Warm Welcome to our New Wordsmiths!

I just want to take a moment to welcome our two new WhipCity Wordsmiths- Claudia Turner and Joseph Seal. Both authors joined this month. Kelly and I are happy to have them in the group.

Claudia is the author of Scars and Stripes Forever, a modern day thriller set against the backdrop of the JFK assassination. I met her at PumpkinFest in downtown Westfield in October, but unfortunately didn't have an opportunity to speak with her at length, however, I did buy a copy of her book. Bill Westerlind provided her the Wordsmiths info and she contacted me. She attended the November 17th meeting.

I met our other new Wordsmith, Joseph Seal, when he held an author event at Blue Umbrella Books to promote and discuss his first book, a novella entitled The 100-Year Wind in which an evil Shaman seeks revenge on his village by cursing it with a deadly 100-year wind. Joseph is also an artist and did the artwork for the cover and interior of his book. He is a young man with a passion for writing and creating magnificent stories.

I'm glad to see the group growing and transforming with every meeting into the type of group I wanted it to be- a friendly enclave of writers, authors and others who share a passion for the written word and are willing to support one another, share their knowledge, instruct, critique and beta read for one another, and help one another grow as writers. The group is like a battery writers and authors can plug into to recharge their batteries. I know that's how I feel at the end of every meeting- reenergized and ready to write!

Welcome Claudia! Welcome Joseph!

Kelly will be adding info to the Author bio and book gallery pages for Joseph when she has a spare moment.

The Kept Woman ... WOW!

I woke up this Friday morning determined to tackle my backlog of book reviews. I finished my review of Karin Slaughter's The Kept Woman. Oh my ... this thing is dark and illicit, absolutely zero sunlight in this story of a murder in an abandon construction site with ties to big money, professional athletes and gang rape. Certainly not for the faint of heart! My review can be found on Goodreads.

Next review... Talk To Me by Westfield author Sonia K. Ellis.

Current reading ... The Scions of Atlantis by Claudia Turner. I am up to page 74 ... Claudia's weave of the current divisive political climate in the nation, USA intelligence agencies and a retro 1960's hippe-esque social activist movement is as captivating and intriguing as the mention of legitimate third parties to stand up against Democratic and Republican Party domination (and corruption???). Brings back pleasant nostalgic feelings of growing up in the 1960s and the enthusiasm of positive change in the air! 

Oh the backlog of books!

Books. Books. Books!

I love reading books and enjoy sharing my thoughts and opinions about them on Goodreads.

The thing is, as soon as I finish one book, the next book has such a strong pull on me that the review of the previous read gets delayed, and delayed, and delayed .... until the reviews pile up and my thoughts about each book fade, losing some of my detailed impressions and emotional attachments.

This stresses me out!

I recently finished The Kept Woman by Karin Slaughter, a dark, raw and gritty story set in the seedy underbelly of Atlanta, a relentlessly intense narrative that easily earned my four star rating. Instead of immediately crafting my thoughts about the story and posting my review, I put the book aside and jumped right into The Scions of Atlantis, Claudia Turner's follow up to her debut novel Scars and Stripes Forever.  Thank you Claudia for allowing me the opportunity to read your manuscript ... riveting so far!

So, my docket of book reviews to be written and posted include:

The Kept Woman by Karin Slaughter
Talk To Me by Sonia K. Ellis
The Assignment by Lindsay Stenico
Perfect Little World by Kevin Wilson
The Long and Faraway Gone by Lou Berney

I know the ratings. I know the stories. I just need to get writing. Perhaps the Thanksgiving weekend is the perfect time!

BTW ..,. Happy Thanksgiving!
   

November Meeting Summary

The WhipCity Wordsmiths met on Saturday, November 17th with eight members present- Susan Buffum, Melissa Volker, Glen Ebisch, Claudia Turner (new member), Lindsay Stenico, Bill Westerlind, Russell Atwood, and Sue Foley. Kelly was in Washington, D.C. on vacation. Rhonda was at the Westfield Farmer's Market and sent her regrets.

(I always feel weird writing I this and I that, so excuse me- I am referring to myself in the third person throughout!)

Susan introduced and welcomed new WhipCity Wordsmith, local author Claudia Turner. Claudia was at PumpkinFest with her book Scars and Stripes Forever. Claudia has a sequel written that will be published soon.

Susan talked a little about NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month. Kelly is again a Western MA Municipal Leader. There is another ML, Jackie who is also here in Westfield, and Kayla in Greenfield. All three MLs are hosting write-ins and keeping western MA writers motivated and writing. Susan reached 50,000 words on day 6 and then bogged down due to distractions, vacation, being swamped at work, but hopes to finish her novel by November 30th. Kelly is on track with her novel at this time.

Susan had been a vendor at a church holiday bazaar in Agawam from 9AM to 2PM just prior to the meeting and related a story about what transpired at her table ten minutes before the bazaar ended. n elderly couple came to her table to look at her books. They asked her if she had written all those books and she said she had. The gentleman (who had to be in his eighties) then looked at her and stated, "I've never met a real live author before." He then seemed to get flustered and tongue-tied.SheI stretched out her hand and said, "Let me shake your hand." They shook hands and she said, "Now you have not only met a real live author, you've also shaken hands with one." They then talked about cats and squirrels (Susan had mentioned that she was also an artist.) She had a few unmounted black squirrel art prints that had been in the bottom of a bin of decorative items she'd brought for her table so she let them choose the print they liked best. They were delighted and went away excited and happy to have met an author. It was a sweet experience.

Susan asked Melissa Volker to talk a bit about her just released YA novel How the Light Gets In. Susan had been asked to beta read the novel and been happy to do so. The book is about a seventeen year old young man who has anxiety and is bullied at school to the point where his anxiety has caused him to see the world around him cracking and breaking away in chunks. He finds escape in his art. Within his art he discovers a "broken" girl and they explore his art and talk, a kindred spirit sort of relationship developing between them. The book follows Wyatt's path toward recovery from the bullying and relief from his anxiety-related visual hallucinations of the world cracking and falling away. The support of his family and close friends helps him- he is one of the fortunate ones who has a strong and supportive safety net, whereas other young people do not have a support system and fall away. It's a powerful novel and should be mandatory reading in high school. Anxiety is epidemic in today's teenagers and young adults, and bullying continues despite schools trying to curb it.

Bill Westerlind asked what it's like for an author to write something completely outside their normal, familiar genres. Melissa described how she had to world build, and then create a fantastical beast reference companion book to her magical Moya books The Thirteenth Moon and the The A'chiad. An idea that had seemed simple rapidly grew complex as she had to invent magical characters and spells, and realms beyond the 'real' world Moya and Fritz live in.

Susan talked briefly about The Worth of a Woman, her new novel, which is a total departure from her usual writing style and genres of paranormal, supernatural, holiday, light romance, fantasy, and magical realism. The new novel takes place in a dystopian not too distant future when males have regained total dominance over females, using them primarily for their own pleasure, discarding them like unwanted dogs when tired of them, or simply killing them and buying another. Jade is bought at auction at age 15 and is expected to obey her owner/master, catering to his every whim and desire. But Jade is unlike the meek, complaint females men enjoy. She bristles at being dominated and resists. She wants something more from life than serving a man. This of course leads to punishments and confrontations as Archer struggles to gain the upper hand over her, but Jade remains true to her own self. Gradually Archer and Jade's relationship changes in small increments as he realizes that his expectations for her are never going to be met, that she will never be meek and compliant. She is sent away to learn the healing arts from Old Rose so she can be useful to the members of his compound as territorial skirmishes are occurring more frequently. Before she is fully trained, Old Rose is killed and immediately, men go after Jade. When her younger sister and Archer's younger brother are attacked, Jade does what she feels she has to do, she kills three men to save Lem, Pearl and herself from certain torture and death. This is cause for execution in the world they live in, a female deliberately killing three men. Things change, Archer and Giant come for her, and to find Pearl and Lem who should have returned to the compound. Jade's homecoming to the compound is less than friendly. The men resent her and feel she has weakened Archer, their leader with her continuing resistance to submitting to him. But Jade, in her own way, is loyal to Archer. When the son of the man who had wanted to purchase her for his own use, the man Archer killed in the auction hall, approaches Archer for help (after ordering Archer's murder and the elimination of Jade) it places Archer and Jade in a precarious position. Jade suffers horribly at Mann's hands, but finds it within herself to save Archer and other men from his compound...it's a raw, disturbing novel full of violence as Jade stands her ground and remains true to herself and her beliefs. She is the catalyst for change but at a steep cost. The book was emotionally wrenching to write and had to be done in three sections with long breaks between them.

Glen Ebisch spoke about what led him to write Dearest David, his recent historical fiction novel. His usual genre is mystery. Sometimes authors need to do something different to challenge themselves- they get too cozy writing the same genre over and over again.

Sue Foley then talked about the difficulty she's having getting something written. She has a tendency to be a perfection and begins to nitpick her work before it's even written. The group talked about taking a leap of faith in oneself and just writing something, even a few sentences. Sue also doesn't have a lot of time to write, so we suggested writing breaks once a day where she sits down with a cup of tea or coffee and a pad and pen and just writes a few thoughts or sentences. The next day she can tinker with the sentences or add a few more. Writing is a discipline. A writer has to dedicate time to the craft. It cant be forced, but it can be nurtured. It's something one has to self-train for. Find a quiet place, a scenic view, a place with no distractions and devote ten to fifteen minutes a day to writing something, anything. Susan suggested instead of writing a story she try writing brief vignettes about her extended family. If each s written on a separate piece of paper Sue can later sort them and put them in some kind of order to create a series of vignettes that flow from one to the next.

Susan had been asked at the holiday bazaar if she ever gave talks or did programs with middle school children. The woman's info was gathered and passed along to Melissa at the meeting because she is interested in doing that kind of thing and more in tune with middle-school to high school aged kids. This is a good demonstration of how the WhipCity Wordsmiths work for and with one another, sharing information, passing along contact info,

Despite only seven members in attendance the meeting was lively, spirited and flowed with the energy that authors and writers need to keep their creative batteries at full charge.

Lex Volker took several pictures of the group during the meeting which were posted on facebook on Susan's page and also on her Susan Buffum Author page.

The bookstore calendar will be checked this coming Saturday to see if there are any openings available. Blue Umbrella is open on Sundays from this Sunday until Christmas, so a Sunday afternoon meeting may be possible instead of trying to find time on a busy Saturday as Christmas rapidly approaches.

A Little Crowing Tonight

I was scrolling through my usually boring/irritating email this evening when I chanced upon an email in regards to the Best Book Awards. I remembered entering a couple of books in various categories in that contest, so opened the email.

What a nice surprise it was to learn that I am now an Award-Winning Finalist in the Fiction: Anthologies category of the 2018 Best Book Awards sponsored by American Book Fest for The Hanging Man and Other Stories, which some of you may remember is also the book I doodled the cover art for during my lunch break at work! That original drawing is now owned by a local collector of the macabre and horror- lucky him!!

Anyway- I'm very happy to take the step up to Finalist after being shortlisted in 2016 for Black King Takes White Queen for the OZMA Award, and shortlisted for Out for the PARANORMAL Award in 2017. Three placements for three different books in 3 years isn't bad for a local author who self-publishes her work.

Okay...I'll admit this right up front, I ordered the stickers to put on the books...why not!

November Meeting

The WhipCity Wordsmiths will meet on Saturday, November 17th at 3PM at Blue Umbrella Books, 2 Main Street, Westfield, MA.

Here's the Story I wrote for Ghost Stories Live! This Year

Ghost Stories Live! takes place Saturday evening, October 27th at 6PM at Blue Umbrella Books, 2 Main Street, Westfield, MA across from the gazebo on the green. This is my 3rd or 4th Halloween with GSL!. This year I'll be reading a new ghost story. Award winning author Dave Zeltserman will be reading a story- I don't have the details on that. And JeanMarie Lariviere will be reading Poe's The Mask of the Red Death. And there'll be sharing of real live ghost stories, too.

As usual, I write multiple stories to prepare for this event, then choose one. This is the one I'll be reading. I'm sharing it here because the weather is supposed to be bad so I thought I'd entertain the Wordsmiths with a spooky story on a stormy night!

What You Do Can Come Back to Haunt You by Susan Buffum (2018)

They say that what you do comes back to haunt you.

It started with a parade of ants across the kitchen floor in the dead of winter. I’d never seen ants in the house, except in the late spring and early summer when they’d found their way inside looking for food.  There were never ants in the winter, only sluggish ladybugs and beetles that had found a way into the attic in the final warm days of fall and had made their way down through cracks and vent openings, lured by the warmth downstairs. But, ants? The sheer amount and variety of them was enough to make my flesh crawl.

I tried stepping on them, swatting them with rolled magazines, scooping them up on newspaper to throw back outside, but the crazy thing was, they didn’t die. They kept darting across the floors, crawling up the cabinets, meandering over the counters by the hundreds. I couldn’t even sweep them into the trash can.

And then I noticed the flies on the window. No, not just one window, but every single window in the house. I tried to swat them with a rolled up newspaper, but it seemed to have no effect on them. They flew all around the room, silent, no buzzing of wings. I frowned, puzzled and frustrated, not understanding what was going on.

I thought about calling Charlie, but he hated being bothered at work. I knew he had a big meeting with his boss today in regards to a promotion, so I certainly didn’t want to disturb him if that meeting was presently going on.  I would have to handle this crazy invasion of insects on my own.

And then something struck my cheek. I looked down at my shirt and saw a bee walking around near a button. I hate bees. Instinctively, I made a quick brushing gesture to urge it off of me, but my hand seemed to pass right through it. It flickered like an old film strip image then reappeared as if my hand had merely gone through the projected image. How weird, not to mention troubling, was that?

I looked around to see if maybe Charlie had set up some sort of video system that was projecting all these holographic insects throughout the house, but I didn’t see anything unusual. However, something near the fireplace caught my eye. I made my way over there, black dots flitting through the shafts of sunlight on silent wings all around me. Mosquitoes, a horsefly.

I made an involuntary sound of shock and disgust as I realized what it was writhing over the hearth and in front of the wood pile. Earthworms. Nothing is creepier to me than an earthworm. Nothing could be more horrifying to me than finding a writhing mass of worms in my living room! Or so I thought.

I backed away from the glistening mass of worms and yelped as a small brown rabbit hopped past the coffee table. Looking around, I spotted a number of squirrels, chipmunks, and even a possum—a few in the dining room, some running up and down the staircase, others casually strolling from room to room. “Get out of my house!” I shouted, feeling a rush of panic and adrenalin surge through me. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what was happening, what was going on this morning.

I fled upstairs past a squirrel that just sat on its haunches and stared at me. I think my foot went right through him, since he didn’t move to get out of my way. It reminded me of the squirrel I’d hit on Jameson Point Road. It had sat in the road just like that, staring me down. I’d been going a little too fast, hadn’t had time to react and had run it over.

I had run over a few chipmunks, a few other squirrels, and once, at dusk, a rabbit that had appeared out of nowhere. I hated it when I ran something over. It was physically wrenching to me to kill anything really, but sometimes it just happened. Squirrels darted into the road and then couldn’t seem to decide what to do, which way to go. By the time they formed a plan, it was too late. They were flattened on the pavement.

The worse thing I had ever killed on the road was…no. I was not going to think about that!

This was ridiculous. Ladybugs, beetles, flies, ants, worms…and now a butterfly sitting on the frame of the mirror in the bedroom.  A robin perched on the headboard of the bed. That reminded me of the time when a robin had flown across the street, not high enough to avoid a collision with the windshield of my car. I could still see its startled black eye staring at me through the glass speckled with its blood as the airstream had lifted it off the windshield wipers, sliding it up the windshield and then over the roof of the car.

My rational mind was struggling to come up with an explanation for what I was seeing, for what was happening in the house and rapidly failing at its task. There was no rational explanation for these insects and animals to be here like this. These could not be the ghosts of every bug and creature that I had ever stomped on, swatted, crushed with a magazine or newspaper, run over in the street accidentally. How could it be that? But I couldn’t think of any other explanation.

And then spiders began dropping from the ceiling. I fled the room in horror. As much as I was afraid of worms and bees and flies, spiders terrified me even more.

I ran down the hallway and into the den, flinging the door shut behind me…and there he was, the man in the royal blue track suit. I skidded to a halt just a few feet into the room. He was seated in the chair at the computer table. Slowly, he swiveled toward me, giving me a gruesome grin as he awkwardly pushed himself up and out of the chair, he in his muddy, blood-stained attire. I could see the impression of my car’s tires running diagonally across his upper body and his legs. “No,” I said.  His face was surprisingly undamaged, but there was something wrong with it. I had thrown my jacket over his head that night so as not to have to look at him as I’d dragged him into the woods at the side of the road, hauling him to the edge of the ravine, and then using my feet to shove him over the edge so that his body rolled down into the ferns and low-lying brush below. I’d snatched my jacket off his head just before his limp, heavy body had flopped over the edge. “No!” I cried as he silently shambled nearer.

Reaching behind me, I blindly searched for the door knob. A shiny black beetle scuttled from between his lips. He grinned again and more insects—beetles, ants, flies, and squirming, disgusting maggots tumbled from his mouth, falling to the floor. I managed to find the door knob, twist it, and pull the door open a few inches. I was in the way. I had to step toward this horrible apparition in order to get the door open wide enough to escape the room. His dead white hand, the bloodless flesh abraded down to bare bone in places, reached for me. I thought he’d be like everything else in the house that I’d seen, that his hand would pass right through me, but it didn’t. I actually felt the brush of his cold flesh against my hand. “Susan,” he said in a sibilant voice, a snakelike hissing of the consonants of my name. “Ssssusssan.”

I screamed, shaking his hand off. “Stay away from me! Get back!” I walked backwards out into the hallway.

“Ssussssan…why?”

Why? I had been seventeen-years old, driving home from a friend’s house. Her parents had gone away for the weekend. There had been a party, beer and boys. I had stayed far later than I’d said I would. I knew my parents were going to be furious and would ground me. I was trying to get home. I was dizzy from the beer, trying hard to steer a straight path and not cross the double lines. I’d come around a corner, taking it too wide, over correcting, and he’d been right there in front of me. All I’d see was the bright blue of his track suit before I’d been jolted by the thud of striking him, knocking him down, the sway and thump as the tires had rolled over him.

I’d slammed on the brakes, jumped out of the car, and there he’d been, lying in the road. I’d thrown up and nearly fallen over, feeling sick, suddenly sober and scared. It was dark, a car could have come along at any moment, although none had passed me yet. I hadn’t been able to look at him. I’d removed my jacket and thrown it over his head, then crouched down and wrapped it quickly around his head. He’d groaned a little. “I’ll just move you off the road,” I’d said.

I’d struggled and strained to lift his upper body. He was limp and heavy. I tugged and heaved, getting him into the woods. I was just going to leave him there, but then I thought that the police would find him, that they’d find evidence on him linking him to my Dad’s car. Adrenalin gave me the strength to haul him deeper into the woods, to the edge of the ravine I knew was there. Colter Brook ran through the ravine. I’d hike there a lot when I was younger, but now it was posted No Trespassing. Kids hung out at Starbucks or Panera now.

I’d dropped him at the edge of the ravine, tugged my jacket from around his head, then sat on the ground and used both feet to shove him over the edge, listening to the crashing of his body as it had rolled down the embankment and settled into the ferns and brush below.

I’d gotten home without further incident, thrown my jacket in the washer, woken my father, shaking and crying, telling him that I’d struck a deer on the road and damaged his car. I’d told him that the deer had leapt off into the woods, but I thought it would die of its injuries. He’d shaken his head, told me accidents happened with wildlife all the time, asked me if I was hurt, and then sent me to bed, telling me he’d call to report the accident to the insurance in the morning. He’d take care of it.

And now, as I backed further along the hallway, it all played again through my mind like a vivid film loop. “I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!” I cried, throwing my hands out to try to stop him, but he kept lurching toward me on his damaged legs. “Stay back!”

I’d reached the stairs and turned to run down them, but I felt a shove in the small of my back. I screamed as I went flying forward and then downward, crashing onto the stairs, thudding down them, landing in a broken heap at the foot of them. My thoughts were chaotic, stumbling in those final moments of my life, but I thought I heard a voice outside my head say, “What you do, it will come back and haunt you.”