I'll be available for the 2nd Annual Free Online Conference for the Reading Public from 6-8PM EST Saturday October 3rd!
To give you a little taste-test of my novel, I've selected 25 pieces for you to try...please enjoy...maybe they will tempt you...
vii
What did one ghost say to the other ghost? Do you believe in people?
Page 7
“What would make you feel safe?” he asked one night.
“A fire breathing dragon,” I replied. “Her name is Lucy.”
“A girl dragon?” he asked with curiosity as if a female dragon was unheard of in the realm of dragons.
“I’m a girl—why would I want a boy dragon?” I reasoned.
“I guess it would be icky, the boy dragon would have to look the other way whenever you changed into your jammies. Okay, where will she live—in your closet?”
“No—under my bed—she’ll also keep the dust kitties away—they make me sneeze.”
“Oh, I see, she’ll be a double-duty dragon—bad dreams and dust kitties,”
Page 11
A little bit at a time, I started to give a damn about things like a man named Nixon, the President of the United States of America. I pledged my allegiance to the flag of our country in school even though I had no idea what half of it meant because no one ever explained it—I just did it because the teacher expected me to follow without question. Being a little kid and fairly sheltered in a comfortable life, I had no reason to question the things expected of me. Democracy was still an abstract concept of freedom given to me in big word form, and Capitalism, unbeknownst to me, had everything to do with how many pennies it took for me to buy bubble gum at the corner store. Communists, nuclear bombs, and Vietnam were bad things in our world that the television reported with nightly regularity when I would much rather be watching Popeye kicking the tar out of Bluto to the tune of Columbia, Gem of the Ocean. I still had a lot to learn.
Page 16
Distinguished is an indistinguishable looking critter—blue, pear-shaped, and fuzzy with ping-pong balls for eyes and a pink plastic curler for a mouth; he’s an alien from a faraway planet of blue fuzzy critters. In spite of his startling appearance, he is a benign little guy, often confused by the world around him, but happy to be here.
Page 39
…the longer I stared up at the canopy with restive eyes, my imagination got the better of me; the canopy scared me because of that old movie Thirteen Ghosts. “Lucy, I’m scared,” I whispered.
Pages 48-49
I secretly went there to lie on my stomach with my arms flung open to embrace the earth; I’d press my face into the sun-warmed grass, loving its ancient being with its memory of the world carved by glaciers; a life that emerged from the rubble of time.
Page 53
“Wow, you live in the Witch’s house!” Dede blurted out. “It’s so creepy—how cool is that? Is it really haunted? Is it true that Phoebe Lamoureux hung herself in the attic?”
Page 61
“Engine, Engine Number Nine going down the Chicago Line, if the train should jump the track, do you want your money back?”
Page 81
“Easy there, Dede Sage, pull up your socks, I have no quarrel with you—I deserved the fat lip fair and square,”
Page 88
“Mommy, Mommy, the school is throwing up!”
Page 106-107
“I regret deeply any injuries that may have been done in the course of the events that led to this decision. I would say only that if some of my judgments were wrong, and some were wrong, they were made in what I believed at the time to be the best interest of the Nation.”—Richard M. Nixon, August 8, 1974
Page 138
Some little kids are like that, nigh indestructible, they can wipe out as bad as the Agony of Defeat Guy on ABC’s Wide World of Sports, and get up to go about their business like nothing happened except for the annoyance of a scrape or bruise.
Page 140
Why hadn’t they walked with her? Because, they said, Sandy wanted to stop at Mooney’s for candy. Why? Because she found a quarter on the playground. Why didn’t you go with her? Because we can’t walk downtown because we aren’t allowed to go there without our parents. Sandy should have known better because there’s no Safety Patrol on the corner of Broad and Church Streets because it’s dangerous.
Page 157
“Why do I see these things, why do I hear everything from the past—I can’t touch anything in this house and not have it talk to me or show me something—I need to understand why am I like this?”
Page 180
I hated to think that my relatives were a bunch of boring girls who did nothing but sit on their bustles, drinking tea, eating cake, darning socks, and popping out as many babies as humanly possible during their child bearing years.
Page 184
Tell me you wouldn’t do the same if you could stop the diabolical deed of choice from happening by hitching a ride with Dr. Who in the Tardis, traveling to the past to make a particular bad person go away. Okay, I’ll leave you with your pondering feet dangling from that metaphorical fence.
Page 187
What’s she gonna do, scare me? Yeah right, “BOO!” I ain’t scared of no ghost.
Page 207
Today has been one of those days in which I thought boredom might kill me; I don’t know why I feel this way, but sometimes I have this overwhelming urge to implode or something messy—
Page 217
“I think you need to go to the shut-the-fuck-up room,”
Page 260
“Everything’s wrong—what the fuck, I can’t even die right!
Page 266
Tag, I’m it—he got me—now it’s my turn to be dumbfounded. Just because he’s dead, he ain’t stupid—I’m the smart-ass idiot, who suddenly thought she knew, but I didn’t, and I still don’t. He’s the one dead, yet more alive, I have unfortunately fallen into a natural progression of prejudice that occurs when there are differences between people—I’m alive, he’s dead; I’m tangible and he’s not. Just because I can’t touch him—or to be crass—can’t fuck him, it doesn’t make him less of a being without his human parts. “He ain’t nobody without no body,” you say? I beg to differ, especially after this day.
Page 292
“Don’t ever try to surprise me without asking ever again.”
Page 294
I definitely looked like some moldy leftover rock star that got forgotten at the back of the music industry fridge—I was a walkin’ freak show. “Hi, I’m sore thumb, nice to meet ya.”
Page 297
“Listen, honey—I know how hard it is being a girl on her own. I’ve disentangled myself from enough relationships with men to know what you’re going through. You feel guilty for leaving him because you’re afraid he can’t take care of himself, or he’s gonna kill himself, or find you and drag you back to the cave by your hair—whatever flavor your nightmare is, it will pass. Forget him—you need to take care of you. Trust me, one day will come you will look him in the eye and know in your heart you did the right thing leaving him.
Page 320
I looked up at the solitary white cloud in the blue sky—its shape shifting, a spirit from a puddle somewhere—or a ghost from a river—now a mysterious little goddess figure, and then a god, its existence shredded to pieces by the lack of faith of its followers.
Hi everyone and welcome! I'm a writer and an artist from Upstate New York, I'm married to a real sweetheart of a man (who I refer to as "my Fred"), we have a college-aged son, five cats and a dog named Max and we all live together in a big old farmhouse on top of a windswept hill. I self-published my little ghost story, Dusty Waters, and along with my Fred, we started our own publishing company Field Stone Press...so far so good, although we're muddling along peddling our books, we're generating interest through various internet resources, doing giveaways, and book signings. It's been fun meeting readers and other writers since I started my promotion of my novel...it's been a lot of fun (and a little bit addicting!) I'm looking forward to lively discussion about my little ghost story…so, please, feel free to stop by and chat!
Wow! You sure have some interesting characters and lots of fascinating dialogue.
On becoming a writer...
It's the art of the story that snagged me from the beginning when my young mind was figuring out what she wanted to do when she grew up (I had plenty of inspiration, Harper Lee, Joyce Carol Oates, the Brontes, Ray Bradbury, Dickens, the Russians!) It's what drives the bus! I would go to extremes making up a darn good one, of course, always with my hand to my heart swearing it was true! Then pissing off my friends because I suckered them into believing the long elaborate lie that I just told (it's just a story you guys, sheesh!) My little ghost story, "Dusty Waters" is mostly built upon the stories that I used to tell my friends on those summer nights spent trespassing on the porch of an empty house we fondly called "The Witches House", smoking cigarettes and giggling ourselves silly (it was such a Boo Radley sort of venue)...even running off screaming into the night once because the story I was telling just became too intense...about a baby buried in the basement "...and her ghostly cries could be heard to this day" and perfectly timed (I couldn't have planned it if I tried), a baby in the house next door started to have a good cry about a crappy diaper...OMG it was hi-lar-ious! We ran and ran and ran...I never forgot it...so I had to write...I can't help it! If you’re a writer, I think you know what I mean. Once I began to write the book (I think I started setting the first words down around July 2000) I made a home for the stories in a larger story, the ghosts, the house, the girl born at the tail end of the baby boom generation, growing up with a war on the six o'clock news...when I saw it happening all over again a few years back, the pieces just fell into place and the story poured out along with my heart. It's a beautiful thing, writing...I've written five novels, with a sixth one in the making, Dusty Waters isn't the first, nor will she be the last...goodness knows, I've learned a lot since I published it DIY, and I have a lot to learn yet...thankfully, I have no delusions of making millions, it's a labor of love (I'm also an artist, so I got it coming from both ends), and in this evolving industry, I just want to get it into the hands of readers on my own terms.
On self-publishing...
From my size 6 1/2's, I went into self-publishing with both feet in reality...it's a lot of work and it ain't painless. As a self-published author, I'll admit that I won't sneeze at a good deal if one was ever offered, believe me, I would love to have an army of people doing my marketing and editing, and taking care of business, but at the same time, it would probably drive me bat@#$% to have that added element in my life (and I'd probably hate their cover design ideas...btw, I just happen to love my book cover very very much!) With that said, it will be my right to be picky about who is offering a deal and to tell them "Thanks, but no thanks." I'm not going to hold my breath on that happening...it's always been my "MO" to "DIY" because I'm a hands-on person (a.k.a. an artist so I'm creatively double-damned! Oh drat.) So wanting to become my own publisher is just part of the "Laura package" that marches to the beat of a different drummer. I don't think my little company, Field Stone Press, will ever go big time, it's just my husband and I with our novels, we're not taking in other writers, all we're doing is getting our books into the hands of readers. If my book is read, cool, I hope something I say means the world to them (even better)...if they give it to a friend who wants to read it, or sell it on Ebay, donate it to the library used book sale whatever...or if someone thinks it's blasphemy and wants to add it to their bonfire, awesome...whatever happens, it's my book, it's out there and I'm here, doing my own thing just like I always do. Money's nice (I still have my day job), money pays the bills...or buys me a mocha frappachino from Starbucks when I feel like walking down there in my little 6 1/2's...
You do okay with your little publishing company and that's what it's all about. That baby cry coing at that special moment ust have scared some of them silly.
Thanks for your kind comments platform5! If it's all right, I'll remain online should anyone else like to stop by...
I'm in the process of editing my next novel, The Fractured Hues of White Light, which is a novel about an autistic artist, Samantha Ryder...she has an uncanny gift of copying the greatest hits of art history in precise miniatures, her fame as a quirky human interest story...her father, Whitley, encouraged her to perform for money, and the pressure of the commissions suppressed any self inspiration that she keeps stored in sketchbooks that she fills with stream of consciousness abstract drawings that meld with the faces and hands of the people close to her. The quirky part of her autism is her focus on faces, for a woman who rarely makes eye contact and often fails to respond to the emotions of others, she studies facial expressions and creates faithful likenesses of the people she loves: Whitley, his stepson, Guthrie; her half-sister, Helena; Sylvester (Helena's boyfriend), and her mother Lenore, who was murdered when Sammy was 6 years old. There's much more to it than that...
I anticipate to have the book published well before Christmas...I'm in the final editorial stage, and my Fred and I need to work together on the design and the cover.
This book is my favorite...and the most difficult one that I've written to date. It's so odd...sometimes when I've set it aside for some time, I become uncertain about it, but as soon as I pick it up and start revisiting the pages, I'm so surprised by it. Gosh, did I really write this? Funny, isn't it?
To learn more about my writing and what I'm up to, this is a link to my blog Upstate Girl:
view linkI also maintain a blog Follow Your Bliss which focuses on my artwork:
view linkI also exist on Goodreads.com as both reader and writer, and recently started to do book promotion at the Red Room
view linkThe internet is an excellent tool, if you use it right. Thanks for the opportunity to share.
Best wishes,
Laura
