Susan Buffum's Blog: Welcome to My World

During the summer and fall of 2021 I spent a lot of time rereading my own work and tinkering with it and then updating the books. Books that got updated with minor tweaks and corrections of typos, punctuation errors, and such were The Value of Jade, Dalton Cove, Minx Marvel, Camden Lake, Bolt's Landing, Cherry, The Clockmaker's Son, Bending Birches, Fugitives/Survivors, butterscotch: a collection of stories, and The Worth of a Woman. The Subtlety of Light and Shadow got a major overhaul. It was transformed into Whisper Lake, the first of the romance/suspense/drama/crime novels set near bodies of water. It was converted to the easier to hold 5x8 format with a new cover image accompanying the new title. I've read additional novels that I've self-published and will continue to make my books the very best that they can be because a big pet peeve of mine is buying a book that has errors in it. It drives me crazy! (These aren't self-published books either-just sloppy proofreading by major publishing houses!) I read with a pen in hand making corrections to other people's work. I use it as a learning tool as well as a reminder to proofread and scrutinize my own work before I upload a file and create a book...but still little things slip through.

There's been a lot going on in my life and some things like my blog fell by the wayside, but it doesn't mean I haven't been writing. A Haunting We WIll Go, my third ghost stories anthology was self-published in May of 2021. That month was a difficult one for me as I had to have emergency surgery after a trip to the ER on May 1st. Surgery was May 2. I was allowed to go home on May 4th. I'd had abdominal surgery so I was home recovering. On Mother's Day. May 9th my husband unexpectedly passed away at home while doing yard work. I was unable to write for nine months and just started writing again this past February. It was my art that helped me through this difficult journey through grief. I finished writing Rosemont Reservoir, the fifth in a series of romance/suspense/drama/crime novels (Whisper Lake, Bolt's Landing, Camden Lake and Dalton Cove being the other four novels) at the beginning of April. Rosemont Reservoir will be live tomorrow on Amazon and in the Kindle store. I'll be promoting the new novel at Articulture 2022 in downtown Westfield, MA on May 7th at Amelia Park Arena. It will not be an easy weekend for me seeing as it's Mother's Day again, but I can't think of any better place to be than among my author friends and out in my community sharing a new novel that would make a good beach read! COVID restrictions prevented this major cultural arts event from happening in 2020 and 2021, so I'm excited about the bigger venue for the event and the opportunity to be able to talk about Rosemont Reservoir which is set in the Berkshire hills. The beautiful Berkshires of western Massachusetts is one of my favorite places to take a drive when I feel stressed and want to get away. (Westfield, my hometown, is also known as the Gateway to the Berkshires.) Next up will probably be the third novel in the Amberton Paranormal Investigation Society novels (The Fairlawn Investigation and The Victoria Wayfarer Investigation being the first two novels in the series.) The Lakeside Manor Investigation may include characters from daughter Kelly's paranormal novels Parapsychology and Empathic Touch. I attempted to complete this partially written novel in November during National Novel Writing Month but it didn't go well. I wasn't happy with what I wrote. The flow of words just had not come back to me yet at that time. Fingers crossed it will get done this summer!

Medina is the first novel I ever wrote way back in 2006-07. It was intended as a surprise birthday gift for my good friend and co-worker Darlene. She was surprised to get a proof copy in January 2020 after waiting 13 years!

The novel is currently getting a cover designed by my multi-talented author friend Melissa Volker. I've given the novel a soft release in print and as an ebook. It's an epic read at 587 pages. The good news is that I cut it in half, finding a natural stopping point that far into it and setting the rest aside. It will most likely never be a sequel but I can't really let go of it just yet. These characters grew on me as my first characters in an actual novel. My second novel wasn't written until my daughter talked me into NaNo noveling in 2012. Since then I've written 22 more novels. So Medina, my first novel, takes its new position in 2020 on the list as my 23rd self-published novel.

Basically it's the story f a former wild child who is banished to Ireland after a wild ne night stand while visiting her great-aunt who is in a nursing home. She's seventeen years old. In Ireland the rebellious young Medina determines to show her worth. She knuckles down, attends college, earns her degree and writes a few books. Her problem is she gets herself into bad relationships.

After a near fatal accident she's brought back to the Berkshires to finish her recovery. It's been seven years. Her great-aunt is still in the nursing home, beginning t fail. Medina resumes visiting her. Soon she finds herself seeing Great Aunt Cathryn's lawyer who tells her Aunt Cathryn wants her to oversee the renovation and restoration of Greenhaven. the Graham family estate in Beaumont. Knowing her father will be displeased, she agrees. It doesn't matter to her because she loves her great-aunt and she has always loved Greenhaven.

Soon three men are locked in a bitter battle to win her heart. One wrong-side of the tracks brother works at the supermarket deli, is covered in tattoos and piercings, but he's a good-hearted soul trapped in a terrible situation being the overseer of his alcoholic mother. Sebastiano Murphy desperately needs a friend, someone who cares about him. Medina is just that girl. His brother, Giancarlo Murphy, whom she hires to handle the renovation and restoration work at the estate doesn't like her relationship with his kid brother, constantly argues with her, and keeps warning her to steer clear of her great-aunt's attorney. He also finds ways to thwart any budding romances that form between Medina and his workers. It's a rule of his company, no fraternizing with the clients! Seth Sheridan is that attorney she's been warned to stay away from. He's also smitten with the fiery redhead, and bound and determined that he will win her heart and therefore have control of the estate and the Graham fortune that she inherits upon the death of her great-aunt partway through the renovation and restoration of Greenhaven. Meanwhile, Medina gets involved with several other men after breaking up with her Irish fiance. She just can't find the right man and starts to believe that once the estate has been restored to its former Victorian glory she'll be living there all by herself.

As the house is being renovated and restored, Medina struggles to reconstruct her life, to find love and her happily ever after. Will she?

Minx Marvel began with the thought that it would be a novella, but it landed in the short novel zone as her story took shape and form. Writing about childhood sexual abuse and child pornography is not easy, but this story emerged from my criminal justice background.

Minx is twenty-three, has been away from her hometown for five years studying art in England and painting to support herself. She returns home because her childhood home is available to rent from her father whose traveling around Vermont these days painting on the sides of barns and buildings. She's come home to reset her internal compass and find the path into her future.

She never intended to reveal what she had endured as a child from ages three to eleven. She would have preferred to fight her demons alone, but she falls in love with the owner of the local bookshop. A man arrives a few months later, directed to her by her father. He wants some paintings of her that Mitchell Marvel made when she was a child, the rest of the series he had been collecting.

A terrible accident reveals the seamy underbelly of the town and surrounding communities and sets off a series of attacks on Minx and her boyfriend. Girls involved in the ever growing child pornography and sexual abuse case begin to go missing. Minx is stung and hurt by the anger the community directs towards her- the victim.

This is her story. This is who she has become. This is where she wants to go from here.

Minx Marvel is available on Amazon as a print book and as an ebook in the Kindle store.

Artist Jesse Oakes returns to the Adirondacks where he grew up after the death of his actress wife in California. Disillusioned by the lifestyle he’d led in LA, he opens a gallery on Bolt Lake, joins the local hockey team, and lives a quiet life until wealthy society scion Sebastian Archer commissions him to paint a portrait of his youngest daughter upon her engagement to rich playboy Jared Rhys-Bowen. Archer’s arranged the marriages of all his children to the rich sons and daughters of his business associates, thereby increasing his own fortunes. The Archers do not marry for love they marry for money, Jesse soon finds out as he gets to know the unhappy subject of the portrait he’s painting. He falls in love with Ellisan Archer, but soon the horror of her life, shielded by her family and generous payouts of cash to buy silence, is unveiled. Jesse’s love offers her a lifeline out of the nightmare she’s ensnared in, but will she find the strength to grasp it? Can he save her before it’s too late?

Novel #19, Cherry, had its final proofreading with the edited file uploaded and approve tonight. Cherry should be available by Thursday of this week. It's 428 pages and retails for $16.99 on Amazon. The Kindle ebook version needs to be revised and then that will be available, hopefully this weekend.

Novel #20, Memento Mori: Quella & Garnet has been published and is available on Amazon. This is a contemporary paranormal romance with dark psychological and gothic overtones. This was going to be the first in a series, but this one took so long to write, rewrite, and then rewrite again and again, that I am letting it be a its own novel, not a part of a series.

The exciting thing about this novel is that I received permission from a hometown photographer to use his fantastic black and white shot of the main gates at The Old Burying Ground here in town as the cover image. I spoke to him about it a year ago, then contacted him a week ago to make sure I still had his permission to use the image. I'm so happy he gave me a thumbs up to go ahead. I really love the photograph and have an 8x10 matted and framed copy in my collection of local art.

The book retails for $16.99. I'll be working on the Kinde ebook version and hope to have that available soon.

I've been busy writing three novels simultaneously. Cherry was finished first. I'm awaiting the proof copy which should be here shortly.

Cherry is about a young woman in her early twenties who works for her father's real estate business. She's the younger of two daughters in what appears to be a normal family, however, when Charlotte is found sitting on the front porch of her family's home, having recently sustained some injuries in a trip and fall accident after showing a house, violence explodes when she's brought home from the ER by her older sister's boyfriend who found her and took her for treatment. She rapidly finds herself thrown out of the only home she's ever known. Homeless, she's taken in by her sister's now ex-boyfriend. While Charlotte struggles to find her way in a world thrown into chaos, Archer slowly introduces her to his family. He's had a less than ideal upbringing himself, but has been fortunate enough to be taken in by his uncle and aunt and made a part of their family. Violence strikes Charlotte again during a house showing and it's Archer who is there for her during her recovery from her injuries. Gradually she begins to realize that he's more than a friend to her.

I was a CreateSpace user for several years, before Amazon did away with that publishing platform in favor of KDP Publishing. Navigating through KDP to create my last three books has been a learning experience. I was becoming frustrated with trying to get the back cover done last night when I remembered that Kelly and I had recently gone to a young author's home to help him when his mother, who was putting his book together, ran into the same problem. That reminded me that we'd had to change web browsers because KDP is compatible with Google Chrome and Firefox, not plain Google. Once I remembered that the rest of the book cover set up was a piece of cake. Within a few hours I was able to order the proof copy. The shock of discovering my $5.97 single author copy had an $11 and some odd cents shipping and handling charge attached didn't please me. Basically, the S&H cost about twice what the book cost me, but they are delivering it in 2-3 days. I guess the fee is for expedited shipping, so I shouldn't really complain. Plus the book s over 400 pages, chunky.

I've been doing a lot of drawing during the past year- black squirrels, birds, raptors, owls, wild animals, big cats, and cats and dogs. I created an etsy shop in which to sell my art- BicycleCityArtworks. Now, having taken a break, it's time to get back to writing. NaNo novel writing month is nearly over (I cannot believe how fast the month has gone by!) Spindrift, a romance set at a grand resort hotel on the coast of Maine is written. Cherry is written. Memento Mori: Garnet & Quella has been written twice to completion and numerous times in various attempts to develop the novel. I got 55,000 words into another version of the novel before convincing myself that one of the two completed versions will do. It just defies any further attempts at writing it. It's time to get that one done, too.

It'll be a busy end of 2019!

In September, my new anthology of original ghost stories was published. Only BOO, and nothing more contains 28 stories and one poem written way back when I belonged to an Edgar Allan Poe group on Yahoo. It's set up like Poe's The Raven, the stanzas and cadence the same, but there's a little literary difference. I wrote it for my daughter, and it promotes literacy. I also drew the cover art for this book, a pen and ink drawing of a draped funerary urn. I drew a series of fourteen of these urns for myself to hang in my writing room since I write a lot of ghost stories. Here's a little insider info- I accidentally selected the original drawing, not the cleaned up version, so pencil lines from my sketch are visible still. Sometimes, in the course of a busy life, you make little mistakes. A second draped urn replaces the usual author photo on the back cover...that's just me being me. I am my writing and my art!

My writing kind of got derailed by my art during the past six months. I do have a new novel written and have done some editing of it and proofreading. I need to get back to work on that.

I was the speaker at a local book club this afternoon, talking about both my pen and ink art and my writing. I talked a bit about The Clockmaker's Son which was inspired by the mechanical clock tower here in my home town, Out, The Worth of a Woman, and a number of other books. It was a truly enjoyable hour and a half with ten wonderful, intelligent, and conversant ladies who love to read.

I was asked if I liked to read. he answer is a resounding, Yes! I've been an avid reader all my life, and just wish there were more time in a day so I could get to all the to-be-read books n various stacks all around the house!

I did manage to finish the Magician's Lie by Greer Macallister this past weekend. It's a keeper for my permanent library! I love books with magician's as lead characters, and this one was unusual as the lead character is a female magician.

I've been asked to write a killer clown story. I will make it a segment of a novel I started a few years ago, Circus Rising since it has some unsettling sequences already! I've asked horror author Tom Deady for advice. He's agreed to mentor me on horror writing since that is not a genre I normally write in!

Other story ideas are tickling my mind...time to shake off the winter doldrums and spring into action!