven was deaf...”.

When she isn’t painting commissions, she obsessively fills sketchbooks with stream of consciousness drawings that she calls “her doodles”, and within the random compositions, precise portraits of the people she loves emerge: Whitley, Guthrie, Helena, Sylvester, and Lenore. She never draws self-portraits, but her abstract doodles are more about her than what she sees in a mirror, which is what everybody sees, her uncanny resemblance to her mother. She fears that everyone compares her to Lenore; this infiltrates the way she thinks about herself, and it affects how she relates to others: Whitley, Whitley’s stepson, Guthrie, and her half-sister, Helena. Her long time friend, Sylvester Hayden, is the only person she truly feels comfortable with because he never knew Lenore, he accepts and loves Sammy for who she is. Sylvester finds her easy to love, but he wrestles with guilt for his poor judgment when she seduced him into an affair when she was sixteen years old. The secret affair lasted for three years, but Sammy turned it off with the same decisiveness that she started it. He continues to worship her from the other side of the Rose-of-Sharon hedge that divides their backyards where he currently lives with Sammy’s half-sister, Helena.

After she files for divorce, Preston’s behavior grows more erratic, and after he physically attacks her, she becomes terrified for her life, and leaves the routines of home to begin a journey of self-preservation that could be her undoing, but actually sets her free.

In the midst of this odyssey, her traveling companion, an emotionally and physically exhausted Guthrie, struggles to prevent Sammy from pitching a painting over the edge of a Utah cliff after she decided that painting plein-air wasn’t what she wanted to do. After this incident, they take the long way home where the uncertainties that she had left behind await her attention.

Upon her return, she finalizes her divorce, discovers Preston’s role in her mother’s death, comes to terms with her suppressed feelings for Sylvester, and learns to create a new creative life as images from her sketchbooks finally spread unfettered onto large canvases ignited by color.

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“To live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life and to see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived...” Thoreau, Walden

“Follow your bliss” is the hopeful decree that begins the journey of the three main characters, Georgia, Eugene, and Bailey. The novel is in essence a soap opera with a quirky sense of humor that explores the tangle of a love triangle, the inherent human frailties that lead to unhealthy vices, unfortunate mishaps, and the misguided choices that turn an intended path into a life of diversions because of obligations and the best intentions. Georgia and Eugene honestly spar throughout the manuscript about their mutual friend, the schizophrenic novelist, Bailey, the complexity of their friendship and love, their emotional breakdowns, therapists, designer drugs, old B-horror flicks, and the fine line difference between nude and naked.

Drinking from the Fishbowl

540 pages/177,350 words (updated 8/31/08)

Chapter 1: Anticipation

“So, tell me, why do you want to be a poet?” Mortensen Boyd asked, suddenly taking a professorial posture behind the desk. Right up until this moment, my interview was going very well, I had just stopped feeling self-conscious about the way my homegrown brogue accented my words a wee bit more than usual, probably inspired by the professor’s strong Dublin burr; he looked the part of an Irish poet, garnished with wavy red hair and a thick wool sweater. His easygoing manner had initially allowed me to be myself, but now I felt impinged upon by this simple question because the answer is simple.

“I just do—it’s a part of being alive, like breathing,” I replied. While his gray eyes did not betray what he thought of my answer, I knew as soon as I made this heartfelt explanation that he’s heard it before. What I just said made me no different from the rest; hundreds of fresh-faced poets have sat in this very seat, each and every one declaring that forging words into poems is their life’s breath. How can he choose from those who sit before him with their hearts on the line—how can he say ‘no’ to their dreams? Taking a deep breath, I raised my gaze to look at Mortensen Boyd—a poet whose work I have admired for many years—and now I feared that he will no longer take me seriously for saying something as trite as: “I just do—it’s a part of being alive, like breathing.” He’s waiting for a better answer, because he expects more from you.

“It’s hard to explain why I do it because I’ve always done it—you probably know what I mean,” I said with a laugh, hoping to smooth over my naïve awkwardness, but I internally cringed—nothing is coming out right. He smiled, nodded, but said nothing, patiently waiting to hear more. Of course, this should be simple—but it isn’t simple. It shocked me that I haven’t given the “why” much thought—I’ve only focused on the “this is what I want to do” and “this is what I’ve done”, and now his question has created a big hole in the middle of the well-trodden path that I have made for years.

My introduction to the poetic vocation came in the disguise of lessons in penmanship. Every day, my careful blocky letters copied poems by Lord Byron and William Blake from the open books that Mama would set out for me. The skinny columns of words made it look easy—less intimidating—for a small hand holding a fat pencil to transcribe. I memorized these concise stories to recite at the end of the weekly lessons, enjoying the sound of their beautiful rhythms when spoken aloud. Then one day, of my own accord, I decided to forgo the copying of the masters and began to string blocky letters into rhyming themes of my own, and then sharing them during the customary Sunday night readings. One summer night, my great-grandfather, August Devin, listened with rapt interest during the recitation of my juvenile practices, and said without being patronizing: “Oh, this is very nice, indeed—delightfully sophisticated for a wee girl—she must be listening to Beethoven.”

Throughout my education, I faithfully studied all poetry; I adored the epics like Beowulf; Byron and the romantics inspired my love of nature, and later, the contemporary free verse angst of the contemporary rising star, Sin?ad Gibbons, filled in the blanks when I became more self-aware upon reaching adolescence. With practice, my favored left-handed penmanship improved; however, to my dismay, the passion to write often caused it to stray toward illegibility, so when it came time to decipher my musings later, I have cursed my sloppiness.

Faithful to my aspiration to master the craft of poetry, I documented my observations every day. Years of inspired annotations have accumulated inside dime store salt n’ pepper notebooks; a blank page is more precious than gold as I horded paper like a miser with an impulsive greed. Every night before going to bed, I have retrieved several pieces of paper from my pockets; each note conveyed the weather through the shapes of clouds, the color of the sky at dawn and at dusk; the density of atmosphere, and the scents on the breeze. I have taken note of the shifting seasons by remarking on the arrival of the first male robin tut-tutting from the budding treetops. I have deciphered the difference between his territorial heraldry, a proclamation that rain is coming, the warning of a stalking cat, and the call for bedtime; then finally, I report the day when the familiar laughter-filled song has suddenly ceased with his migratory departure.

Even after transcribing everything from these scraps, I keep them tucked inside the notebook; this additional compilation puts an inordinate strain on the binding, each notebook is overflowing with the daily citations of time and place. Whenever the words I needed didn’t come to mind, I have sketched the image in the ruled journal margins, sometimes making a watercolor wash of an unusual nuance I saw in the sky above the verdant curve of the hill behind our house. In a sense, I have preserved the world that I love, and each fragment became a hopeful fount for future inspiration.

As my writing matured, I diligently transcribed the final drafts of finished work onto onionskin paper rolled into an ancient Smith Corona, and bound them into homemade folios. The delicate crinkle of these accomplishments thrilled me as the volumes became fat with my prolific efforts.

Along with my naturalist work, epic poems grew from my interest in mythology; some are faithful reiterations of fabled dramas, and some are playful allegories in which the immortals and heroes partake in fantasies of my creation. At the age of fourteen, my ambitious retelling of Persephone won a one hundred dollar poetry prize at the literary magazine Taliesin. When the editor, Peter Michael Hurst, found out that I was so young, he expressed his surprise in his kind letter of congratulations. I thought the editor’s praise in the follow-up feature article made too much fuss; humbleness and pride collided in a sickening brew of emotional turmoil that caused my moods to swing into extremes, which caused my pen to stumble because I feared that I would never meet his predicted expectations. Time eventually took the edge off this dread once the regular appearance of rejection letters in the mailbox forced me to focus on my discipline, and in effect restored the flow from my pen.

My obsession to write is so seductive that it is hard for me to concentrate on my daily chores; I stay awake too late to rise so early, and often greet my family in the morning with a sheepish shrug when questioned about how well I slept. I have always felt guilty that this literary ambition was a wish based on vanity, and made the conscious effort to balance my dreams with reality. Mama and Da finally expressed their concern for my well-being; my desire to write had not gone unnoticed. Once they articulated their consensus that I needed to hone my skills with experiences beyond the borders of home, we began the search for the place where poetry will be my only concentration, which has brought me to the question of why I want to be a poet. I do know why. The why is all around me every day, the why is everything I see, everything I touch, with every breath I take. It is natural for me to feel writing poetry is akin to breathing—I would feel smothered without the daily written release—but now that I have given this simple answer to Mortensen Boyd, I feel silly—insincere—how can he possibly take me seriously after saying such a foolish thing? There is more to the why than that.

Synopsis:

Georgia Sullivan, an aspiring poet, is the perfect innocent; she grew up on a self-sufficient Upstate farm that was based on the philosophy of Thoreau’s Walden. She leaves the security of home to attend the university to study at the prestigious creative writing program. While there, she befriends Eugene Riley and Bailey Muldoon. Eugene, the son of a documentary filmmaker from Jackson Hole Wyoming, longs to make movies in Hollywood. His roommate, Bailey, a brooding young novelist, is the spoiled and schizophrenic son of two literary giants from Manhattan. Even though Georgia and Eugene are aware of Bailey’s selfish manipulation, the two friends willingly cater to his whims. Georgia suffers with an internal conflict as her friendship with the two young men tempts her to stray from her simple ideals of writing poetry and buying the Christmas tree farm that she has had her heart set on since she was a little girl.

After graduation, Bailey and Georgia move to Manhattan and eventually get married. Georgia finds her hands full keeping Bailey’s spirits up while his first novel goes through several rejections and rewrites until it is finally published. Meanwhile, the ambitious Eugene blunders into Hollywood with his pregnant wife, Millie, and finds fame that immediately takes on a life of its own beyond his control, and like a chameleon, he adjusts himself to “fit in” to fulfill what he set out to do for himself. The consequences of his personal negligence leads him down a self-destructive path strewn with short-lived marriages, addictions, rehab, and the steady stream of bizarre tabloid gossip that twists his reality into sordid tales about who he’s sleeping with. He was once declared dead after a car accident (he only had a broken wrist), but he is disappointed that he was never exposed as an alien from outer space, nor did they genetically link him with Bat-Boy (dang).

Bailey’s private ambitions drags the three friends back together into the high-profile life in Hollywood after he and Eugene agree to form a production company to make films based on Bailey’s novels. Georgia, plagued by depression since being transplanted to California, becomes isolated because the lifestyle repulses her; eventually, a tabloid paparazzo publishes rare photos of her to prove that Mrs. Muldoon exists (as if she were Big Foot). Rumors and truths flow and blend in the bizarre reality of the Hollywood fishbowl as the gossip tabloids advertise Bailey’s infidelities. When Georgia finally asks for a divorce, Bailey’s unexpected suicide sets her free.

Georgia moves back to Upstate New York where she purchases a Christmas tree farm and begins a self-sufficient lifestyle as she had originally intended. At first, it seems unlikely that she and Eugene will be able to pursue their longstanding love for each other because their dreams are as far apart as East and West Coasts. Once they learn to stand on their own, they finally make the commitment to be together.

(Rumor has it they live happily ever after.)

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“How long ‘til my soul gets it right?”—Emily Sailers of the Indigo Girls, Galileo

Washed Glass

855 pages/260,000 words (Please note: This book is not being circulated on offer, I fear that it suffers from a bad case of First Novel-itus, and until I go through it with a fine editorial tooth comb, there is no way this baby is seeing the light of day!)

From the first page:

I’ve painted a dream today—I wrote in the white margin below the hazy image. It looks like a Rothko, but not as melancholy—I thought while sitting on the cottage back step; I again contemplated the blue horizon, and held my watercolor effort up to its reality—it’s almost there—my concentration is off today. I start to hum Beethoven’s Ode to Joy as I tucked the painting into the musty leather-bound tome entitled The Mabinogion balanced on my knees. My fingers turn through the tissue-thin, gilt-edged pages in an absent-minded rhythm, my gaze scanning over the gothic type and engraved images; mostly I’m turning the pages because I love the frail crackling sound that they make. I fell in love with this old book at a used bookshop yesterday afternoon; it has the feel, appearance, and the smell of an ancient relic from biblical times. It is the original translation from the Red Book of Hergest of the legends of King Arthur from twelfth century Wales. The stories contained within the covers about brave knights, fair maidens, magic, battles of honor, treachery, and the romances of the heart are unmolested by the Hollywood vision of Camelot glamour.

Closing the book, I hug it to my chest; my desire to read is lost because of a low-grade distraction that is tempering my focus. As my bottom grows numb on the weathered wooden step, I twitch and shift, suffering from the restlessness of a young body that doesn’t know what to do with itself. My mind is too full of thoughts in which making a simple decision is impossible. Right now, it seems that sitting still is the only option I have, although it feels like torture; it would feel so good to explode to my feet and run like mad, screaming at the top of my lungs to disrupt the tranquility of the beach, but I remain paralyzed by indecisiveness.

Why on earth did I write this book?

This is a classic boy meets girl and everything and the kitchen sink love story. It’s the exploration of What if you can remember everything from your past lifetimes? I have to ask myself: what would that do to a person? I’m not a new age guru or anything like that (I don’t want to be) but I wanted to tackle the subject with sensible enlightenment and a sense of humor that sharply examines the comedy and tragedy of such a circumstance; there’s a blunt social commentary with a skeptical outlook that is balanced with the sentimentality of romance (NO, not the bodice-ripper type, my characters are much too self-conscious for that sort of nonsense).

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First draft of Wish (formally titled: The Portrait) is 156 pages, 50,600 words...just a wee bit of a book...

On September 3, 2004, I "officially" started writing my fifth novel, Wish (The Portrait was the working title), picking away at it when inspiration ticked my fingers on the keyboard to jot down whatever I wanted to say in it, then on March 26th 2006, I picked it up again, this time to make it happen. Sometimes starting a new book is a scary bit of business... you know, all that cool unknown stuff just lurking around, waiting to jump out of the dark corners of the brain and say "BOO!" It's always there and it's just amazing.

So, anyway, this guy I'm writing about, Aloysius is a character that I've carried around for many years...oh, since high school... I didn't really know who he was until I wrote my first novel Washed Glass where he made his debut. He arrived there with such vitality that my readers who have helped me through the formative years of becoming a writer told me how much they enjoyed him and wanted to know more. Of course, at the time, I only knew what they knew, Aloysius remained elusive until I sat down with my laptop and began the interrogation process. As of April 26, 2006, I have 88 pages, 26,000 words, and 11 chapters, lots of room to grow in this rough beginning...

What's it about? Oh, yeah... you might want to know that. Bear with me, this is going to be a little rough... he's a dying man, that is made clear in the beginning of the book as he is in his final days of his life and he's being cared for by Katharine Tierney and his butler, Jeffrey. In his life, Aloysius is an art historian, although he is a British aristocrat, he has chosen to estrange himself from his family's heritage to find his own way in the world. He makes a living as an fine art appraiser and a painting and paper conservator, he enjoys taking on the mystery of identifying works of art that are unattributed to an artist or misidentified. His work takes him around the world to museums great and small, and many parlors of wealthy collectors. The inspiration that led him into this kind of career bloomed from a portrait of his great aunt Lady Damaris Crawford by a little known Impressionist portrait painter, Annachie Powys. As a little boy he was smitten with the portrait, then as an adult he becomes obsessed with it. There is a messy history about the painting, a love affair, a murder, a suicide, and an execution...very grim circumstances for such a pretty painting entitled The Angel, an impressionist portrait of a delicate young bride full of the blush of life, holding a book in her hand, and a small painting drying on the window seat beside her, the sunshine blazing through the window behind her and he white gown give her a gossamer appearance. It becomes his goal to discover who the artist is, and to find out the truth about why she killed herself on the day the portrait was completed, and why the painter was shot, and her husband executed for murder. His personal life has it's ups and downs with women, several love affairs gone wrong, sometimes dangerous, some foolish whims of fancy, he even fathers a son with his friend's fiancé during a one night stand; the boy, Sylvester Hayden, is a character from The Fractured Hues of White Light. His final entanglement is with a young version of Katharine Tierney (her affair with him is briefly chronicled in Washed Glass). Although he has his regrets about her, he even considers marriage, but just as he thinks about settling down, his chronic headaches become more than that, he has a brain tumor that cuts his life short and he breaks off from Katharine to spare her his suffering. His final journey makes peace with all that he left behind in the past, and he finally resolves the mystery about the Portrait of Damaris once he obtains the journals of Annachie Powys from the great-granddaughter of the Countessa.

I can't begin to tell you how much fun this is...

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A little bit about me

Do you think the weather in Syracuse, New York has anything to do with the making of exceptional writers? So many distinguished authors have passed underneath the prevalent gray sky—many have moved on, but I have stayed here, though I chose to relocate to the southern hill country for a better view. There’s something unique about the profusion of overcast days that sparks inspiration, it is a bit moor-ish in a Bronte sense. Some times that suffusion of gray comes down as fog on my Upstate hill, and my world takes on an isolated quality; it is such a lush atmosphere that fosters creativity in cozy rooms by a wood stove fire. Sunny days are precious, and that’s when I turn my attention from the moody sky to the placid earth. I have worked out numerous plot knots with my hands immersed in the soil of my garden; my imagination tickled by the softness of a cat’s sweet tail as it brushes along my arm when it passes by me with affectionate curiosity. After hours of physical labor tending to flowers and vegetables, I return to my desk to write, contemplate—tinker and tweak; sometimes I forgo the desk to sun myself in my favorite chair on the front porch. While hummingbirds buzz at the sprays of bee balm, I rest my feet on a sun-warmed dog, and I read with a red pen poised, ready to stab at the manuscript lying in my lap. You see, I have a good life on my hill, it is so pastoral and peaceful—this is how I want you to envision me. It is important for you to incorporate this vision, because this is what I have worked towards for many years, without this quality of life and the extremes of weather, I wouldn’t be writing—I’d be stuck on survive otherwise.

Believe me, there have been times when I’ve cursed myself for waiting so long, being almost forty when I finally started all of this—but it has been worth the wait turning into the writer I wanted to become. Thankfully, I am wise enough to be patient.

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My list of recommended readings:

Donna Tartt, The Secret History. Breathtaking.

Mikhail Bulgakov The Master and Margarita, this is probably the funniest book I have ever read, yeah I know it's Russian literature, what could possibly be funny in there? It just is...but then I have a odd sense of humor. It's brutality is stunning, I can see an indie director like Quentin Terantino or Tim Burton doing something with this novel. What a treat...trick or treat in a way.

John Cowper Powys Porius: A Romance of the Dark Ages, this epic is what epics are all about, probably a bit excessive--perhaps self-indulgent on the authors part, but what a beauty! I absolutely love this book, especially the uncut tome that I have.

Herman Melville, Moby Dick, I'll read it again and never grow tired of its beauty.

Gustaf Sobin The Fly-Truffler, this book is written in very gentle language.

Joyce Carol Oates Bellefleur (I wrote a review for this at Amazon.com). It's awesome, it's on my read it again list, one of the best books I ever read.

Virginia Woolf, Night and Day, the sense of humor of this book is subtle and hilarious. I adore this book so much the darn thing is falling apart, I'll have to get another copy...or I'll make a new cover for it. I tend to give this one away as a Christmas gift because I love it so much.

Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, I grew up with this book and with the film, what a beautiful gift this book has been to our culture. Not too many like this come our way, it is a once in a life time sort of novel.

D.H. Lawrence, The Rainbow, intense and gentle at the same time, this man had an amazing gift.

Anne Lamott, The Blue Shoe, sadly real and wonderful because of it's reality.

Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, wow, that's just so cool.

John Steinbeck, East of Eden Gorgeous.

Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine, this book is a treasure!

Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient, one of the few times the book and the movie are in harmony and both are good.

Carson McCullers, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, a remarkable book.

Wally Lamb, I Know This Much Is True, fascinating.

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Education:
Syracuse University BFA in painting 1984.

My day job:
I am employed by the Syracuse University Art Collection (since 1989) and I currently hold the honorable position of Registrar.

A couple of other things:
I've done two illustrations for book covers published by Syracuse University Press, The Night Has A Naked Soul by Alan Kilpatrick and Deep Woods by John Burroughs.

I live in an old farmhouse on top of a windswept Lafayette hilltop with my Fred, our grown son, we're down to five cats and one dog Max.

There is more day to dawn. The Sun is but a morning star. Thoreau, Walden