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``` SHE NO LONGER IS

a poem

by Carrie Jones

My mother has been dead

And I do not count the years

Because I count no years for anything.
She no longer is, I tell people,

And those with empathy lean forward

And those without it lean away, tiny

Movements of bodies showing

The full resonance—or lack thereof—of their souls. ```

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A storm hit the Maine coast this past Wednesday (Jan 10, 2024) and another is here now. That first storm decimated a lot of things on the coastline on our island. Dunes are gone. Seawalls made of rocks and boulders are gone. Pieces of road, some docks, and our beloved Shore Path have holes. Some fishing outbuildings are gone. It’s all a blow for the working waterfront and property owners and businesses. A shipwrecked schooner, the Tay, from 1911 has been unearthed and its bones are on Sand Beach in Acadia National Park. People are posing with it. A man died in that wreck in another storm so long ago.

Front page of the Lewiston Saturday Journal after the storm that wrecked the Tay and several other yachts and schooners in the area, including many in Northeast Harbor.Photo by Kristin McKee. Bar Harbor’s Shore PathPhoto by Jeremy Dougherty. Bar Harbor’s Shore Path.Businesses by where the cruise ships tender.The Bar Harbor Inn’s pier . Photo: Jeremy DoughertyThere’s a bit of disbelief as photos roll in of destruction caused by wind and storm surge and tide. I’m only using some of the ones I have permission to here. There’s more on Bar Harbor Story, my newspaper.

Today, there’s a post on social media with nostalgic memories of storms past where snow was so high there had to be tunnels to Bar Harbor businesses. But that nostalgia is mixed with disbelief, too. There’s no snow on the island. There wasn’t snow on Christmas.

People keep asking: Where is the snow?

But they’re also asking: What comes next?

Steve Boucher photo.The beach in Mount Desert. The sea wall is gone there and in other places along the island’s coast. Photo: Steve BoucherWhat comes next are choices: To build, to rebuild, to build differently, to not build at all.

What comes next are also choices about kindness and generosity: To support each other or not, to help move boulders and sand or not, to think just about the photo opportunities or how someone’s story ended with a shipwreck, to think about what we can do to help those on the working waterfront to get through this or not.

I think the choices are going to be good ones. Here’s a story about a similar community in Florida that I wrote a bit ago after it suffered through a major hurricane.

My community is full of people who diss each other on social media and then hug each other on the street, who vilify people with opposing views about property rights or cruise ships or how to deal with making more homes in a small area and then celebrate each others birthdays or mourn at their funerals. It’s a community that comes together in hard times, that forgives each other, that fights again and forgives again. The important thing is that it’s a community that loves.

This post and most of my posts are actually over on my Substack, Living Happy and Write Better Now. So, if you miss me popping into your email weekly, head over there. No pressure though.

The subscribe button below is for here.

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Spartacus was a great dog.Photo by Jr Korpa on UnsplashThere’s this website that posts poems by different writers. One of those poems was by Raymond Carver, a self-aware/self-loathing bit about writing a poem about his daughter’s dog’s death. There are a lot of reasons I found that poem today, but I can’t quite write about those reasons yet. Maybe I can by the end of the post.

Instead, I want to focus on what I saw on the comments.

For background, Raymond Carver died in 1988. The website even says this.

The poem, of course, hurts my heart in a multitude of way, but what caught me is this comment:

And then these comments.

There were people who complained that Carver’s writing style was too choppy for a poem. There were people who loved it. And then, of course, there were people that didn’t get that he, himself, was dead and that this was a website that just posted other people’s poems, not the poem posting their own.

Sometimes, I think, humans are so hard to understand.

And dogs?

Dogs are a lot easier. Dogs are beautiful and far too good for us. Sparty was one of those dogs. Bumble bees and wasps would hitch rides on his back and head when we hiked or just walked in the woods. Cats would claim him as their own. He never met a dog or person, cat or bumble bee, UPS driver, Fed Ex driver or random squirrel that he wasn’t an instant fan of.

Hair dryers and x-ray tables at vets? Totally different story.

One of the hardest things in life isn’t realizing that people really lack attention to detail or that they like to make proclamations about a poet’s or another person’s worth (or lack of it), but that we have so little time to love, to get over ourselves, and just love.

I haven’t posted about Sparty on social media yet. But this is him, here, looking goofy and adorable and like a dog that doesn’t read the comments.

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So far we’ve talked (and written) twice about character misbeliefs. Then we took a baby break because we’re like that, but we’re back on it now, my friends.

Those earlier posts are linked below.

First off to recap, the big lie or character misbelief in your story is what motivates them or causes them to act in a certain way. If your character grows in a positive way, during the story, they usually realize by the end that the lie was a big ole lie and not a glorious simple truth and voila—life is better.

Your lie has to move the plot forward and it has to relate to your story’s theme.

According to LitCharts, theme is just “a universal idea, lesson, or message explored throughout a work of literature.”

So a character lie is something like “MIGHT MAKES RIGHT” because your character believes this with all their mighty heart. The theme might be love is more powerful than might. Often, the theme disproves the lie, right?

Cool.

Now, when you’re building characters for your novel and building the plot around them, you want to use that theme and that lie to make your story resonate, to make your readers or audience feel for the characters involved and root for them to stop lying to themselves and get some wisdom (in the form of the story’s theme).

So basically, you find the theme and the opposite (kind of tweaked) is usually the character’s misbelief.

So, here’s how it goes, step by step for those of you who like steps:

Figure out the theme.
Think of what’s the opposite of the truth of that theme (the lie).
Think about why your main character believes this hideous lie.
Write a little scene about it. Call it backstory. Think deeply about whether it actually needs to be in the story AS SCENE or if it can be sprinkled in.
Think about other moments that made your poor honey of character believe this BS.
Think about how believing this lie has totally messed up your character’s life right now in the story.
Figure out if your main does something that they think sparks joy because of this BS lie but they are totally wrong?
How does your character go after a goal that deals with the lie or the theme? This is the plot of your book.

Cool, right?

DOG TIP FOR LIFEEvery once in awhile reassess the things you believe about yourself and the world. Are they really true? Why do you even believe them?

What’s the theme of your life? It sounds like we’ve had some Mary Jane, but seriously, as Kira Newman at the Greater Good asks,

“If your life were a movie, where would the plot be headed right now?

“You may not be immortalized in film anytime soon, but your life is still a story. According to psychologists, we all have an internalized narrative that explains how we became the person we are today and where we are headed tomorrow. Like any Hollywood blockbuster, this narrative has settings, scenes, a plot, characters, and themes.”

WRITING TIP OF THE PODA lot of books are flat not because they aren’t clever or the plot doesn’t have cool things. They are flat because the characters are. The characters are often flat because there’s no big lie that’s part of their motivation.

PLACE TO SUBMITExploration and Recovery: Mental Illness and The Awakenings ReviewYear-round

“The Awakenings Review is an award-winning literary magazine committed to publishing poetry, short stories, nonfiction, and photography by writers, poets, and artists who write from experience with mental illness: either in themselves, family members, or friends. Located in the Chicago area but international in scope, our print publication is one of the nation’s leading journals of this genre. By its nature, mental illness is a troubling, distressing, and painful experience. At The Awakenings Review we love to get works of renewal and healing, a positive outcome to your suffering and distress. We are currently accepting submissions for our Spring 2024 issue. Please read our submission guidelines at www.AwakeningsProject.org.”

RANDOM EXERCISE FOR THEMEOver on the Reedsy blog, there is a post about finding your novel’s theme. You can read it in full over there, but we’re going to encapsulate it here:

Write nouns that deal with your novel. Hobbits. Friendship. Powerful ring. Hot elves.
Pick one to be your center noun. Power.
Make a thematic statement with that theme. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

THOSE LINKS I WAS TALKING ABOUTWrite Better NowNeither of Us are Lookers, Seventh Grade Insults and Character Misbeliefs

Carrie Jones

·

Sep 28

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Write Better NowYOUR BIG LIE OR CHARACTER’S MISBELIEF

Carrie Jones

·

Sep 21

We’re doing a hybrid writing tip and podcast this week. All the important stuff is written down here. All the fun stuff and Shaun aka The Talent is in the podcast where we talk about this important writing stuff and other things. So, let’s get started.

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OTHER POSTS LIKE THIS FROM LAST WEEK

Four Types of Energy You Can Manage to Live Life BetterLambs and Community Theater and ResilienceOriginally published at https://livinghappy.substack.com.

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You Have To Believe in The Good–Living Happy RoundupMy mother spent a lifetime hugging other people. Meeting after meeting, interaction after interaction, for the entire time that she was alive, she would hug people when she saw them and hug them when they left.

Her hugs were many.

Her hugs were long.

She would open her arms wide, her eyes would twinkle, her dimples would show and it was almost impossible not to step toward that 5 foot 1 frame and hug. She’d often smell like vanilla and brown sugar on top of her perfume, a fancy kind that she’d ask for every Christmas. It came from Jordan Marsh, which was a big deal store decades ago. It was fancy, too.

She would open her arms and you would step into them.

My mom always wanted to be a teacher, but life got in the way. Love with my stepdad when she was still in high school became a big deal drama. He was run out of state. She was desperate to leave home. She married my little hobbit down and though she was brilliant—impeccable at math and grammar, the fastest typist anyone in Bedford, New Hampshire had ever seen—she settled for a life without college. She raised her children. Felt unloved. Unfulfilled. Had another child and a scandal. That child was me.

“Don’t let anyone tell you that you are less, Carrie,” she’d tell me before I knew even what less meant. “You are good, so good.”

“You are too, Mommy,” I’d say back for years and years.

You are too.

My mom with her brothersMy mom often felt judged by people who were richer, who had less drama, who weren’t addicted to Marlboro Lights or canned tuna, who got to go to college, by ministers who cheated at bowling, by men who cheated on their wives but didn’t get caught, and women too. She’d dance around the house when she vacuumed or did dishes singing about the “Harper Valley PTA” a song about a women judged in her small town for loving wrong.

But even then. She would throw her arms open and let people hug her. She’d know everything about everyone—she became the town clerk, a real estate agent, an office manager, organized her class reunions—and people told her things.

“We all have secrets,” she’d tell me. “You have to hug your way through them.”

My mom died over a decade ago. On her hospital bed, two days before she left, she tried to share her hospital ice cream with all of her surviving kids. She insisted.

“Good,” she murmured, “it’s so good.”

Hugs come in different ways. My mom knew that. Sometimes, people have personal boundaries and didn’t want one. She always respected that, too, but she’d find other ways to give them. In the offer of ice cream, in listening without judgement, in a dimpled smile, or in words. Sometimes her strongest hugs were words. Words like “You are good, so good.”

Despite all the drama in her life, despite her missed opportunities, my mom lived her life with purpose. That purpose? It was to hug. It was to remind people they are loved. It is to remind them that they are good.

So, in honor of her this Monday, let me share her purpose for a hot second.

You are worthy of hugs. You deserve them.

You are worthy of love. You deserve that, too.

And the inside of you? That part that sometimes feels too raw to share? It is good. So full of good.

A COUPLE OF COOL LINKSFour Ways Hugs Are Good For You, which I’ve retitled My Momma Was Right

Berkeley’s Purpose In Life quiz

LINKS FROM LAST WEEKI have another blog where I post this sort of thing more often than here on my writer website. It’s free, but it is a subscription model and I tend to post there on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Saturdays.

These are some recent links from there.

I’ve Been Talking to People I’m Scared of And It’s Turning Out Okay. And a Bit About Choice and Who You Are

Crawling Through The White House Fence And Let’s Get Stoic

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This year, I’ve been talking to a lot of people that I used to be a little afraid of.

And it’s been?

Lovely.

It’s actually been lovely.

People that I was intimidated by, I now message on Facebook.

People that I would stress about seeing because they had no problem telling me uncomfortable truths? We talk on the phone.

People that were so beautiful and confident that I would sort of gawp at and run the other way? We smile and talk now. We make eye contact during meetings when other people are being dorks.

And this? It’s kind of a beautiful thing and a lucky thing. It’s all just because I stopped being a wimp and started just going into everything I’m afraid of with the goal of being nice no matter what.

Tomorrow is the tenth year anniversary of Richie Havens’ death. This man was a talent, an enhancing talent, but also someone who spent a lot of his life making the kind of music that preached love and kindness for each other and the environment.

Next week it will be the tenth anniversary of my little hobbit dad’s death. He was no Richie Havens, but he, too, dedicated so much of his time in love and kindness for other people, for the environment, breaking into song or whistling because the music of the world meant a lot to him and was a part of him.

And both of them seemed as if they could be skeptics; they were comfortable and familiar with unease.

And I think both of them believed (at least at some point in their lives) that injustice often came from not taking care of the earth and then not taking care of each other.

Today, I decided (again) that I need to rededicate myself to humanhood – to the hope that I can find a way to see everyone as part of a great, big human system that we are all in together.

There is magic in the earth. But it has to be tended to.

There is magic in humanity. But it has to be tended to, too.

I am tired of enemies. I am tired of thinking in a way that makes other people enemies or the earth, an enemy. I want a world that doesn’t have that, yet I still think that way sometimes. Recently, someone who has some issues and has been kind of mean to me, asked me, “How can you still be nice to me? I don’t understand how you can still be nice.”

It’s the only way I want to be. And, I TOTALLY fail at it sometimes, but that doesn’t mean I am going to stop trying. I want a world of nice, or magic, or tending to, a world where we celebrate each other being brave even when the result is sort of a mess (like my sketch below).

I can’t control anyone else, but I can at least partially control myself, so I’m going to try.

I’ll call it the Nice Experiment. It’s starting now. Fingers crossed that I’ll do okay with hit. Fingers double crossed that people like Havens and my dad are still here, paying homage, creating music with words and thoughts and guitar riffs and hobbit voices (my dad, not Havens) that matter.

You can buy prints of some of my art if you’re into that.

And there’s more of this sort of content on Living Happy. It’s a Substack.

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Living Happy and Be Brave FridayBecause of my big Sunday breakdown at the beginning of the month, I’ve been looking into resilience a lot, and it brought me down a bit of a wormhole about stoicism.

Backstory: Basically, one negative comment on that day about my news blog (and me) knocked me down pretty hard. Usually I’m pretty resilient, but apparently life or circumstances or something is making me not bounce back quite as well this month as I usually do. I also had a bit of a setback because someone said my voice sounded like Marcel the Shell. They didn’t mean it in an evil way, but I had a middle school teacher who told me that I’d never succeed in life because no one would take me seriously because my voice was “so ridiculous.”

Those two things tweaked me (one a lot more than the other), thus the wormhole of resilience and stoicism and the connections between them that has been happening.

It appears I am not alone or groundbreaking in that connection. At all. Which is cool because it’s less work for me.

According to the modern stoicism society, stoicism is,

“Stoicism is a philosophy that originated in ancient Greece and was later popular in Rome. It was first developed by Zeno of Citium, c. 300 BC, who taught at a colonnade (Stoa) in the centre of Athens. In Rome, Stoic ideas were taken up by the statesman and writer Seneca, an ex-slave turned teacher, Epictetus, and the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius.

“Originally a complex system of ideas encompassing formal logic, grammar, physics, meteorology, and more, the three Roman Stoics Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius wrote mainly about how to live as a Stoic, embracing Stoic ethical ideas as a guide to a good life.”

Some of those major ideas and principles according to the website are:

Living with nature is good and to try to live in harmony with it.

External factors (objects, circumstances) are not necessarily good. What is good is when your own character and mind are virtuous.

Selfishness isn’t cool.

Things that are external (including good times and bad) change so you want to keep your mind chill and calm and rational even through that chaos. There are a lot more and I’m only summarizing here.

Psychologist Donald J. Robertson writes,

“Emotional or psychological resilience basically refers to our ability to endure stressful events, without being overwhelmed by them. Through cognitive and behaviour skills training we can improve resilience and prepare ourselves to cope better with future adversity.

“In a sense, Stoicism has long been virtually synonymous with resilience. Indeed, one modern expert, Michael Neenan, refers to the Stoic teacher Epictetus as the patron saint of the resilient.”

What he talks about is how stoicism aligns with cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), which thinks that a lot of how we have emotions is created by how we believe certain things. Robertson quotes Epictetus who says,

“It’s not events that upset us but rather our opinions about them.”

Whoa, right? And you see this. You see one person who finds a rainy day beautiful and another who thinks it’s the end of the world. You see one culture that finds death to be glorious and another who definitely does not. You see one person who thinks a lady bug is good luck and another who thinks it’s an omen of destruction.

This happened in our family last year when someone tried to kill themselves and failed beautifully. They didn’t even get sick from the pills they took. We took this moment as a devastating moment that they felt so badly in that instant that they tried it, but we also took it as a blessing because they failed and now they could get the help they needed from the state agencies that weren’t helping them before.

It is a weird way to think in our culture, but we know how lucky we were and how lucky they were, and how much better they are doing now because they finally got the diagnosis and help that they needed.

PREVENTION VS REACTIONCBT is a therapy that deals with a diagnosis and stoicism isn’t. People usually undergo CBT because they are suffering like our family member was.

But as Robertson says,

“However, the Holy Grail of mental health is prevention — prevention, as everyone knows, is better than cure. Psychologists try to reduce their risk of individuals experiencing future mental health problems through emotional resilience training. However, so far that’s had mixed results because although resilience training is beneficial, it tends to wear off over time, and people need refresher courses every few years.

“People who get into Stoicism, though, tend to stick with it for the long term because rather than a set of techniques it actually provides them with a whole philosophy of life. We like to phrase this by saying that “Stoicism is sticky”, in fact it’s often permanent. We need to carry out psychological research to actually test that hypothesis, though.”

And that’s really interesting to me because of his underlying belief that a philosophy can be so helpful in a long-term way. Stoicism isn’t one and done. It’s a way of living that involves the mind and actions and a way of seeing.

Robertson actually created something called the Stoic Mindfulness and Resilience Training Course, which is a four-week long event on the internet as a pilot study. It’s fascinating. He created a Stoic Attitudes and Behaviours Scale to see how much people illustrated behaviors considered to be stoic and mood.

I’ve screenshot his findings below. The link is at the end of the article.

But it’s how that held pretty solid after three months that matters. There was a continued “20% reduction in negative emotions.”

That’s a lot of continued benefit.

I think almost all of us could use that.

BE BRAVE FRIDAYThis one, I hope, is shorter than last week’s. And so many thanks to all of you on Facebook, who wrote comments. I wasn’t feeling brave enough because it was about my cousin Lisa and grief and sometimes it’s hard for me when people are nice about that. To be fair, it’s harder for me when people aren’t though.

This week a lot of people suffered a lot of grief on our island as loved ones died or were harmed or witnessed great injury. And I think that made it a bit harder for me to accept all of your kindness, which is silly, I know. Thank you for being kind.

Anyway, I’ve been looking at resilience and, as we now know, that led me down the path to stoicism, which brings me to this quote that I thought I’d share with you.

Epictetus said, “Don’t explain your philosophy. Embody it.”

So, I’m going to be brave and thank people for their kindness; I’m going to take every opportunity I can to be kind too, I’m going to show you this little baby sketch I made; and I’m going to try to be okay with the fact that someone this week said that my voice was like Marcel the Shell, but in a good way.

Braver. Kinder. Embodying who you want to be and your values. It doesn’t sound that hard, but sometimes it is.

LINKS TO LEARN MOREView at Medium.comhttps://learn.modernstoicism.com/p/smrt

About Stoicism today

Stoic Attitudes Scale

Stoic week

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Hi! This year (2023), I’m continuing my quest to share a poem on my blog and podcast and read it aloud. It’s all a part of my quest to be brave and apparently the things that I’m scared about still include:

My spoken voice
My raw poems.

Thanks for being here with me and cheering me on, and I hope that you can become braver this year, too!

https://livinghappy.substack.com/

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I haven’t had a BE BRAVE FRIDAY for a bit, but it’s something I used to do all the time to try to push myself out of my comfort zone, especially about sharing my art.

There’s this old Simon Sinek quote that goes, “A star wants to see herself rise to the top. A leader wants to see those around her become stars.”

I like this quote a lot, but I think that there doesn’t have to be a dichotomy. I think we can all rise together; we can all make ourselves better; make our communities better.

That’s a choice that we make, every single day, a choice to make our selves or our communities better.

My dad was basically ancient. He was born in late October 1929, the youngest child of three. His mom’s grandmother was Jewish, but he didn’t even know if his mother knew that. His dad was about as protestant as a man can be before a man turns into an atheist. Before he became an atheist, he was a stock broker. He was a stock broker in October 1929, working in a ground floor office in Manhattan. One day something thudded. Screams echoed down the street.

One day he looked out his window and saw that another stock broker, a man he knew, a man that he was friends with, had jumped out of a window to his death. Another man followed him down to his death, jumping on purpose because life had become too much. It had no hope for them anymore.

When the U.S. stock market crashed in October, 1929, it wasn’t just numbers that crashed; it was people too.

It was a time of death, and fear. It was a time that began a ten-year depression that crashed even more American families. That was when my dad was born. He was born not into an atmosphere of joy and the American Dream and prosperity, but into a time of fear.

My grandmother was a tiny woman – maybe 4 feet 10 inches tall. Her favorite thing in the world? A beautiful ripe tomato. Her other favorite thing? Butchering her own meat. She was a poet who never submitted a poem. She was an artist who never showed a painting. She was a mother who brought three children into the world and the last of those was my dad. But most of her favorite things had to do with food.

She could weep over the perfection of a tomato.

She could do a happy dance over a good cut of meat.

She knew how hard it was to survive after you were used to surviving. She knew how hard it was to eat when there was no food.

So, my dad grew up a pessimist. The first ten years of his life were grim. He expected bad things to happen. He expected the government to fail you, for life to be scraping and angry and tough. His father went from stockbroker to idealogue. Disheartened by a system that could allow such things to happen, he made my father stand on street corners, passing out political leaflets that my grandfather wrote, but that my father was too young to read or understand. Those leaflets talked about people working together for the common good, about people taking care of one another, about the role of government. Some people would take the leaflets and throw them at my dad’s sweet three-year-old and then nine-year-old face, screaming at him that he was a socialist or an idiot or worse. Some took pity on him and just pretended he didn’t exist. Some spat. Some pushed him in a puddle. But my dad would get up again. He’d wipe his face. He’d stand there.

My grandfather ran for state senate and U.S. Representative for New York. He always lost. By a lot.

My dad ran for nothing, but he always lost, too.

My grandmother watched them struggle and dreamt of food to feed her family. My grandfather dreamt of changing the world. My dad probably dreamt about sweets and girls or something like that. He hadn’t told me. It would be kind of embarrassing, since I’m his daughter, but when his life was ending, he was still an 84-year-old player, so I’m guessing it’s likely.

This story of my dad’s has no pretty end. The economy got better. My grandmother was able to buy meat and grow tomatoes and cry. My dad grew up to be a truck driver who always felt stupid even though he was smart, into a man who always was grateful when people were kind to him instead of mean, a man who always longed for sweetness—sweetness in his food and in his people.

The true stories don’t always have pretty ends, I don’t think. They are hard to make sense of. How do you explain to your wife about a friend who was joyous a mere six months before, and then plummeting to his death in front of you? How do you explain to your infant son that the world is full of cycles of joy and pain and want and have and some people only get to see one part of the cycle? How do you make sense of people being cruel to a three-year-old boy holding political papers on a street corner in New York City?

You don’t.

Because true stories sometimes can’t be explained easily. Just like the world now, like the news now, like the stories now, true tales have to be picked at, layer by layer. They are the lived-out poems of people, and the truths aren’t always easy to see, but the meanings rest underneath the laid-out facts.

My father was a man who expects the worst and gives his best. His father expected the best and often gave the worst. My dad’s mother found miracles in everything and nothing. And they survived. My father survived to have three children of his own. I am the last and the youngest by a lot, sort of an afterthought. My grandfather fled the country to Mexico and Canada, reading books and getting irate and dying in a bathtub when he was in his 90s. I don’t remember him. My grandmother lived until she was 104, scribbling out poems, admiring tomatoes, rejoicing in protein. And my dad kept living too, until he didn’t, plagued by worries about the country and the world, plagued by people’s apathy or conversely their inability to investigate deeper than reposted Facebook statuses and twisted truths, plagued by a quick moving cancer in the area around his lungs. It was a cancer that volunteer firefighters like him often get.

“What will become of us, Carrie?” he always asked me. “What will become of people?”

And I told him, “We will survive if we want to survive, Dad. We will find tiny moments of hope and truth if we want them. We will make our lives and our friends’ lives into stories that we tell each other again and again.”

And then he would tell me a story about how his dad and uncle (after the Crash) ran a tug boat business in the Hudson River, hauling trash across the water on barges. My grandfather would be on the barge and his brother-in-law would drive the boat. Once, the barge began to sink. Neither of them could swim. All they could do was try to hurry across the open water to get to the shore before it was too late. The whole time, my grandfather expected to drown in the garbage other people didn’t want any more. He clung to the tow rope as his brother-in-law tried to get the tug boat to speed. He survived.

“Can you believe that, Carrie?” my dad would ask me for the 1,000th time. “He survived.”

And I’d think, “Yes. Yes, I can.”

People are still enslaved. Now. People are still killed for no reason. Now. People still starve. Now. People struggle and excel and fall to hate and thrive in love. Now.

So this Be Brave Friday, here is my hope. My hope is that you do things. Go change the world. Change it with your stories. Change it with your money. Change it with your hope. Change it by running for office. Change it by helping others. Change it by just surviving. Change it by being informed. Change it by being brave. Changing it by making yourself and others stars.

https://www.inprnt.com/gallery/carriejones/

And feel free to check out these links:

http://www.beherenow.org

Amnesty

End Slavery Now

Unicef

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And how to put it on the pageSound.

It often surrounds us.

But sometimes it is just completely and utterly gone.

I don’t know if you’ve ever been in a moment of high trauma (personal or public). It’s the moment when something big happens, something so big that time feels like it slows down or stops completely. Your brain switches into another gear and you’re straining looking for clues, trying to figure out where the danger is coming from, what it is, and how to survive it. I’ve had people describe these moments when they’ve had a gun pointed at them in the parking lot of a motel, when a man has raised a fist in a dining room, when they’ve realized a loved one having a heart attack in their aunt’s living room, when they were at recess in fourth grade and a bully was heading over to give them a wedgie.

For me, one of the times I experienced this was at the Boston Marathon when the bombs went off, and I was trying to understand what was going on. Even though I was on my cell phone, the world whooshed out for a moment. My personal world was silent even in the chaos. Then the sounds of cops on radios and the cacophony of panicked voices and runners feet hard against the asphalt streets rushed back in.

As writers, we explain these moments and try to encapsulate them and sometimes? Well, sometimes we try too hard and write and write and write giant redundant paragraphs that instead of immersing our readers in the silence and shock and stress or a moment and instead overwhelm with noise.

Here’s the thing: There is a great power in silence in our world and on the page.

Silence appears on the page in a couple of places.* It’s in the white space. The white space is just the places on the page where there are no words. * It’s in the words you actually choose and how you structure them.

What do I mean by that? When we choose words on the page, those words make associations in our minds and in the readers. So, we want to pick the words sometimes that play into the silence sometimes. This is a really great device for scenes of heightened emotion and suspense.

For word choice, she cackled isn’t the same as she laughed. Those are loud things though. For a more silent experience, she whispered isn’t the same as she said.

And for structure? You have a lot to play with.

Here is a quick example.Original:

I heard the dog growl and then I heard a scream and wondered what might be happening, what might have caused that growl and scream.

Too much writing there, right? A lot of padding. A lot of distancing words (heard, wondered) that lessen the impact and the immediacy of the moment. Here it is with a bit more silence.

After:

The dog growled. And then, someone’s scream shattered the air. Who was that? No. What was that?

Add in white space to make it more tense:

The dog growled.

And then, someone’s scream shattered the air.

Who was that?

No.

What was that?

Add in specifics to make it even more tense:

Hackles raised, the dog growled by the mailbox, which leaned toward the darkness of the Mud Creek Road.

And then, a shrill, cackling scream shattered the humid air.

Who was that?

No.

What was that?

You can see all the differences in there, right?

Like any tool, you don’t want to overuse it, but you want to know about it, know that it’s there (just like you’d like to know if there was a mass of zombie gerbils trundling down the street toward your home). Sound and silence are really important tools on the page. Just like a guitarist wants to know about an entire string on her instrument and a pick and what happens to sound when you use a bridge or what happens when you tap out a beat on the guitar’s side, you want to know about all the tools you can use as a writer.

Silence is a tool, and it’s an important one. Sound is too.

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Thoughts on Writing Action and a Little Bit on PacingSo, I’ve been talking a bit about action scenes lately. And one of the big adages that writing coaches and writers put out there is that you want the form to match the function.

Chuck Wendig is a big advocate of this and he writes,

“Form and function do well together across all types of writing, but this is particularly true in terms of writing action. I find that when I write action, the form of my writing moves to match the pacing of the action. I tend to like my action sequences presented as a short, sharp shock, and so the writing tends to mirror that. Shorter sentences. Sentence fragments. Blunt, brutal language. Words like rabbit punches. Like the stitching of prison shivs.

“Is this necessary? No, probably not. But there’s value in setting the pace of your scene with the clip at which you write. You don’t want to write long, languid patches of prose in writing action. We want action to be fast, exciting, engaging, and most of all, easy-to-read. Writing action is in this way like writing dialogue: you want it to come across to the readers without them halting, without them pausing to take a breath.

“That’s not to say there’s no value in slowing things down — pacing is a tricky thing. The escalation of any story has its peaks and valleys and you can give an action sequence those same valleys, too — you can collapse moments just as easily as you can drag them out. The value in that is the value of crafting tension. By pausing before the money shot, the cookie-pop, the underwear-shellacking, you’re forcing the audience to hold their breath a little bit.”

One of the most important things he says here is this: It’s tricky. You want a balance of detail and feeling/senses. You want your reader to know what’s happening but also to feel what’s happening in the scene. Each gut punch should make them flinch and worry.

There is pacing that happens within a scene as well as within a chapter as well as within the entire structure of a book.

Fight and action scenes are no different. There are places within those action scenes where you might want to slow things down.

Why is that?

Well, it’s because your job as a writer is to focus the reader on a whole bunch of things, but the main ones are:

What is happening in the scene?
Why is it happening?
What is the harm or help that this event is doing to your main character?
What are the stakes: physical and emotional?

To get that balance, you have to pick and choose what you’re going to write.

If you write every single detail and every single movement, it allows the reader to truly see the scene, BUT it also makes a lot of readers fall asleep.

What? Fall asleep in an action scene? How is that even possible?

Well, it’s possible because there’s no:

Sensation. We also want bits about how it feels to fall down hard on your bum or get punched by a hamster.
Stakes. There’s no emotional resonance for the character.
Character revelation: You want to show subtext in this action scene. You want it to have a reason. You don’t want it to be just fighting for the sake of fighting but it isn’t building or dismantling their character or moving the plot forward.

You can look at the simple structure of your sentences and paragraphs and analyze them for pacing:

Think about how long the sentences are.

Think about where the periods are. Where are the commas.

How long is the paragraph? How many sentences are in that paragraph?

How much white space (places with no writing) is on the page?

Short sentences and paragraphs make your writing much more clear and more clean to the reader. But they are also great resonating moments for stories.

Jesus wept.

That’s a big deal moment right there. Two short words.

Think about how different the pacing of that is compared to:

Carrie started crying because she was a little overwhelmed by getting up at 5 a.m. consistently to get all her work done and because she basically has no love of mornings, not that she has a great love of nights either. Honestly, does the woman love anything other than manatees and if not, why does she live so far from manatee habitat. Maine seems like a bad life choice for a weeping, manatee-loving woman like Carrie.

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“To be an artist is to believe in life.” – Henry Moore

That Moore quote blew my mind today.

That’s because for me, I always thought that I was afraid to paint or even try to paint because my sweet, well meaning mom told me when I was little that nobody in our family had an artistic bone in our bodies.

I was meant to make story with words, she said. She was right. But I really wanted to make story with image, too. We never had fancy markers. We never had fancy paint. So, I’d work the crayons all the way to the nubs. I’d completely demolish the eraser on the end of my number 2 pencil.

I only took one art class in high school because I was so focused on making sure that I looked “academically rigorous” enough to get into colleges, which worked.

But there was always this urge to paint.

I’ve always though that the reason that I couldn’t share my images was because I was too afraid of ridicule because “nobody in our family has an artistic bone in their body.”

Now, that I’ve seen that Moore quote I think there might be another layer in there that adds to that fear.

“To be an artist is to believe in life.” – Henry Moore

One of the major criticisms that I get of my writing (news, blogs, books, poems, social media posts) is that I’m schmaltzy, that I have hope. I usually can brush that aside when it comes to writing because I believe in hope for communities and individuals. I believe that the drive to want to make things better is partially rooted in the hope that each of us can make a difference.

So, why can’t I allow my art to be hopeful too? To be seen? It’s decidedly bright. It’s decidedly full of aspiration. It’s hope.

Hope hasn’t been that cool since Obama, and even then not everyone was into it.

But here’s the thing: hope doesn’t mean an absence of understanding.

Hope doesn’t mean that you don’t acknowledge evil.

Hope doesn’t mean that you don’t see the need for change. It actually implies the need for change.

To believe in life. That’s a giant step of hope. To believe that we can make a difference, can understand, work together and alone to make brighter futures for us and everyone else despite everything?

That’s pretty damn powerful.

We have to believe in our hope, in life, in our own power to do good, don’t we? Because if we don’t? We shutter ourselves, our community. If we don’t, we choose hopelessness, the downward spiral.

I regret how cowardly I’ve been about so many aspects of my life. But I’m really hoping to fill myself with brightness and hope.

Keith Haring said, “Art should be something that liberates your soul, provokes the imagination and encourages people to go further.”

I want to go further. I hope you do, too.

So, here’s my painting for BE BRAVE FRIDAY

Totally not finished.

Totally flawed.

Totally still trying.

Totally me.

By me.

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Writing action scenes means picking details.Readers, have you ever read an action scene and it made you feel dizzy?

You are not alone.

This happens when the writer wants to put every single detail of the scene inot the scene, on the page, and in your mind. This is a really kind want of a writer, but the thing is that it doesn’t really work.

Writers, I’m talking to you now. Take off your reader hat and just put on your writer hat while I tell you this: You do not want to make your readers swoony in a bad way.

When you tell us every single characters’ actions, thoughts, emotions, and placement in an action scene, it overwhelms us. So, what you want to do is pick and choose here.

You want to pick and choose:1. The characters that have the most at stake emotionally and physically.

The characters that the reader is the most attached to.

The best way to deal with this is to usually try to stay super close to your protagonist during the action scene. Make sure that you are writing the scene from the viewpoint of that characters. If your puppy main character is watching a Star Wars style space battle, you want to make sure you tell it from that puppy’s point of view.

Our jobs as writers is to pick and choose the details that matter and then trust the reader to recreate that scene in their brains. We don’t want to distract them with the color of the puppy’s collar unless that matters.

If we do the opposite, if we show the reader every little action that happens, then we risk boring the hell out of them, but also we don’t give them to focus on.

Spoiler: You want them to focus on your protagonist and then maybe the antagonist. You want them to focus on the stakes, what your hero wants, and what’s standing in her way.

Think of it like this: You are a movie director. The page is your camera. You want to put the things in focus that matter.

Masterclass has this lovely tidbit.

via MasterclassThat’s all a direct quote. What I love about it is that it talks about the most important part.

You don’t want a sword fight in there just for the sake of a sword fight. That sword fight or the hamster zombie troop running down the street after you needs to be there for a purpose.

Once you have that purpose, pick the details.

I think I’ll probably talk more about this next time, too. I hope you’re doing well and safe. It’s snowing madly here right now. And poor Shaun’s just had his third cancer (in less than a year) scraped out of his hand. He’s had three types of skin cancer in one year. This is the kind of overachieving we don’t want.

our front porch. You can totally tell this isn’t staged because we still haven’t taken the cushions in for winter (Yes, it is March) and one is lopsided. I’m posting writing tips and things about how we’re trying to live better lives over here if you want to check it out. My regular website is here. No pressure though, obviously. Thanks for reading this! And happy writing.

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I wrote over on LIVING HAPPY about some time management tools for planning your day, and today, Shaun and I are checking it out a little bit more.

DOG TIP FOR LIFEDay planning needs to include walks, poops, and water. Just saying.

LINKS WE MENTIONhttps://darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin2022-07.html

https://livinghappy.substack.com/p/how-do-you-actually-manage-your-time-e5b

SHOUT OUT!The music we’ve clipped and shortened in this podcast is awesome and is made available through the Creative Commons License.

Here’s a link to that and the artist’s website. Who is this artist and what is this song? It’s “Summer Spliff” by Broke For Free.

WE HAVE EXTRA CONTENT ALL ABOUT LIVING HAPPY OVER HERE! It’s pretty awesome.

AND we have a writing tips podcast called WRITE BETTER NOW! It’s taking a bit of a hiatus, but there are a ton of tips over there.

We have a podcast, LOVING THE STRANGE, which we stream live on Carrie’s Facebook and Twitter and YouTube on Fridays. Her Facebook and Twitter handles are all carriejonesbooks or carriejonesbook. But she also has extra cool content focused on writing tips here.

Carrie is reading one of her raw poems every once in awhile on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That’s a lot!

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It’s about lists and hacksThere’s a book by Chet Holmes called The Ultimate Sales Machine, that I used on my post Saturday to springboard into a discussion about time management and productivity.

I’m going to be continuing that thread a bit today for our round-up. This sort of information (about my life and about trying to make it better) doesn’t usually show up here on my blog. It’s usually on my substack, LIVING HAPPY. It’d be awesome if you go check it out. There’s usually not really any overlap.

MAKE A TOP SIX LISTHolmes’ second tip on time management is to make lists. And the key, he says, is that you want to keep your list to the top six things you want to get down that day — maybe list them out every day on a sheet of paper. I do this the day before because I get anxious if I don’t have a clear idea of my next day.

Over on the Muse, Lily Herman suggests,

“If you’re new to making a to-do list, start small (only four or five action items per day) and use a simple tool or app to write down your tasks (like MacBook’s reminders app or just a traditional paper list). For everything else, I like to keep a separate tab on my MacBook reminders app for tasks that need to be done at a later date (aptly called “Later To-Do”), so that I am only focusing on what’s most important on any given day or week. I would highly recommend doing something similar, regardless of whether you have a paper list or a digital one.”

Full disclosure: I currently have a really long workday because Shaun can’t work full time right now because Xane’s type of autism requires them to be at home and dial in for about 90-minutes worth of classes. It also means they have a lot of needs. This means that I have to make up a majority of the income. I honestly don’t know if I’ve ever had a six item or a four item to-do list in the past few years. So, if you’re into big to-do lists and don’t think they are intimidating, go for it. I do.

TIME ALLOTMENTThe next thing that Holmes suggests is something else I’ve started doing this year, which is figuring out how much time each task will take.

So, you just go through those six items and put how much time you’ll spend on it.

Here’s my Saturday example:

Work on Brooklyn’s story 60 pages– 2 hours
Work on Ross’ story 50 pages — 1 hour
Get Loving the Strange Up — 30 minutes
Write Living Happy Extra — 1 hour?
Emails — 30 minutes
Marc notes to him — 1 hour
Write Iceland revise 1 chapter plus 500 words — 1 hour
Revise Magic — 30 minutes
Write On the Agenda — 30 minutes
Write Round Up — 30 minutes

I tend to try to overestimate my time and then if something takes 20 minutes instead of 30, I have a happy, little party inside my head. It’s always good to have a happy, little party in your head.

Sometimes, you can’t control the amount of time things take. Like if I’m reporting on a Town Council meeting and it ends up running from 6 to 11 instead of 6 to 9 like I was hoping. That’s okay. Life is like that.

Planning out your time is super helpful to get your goals done. I mean, if you look at my list, a lot of those items aren’t going to be completed on Saturday because they are working on big novels (my own and other people’s). But because I dedicate time to it each day, it happens.

Holmes says you should you should keep your productive tasks to six hours. I fail at this. However, the science is starting to agree.

A Forbes article by Julia Chang writes,

“Past research has also made the case that productivity isn’t harmed by working fewer hours. A 2016 study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development of its member countries found that productivity actually went up when people worked fewer hours. And a 2014 study out of Stanford University found little correlation between the number of hours worked and productivity, even finding that results start slipping after people worked 50 hours.”

And an article by Steve Glaveski for the Harvard Business Review writes,

“Many of today’s organizations sabotage flow by setting counter-productive expectations on availability, responsiveness, and meeting attendance, with research by Adobe finding that employees spend an average of six hours per day on email. Another study found that the average employee checks email 74 times a day, while people touch their smartphones 2,617 times a day. Employees are in a constant state of distraction and hyper-responsiveness.

Jason Fried, co-founder of Basecamp and author of It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work, said on my podcast, Future Squared, that for creative jobs such as programming and writing, people need time to truly think about the work that they’re doing. “If you asked them when the last time they had a chance to really think at work was, most people would tell you they haven’t had a chance to think in quite a long time, which is really unfortunate.”

“The typical employee day is characterized by:

Hour-long meetings, by default, to discuss matters that can usually be handled virtually in one’s own time

Unplanned interruptions, helped in no small part by open-plan offices, instant messaging platforms, and the “ding” of desktop and smartphone notifications

Unnecessary consensus-seeking for reversible, non-consequential decisions

The relentless pursuit of “inbox zero,” a badge of honor in most workplaces, but a symbol of proficiency at putting other people’s goals ahead of one’s own

Traveling, often long-distance, to meet people face-to-face, when a phone call would suffice

Switching between tasks constantly, and suffering the dreaded cognitive switching penalty as a result, leaving one feeling exhausted with little to show for it

Wasting time on a specific task long after most of the value has been delivered

Rudimentary and administrative tasks

“People waste a lot of time at work,” according to Grant. “I’d be willing to bet that in most jobs, people would get more done in six focused hours than eight unfocused hours.”

Okay, back to time management.

PLAN YOUR DAYThere are a ton of templates on the internet where you can plan your day out either digitally or via a piece of paper. I’m a scrap paper sort of person usually.

Yes, I am messy.It helps me not feel overwhelmed if I can see that I have the time to do the tasks that I need to do.

Canva has some free daily plans that you can customize. And there are apps too. Here’s a list.

I hope that helps!

LINKS FROM THIS PAST WEEK BY MEHow Do You Actually Manage Your Time

90 Day Goals Can Change Your Life

The Power and Magic of Weirdness

RESOURCES I USED FOR THIS PIECEhttps://www.themuse.com/advice/5-productivity-hacks-youre-screwing-up-and-how-to-do-them-better

Chet Holmes Home 2021

https://www.psychologistworld.com/memory/zeigarnik-effect-interruptions-memory

https://www.themuse.com/advice/take-it-from-someone-who-hates-productivity-hacksthe-pomodoro-technique-actually-works

https://www.forbes.com/sites/learnvest/2017/04/24/honestly-we-should-all-embrace-the-6-hour-workday/?sh=107eba6118df

https://hbr.org/2018/12/the-case-for-the-6-hour-workday

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It’s BE BRAVE FRIDAY!

Since I started the Bar Harbor Story, I’ve been getting up at 5 working on my own novels (5-7) and then doing paying work and the news blog throughout the day and sometimes into the night because town meetings are at night (7 to 5 or 7 or 11 if the town council goes long).

What does this mean?

It means I fall asleep really well at night. But it also means that I’ve been neglecting painting a bit and painting? It’s really fun. And it makes me feel good inside even when it’s terrible.

So this week, I’m making two commitments to myself to try to get a better balance (You can tell my birthday is coming, right?).

I’m trying to:1. Paint for five minutes a day (even if it’s a little bit).

I started the Couch to 5K program again (much to Shaun‘s horror). I really love running. My overly flexible joints, however, hate me doing it.

And also, most importantly, I’m trying to remind myself to be a bit more brave thanks to a post of her great painting that Amy recently tagged me in. Thanks for that push, Amy.

This one I’ve been tweaking and tweaking and rethinking. But here is what it looks like today. Here is what I look like today, too: a person made up of a lot of disjointed strokes trying to create something cohesive.

I hope you all have a great Friday and weekend and stay safe and warm and well and get to choose brave rather than have it forced on you.

Xo

Carrie

My art shop is here and if you want to check out the news blog, it’s here, and if you want to check out my other blog (it’s a bit more personal as I try to figure out life and living with purpose and has week daily animal thoughts, that’s here). No pressure!

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The sexy place is the actual writing.Almost every time that I go to a school visit and am asked questions or when I’m interviewed by newspapers, I get asked two things:

Where do you get so much energy?
Where do you get your ideas?

I don’t actually think of myself as having a ton of energy. Like right now, it’s 7:06 a.m. and I’ve been up since 5. I went to bed around 11. I’m a bit tired actually, and no, I don’t have any coffee or even tea in my system yet. I know! I know! You’re probably thinking what half of the people ask me in public events:

How are you so weird/quirky? Does your mind really work like that?

Just kidding—sort of.

This post isn’t actually about productivity or weirdness. It’s about ideas.

Chuck Wendig recently had a post about AI where he wrote about how so many of us think that ideas are the holy grail of writing and all creativity. People are always asking:

Where do you get your ideas?
How do you know an idea is a good one?
How do you not lose your ideas?

Ideas are cheap. They are the extras that die on the street while the superheroes battle above them. Ideas are often barely differentiated in the scene—just a mass of them crumpled by falling cars and buildings and laser blasts.

That’s the thing.

Writing and art isn’t necessarily about the ideas. Writing and art are about the craft that sculpts that idea into a story or an art piece or a song that connects to other humans on an emotional level.

Wendig writes on his blog,

“But again, the idea is a seed, that’s it. Ideas are certainly useful, but only so far. A good idea will not be saved by poor execution, but a bad idea can be saved by excellent execution. Even simple, pedestrian ideas can be made sublime in the hands of a powerful craftsman or artist. Not every idea needs to be revolutionary. Every idea needn’t be that original — I don’t mean to suggest the plagiarism is the way to go, I only mean in the general sense, it’s very difficult (and potentially impossible) to think of a truly original story idea that hasn’t in some form been told before. The originality in a narrative comes from you, the author, the artist. The originality comes out in the execution.”

That’s the magic of being a human and not being AI when you create art. The process is where the art becomes alive, where the story becomes real, where the unexpected (rather than the program) creates spark and light and joy and beauty.

AI can’t do that. At least not yet.

FLOWPart of that is about flow.

A long time ago—back in the 1980s—this guy Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi was studying happiness. He gave people pagers. Remember this was in the 1980s. Then he and his research assistants would send the people messages at random times and ask how they were doing, feeling, what they were doing, etc. It sounds a bit like when your mom texts you, honestly.

And he discovered flow. People were happy when they were super engaged in the task they were doing. People weren’t happy when they were doing nothing. They were happy when they were involved in something. Playing soccer. Playing music. Creating art. Solving a problem.

Minds were blown.

When people were in the ‘flow,’ they forgot about time, space, all the other detritus in their lives. They were focused on the now, on what they were doing. What they were doing might be writing, sports, hanging out with other humans, art, and so on… But for them the involvement was so intense that they became engaged and absorbed into it and were happy.

That might happen if you’re a reader and into reading a great book.

That might happen if you’re a painter and created something spectacular on the canvas.

The best moments in our lives are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times . . . The best moments usually occur if a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile” – (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990).

FLOW IS WHERE THE UNEXPECTED HAPPENS, THE EPIPHANIES, THE ARTLincoln Michel writes on his blog,

“The unnecessary is most necessary part of art. Art is exactly the place to let your eye linger on what fascinates it. Art isn’t an SEO optimized app or a rubric for overworked teachers to grade five-paragraph essays. Art is exactly the space—perhaps the last space left—where we can indulge, explore, and expand ourselves. If we can’t be weird, extraneous, over-the-top, discursive, and hedonistic in our art, where can we be?”

So, as a writer, flow and process, the actual act of writing your story is far more important and interesting that the original idea. What it is that happens in our minds that makes those little epiphanies, the moments where we are swept up in the flow—in the act of creating—and our prefrontal cortexes are firing on all cylinders and heading into warp drive. That’s what’s interesting.

Ideas happen everywhere. Looking at other art. Reading a book. Living a life. But process and art and writing? That is where you turn the idea into something else—something that breathes in a way that AI can’t do yet or even in a way that other people can’t do yet because it requires putting in the work so that you can get those gorgeous, beautiful, holy-poop moments.

And those moments? They’re pretty addictive.

As Wendig writes, “It’s just idea, small-i. You’re not done when you have an idea. You’ve barely even begun. The wonder is in what comes after. The wonder is in the work.”

And that’s what I wish more people talked about, not idea generators or where the ideas come from initially, but how they are shaped and formed to create a story that carries people along to somewhere new and magical, to somewhere that they might create a new and magical story from ideas that were germinated in yours. How cool is that?

LINKS I REFERENCE HERE THAT YOU MIGHT WANT TO CHECK OUTMore about the 8 traits for flow.

Wendig’s piece about AI and the Fetishization of Ideas

Finding Flow

Counter Craft

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Some people even call it a super power.I used to be weirder.

I know! For some of you that’s hard to imagine, but the truth is that I just sort of let my freak flag show no matter what level of freak that currently is.

This, obviously, was a bad idea when I ran for the state legislature (and lost thankfully). It was strongly recommended that I take down my blog (it was LiveJournal to give you context) so that my weirdness would be hidden from the voters.

That didn’t happen. I kept the blog up.

Pretending to be someone different isn’t the way I work.

Take, for example, the fact that I post animal thoughts on weekdays on my social media and here.

I know sarcastic animal thoughts play much better. But that’s not me. So instead it’s like a weird hybrid of worry about other humans and imploring everyone to be okay.

In The Perks of Being a Weirdo, an article in The Atlantic written by Olga Khazan, she talks about how not fitting in can sometimes make you more creative. She also has a talk about it with Wisconsin Public Radio.

Denise Hill writes in LifeHack,

“Society has conditioned us to be conformist. When you are called weird instead of hearing an insult, you should understand that you have just been paid one of the highest compliments. You have just been told that you are unique, bold, daring, exceptional, authentic and that you are special. Weird people think differently and choose to respond to the world around them differently – they own their individuality. It takes courage to go against the grain and to choose a distinct path in life.”

Weird people, she says, are divergent thinkers and that’s okay.

Part of what makes you weird, what makes you different from society’s norm, is often what makes you powerful. Embracing your weirdness allows you to love your own self, to be authentic, to not be fake, to not live your life as a lie.

That’s all really good stuff.

It’s also made me wonder where my goofy, weirdness went. Obviously, I’m still not normal, but I pass for normal a lot more than I used to. And I miss the Weird Carrie. The Random Carrie. The Carrie Who Just Was Who She Was.

So, here’s my weird little video from that time in my life when I used to be even weirder. I’m working my way back there right now.

I hope you’ll embrace your weird, your strange, with me, too.

LINKS FROM LAST WEEKBeing Insecure Sometimes Is Okay

Waking up at 5 a.m. when I’m a night owl

ANIMAL MATING RITUALS ARE WEIRD AND APPARENTLY LOVE IS ALL YOU NEED IS REALLY A LOT OF BS

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Write Better NowIf you’ve been hanging out with me this past week or so, you’ll have noticed that I’ve been talking about emotional interiority in writing characters for our novels or short stories. You may have repressed it all, that’s okay. I repress everything, too.

But in case you want to take a peek at the last few posts, here you go:

Making Your Writing Better

Showing Your Character’s Emotions

I continue all this today!

Mary Kole also has a checklist for developing character interiority, which is here:

· “What is your character doing right now (objective)? Why (motivation)? (The why is especially important.)

· What do they hope will happen?

· What do they worry will go wrong?

· How do they feel about themselves?

· How do they feel about their scene partner?

· How do they feel about their place in the plot in general?”

This is lovely, but the thing is that you don’t really want this for every single sentence of your story. Showing the character’s emotions and inner life is important in the beginning of the story. It’s important in a chapter of the story. It’s important in a scene usually. But it doesn’t have to be in every sentence.

Where is it most important?

It’s most important in the big moments and for the big emotions.

When you finally get your goal
When you learn that your dad is not your dad.
When you realize that because you are eight feet tall you will probably not get to do the bars on the Olympic team.
When a zombie is chasing you.
When you realize the zombie is actually your secret crush and he’s just playing.
When you have to ask your boss for a raise.
When you get fired.
The inciting incident of your story
The darkest moment of your story
The finale of your story.
When your character realizes they had it all wrong.

EMOTIONS AREN’T THAT SIMPLEIn the picture book world it often feels easy:

Jane was sad. What a bad day she had.

But as you move up through the age groups, emotions on the page become more and more complex. A character isn’t just lustful. They are afraid of their lust maybe? They are proud of it maybe? The emotions layer on.

THE CHAINStorm Writing School discusses the chain of interiority through the lens of the 2017 short story “Cat Person.”

And they create interiority as a chain of events.

Something stimulates a response.
The feelings associated with that response happen before the thought.
Chained interiority.

He writes that this fancy word is just:

“The stimulus for interiority is usually external but can sometimes be other interiority. That is, an external stimulus might lead to an emotion and/or a thought, which in turn leads to an emotion, which then leads to another thought.”

Robert Olen Butler says, “Moments of reference in our past come back to us in our consciousness, not as ideas or analyses about the past, but as little vivid bursts of waking dream; they come back as images, sense impressions”

When that happens it can branch into:

1. Memory.
1. Future and imagination.
Implied and unstated interiority
Complex feelings.
Indirect interiority.
External reaction.
POV character judgements.
Seeming

So, in this chain some things will happen, usually in this pattern, right?

Here let’s try to map it out.Let’s start with a random tale of a Piglet betrayed by a Pooh.

Pooh bear’s face was inside Owl’s honey pot. Piglet recoiled. That was his honey pot, full of sweet honey. Pooh had told him just an hour ago that he had the best honey and given him a hug by the big tree. Will they ever hug by the big tree again?

“Are you still seriously hungry?” Piglet asked.

“I’m a still seriously many things,” Pooh said, “although maybe not so seriously.”

Piglet laughed along with Pooh even though the honey globbing down the bear’s face made Piglet’s own tummy rumble in a very unpleasant way. Maybe now, he thought, Pooh would realize that life was about more than honey and honey pots; it was about friendship, but by being jealous was he maybe hurting Pooh, too? Was life about more than friendship?

Pooh took a step back and looked away. To have been caught with his head in Owl’s honey pot like that!

Pooh gave Owl the honey pot and waddled forward, arms open. “Oh, Piglet! I am so sorry. Your face is so sad making, all frown lines and tears. You must feel terrible!!”

He was apologizing and being all nice again. Piglet knew that Pooh felt bad for his betrayal; he could tell by the extra tremor in his obviously wobbling voice and how he seemed to be trying to shoo Owl away via a hand movement behind his broad, furry back.

Pooh’s arms wrapped around Piglet in a sticky hug and his belly was soft against Piglet’s face and it seemed—for just that moment—that maybe he could possibly stop eating other animals’ honey. Or maybe that was just Piglet’s own mad hope.

1 Something stimulates a response.

Pooh bear’s face was inside Owl’s honey pot

The feelings associated with that response happen before the thought.

Piglet recoiled.

Chained interiority.

That was his honey pot, full of sweet honey.

Memory.

Pooh had told him just an hour ago that he had the best honey and given him a hug by the big tree.

Future and imagination.

Will they ever hug by the big tree again?

Implied and unstated interiority

“Are you still seriously hungry?” Piglet asked.

“I’m still seriously many things,” Pooh said, “although maybe not so seriously.”

Complex feelings.

Piglet laughed along with Pooh even though the honey globbing down the bear’s face made Piglet’s own tummy rumble in a very unpleasant way. Maybe now, he thought, Pooh would realize that life was about more than honey and honey pots; it was about friendship, but by being jealous was he maybe hurting Pooh, too? Was life about more than friendship?

Indirect interiority.

Pooh took a step back and looked away. To have been caught with his head in Owl’s honey pot like that!

External reaction.

Pooh gave Owl the honey pot and waddled forward, arms open. “Oh, Piglet! I am so sorry. Your face is so sad making, all frown lines and tears. You must feel terrible!!”

POV character judgements.

He was apologizing and being all nice again. Piglet knew that Pooh felt bad for his betrayal; he could tell by the extra tremor in his obviously wobbling voice and how he seemed to be trying to shoo Owl away via a hand movement behind his broad, furry back.

Seeming

Pooh’s arms wrapped around Piglet in a sticky hug and his belly was soft against Piglet’s face and it seemed—for just that moment—that maybe he could possibly stop eating other animals’ honey. Or maybe that was just Piglet’s own mad hope.

And there you go! Interiority as a chain in action. If you check out the Storm Writing School link below, you can see some elaboration on those steps.

Happy writing! And say hi in the comments if you’re into it.

LINKS TO LEARN MORE

Developing Character Via Interiority in Literature

https://www.stormwritingschool.com/cat-person-interiority/

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Hi! This year (2023), I’m continuing my quest to share a poem on my blog and podcast and read it aloud. It’s all a part of my quest to be brave and apparently the things that I’m scared about still include:

My spoken voice
My raw poems.

Thanks for being here with me and cheering me on, and I hope that you can become braver this year, too!

Hey, thanks for listening to Carrie Does Poems.

The music you hear is made available through the creative commons and it’s a bit of a shortened track from the fantastic Eric Van der Westen and the track is called “A Feather” and off the album The Crown Lobster Trilogy.

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There are a lot of components to pacing in your novel. You can think of it as:

The big picture, how fast and slow your whole novel goes. How scenes link together.
The scene, how fast and slow the individual scene moves
The page, how sentences and white space and even punctuation influence how quickly or slowly the reader moves through the story. This is the pacing of each line.

It’s linked to your novel’s structure in those individual scenes and how those scenes cycle through your story (some more active and others not so much). It’s also linked to your style and tone (your sentence length, word use, paragraph length). It also is linked to genre expectations.

When we settle in to Outlander or Game of Thrones, we’re expecting a slower pace than if we’re opening up a Tess Gerritsen novel.

So, it’s a lot, right?

It’s up to us writers to know the expectations (potentially even subverting them) and then slowing the speed up or down.

Typically, the story is the fastest paced at these moments:1. In the opening

In the middle
In the climax.

The story tends to go faster when:1. There’s action happening. So, an action scene. Most authors try to avoid long sentences full of clauses and detailed description and transitions here.

Dialogue without a lot of setting details, transitions or other things involved.
When there’s a cliff hanger. That’s basically just when the reader is compelled to turn the page to find out what happens next in the story.
Scene changes.
Scene changes in rapid succession.
Shorter chapters.
Shorter scenes.
Your words are simple and concrete and your sentences are short.
Your words are harsh. What do I mean here. Just when they have hard sounds. Like Gs and Cs and Ks.

The story tends to go more slowly when:1. There’s no action happening. So exposition or setting or a pondering scene.

There are a lot of setting details, internal monologue (in paragraph form), backstory and exposition.
Longer chapters.
Longer scenes.
Your words are complex and abstract and your sentences are long and full of colons or semicolons and clauses.
Your words are softer. There aren’t those hard consonants and they make you think of more mellow things, so passive language.

Wow. I went very list-focused for this post. I hope you don’t mind. If you ever want me to explain anything more (in this post or any other), just let me know in the comments, okay?

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Be Brave FridayYesterday, there was a package.

And the package was addressed to me.

Inside that package wasn’t actually a present I ordered for someone else, which is what I was expecting. Inside that package was the unexpected; it was a present for me.

Not just any present. A handmade present.

Not just any handmade present. A gnome.

I love gnomes almost as much as manatees. That’s a big love. And here was this brown, adorable gnome that had travelled in a dark box surrounded by packaging, taking this journey where he didn’t know his reception, didn’t know his outcome, didn’t know if he’d get there, didn’t know if he’d be loved when he did.

Jumping up and down, I hugged the gnome to me and started tearing up, because I am so lucky and I know what it’s like to feel like that gnome: boxed in, afraid, not really knowing where I’m headed and getting bumped around a bit in the transit.

Maybe you feel a bit like that sometimes, too?

the most excellent gnomeBut in the package was also a handmade card about being brave that I truly needed this week. It was like getting the best, biggest, unexpected hug (if you’re a person who likes hugs).

When you write books or a news blog, when you share your art, when you share your thoughts, you put yourself out there and that is vulnerable. I’ve been feeling pretty vulnerable these past two weeks.

This vulnerability is especially when you aren’t perfect. Believe me, I am SO far from perfect. And my ego wants me to never make a mistake. Ever. But my heart is so lucky and blessed when people let me know that I have. I am often shocked by how kind and gentle people are with me when I misspell their names.

Despite that, the other night I went to bed thinking about the news blog and the ways I earn money (not the news blog, I put out all that content for free because I want people who can’t afford the news to have at least some news), and I had such a crisis of faith because of a small error.

“I can’t keep doing this. Why am I doing this?”

I whined. A lot. Luckily, the dogs didn’t mind.

And the next morning, I woke up feeling the same way, which never happens. In the shower, I thought, “I need a sign from the universe about whether to keep doing this.”

The first email I saw was from a journalist subscribing to my news blog and thanking me for the straightforward reporting. And then I received another kind email about the same thing. And then I realized what I dork I am.

It is sometimes so hard to believe in yourself. It is sometimes so hard to forgive yourself when you aren’t perfectly perfect. And then—whoosh—in sweeps the universe on the backs of kind humans who go out of their way to say something kind.

How amazing is that?

I’m very lucky. Not only do I get gnomes in the mail. I get kindness and correction with kindness. How cool is that? I know so many people in local government who get the exact opposite every day.

I hope they get kindness and I hope that you get that too, and I hope that you can be brave enough and vulnerable enough to go out there and learn new things, run for political office despite people spitting venom at you, support your causes, create words and art and story and friendships. Because sometimes it all can seem so overwhelming.

In her book, Daring Greatly, Brene Brown writes that the biggest myth about vulnerability is that it is weakness.

She also says, “Vulnerability isn’t good or bad: It’s not what we call a dark emotion, nor is it always a light, positive experience. Vulnerability is the core of all emotions and feelings. To feel is to be vulnerable. To believe vulnerability is weakness is to believe that feeling is weakness.”

I am so lucky that I have the gift of knowing so many of you and for knowing Susie via the dynamic duo of Art and Liz. I hope you all get to have a lot of Susies in your lives. And gnomes. I hope you all get a lot of gnomes.

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So, I’ve been talking a lot about creating the atmosphere or mood in a story because it’s really super important. Two weeks ago, I talked a bit about creating mood or atmosphere in your story, and last week, I shared some cool ideas from other humans.

This week we’re going to summarize and expand a little bit. So, let’s get moody together.

SETTINGTalking about the world outside your character really helps people get the mood of the story.

But to do that effectively you need . . .

MOODY WORDSSeriously. Word choice is key when creating atmosphere and mood.

I walked to the bar. I ordered a drink. I sipped it.

Pretty dull, right? Kind of reads like bad stage directions. But look what happens when we start trying to show the character’s mood and the atmosphere of the setting.

I sashayed to the bar’s disco-ball lit corner.

“One super hot and sexy turtleneck sweater with extra cuddles,” I announced to the super hot and sexy bartender. He took my credit card with five quick fingers and a wink.

Two seconds later, the warm mug was in my hand, the smell of mint and rum wafting into my nose.

Let’s try another mood.

My feet stuck to the beer-soaked, beer-dried, beer-imbued wooden floor as I pushed past the giant football players that formed a wall between me and the most disgusting, germ-filled objective in my recent future: the make-shift, plywood dorm room bar that Bill and Ted set up in the edge of their quad.

“Dude? You want some?” Bill surfer drawled when I got past the barrio of testosterone and Axe body spray. He held out the keg’s hose. Something brown crusted near the nozzle. Something brown that was definitely not beer.

Swallowing hard, I managed to stay upright as someone pushed behind me. My palm struck the plywood. A splinter tore into the flesh and stuck there.“Yeah. Yeah, I guess I do.”

The difference here is the details and the words, right? In both bits someone wants a drink and goes to the bar to get there but they are very different moods.

A walk is not a sashay is not a tiptoe is not a gallop is not a slog. Whenever you can use verbs, nouns, adjectives and details that convey how your character feels.

To become a magistrate of words, you can check out a thesaurus. It feels like cheating, but it’s super helpful.

Those little word choices are subconscious hints to the reader that tells them things. They think, “Oh, sashaying, how happy they must be, how confident.”

DialogueWhen our characters talk to other people and they are the thrilling or overbearing or confusing or just plain quirky or mean, it helps create the mood that’s happening in the story.

If your characters have to whisper that can change the mood. The same goes for yelling, screeching, singing, preaching.

Sentence Structure and White SpaceReaders subconsciously pick up on a lot of things that us writers put out and one of those things is sentence structure and white space (the part of the page where no words are).

The shorter the sentences, the higher the tension and faster the pace the reader goes over that page. That can make things feel more tense, more agitated, more suspenseful.

The longer the sentence and bigger the paragraph creates a more languid feel and slower mood that the reader has.

DO NOT TELL THE READER THINGS.In my example of the bar earlier, one of the main differences is I didn’t do a ton of telling what they were doing. But I did in that first example where there was no mood:

I walked to the bar. I ordered a drink. I sipped it. I felt happy because I was going to get a drink and was looking forward to that Shirley Temple.

The details that us writers choose are meant to show the reader things rather than constantly telling the reader things.

I pretty much sashayed over to the bar, hand up, credit card out. “Hey, girlie!” My voice skipped over to Donna of Shirley Temple mixing fame. “I am so ready for my daily fix!”

Different right? I never say that she’s happy, but we can feel that she’s happy. And that’s what atmosphere and mood is really all about. We want to make the reader feel things.

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Living Happy and StuffPhoto: MeOkay, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “What the what?” Or maybe you’ve put some expletives in there. I’ve been posting about being brave week after week after week as I push against my social anxiety and post paintings.

Here is the thing: I grew up in a family full of fear. My older sister was allegedly afraid of grass when she was little. Grass! My mother was afraid of a litany of things: birds, closed-in spaces, wide-open spaces, high spaces, water over her head, bridges in a storm. My brother inherited the bird fear, or maybe he learned it. So did my sister.

my adorable momAnd I grew up thinking that I didn’t want to be anything like that. No offense to my mom because she was wonderful, but she changed the channel if Donald Duck was on and he’s a cartoon. She wouldn’t go to parks with seagulls. She wouldn’t go near a feather pillow.

I grew up chanting “You have to face your fears” when my television turned on at night all by itself or when I had to take an algebra test or when I convinced twelve girls at a fourth grade birthday party to all hold hands and confront whatever the heck was making that groaning noise in the kitchen. Spoiler: it was the fridge and a snoring dog.

I faced my fears one after another. My voice? Check, make a podcast. Not scary enough. Make a live podcast. Art? Check, do some art. Post it online. People constantly telling me I made a mistake? Check, make a news blog without an editor.

A Friend’s Words

One night last month, a friend took me aside at a gathering and whispered, “You know, you don’t always have to be brave.”

She had a beer in her hand and a determined glow in her eye.

I gawped at her.

She nodded and twirled away back to the gathering. And I was left with her words.

You don’t always have to be brave.

It was shocking. It was the opposite of my mantra. I think our society (or a lot of us in it) believe that you always have to be brave. But life isn’t about always facing your fear, is it? If you’re afraid of sky diving, do you really have to sky dive? If you’re afraid of going bankrupt, do you really have to lose all your money? If you’re afraid of having a concussion, do you have to give yourself a concussion?

Facing all my fears has definitely expanded my world, but it’s okay for me to enjoy the world I’m in just as I’m in it, too. There can be balance.

You Don’t Always Have To Be Brave.

That’s the thing. There is sometimes a power to not pushing yourself into doing things that are really scary for you — like downhill skiing when you have no depth perception. Cough. Yes, cough. That is me.

It’s okay to sometimes hunker down, build up your reserves, and just be. That’s right. Just be. It’s okay to be who you are right in that moment. And that might not be the same who you are that you are in the very next moment. Humans get to change, to discover, to grow, to decide when and if they should be brave or not.

If you want to, you can come hang out with me at Living Happy. I’m much better about posting there. No pressure though!

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WRITING TIPS ARE GOOD THINGS!Last week, we talked a bit about creating mood or atmosphere in your story, and this week, I’m going to share some cool ideas from other humans.

What? I do not know everything? Gasp!!!!

Photo by Ben White on UnsplashSadly, I do not. For instance today I wrote that Acadia National Park has a million visitors. It has four million. Did I know this? Yes. Did I write it? No.

Did someone tell me immediately?

Yep.

Thanks to that person for letting me fix my mistake.

Photo by Howie R on UnsplashThe thing is I am really human and that means I try to juggle a lot of things and sometimes I make errors. I try to tell myself that this is okay. That in a billion years (or 100) nobody will remember me or my errors. Usually that works. But not today.

But all of this just means:

I don’t trust myself today.
You get to read curated advice from cooler people instead. That’s a win!

Here, this first is from MasterClass. It’s kind of beautiful and pretty concise like art that you get off Ballard Designs.

Photo by Stephanie Harvey on Unsplash3 Tips for Creating Mood for Your Story via MasterClass (these three tips are all a direct quote):1. “Use a holistic approach to mood. Since mood is made up of a combination of setting, tone, word choice, and theme, it’s important that you as a writer think about all four while you work. If you try to use only one of these tools, you’re severely limiting your ability to create a believable and pervasive mood for your story. A good rule of thumb is to shoot for at least three of these tools to establish your mood. 2. “Brainstorm mood words. If you’re drawing a blank when it comes to how to create a particular mood, it can help to brainstorm a list of mood words. For instance, if you know you want your story to have a creepy mood, then try making a list of different words that feel creepy to you, like these: gloomy, creak, tiptoe, moonlight, skittering, shadow, rattling. Once you’ve got a good list, pick a few of your favorites and include them in the scene. 3. “Subvert expectations. While it’s easy to go with the “expected” mood for your stories (for instance, that a story about a wedding will have a lighthearted, celebratory mood), remember that it’s not always the best choice. When you push yourself to subvert readers’ expectations, you can come up with creative and exciting combinations—for example, a wedding story with a foreboding mood, or a ghost story with a funny mood. Innovating with mood can help you create memorable, lasting writing.”

Let’s dive a tiny bit deeper into that first tip. Do I trust myself enough for that? Um, not really. Here goes anyway.

Setting is where the story is located or “set.” Set = setting, so clever a language English is.

Tone isn’t about the reader. Mood is. Tone is about the narrator and the attitude they are putting down about the events.

Word choice is pretty self-explanatory. It’s the words that you the author put on the page. Short words can make things staccato. Long words can make things mellifluous. Swear words can make things tense, emphatic or even humorous.

Theme. That’s what the story is about and what it’s trying to convey. A story that true love exists and that it will save the world and all the cavorting hamsters within it? That’s going to be part of the mood and atmosphere of the story.

So, when MasterClass is talking about how these elements work (in tip #1), the MasterClass staff authors of that blog post is just saying to weave it all together and make it create that atmosphere.

LINK TO LEARN MORE:https://www.masterclass.com/articles/how-to-create-atmosphere-and-mood-in-writing#4-ways-to-create-a-believable-mood-in-a-story

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Let’s kick some butt (in a chill, non aggressive way)Photo by Johnny Briggs on UnsplashHey! Thanks so much for being kind about me not posting during the holidays. It really helped be think about what and how to be helpful. I appreciate it a lot and you can expect some new things this year from me. Fingers crossed. I’m going to try to be braver about sharing advice and information and thoughts.

So . . .

Recently, a really popular YouTube author gave out some editing advice. She’s cool. She’s pretty. She’s sarcastic and fun. She’s promoting her own book.

But she also is a little bit wrong this go around because she says the first step in a professional edit is the developmental edit.

It isn’t. Not always.

The first step is often an editorial assessment. Then you revise. Then if you have a butt-ton of money because your daddy is rich and your mother’s good looking, you can hush like a little baby, don’t cry, and get a developmental edit.

Or . . .

You can realize that the first step in a developmental edit is an editorial assessment.

What are these two shiny bits of editing bling?What is this developmental edit? An editorial assessment?Let’s use Reedsy’s definitions, okay? Reedsy is a massive platform that connects authors to editors and other freelance professionals and makes sure that those freelancing professionals don’t suck. Full disclosure: I was recruited for Reedsy a couple of years ago and I make money there.

Here’s what that platform (that includes 1 million authors and 2,500 freelancers like me) says about those two styles:

“Editorial Assessment. This is a popular and cost-effective first step for authors, ideal for those at an early stage of their rewrites. Editors offering an editorial assessment will usually:

Read and analyze your manuscript;
Provide an evaluation in the format of a report, covering all aspects of the story, structure, and commercial viability;
Offer suggestions to guide your rewrites.”

And then . . .

“Developmental Editing. A nose-to-tail structural edit of your manuscript for authors who have taken their book as far as they can by themselves. A developmental edit often includes everything in an editorial assessment, plus:

Detailed recommendations to improve “big picture” concerns like characterization, plot, pacing, setting, etc.;
Specific guidance on elements of writing craft;
In-line suggestions and edits in the manuscript.”

So, you could go with a YouTuber’s definition or a platform’s. Totally up to you. But that’s the thing: a lot of people get a lot of money creating edicts for those of us who don’t know better.

They say:* These are the best ways to write. * These are the worst ways to write. * These are the best ways to start your story. * These are the worst ways to start your story.

And it’s all absolutes.

Here’s the thing (and I’m going to sound absolute here):Art and writing aren’t about absolutes. There is diversity of thought and culture and literature and perception. It shouldn’t all be ‘my way or the highway.’ Your psychographics, your family, your culture, your education, your location, your gender identity, race, religion, all create who you are and your story.

Don’t Lose YourselfWhen you’re trying to get published or trying to get a ton of readers, you can sometimes lose yourself and your story in the process of listening to those edicts. Stay true, okay? Learn and grow, but don’t accept absolutely everything that an influencer says as gospel. The world and you and your story is bigger than that.

Here is a photo of my cat, Koko,judging me for losing myself in the past.WRITING PROMPTSBecause I was just talking about Reedsy, I’m going to take one from there. Thanks, Reedsy!

“Your character always makes the same promise; to change. Will they finally make it happen this time?

“Write a story about someone scrambling on New Year’s Eve to fulfil their resolutions for the entire year before the clock strikes twelve.”

You can submit your stories at those links as well. And enter a weekly contest.

SUBMISSION POSSIBILITY FOR THIS WEEKSALT HILL PUBLISHES POETRY, FICTION, TRANSLATIONS, ESSAYS, INTERVIEWS, AND VISUAL ART. Oh my.

“We have two submission periods for fiction and poetry:

December through January

August through September

“We accept nonfiction and art submissions year-round.

“Salt Hill accepts only online submissions via Submittable for poetry, fiction, nonfiction and reviews. For visual art submissions, see below. Most, if not all, of our published work is selected from unsolicited submissions.

“We accept simultaneous submissions, but ask that you alert us as soon as possible if your work is placed elsewhere by either adding a note to your submission through Submittable or withdrawing the full submission.

“We ask that you submit only once per genre per reading period.

“Due to the volume of submissions, we can’t respond individually to submission status queries. We aim to respond to submissions within three to six months.

“Unfortunately, we are not in the position to offer payment to our writers.

“Curious about what we like? Grab one of our issues, or take a dip through our online archive.

POETRY:

“Please submit no more than five poems at a time, in one document.”

FICTION:

“Please do not submit works of more than 30 pages. We accept multiple flash pieces, so long as their combined length does not exceed 30 pages. Please double space, unless the nature of your work requires special formatting.”

NONFICTION:

“The nonfiction we are interested in pushes the boundaries of the genre, making use of the techniques of fiction and poetry to tell a true story. We want memories, arguments, meditations, revelations, philosophical rants. Salt Hillis a literary journal, so please don’t send us articles or reports. We will consider nonfiction for both our print journal and our website.”

There you go! Let’s go kick some butt in 2023 or make some beautiful music or just really craft our stories the best way we can: piece by piece, word by word, hope by hope.

We’ve got this.

This content and other writing tips, etc. is over here, too.

Writing

Writing Life

Writing Tips

Fiction Writing

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This week we talk about the take-aways from spending time with the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, plus weird junk finds. Because why not?

Filmmaker Peggy Callahan spent a lot of time listening to spiritual leaders while working with author Doug Abrams who co-authored The Book of Joy.

She wrote for the Today Show, “Their message is needed now more than ever. We’re heading into the “most wonderful time of the year” and yet so many people are struggling. We’re wrestling with how to bring “joy to the world” when life is wrought with stress and challenges.”

They also created “Mission: JOY — Finding Happiness in Troubled Times,”a documentary.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE! There’s nothing wrong with loving your stuff. – Pogie the puppy.

SHOUT OUT!The music we’ve clipped and shortened in this podcast is awesome and is made available through the Creative Commons License.

Here’s a link to that and the artist’s website. Who is this artist and what is this song? It’s “Summer Spliff” by Broke For Free.

WE HAVE EXTRA CONTENT ALL ABOUT LIVING HAPPY OVER HERE! It’s pretty awesome.

AND we have a writing tips podcast called WRITE BETTER NOW!

We have a podcast, LOVING THE STRANGE, which we stream live on Carrie’s Facebook and Twitter and YouTube on Fridays. Her Facebook and Twitter handles are all carriejonesbooks or carriejonesbook. But she also has extra cool content focused on writing tips here.

Carrie is reading one of her poems every week on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That’s a lot!

LINKS WE REFERENCEhttps://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/it-s-back-1-800-got-junk-s-list-of-weird-junk-finds-in-2022-1031969251

https://www.today.com/life/essay-life/dalai-lama-archbishop-tutu-joy-rcna60757

https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/washington-company-discovers-famous-shipwreck-150-years-later/281-cc813e7f-2fa1-487e-a721-55f81296a3c7

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I took the first part of a painting class and as everyone was putting up their paintings, I ghosted out. Seriously, I snatched my painting off the easel and ran out, while these other people who had time and talent to take two hours out of their afternoon made friends and connections as they looked at each other’s works in progress.

Brave?

Not one bit.

Apparently, I have a lot of work left to do.

At first I pretended to myself that the reason I rushed off was because the painting was such a mess—chaotic colors—dry brushes—clashes and strokes that made no sense—and then I admitted about one mile onto the Crooked Road that it was because I was such a clashing, chaotic mess. Not the painting. Me.

I was such a mess that I called Shaun and told him what I’d done.

“Are you going to go back next Tuesday?” he asked.

“Of course not. I ghosted out.” My hands tightened around the steering wheel. “I told them how my sweet mom said I didn’t have an artistic bone in my body and I wanted to prove her wrong. I was so vulnerable. Nobody else was so vulnerable. They were real artists. Rocky Mann was there!”

“He’s a potter.”

“He’s real.”

“You’re also real.”

“An art teacher was there! And another potter and—”

And then because the wireless coverage on our island sucks, I lost the connection.

When I got home and dealt with all my own editing and writing deadlines and family (dogs and cats and human) needs, and wrote stories for my local news blog, and went to a meeting, I let myself look at the painting again.

It was still an unholy mess. And I broke all the rules. It was supposed to be about color and light and looking at plants through that. My plant became some sort of geyser. A bird head in rough form snuck in. A woman, small with hands lifted to the sky stood at the bottom center.

I don’t know how she got there.

And I don’t know how I got here either. But I’m going to try to channel a little more fierce next week. Maybe go back. Maybe not turn myself into a ghost or other transparent things.

Anyway, I hope that you get where you want to be this week or next. I hope you turn yourself solid. No more ghosts.

Here is that work in progress. Or possibly “work that’s about to be painted over.”

Agh.

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BE BRAVE FRIDAY

I was going to write about so many people being brave in our high school’s lockdown this week, but I’m not ready for that yet, and this came out instead.

It’s long (I write novels), but I hope you’ll give it a look anyway.

I was talking to a man at the Chamber of Commerce dinner this week and I hadn’t seen him in a while.

Okay, let’s face it. I haven’t seen anyone in a while unless you count Halloween and picking up the farm share and going to the farmer’s market.

And I told him how terrified I was about going up to get an award for being someone that the Chamber president thought did good things for the community or that they admired or something like that.

“We’ll be rooting for you, Carrie,” he said. “You’ll be great.”

“God love you for a liar,” I said.

“No! No, you will.”

Two minutes before I got the award, I went to the bathroom and realized that I put the Spanx underwear I’d bought on backward and the lacy parts were not on my front, but on my butt, making my already non-existent butt even less existent.

“No,” I half yelled.

A woman in the next stall made a shocked noise.

I was not alone. I was with someone who made shocked noises.

Here’s the thing: I could have done one of two things. I could have taken my underwear off, turned it around, and have her see in that space below the stall me trying to yank up my underwear over my big, knee-high boots that are supposed to make me feel like Wonder Woman.

There in the bathroom stall of the Atlantic Oceanside, I did not feel like Wonder Woman. My boots were highly recognizable. She’d totally figure out that it was me who yanked her underwear off and did a switch-around in the stall.

I imagined going up on the little stage and having her stand up and shout, “THIS WOMAN JUST TOOK OFF HER UNDERWEAR AND SWITCHED IT AROUND! SHE CANNOT EVEN PUT HER UNDERWEAR ON CORRECTLY! DO NOT GIVE HER AN AWARD!”

I did not have that kind of courage right then, and I yanked those stupid underwear right back up backward and flushed the toilet and opened the stall. I washed my hands, but I couldn’t even look in the mirror.

“Coward,” I whispered. Not very self-love, I know.

A tiny bit later, Nina Barfuldi St. Germain said a bunch of super lovely things about me and my news blog and I heard none of it. She said my name. I stared. A million years passed. Well, they did in my head.

Alf Anderson, the director gave me a sympathetic look and for a second, I thought he knew about my Spanx, but no. He knew about my stage fright, which happens before I speak, but especially happens in front of people I know locally. The smaller the crowd, the worse I am. Shove me in a school, put me in another state? Put me in front of 1,000 strangers. I rock it. But my own community? With backward Spanx?

I stood up. I walked over. I got on stage somehow, hugged Nina and thought, “Her shoulders are so tiny, how does she do so much, how does she hold so many things together?” And then I thought, “I bet she isn’t wearing her Spanx backward.”
But I looked at Alf and Nina and the lovely man from the beginning of the meeting and Shaun, and they gave me safety.

The award was supposed to be about me, but I knew it wasn’t. The award was about community and people loving you and you loving them even when your Spanx are on wrong and everything might seem backward.

While up there, I told this story about how my daughter and I were once stuck in a flash flood in Charleston and how we hunkered under an awning, watching water spew, filling up the road, thundering down around us, and a kid looked at me and said, “ ‘Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced,’ Soren Kierkegaard.”

And I was sort of flabbergasted because here I was in a flash flood in Charleston and a pre-teen, barely teen, guy was quoting Kierkegaard at me. I wasn’t flabbergasted that he knew the old philosopher because I know teens are smart and amazing. I was flabbergasted that he gave me that quote like an offering. It was a special offering because in one of the book that I had coming out, the teen protagonist is a big Kierkegaard fan.

And my own little quote came to me, “Life has its own hidden forces which you can only discover by living.”

I gave that to him and he smiled. He said, “You either brave it or you don’t. But I will root for you.”

And that’s what it’s all about. It’s about rooting for each other and sometimes our own selves. It’s about giving offerings like Nina of the strong but tiny shoulders did. It was about all those people in that room, working hard, being brave, supporting each other and the kids and the employees, and places like the library, and making community.

Helping others is an act of bravery because it’s an act of hope.

Caring about others is an act of bravery because it’s an act of empathy.

Rooting for others is too because sometimes they might not be wearing their underwear correctly.

I promise that I will root for you through all the forces, hidden and unhidden, and I truly hope that we can all root for each other—in good times and bad—and maybe especially bad. I will root for you. And sometimes that’s a little brave.

*These paintings are some of the first I did and they are on bookshelves because I thought only ‘real’ painters used canvas. And I’m sharing them here because for me they are about hope and becoming. And they remind me of all the people I’m rooting for.

My art shop is here. My news blog is here.

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I wrote a story for my online news blog, THE BAR HARBOR STORY, a couple of months ago, and in this story, I didn’t mention the name of the woman who had an appeal before the town regarding the use of her home. She made it incredibly apparent during that public meeting that she didn’t want her name mentioned because she was afraid of stigma.

After I ran the story a couple of months ago, even without her name, she still contacted me, heart-worried that the story could potentially impact her. And I took that story down. Our local paper just ran the story this week and mentioned her name.

Was my choice a good choice? It was a good choice for my own ethics.

Is it a good choice for my wallet? Probably not. When you write or blog, you have to make a ton of choices all the time, and I’m positive that most of the time I make a choice that doesn’t benefit me financially.

Sometimes I fail to make the right choice, but it’s usually not because I don’t care.

Sometimes sensationalism wins in a lot of news reports (this wasn’t one of those reports), but when it’s local news, I think it’s really important to remember that most of the players aren’t Marvel villains or superheroes. They are people who will make mistakes just like I do. They are people who get worried and have anxiety and have lives beyond the page.

Sometimes people care more about strife than trying to make their own selves or their neighbors’ lives better, stronger, safer, less full of worry.

But as humans, we have to make that choice, not just in what we write, but in what we think.

We don’t have to always make the toxic choice. We don’t always have to think everything is a bipolarity, us and them, my way or the highway. We can remember to try to do the least harm and the most good.

I hope that we do make the better choices even if it doesn’t make us bank or get us likes or hits. I hope that institutions and individuals can continue to make a better world, starting in our own brains, our own houses, and our own communities.

Believe me, I’ve written stories that I regret now. And made choices that I think, “Doh! Carrie. Bad move.” We all do, but part of moving forward is moving forward together and trying to do better, right?

Why is this a BE BRAVE FRIDAY post? Well, because almost every time I right something like this I:

Lose a couple friends
Someone tells me I’m schmaltzy
And because I was pretty scared to make this news blog even though I’ve been an editor and reporter. News is so important and the potential to get things wrong is always so horrifying to me.

Here’s some unfinished art to make it super brave. Remember, I’m pretty sure it’s not done, so don’t judge too hard.

I hope you all have an amazing weekend and feel good about things and feel brave, too.

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Ah, as many of you know, I get super stressed and major imposter syndrome about sharing anything artistic or doing anything where people can hear my voice.

And because of that I have a super hard time actually doing things like buying paint or canvas because it means I’m using money to make art rather than pay bills or buy pellets for winter. That’s why this painting is actually mixed media. I ran out of a lot of paint this week.

That’s okay.

Running out of a lot of paint and only having pretty low quality paint brushes is cool in a way because it pushes me. I have to think in different ways.

Life, I guess, is kind of like that, too.

I talked to someone this week that used to really intimidate me. They are smart and no holds barred. Sometimes that’s a scary combination in a person. And I used to have so much anxiety about talking to this person. But I did it. I talked to them. And you know what? It was good. I made a connection, I think. I had fun.

Why? Because I remembered that they are a person too.

“You used to be so fearful,” they said, which is really similar to something a local bookseller said to me last year.

And I think part of it is that I know how flawed I am. I can’t even remember to shut the closet door, but it’s okay. We are all flawed and imperfect and if people want to judge me? That’s okay, but I’m going to do my damn best not to judge them.

There’s a sort of freedom that comes with that realization—a freedom that I’m hoping will extend to me being able to share paintings and art. Because all my fear about art is about being not talented enough and being judged for that. That’s not really what life is about, is it? It’s not what art is about either.

Brené Brown said,“I define connection as the energy that exists between people when they feel seen, heard, and valued; when they can give and receive without judgment; and when they derive sustenance and strength from the relationship.”

I have been super lucky lately because writing a local news blog has pushed me out of my hermit ways and I have a reason to find connection. I hope you find more and new ways to be brave, too.

My little art shop.

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Be Brave FridayEvery year my ancient nana would call me up to make sure that I’d voted.

“It’s the least you can do, Carrie. The least you can do,” she’d say. “It’s our civic duty to protect the enchanted.”

Who are the enchanted? According to my nana? Women. Children. The disenfranchised.

My nana, Rena Philbrick Morse, was not a least-you-can-do sort of person, but voting was her bar for the ‘least you can do.’

She had high expectations of her family and of women.

Voting was tremendously important to her because women’s right to vote happened on her tenth birthday. She always heard from men that she knew were less intelligent than her disparage women’s brains. A farm girl, she heard a lot of men say that women were too delicate to do physical labor. That farm girl lived to be 100 and spent 99 years of it working her garden.

When women were give the right to vote, she celebrated with her mom knowing that she would have a voice.

A voice.

The HorrorMy nana was a tall woman, rail-thin, brought up three kids of her own when her jazz drummer husband left her. She was involved in New Hampshire for an extremely long time. Her eldest son ended up desegregating the UNH fraternity system back in the 1950s. She was the valedictorian of her high school and her mind? Her mind was brilliant and so sharp. She was a woman who was stoic. She didn’t emote. She was a plank of barn board that refused to bend no matter what beat against her.

So when she called me crying one November, I couldn’t understand. I thought someone had died.

“No,” she gasped. “No.”

It was worse than that.

One of my older relatives didn’t vote. She had claimed she had ‘no head for politics.’ She’d been lying about voting for years.

I’m not sure how my nana survived that.

But she did. She survived because someone needed to drive that relative to the polls. She survived because she knew she had work to do. We all have work to do.

The PurposeThe purpose of motivation and engagement or protecting ourselves and others through words, through action, through voting? It’s your purpose. It’s our purpose.

In the local politics of our town, a lot of people don’t agree about things and they argue like their souls depend on it, like the world will collapse if their point of view doesn’t become policy, but they still manage to jump each other’s cars (mostly), make casseroles when someone is sick or dies, applaud each other’s kids when they score at a game. They mourn when someone suffers a devastating loss and celebrate when there is a win.

And hopefully they will vote in November.

I told someone about what my nana said and they responded, “The least you can do? It’s one of the most important things you can true.”

That’s how so much of this life works, isn’t it? Sometimes the things that are the least you can do are also some of the most important? That might be voting. That might be talking to a neighbor. That might be making connections and giving someone praise. But it’s something. We all can do something. And keep doing it. Until our world gets better.

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And try not to freak out about the good thingsBe Brave Friday – The Suck at Running EditionI’m going to get an award and it’s freaking me out.

No, writing world, it’s not a National Book Award, but an award in our local community, and it’s very lovely and also very strange because it’s a recognition of me trying. Trying to do good stuff. Trying to get facts out. Trying to make the community a better place. Trying to make sure people have a voice.

It feels weird to be recognized for that when I don’t ever feel like I’m doing a good enough job.

Eleven years ago today, I was doing press via national radio news things for the book, DEAR BULLY, which I co-edited. It was an anthology of true stories by writers about the impact of bullying on their childhoods.

These radio moments on places like NPR were totally outside my comfort zone because I have a Muppet voice and slosh my s’s, and radio is all about voice. Kind of like podcasts.

And it was sort of weird because my piece in DEAR BULLY was about getting mocked about my voice and being told I would never be successful because of my voice, that nobody would take me seriously.

Which is probably a big part of why I am a writer.

Nobody can interrupt you when you write.

Nobody can hear your sloshy s-sounds.

And nobody sees it when your skirt falls down.

But awards? Awards and radio interviews or even goofy podcasts like our one tonight mean that for a tiny brief moment people can see you.

And it’s cool. I’m super lucky that I get to be a writer and I wouldn’t change it for anything, but sometimes I wonder what I’d be if I didn’t have this voice. Would I be braver about things like awards? Would I be an actress or a singer instead of a writer? A public speaker? Something else entirely?

Or if I had this same voice, but we lived in a world where difference didn’t easily mean cruelty would my anxiety be a bit less about people noticing me.

You know?

Despite what it might seem like on social media or podcasts, I’m a person who actually prefers to sit on floors rather than stand behind podiums, to applaud others and celebrate their awesome. And every time something good happens where I get attention, I kind of look over my shoulder and wait for something bad: some criticism, some complaint, or — you know — just my skirt falling down.

I’m trying to stop that looking over my shoulder and it’s not always easy, but I’m trying. It’s all part of evolving, right? So, I’m really thankful for this chance to evolve.

Choosing to see light in other people can be hard sometimes when there is mockery and politics and trolls. Choosing to promote light can be hard, too, because then people call you schmaltzy or a Pollyanna or Captain Hallmark. But trying to make your choices be full of gratitude and light? That can sometimes be the hardest thing of all. So, I’m trying to push my anxiety down and be cool about this award from our local chamber of commerce.

One of my old writing teachers created a book for other teachers (before the era of self publishing) and in it, he talked about “breathtaking rough drafts.” His favorite rough draft was like the one created below by one of his students.

And I’ve got to tell you, I think I’m still in that rough draft stage, hoping to someday be a breathtaking final product but currently in the massive throes of revision with scratch-outs and additions everywhere.

Anyways, if you are being mocked for being different, I am SO sorry. I hope you find the strength to make it through. I hope those people who are mocking you realize how poopy they are being. I hope you can find a way to realize that difference is an awesome thing. I hope that we all can move into the world of breathtaking together.

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First we talk about this woman who saw Elvis in her McDonald’s ketchup and then

A little bit about a lady who lets her dog sit at the table and wipes his bum.

Steve Martin, author, comedian, musician, cool human, has this MasterClass where he talks about how when he started out in show business and had absolutely no talent at all. But he took a chance at a comedy writing job where they basically just needed young people to write jokes.

He has three big wisdom chunks we share with you before Shaunie derails completely into the Land of Naughty.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Be always in reaching distance of the person who has the food and demand a seat at the table.

LINKS!

https://positivepsychology.com/happiness-wellbeing-coaching-perma/

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/mum-double-take-after-spotting-28148114

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/i-wipe-dogs-bottom-eat-28141647

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This podcast is about a butt ton of Coors Light on a Florida highway and flow states.

A few years ago, we talked about FLOW on our podcast and then I just did again over on our LIVING HAPPY newsletter, but I thought it would be pretty cool to talk about it for another hot second because more people are talking about it now.

We’re trendsetters, baby.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE:

To get that flow state, stay focused, persistent, give yourself time, minimize distractions and make it a tiny bit hard. It’s like chasing a cat. You always think you might catch it, but it’s not easy.

RANDOM THOUGHT LINK

https://www.npr.org/2022/09/22/1124451096/florida-coors-light-beer-cans-highway-crash

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.645498/full

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5763465/

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/flow-state

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Join us as we talk about calling a new born baby an aunt and cognitive distortions.

Cognitive distortions are basically when you notice something that happens outside of yourself and you distort the hell out of it and create this super exaggerated, super negative view of yourself or another person.

There are at least six of these bastards.

The first is called Catastrophizing. I’m a master at this, but let’s go through all of them according to Esther Perel, a therapist and author.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Sparty Dog says to only worry about the now, baby. Eat your treats, scratch your fur, snore, and call it good.

LINKS

https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/how-to-recognize-and-tame-your-cognitive-distortions-202205042738

https://www.masterclass.com/classes/esther-perel-teaches-relational-intelligence/chapters/developing-self-awareness

https://www.msn.com/en-us/lifestyle/family/older-dads-weird-demand-to-family-over-babys-name-baffles-internet/ar-AA122iLR

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W. Edwards wrote “Drive out fear so that everyone may work effectively for the company.”

Paul Zak says, “When learners are psychologically safe, they acquire new information easily because they have the cognitive and emotional bandwidth to concentrate on course material. Anxiety takes significant metabolic energy and inhibits learning.”

Join us as we talk a little bit about coffee balls, how anxiety makes it hard to learn and dog tips for life.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE FROM SPARTACUS THE DOG

Don’t worry about anything. Just get your treats and snack and sleep whenever you can.

SOURCES

https://www.edutopia.org/blog/the-science-of-fear-ainissa-ramirez

Paul Zak, Immersion (releases today!)

https://apnews.com/article/switzerland-climate-and-environment-83cc3ee9959e48301b98d68d15693b64

Our brand-new-amazing-creepy podcast is DUDE NO! It’s true crime with an occasional foray into the paranormal and macabre and it’s awesome.

SHOUT OUT!

The music we’ve clipped and shortened in this podcast is awesome and is made available through the Creative Commons License.

Here’s a link to that and the artist’s website. Who is this artist and what is this song? It’s “Summer Spliff” by Broke For Free.

WE HAVE EXTRA CONTENT ALL ABOUT LIVING HAPPY OVER HERE! It's pretty awesome.

AND we have a writing tips podcast called WRITE BETTER NOW!

We have a podcast, LOVING THE STRANGE, which we stream live on Carrie’s Facebook and Twitter and YouTube on Fridays. Her Facebook and Twitter handles are all carriejonesbooks or carriejonesbook. But she also has extra cool content focused on writing tips here.

Carrie is reading one of her poems every week on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That's a lot!

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This week’s podcast is all about Belgian psychologist Ester Perel who has two great podcasts and talks all about relationships and sex and you know, the stuff that gets us an explicit rating.

Listen in! There’s some great stuff in there!

RESOURCES

https://www.ted.com/speakers/esther_perel

https://www.estherperel.com/about

IN OUR RANDOM THOUGHTS, WE MENTION THIS ARTICLE AND THE LINK IS HERE

https://www.npr.org/sections/strange-news/

SHOUT OUT!

The music we’ve clipped and shortened in this podcast is awesome and is made available through the Creative Commons License.

Here’s a link to that and the artist’s website. Who is this artist and what is this song? It’s “Summer Spliff” by Broke For Free.

WE HAVE EXTRA CONTENT ALL ABOUT LIVING HAPPY OVER HERE! It’s pretty awesome.

AND we have a writing tips podcast called WRITE BETTER NOW!

Our brand-new-amazing-creepy podcast is DUDE NO! It's true crime with an occasional foray into the paranormal and macabre and it's awesome.

We have a podcast, LOVING THE STRANGE, which we stream live on Carrie’s Facebook and Twitter and YouTube on Fridays. Her Facebook and Twitter handles are all carriejonesbooks or carriejonesbook. But she also has extra cool content focused on writing tips here.

Carrie is reading one of her poems every week on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That’s a lot!

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So, Shaun is off in Florida HUNTING ALLIGATORS (!) leaving me alone to podcast, which means that all the talent is gone! This is short and sweet. 🙂 Check out our upcoming true crime podcast for people who don’t like to sleep, DUDE, NO! The website is here. The site for private bonus stuff is … Continue reading "Alligator Hunting and Why Shaun Is Gone, Plus New DUDE NO Podcast Preview"

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Holes and Vettes Bar Harbor. Maine. 2022. A baseball field. Corvettes line up in rows, engines still For once and owners preening From their folding chairs, legs poking Into the same grass that supports Life Flight helicopters in emergencies And soccer cleats. This earth withstands so much. It’s a yearly gathering that’s paused two years … Continue reading "Holes and Vettes"

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This week’s LOVING THE STRANGE is all about . . . prom. LINKS WE MENTION https://www.seventeen.com/prom/a39446/weird-prom-traditions/ https://jezebel.com/the-ten-worst-prom-stories-weve-ever-heard-5809569 https://www.cosmopolitan.com/sex-love/a19876321/funniest-prom-hookup-stories/ https://cafemom.com/parenting/185283-11_prom_night_confessions_that https://mashable.com/article/prom-horror-stories https://www.buzzfeed.com/jamedjackson/prom-horror-stories-thatll-make-you-literally-cringe

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First, we should define point of view just in case you need a refresher. Truth is, we all often need a refresher even when we don’t want to admit it. Point of view is all about who is talking and/or telling the story. YOUR NEXT QUESTION IS: Is There One Narrator Or Many? And who … Continue reading "A Quick Overview About Point of View"

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So, sometimes we burnout. We work and work and strive and strive and juggle multiple obligations and opportunities and we just stop being fully there because we’re so tired. Before I go on, let’s define burnout. I’m going to go with this definition because it’s not a Medium or blogger guru, but from the National … Continue reading "Take a Nap Like Alexander the Great and Fight Burnout"

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King Kong Trolls The self-appointed writer-guru on Substack with four- thousand devotees to his biweekly missives has decided there are no more geniuses, really, not any more. Someone needs to tell him that he just doesn’t know where to look. The geniuses aren’t banging their chests, King-Kong like in their glory despite being ground dwellers, … Continue reading "King Kong Trolls"

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Sometimes us writers become a little stylistic. We get addictions. We might fall in love with the ellipses or certain words. Or, we might forget things like what a comma splice is or—gasp—what a sentence is. Yes, I said it. Sometimes writers forget what it is to make an awesome sentence. So we’re here to … Continue reading "Writers Get Addicted to Things Not Just Drugs and Booze and Coffee"

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Loneliness He is known as he enters the emergency room, jeans sagging off his waist as an orderly ambles To meet him. He is hunching at the precipice between lobby and hall, intake and bathroom, and Ready to be seen. It is hard to be seen these days in a little Maine town full of … Continue reading "Loneliness"

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Here are some fast and dirty writing tips today that’s going to make your writing more intense. Ready? Think about your tenses What’s that mean? It means don’t be writing like things are happening now and then shift over to writing like things were happening in the past. If you want the most immediate writing … Continue reading "A Couple Tips On How to Write More Engagingly"

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It’s BE BRAVE FRIDAY, and so many of you are being brave in really big ways every single day. Dealing with cancer. Dealing with kids. Dealing with justice issues and war or work things. Dealing and dealing and dealing. My offering today isn’t all that much. Not in the big scheme of people’s lives.I think … Continue reading "Be Brave Friday – Becoming"

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I am not feeling terribly brave today. I’m feeling pretty overwhelmed. My work load these past two weeks (and until Tuesday) has been huge. A lovely writer that I work with in Write Submit Support at the Writing Barn (and who only knows what I do there) said, “I don’t know how you get done … Continue reading "Be Brave Friday- The Overwhelm"

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On Thursdays, my co-podcaster, Shaun, and husband guy, takes over the blog. He’s adorable. I hope you’ll read what he says even if he does occasionally sound like a surfer dude from the 1990s or Captain Pontification. And no, we don’t always agree. 🙂 As many of you know, we have a new member of our family … Continue reading "Get in your crate, Shaun!"

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One of my favorite writing exercises is super simple. I take a bunch of novelists and ask them: What is your protagonists more afraid of happening than anything else in the whole freaking universe? We authors talk a lot about what our characters wants are, their yearnings, their goals, but we often forget about the … Continue reading "The Big Scary Fear Monster Is Really the Rock Star of Your Novel"

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It’s a super quick writing tip again today. Ready? When you’re writing dialogue, make every new speaker a new paragraph. If you’re writing kids books? You might as well just keep each dialogue a paragraph of their own? Why? Our brains are wired to read each paragraph as a new speaker. If we jumble a … Continue reading "Don’t Be Chunky – Put Your Dialogue in Paragraphs"

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On Thursdays, my co-podcaster, Shaun, and husband guy, takes over the blog. He’s adorable. I hope you’ll read what he says even if he does occasionally sound like a surfer dude from the 1990s or Captain Pontification. And no, we don’t always agree. 🙂 So, we have ourselves a new dog. A real new dog! In fact, … Continue reading "So, we got a puppy . . . . and I did not pee on the floor!"

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No lofty talk about exposition or your story’s theme this week. Instead, we’re going back to basics with an easy grammar tip. Some day (two words) vs. someday (one word). It’s a debate that happens on the page over and over. Here’s how it works. Someday (one word) is basically “at an indefinite time in … Continue reading "Grammar Break Some Day vs Someday"

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This week has been a bit exhausting for me thanks to: New puppy Board issues Editing and coaching I didn’t make enough money this week. Mostly it’s the new puppy. And it’s a good kind of exhausted, but gosh. I mean, I am tired. But it made me think of about how surviving isn’t the … Continue reading "Surviving Is Not Thriving: Be Brave Friday"

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Today, I made my first GOFUNDME that was for a person and not a nonprofit and that was a little scary. I don’t know how to express how important and lovely it is to help others, especially when there are people like my friend who spend so much time helping to create things like playgrounds … Continue reading "Allowing People To Be Kind Is Being Brave"

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On Thursdays, my co-podcaster, Shaun, and husband guy, takes over the blog. He’s adorable. I hope you’ll read what he says even if he does occasionally sound like a surfer dude from the 1990s or Captain Pontification. And no, we don’t always agree. 🙂 THIS IS ESPECIALLY TRUE TODAY!!!! HE IS SUCH A GOOBER! The video was … Continue reading "When your wife watches a video about how to flirt with women"

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There’s an Anne Lamott quote that says, “Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes—including you.” And that’s a lovely quote and quite true in so many instances, but also sometimes? Sometimes it can feel next to impossible to unplug. Sometimes that unplugging has to be a dramatic event where … Continue reading "Unplug Yourself and Bark Back and Find Your Agency"

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Having a kid who isn’t doing well This week the psychologist for the school system looked at my spouse (Shaun) and me across the island in our kitchen and said, “You two are really very grounded.” He is lovely and kind. But as we’ve dealt with crisis after crisis with our kiddo, I’ve … Continue reading "No More Hiding Who We Are"

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On Thursday, my co-podcaster, Shaun, and husband guy, takes over the blog. He’s adorable. I hope you’ll read what he says even if he does occasionally sound like a surfer dude from the 1990s or Captain Pontification. And no, we don’t always agree. 🙂 Hey all! I just read the Tortoise and the Hare by Æsop. You … Continue reading "Do you really want to be the tortoise?"

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This poem is (I think) part of me delving into a character of a young adult novel work in progress. Spring My nerves are jangled, frayed. Panic touches the under layers of all my skin, and I take off, breezing past Jackie and Joe in as fast a walk as I’m capable of without actually … Continue reading "Spring"

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Brené Brown writes a lot of books about being brave and also has blog posts where she focuses on that, too. And I have to confess, I haven’t read all of them. But in Rising Strong, she wrote about an epiphany she had while doing a project for her master’s program and talking to her … Continue reading "Navigating Mental Health and Pain –Be Brave Friday"

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These last couple weeks have been a bit hard. So, I went on a quote hunt and I found these bad boys. “Neuroeconomist Paul Zak has found that hearing a story—a narrative with a beginning, middle, and end—causes our brains to release cortisol and oxytocin. These chemicals trigger the uniquely human abilities to connect, empathize, … Continue reading "Be Brave Friday"

The Places We Hide (The Bar Harbor Rose Mystery Series)

The Things We Seek: Bar Harbor Rose Mysteries (The Bar Harbor Rose Mystery Series Book 3)

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On Thursday, my co-podcaster, Shaun, and husband guy, takes over the blog. He’s adorable. I hope you’ll read what he says even if he does occasionally sound like a surfer dude from the 1990s or Captain Pontification. And no, we don’t always agree. 🙂 Spring is almost here folks! Here in Maine, in Bar Harbor at least, … Continue reading "Take Time For Fun Before You Run Out of Moments"

The People Who Kill: Book 2 Bar Harbor Rose Mystery Series (The Bar Harbor Rose Mystery Series)

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Hey, everyone! We’re having a wee bit of drama in our lives, so we’re taking this week off in the podcasts. Gasp! I know! We never do that. But it means that we’re going to bring back one of our podcasts for a lovely redo. It’s great! Here you go! And we hope you’re all … Continue reading "Let’s Get Fighting BECAUSE Conflict in Stories Is Good"

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I posted this on social media and Medium last week. Shaun posted about it yesterday. And it still hurts to post it here, but here goes. . . Most people post about their dogs doing one of a few things: 1) Being sick. 2) Being stupid. 3) Persevering and/or needing love or giving love. Love, … Continue reading "Be Brave Friday: Losing Gabby Dog"

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On Thursday, my co-podcaster, Shaun, and husband guy, takes over the blog. He’s adorable. I hope you’ll read what he says even if he does occasionally sound like a surfer dude from the 1990s or Captain Pontification. And no, we don’t always agree. 🙂 Our beautiful, white, very fluffy and hairy dog, Gabby, passed away a week … Continue reading "It is never to let to be your true self"

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So, over here on WRITE BETTER NOW, we’ve had a three-post series about how to develop your theme and what the hell even in a theme and blah, blah, blah. This last post is really just focusing quickly on how to develop your theme. Step One: Think what the hell kind of insight you want … Continue reading "Other Quick Ways To Develop Your Theme in Your Novel"

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The apple fell to the ground joining the others; rotting had already begun the way it does. We all fall and crack. On the wire a squirrel ran to the right, green apple in her mouth, prized obviously, bigger than her head. Another fell before a second squirrel appeared, apple in mouth, bounding on the … Continue reading "The Apple"

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I’m on vacation, which means that I am supposed to be giving my brain a bit of a break from all things work, but that’s not happening because: I still have to work on clients’ stories The world is ridiculous I have a work ethic/neurosis that every month makes me constantly worried that I won’t … Continue reading "People are trying to ban my book"

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Parent Not Expected I know nothing about the weather I was born in or how the sky whispered or stormed. I know nothing about the man who helped make me, other than his name and he smoked cigarettes, constantly, until he got skin cancer. I know his mother had thick, dark hair, immigrated here, which … Continue reading "Parent Not Expected"

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Ashley Bryan died this week. He was 98 and a brilliant artist, writer, and human who lived on an island in Maine near us and was the keynote speaker at a book festival we had. In a 2017 Horn Book interview with Roger Sutton and Nikki Giovanni, he said, If someone says they are taking … Continue reading "It’s the Moments Not the Superlatives that Matter"

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The Lettuce Again this summer I’ve forgotten to harvest the lettuce that we planted when the ground was barely workable, warm enough to support the tenderness of seedlings, brown, pale, and white, barely opening to the world, the air, the sun. We are still human, he tells me, even though I think that we may … Continue reading "The Lettuce"

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This week on our live broadcast, it’s all about strange eating habits! Cheese Whiz with bacon and strawberry jam? Coke and milk? Peanut butter and bologna and mayo? Yum? LINKS WE REFER TO https://www.inc.com/marla-tabaka/really-strange-eating-habits-of-highly-successful-people.html https://www.boredpanda.com/weird-food-habits-tweets/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=organichttps://www.buzzfeed.com/hannahloewentheil/weirdest-food-habits https://www.columbiatribune.com/story/opinion/columns/2021/11/05/miller-foodamixaphobia-weird-eating-habits-we-keep-us/6280228001/

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Hey! It’s BE BRAVE FRIDAY and I’m trying to reach beyond my comfort zone a bit in writing by working on: A ROMANCE NOVEL FOR ADULTS! A revision of a novel of middle graders that I’ve decided isn’t good enough yet. It has a lady of the lake in it, only she’s the last one, … Continue reading "The Constant Fear of Being Broke"

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A long time ago we talked about backstory on our podcast, DOGS ARE SMARTER THAN PEOPLE, but we thought it would be pretty helpful to quickly talk about it here on WRITE BETTER NOW. Hey baby, what’s your backstory? It’s that I married you, honey. Hey baby, what’s your backstory? It should be a pick-up … Continue reading "Baby Got Backstory Using Backstory in Your Writing"

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Everything Makes Us Scared The professor and his wife argue about the party though they love each other. Chairs are meant to be where exactly on the porch? Burgers pre-made or created on site? He’s a hippie from the Marines. Everywhere is danger, possibilities of pain. He wasn’t in a lot of war, but it … Continue reading "Everything Makes Us Scared"

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What makes people competitive? Is it helpful? What are the weird things people compete about? What are some weird official competitions? That’s all on this week’s episode of LOVING THE STRANGE, recorded live, and believe me? You can tell. 🙂 LINKS https://www.inc.com/john-brandon/6-traits-of-people-who-are-unusually-competitive.html https://www.yelp.com/topic/chicago-weird-things-people-get-competitive-about https://www.mockquestions.com/interview/Personal/How+competitive+are+you%3F.html https://www.nationalbeardchampionships.com/ https://drafthouse.com/show/air-sex-competition https://ninjajournalist.com/entertainment/weird-competitions-world-fb/ https://drafthouse.com/show/air-sex-competition

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On Thursday, my co-podcaster, Shaun, and husband guy, takes over the blog. He’s adorable. I hope you’ll read what he says even if he does occasionally sound like a surfer dude from the 1990s or Captain Pontification. And no, we don’t always agree. 🙂 Last week I wrote about the four elements of long-lasting love. If you … Continue reading "Getting Ready for a Blizzard (in the bedroom and outside) Means Being Happy For What You Have"

The Greed That Kills (The Bar Harbor Rose Mystery Series Book 4)

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One of the big things that Carrie sees in stories a lot is nodding. Here’s what it looks like: Shaun nodded. “I agree that’s a lot nodding.” Carrie nodded in affirmation. “Yes. There really is.” For a moment they sat there and then Shaun smiled. “You want to get out of this excerpt and do … Continue reading "No More Nodding in Books"

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So, this week I’ve decided to read one of my grandmother’s poems instead. Full disclosure: I have a lot of grandmothers and they are all dead and this one was about 4’10 at maximum height and this grandmother was already 75 when I was born. Luckily, she lived a long time so I got to … Continue reading "A Wish, a Grammy Barnard Poem"

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What the what?

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Today is Be Brave Friday, and I don’t have a ton of insight. I know! I know! Way to sell a blog post, Carrie, right? So, I thought I should look to some wordsmiths instead. Courage is found in unlikely places. J.R.R. Tolkien There’s something that compels us to show our inner souls. The more … Continue reading "Courage in Unlikely Places – How Thinking of Others Helps You Be Courageous"

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On Thursday, my co-podcaster, Shaun, and husband guy, takes over the blog. He’s adorable. I hope you’ll read what he says even if he does occasionally sound like a surfer dude from the 1990s or Captain Pontification. And no, we don’t always agree. 🙂 Carrie and I just finished eating our dinner and I was wondering what … Continue reading "The Four Elements Of A Successful Relationship"

When You Bring Them Back : A Maine Island Paranormal Romance

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When the first giant tree from a neighbor’s yard fell into our fence and demolished a lot of it, I didn’t post about it. There had been a horrific tornado in another part of the U.S. that took so much property and killed so many. People were hurting and grieving and to post about our … Continue reading "You Don’t Need Good Fences to Make Good Neighbors"

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It’s Writing Tip Time and we’re going to give you three fast and dirty writing tips today that’s going to make your writing more intense. Ready? Think about your tense What’s that mean? It means don’t be writing like things are happening now and then shift over to writing like things were happening in the … Continue reading "How To Make Your Writing More Intense"

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“You Aren’t Allowed To Write About Me” If by aren’t allowed, you mean you forbid it, then who are you to forbid? If by write, you mean think, tell stories, try to understand, to recreate you in a way that isn’t such a jackass, I’m sorry, but you can only be improved, and you’re missing … Continue reading "“You Aren’t Allowed To Write About Me”"

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Sometimes you just need fruit and sugar. Okay. What am I saying? All the time you just need fruit and sugar.

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Hey! It’s BE BRAVE FRIDAY and um . . . I’m not sure what I’m being brave about right now. No. No, that’s a lie. I’m going to be brave by sharing a huge painting that I’m working on and I’m going to be brave by telling you that I have a book coming out … Continue reading "Be Brave Friday! It’s a New Book Baby, Art, and a Weekly Round-Up"

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I was lucky enough to interview the brilliant, young, amazing and talented Tony Quintana, writer of wonder. Tony talks about how he uses his perfectionism to motivate him, how his background in theater and art helped create Dashiel’s world, and how he began his debut novel in Spanish, only to decide to translate it all … Continue reading "Sublime Steampunk. Author Interview with Tony Quintana"

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Carrie got really confused this week because she went on YouTube and looked up “Writing Advice” and there was a really popular vlogger who gives a ton of writing advice, but she’s not published things. She is, however, really definite on her views on how to be a good writer, which is lovely. It’s lovely … Continue reading "The Biggest Thing Holding Back Your Writing"

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Mean People Suck She is driving, in her car, with the sticker MEAN PEOPLE SUCK Stuck on the bumper. She hasn’t yet peeled The sticker off, though she promised herself When her dad bought her the car, she would before the week was through. Mean people suck. But as she drives the car, at night, … Continue reading "Mean People Suck"

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Tomorrow there’s a big storm coming to the coast of Maine (allegedly), but if we have power and internet, we’ll be here talking about the random, strange, stupid things people call emergency services about. Have you done this? Dispatcher friends, if you want to share anonymous stories, feel free to message. We know you have … Continue reading "Strange and Stupid Reasons People Call 911"

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Hi! It’s BE BRAVE FRIDAY! And it’s been a week in our family full of kid drama (they are totally okay; they just had a hard week at school) and me doing my annual stress out of: WHY DO I WORK FOR MYSELF? WHAT IF I MAKE NO MONEY. I do this every single year. … Continue reading "Be Brave Friday, Money Worries, Trying New Things"

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On Thursday, my co-podcaster, Shaun, and husband guy, takes over the blog. He’s adorable. I hope you’ll read what he says even if he does occasionally sound like a surfer dude from the 1990s or Captain Pontification. And no, we don’t always agree. 🙂 So, Carrie has been bugging me all day to get this blogpost done. … Continue reading "Let’s Go Live on a Sailboat!"

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So, this Be Brave Friday is on the last Friday of 2021 and I’m starting a whole lot of scary stuff this year. Scary Stuff I’m Starting I’m starting my own classes to teach people online about writing and they are super cheap because I want people to be able to learn even when they … Continue reading "Be Brave Friday – The Year I Wrote Too Much"

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On Thursday, my co-podcaster, Shaun, and husband guy, takes over the blog. He’s adorable. I hope you’ll read what he says even if he does occasionally sound like a surfer dude from the 1990s or Captain Pontification. And no, we don’t always agree. 🙂 Happy New Year Can you believe that another year has passed us by? … Continue reading "Shaun’s New Year Message"

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I have a grocery list that is miles long because of the holidays. Seriously, it’s so long. And I go to the grocery store. Then I realize it. I have to get a grocery cart. I HATE grocery carts. No offense to you if you are reading this and you are, in fact, a grocery cart. … Continue reading "Death By Grocery Store Cart"

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So, I have survived Christmas 1 and 2 in the house, and it was basically super cool amazing and I should really post about it, but instead I am going to post about holiday traditions. So here it goes… TRADITION NUMBER ONE: First we get a tree. See earlier post by my dog, Tala, to understand … Continue reading "I Survived Christmas and All the Naughty Traditions"

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One week in grade school, Em scored victories for short girls everywhere. First, her grade had been preparing for around two months for the Greek and Roman festival. They learned history stuff, made Greek gods trading cards, had an Olympics and finally a festival where they made costumes and everything. So, Em had been stressed … Continue reading "When my daughter scored a victory for short girls with curves"

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Because I’m a little stressed out because of the holidays and the state of the world, I’m recycling this blog from 2007. HELLO! Ancient times. Back then, we had an awesome dog named Tala (a Great Pyr), who wrote the whole blog because my dogs are like that. So helpful. Here you go. Hello. I … Continue reading "The Time Our Dog Peed On the Christmas Tree"

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From old settlements to hikers, conspiracy theories abound about the who/when/when/where and why of people going missing. We’ll delve into this world a tiny bit in our LIVE podcast on Friday at 7 p.m. EST. RESOURCES WE USED https://www.thetalko.com/15-chilling-missing-persons-stories-that-are-still-unsolved/ https://www.grunge.com/103829/unsolved-disappearances-will-haunt/ https://www.thefocus.news/travel/feral-people-national-parks/ https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/missing-persons-by-state https://www.nps.gov/orgs/1563/cold-cases.htm https://www.pathloom.com/post/national-park-oddities-cannibal-people-conspiracy-or-wildlifehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donn_Fendler

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On Thursday, my co-podcaster, Shaun, and husband guy, takes over the blog. He’s adorable. I hope you’ll read what he says even if he does occasionally sound like a surfer dude from the 1990s or Captain Pontification. And no, we don’t always agree. 🙂 The neighbor in the back of us has this giant Maple tree that … Continue reading "Tree Falls Down, Goodness Goes Up"

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Sometimes an author will get super in love with a character that isn’t their protagonist or main point-of-view character and they’ll think, “Maybe this sexy beast deserves their own point of view.” Then they will second guess themselves. Then they will go back to thinking yes. Being an author is confusing sometimes. When you have … Continue reading "When Should You Add A POV Character to Your Novel?"

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Sometimes even though you love them with all your heart, you might have to get rid of a character in your novel. Or even—gasp—a few. So how do you know when you have too many characters? Part of it is a bit subjective. It depends on your story. But a big clue is that if … Continue reading "When To Delete Your Characters in Your Novel"

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A lot of people ask me how I get so much done. And a lot of other people think that I don’t do anything during the day at all, which is pretty funny, honestly. Those people are mostly my surviving relatives. When I was in seventh grade, I didn’t want to shovel and one of … Continue reading "Getting Naked: How To Be Unstoppable: BE BRAVE FRIDAY"

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Ok. I was tagged on Facebook for this and I sooooooooo didn’t understand the rules, so I deleted my response. Here it is, better-i-fied. Consider yourself tagged if you want. 4 Random Facts 1) I have a Teddy bear with only two legs. I call him Teddy. My friends renamed him Peg Leg after a horrible slumber … Continue reading "16 Random Facts About Me For A Wednesday"

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DO NOT SIGN UP WITH A LOCAL INTERNET PROVIDER WHO WILL ALLEGEDLY EMBEZZLE FUNDS FROM HIS EMPLOYEES’ 401K ACCOUNTS AND THEN DISCONNECT THE SERVICE, THE SERVER AND THE PHONE LINES AND THEN EVERYONE INCLUDING YOUR EDITORS AND YOUR AGENT AND YOUR MOTHER WILL TRY TO SEND YOU AN EMAIL AND THEY WILL GET A MESSAGE THAT YOU DON’T EXIST. No. Sorry. That’s not it. Although that is good important advice I wish someone had told me before it happened to me. Below is my real advice and it’s not about computer fraud or even strictly about the craft of writing. Instead it’s about the mind state of being … Continue reading "Secret Writing Advice"

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Hey! It’s Cooking With a Writer, real recipes, but um . . . a weird writer take on them. I always source my recipes, but I can’t verify if they are the originals.

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On Thursday, my co-podcaster, Shaun, and husband guy, takes over the blog. He’s adorable. I hope you’ll read what he says even if he does occasionally sound like a surfer dude from the 1990s or Captain Pontification. And no, we don’t always agree. 🙂 Every morning, with very few exceptions, for the last month or so, I … Continue reading "Don’t Be Too Busy To Help"

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My little, creepy book baby is out in the world today! Because who doesn’t want sad, quirky, horror with some romantic bits for the holiday season? IT IS OUT TODAY! December 1 and it’s a young adult novel (upper) called WHEN YOU BRING THEM BACK! Some secrets should stay buried. Self-trained necromancer Snow secretly sells … Continue reading "NEW BOOK ALERT! WHEN YOU BRING THEM BACK IS OUT!"

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One of my blogging friends was feeling sad even though he is published because, basically, he’s worried about being a mediocre writer.
It is easy to worry about this.
There’s that essential sense of horror about never being good enough, never making a difference, never being on a NYT bestseller list or being nominated for a National Book Award.
That’s not what writing is all about. (Note: I forget this a lot.)
One of my friends who became my husband wrote me this in an email back when he was just my friend when I was worrying about not doing enough good in the world because I am just a writer:

“You never know what kind of positive effect you are having in someone’s life as an author. Even if it is just that someone can escape for an hour from their life, that may be the best part of their day. Think of the kid who doesn’t like their home life or maybe their school life or maybe both. When they pick up a book by Carrie E. Jones, they get to escape the realities of their life and lose themselves in somebody else’s for a while. How cool is that?”

If you are a published writer and having a bad day you can just substitute your name in there because it’s true for everyone.

If you are unpublished writer and having a bad day you can do the same thing because you are writing, you are creating, you are escaping and thinking and plotting and feeling and that is a positive for you FOR YOU and hopefully for other people too some day.

Being a writer can be hard. People write stuff in reviews that can be cruel rather than constructive. You’ve got to ovary up to deal with that stuff when you’ve poured your heart and soul into a story.

So, be kind to authors when you review them. And musicians. And businesses. Don’t get off on being clever and cruel. Get off on being kind, okay?

Spreading kindness is so much lovelier than spreading cruelty.

NEW BOOK OUT! It’s super fun. An adult paranormal/mystery/romance/horror blend. Think Charlaine Harris but without all the vampires. Instead there are shifters and dragon grandmothers and evil police chiefs and potential necromancers and the occasional zombie and a sexy skunk.

It’s out November 1, which means you can buy it now, and I seriously love it. So, it would be cool if you bought it so I can be all motivated to write the next book.

Oh, and it’s quirky.

This is because most of my books are quirky.

Be ready to resurrect your love of the paranormal in the first novel in the Alisa Thea series—the books that give new meaning to quirky paranormal.

Alisa Thea is barely scraping by as a landscaper in small-town Bar Harbor. She can’t touch people with her bare skin without seeing their deaths and passing out, which limits her job and friendship opportunities. It also doesn’t give much of a possibility for a love life, nor does her overbearing stepfather, the town’s sheriff. Then along comes an opportunity at a local campground where she thinks her need for a home and job are finally solved . . .

But the campground and its quirky residents have secrets of their own: the upper level is full of paranormals. And when some horrifying murders hit the campground—along with a potential boyfriend from her past who may be involved—Alisa starts to wonder if living in a campground of paranormals will end up in her own death.

Join New York Times and internationally best[selling author Carrie Jones in the first book of the Alisa Thea Series as it combines the excitement of a thriller with the first-hand immediacy and quirky heroines that Jones is known for.

It’s fun. It’s weird. It’s kind of like Charlaine Harris, but a little bit more achy and weird.

Almost Dead Series – Meet Alissa Thea, a sexy skunk, a haunted campground and a lot of quirky

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In last week’s podcast we started to talk about how to punctuate dialogue because we’re sexy like that. And we’re continuing that discussion this week.

A great source of how to to punctuate dialogue is from theeditorsblog.net

They are calm and lovely and explain things really well.

And for a reminder: A dialogue tag is just the bits like “they said,” “she whispered,” “he yelled.”

Single line of dialogue with dialogue tag and action So, for this, you’ve got quotation marks around your dialogue with the dialogue tag following what was said. But before that, right before the end quotation mark, you have a comma. There’s no capital letter for that dialogue tag. Why? Because it’s the same damn sentence, that’s why, and you can’t just randomly capitalize things in there. A period goes at the very end of the action or beat.

“Shaunie is a cutie face,” she said, hoping Shaunie would look her way and smile.

Quotation Marks + Capitalized First Word + Comma + End Quotation Marks + Lowercase First Word in the Dialogue Tag + Comma (usually) + Action/Beat + Period.

You can switch that around and start off with the action/beat and the dialogue tag.

Hoping Shaunie would look her way and smile, she said, “Shaunie is a cutie face.”

Action/Beat + Comma + Dialogue Tag + Quotation Marks + Capitalized First Word + Period + End Quote

So, then you have the interrupting dialogue stuff that writers love. This is when the dialogue is all the same sentence, but it’s interrupted by the dialogue tag. When that happens, you want a comma before the last quotation marks in the first part of the sentence and then again after the dialogue tag.

“Shaunie is a cutie face,” she said, hoping Shaunie would look her way and smile, “but he doesn’t ever notice me.”

Or

“Shaunie is a cutie face,” she said, “but he doesn’t ever notice me.”

Quotation Marks + Capitalized First Word + Comma + End Quotation Marks + Lowercase First Word in the Dialogue Tag + Comma + Action/Beat + Comma + Quotation Marks + Lowercased first word + End Punctuation (not a comma) + End Quotation Marks.

Two sentences interrupted Or you can get all emphatic and make it two sentences because it’s dialogue. Then the first sentence has a period before the end quotes and dialogue tag. The dialogue tag ends with a period. The second quote section starts with a capital letter. Whew. That’s a lot. Ready?

“Shaunie is a cutie face,” she said, hoping Shaunie would look her way and smile. “But he doesn’t ever notice me.”

Quotation Marks + Capitalized First Word + Comma + End Quote Marks + Lowercase First Word in the Dialogue Tag + Comma + Action/Beat + Period + Quotation Marks + Capitalized First Word + End Punctuation (not a comma) + End Quotation Marks.

Whew, that was a lot. Our brains are fried? Your brains okay?

Writing Tip of the Pod Be sexy. Know your punctuation.

Dog Tip for Life Don’t just bark at people. It’s easy, but it doesn’t get you what you want.

LINKS WE REFERENCE IN THE RANDOM THOUGHTS PART OF THE PODCAST https://omaha.com/news/national/roadrunner-going-faster-ends-up-in-maine-after-hitchhike/article_4ce788b0-ef17-50ea-b260-36325130663c.html

https://www.ranker.com/list/creepy-hitchhiker-stories/isadora-teich

SHOUT OUT! The music we’ve clipped and shortened in this podcast is awesome and is made available through the Creative Commons License.

Here’s a link to that and the artist’s website. Who is this artist and what is this song? It’s “Summer Spliff” by Broke For Free.

AND we are transitioning to a new writer podcast called WRITE BETTER NOW! You’ll be able to check it out here starting in 2022!

We have a podcast, LOVING THE STRANGE, which we stream live on Carrie’s Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn on Fridays. Her Facebook and Twitter handles are all carriejonesbooks or carriejonesbook.

Carrie is reading one of her poems every week on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That’s a lot!

Here’s the link.

Write Better Now – Writing Tips podcast for authors and writers loving the strange the podcast about embracing the weird Carrie Does Poems

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Okay. Let me just say that I am super glad that I am not famous.

Here is why: There are no paparazzi following me around.

If there were I would ALWAYS be on sites like THE SUPERFICIAL and GOODCELEBSDOAWKWARDTHINGS.COM (I made that one up) because I am SUCH a klutz.

Bella in Twilight and half the women in rom-coms have nothing on me. NOTHING!

Why?

Well, all in one day I:
1. Drove my car over a curb.

This is not my car unfortunately. I used to have a MINI Cooper, but I basically made it explode on the turnpike. It was a spectacular death, but that’s a story for another day.

Twisted my ankle and did that half fall-down thing when going into a gas station.
Drove the car over the curb AGAIN!

Also not me or my MINI. My MINI was red.

Set the microwave on fire.

There were blue flames and fire and now there is a GINORMOUS scorch mark in the microwave.
5. Wore two different shoes out in public.

Can you imagine if people were filming my life? They would totally think that I was:

Drunk
Taking bath salts.
Possessing a human body for the first time.

Sigh. I feel so badly for famous people. It’s not just all those horrifying up-skirt shots, it’s also just all the goofy faces and awkward moments and wardrobe malfunctions. I know some famous people don’t mind and actually get off on that stuff, but I bet a lot more don’t.

GOOD LUCK FAMOUS PEOPLE! I AM ROOTING FOR YOU!

NEW BOOK OUT! It’s super fun. An adult paranormal/mystery/romance/horror blend. Think Charlaine Harris but without all the vampires. Instead there are shifters and dragon grandmothers and evil police chiefs and potential necromancers and the occasional zombie and a sexy skunk.

It’s out November 1, which means you can buy it now, and I seriously love it. So, it would be cool if you bought it so I can be all motivated to write the next book.

Oh, and it’s quirky.

This is because most of my books are quirky.

Be ready to resurrect your love of the paranormal in the first novel in the Alisa Thea series—the books that give new meaning to quirky paranormal.

Alisa Thea is barely scraping by as a landscaper in small-town Bar Harbor. She can’t touch people with her bare skin without seeing their deaths and passing out, which limits her job and friendship opportunities. It also doesn’t give much of a possibility for a love life, nor does her overbearing stepfather, the town’s sheriff. Then along comes an opportunity at a local campground where she thinks her need for a home and job are finally solved . . .

But the campground and its quirky residents have secrets of their own: the upper level is full of paranormals. And when some horrifying murders hit the campground—along with a potential boyfriend from her past who may be involved—Alisa starts to wonder if living in a campground of paranormals will end up in her own death.

Join New York Times and internationally best[selling author Carrie Jones in the first book of the Alisa Thea Series as it combines the excitement of a thriller with the first-hand immediacy and quirky heroines that Jones is known for.

It’s fun. It’s weird. It’s kind of like Charlaine Harris, but a little bit more achy and weird.

Almost Dead Series – Meet Alissa Thea, a sexy skunk, a haunted campground and a lot of quirky

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So, usually one of the first things an instructor will present in a character development class is the character profile sheet, but I tend to delay this because of my own belief system, which is probably something I shouldn’t admit, but it basically comes down to this:

I care more about my characters’ insides than their outsides. Yes, the demographics of who they are and how they grew up and their physicality absolutely impacts who they are, but I want their yearnings, wants, big lie, human worth and flaw to be the things that matter the most to me as the writer and the reader.

But character profiles are beautifully concrete tools and approaches that can truly help you nail down your character (not literally, no hammers involved).

A character profile is basically a tool that: 1. Helps you not get confused with the details as you write. 2. Helps you round out your character’s psychographics and demographics. 3. Organizes your thoughts.

Writerswrite.com says,

“A Character Profile is just meant to be a guide where you can list facts and details to help you get to know your characters, especially if you get stuck on one character who doesn’t quite seem real. You also want to be sure you don’t create a Mary Sue character. Maybe he needs a new characteristic — a hidden trauma, a fabulous skill or a deadly secret — something that will make the character come alive for you. If you are having trouble coming up with character details try to see how your character performs using a writing prompt or walk them through a situation known well to you.”

When I was in fourth or fifth grade, I loved character profiles, filling in all the blanks on the sheet, but what I didn’t know then is that while the profile is a fantastic organizational tool that helps you think about your character, it isn’t what makes your characters believable or lovable or be the kind of characters that readers want to invest time in.

Bringing life to the character doesn’t happen in the outline or the profile, it happens on the page as that character deals with conflict, goes after their yearnings, takes action, interacts and moves across the story, guided by their own yearnings that we readers can relate to.

Those yearnings are a much bigger deal than demographics because it’s those yearnings that make us (and our characters) human.

Resources/Links https://www.writerswrite.com/characters/character-profile/

Click to access Character%20Profile.pdf

Click to access Character-Profile-Sheet.pdf

https://blog.reedsy.com/character-profile/

NEW BOOK OUT! It’s super fun. An adult paranormal/mystery/romance/horror blend. Think Charlaine Harris but without all the vampires. Instead there are shifters and dragon grandmothers and evil police chiefs and potential necromancers and the occasional zombie and a sexy skunk.

It’s out November 1, which means you can buy it now, and I seriously love it. So, it would be cool if you bought it so I can be all motivated to write the next book.

Oh, and it’s quirky.

This is because most of my books are quirky.

Be ready to resurrect your love of the paranormal in the first novel in the Alisa Thea series—the books that give new meaning to quirky paranormal.

Alisa Thea is barely scraping by as a landscaper in small-town Bar Harbor. She can’t touch people with her bare skin without seeing their deaths and passing out, which limits her job and friendship opportunities. It also doesn’t give much of a possibility for a love life, nor does her overbearing stepfather, the town’s sheriff. Then along comes an opportunity at a local campground where she thinks her need for a home and job are finally solved . . .

But the campground and its quirky residents have secrets of their own: the upper level is full of paranormals. And when some horrifying murders hit the campground—along with a potential boyfriend from her past who may be involved—Alisa starts to wonder if living in a campground of paranormals will end up in her own death.

Join New York Times and internationally best[selling author Carrie Jones in the first book of the Alisa Thea Series as it combines the excitement of a thriller with the first-hand immediacy and quirky heroines that Jones is known for.

It’s fun. It’s weird. It’s kind of like Charlaine Harris, but a little bit more achy and weird.

Almost Dead Series – Meet Alissa Thea, a sexy skunk, a haunted campground and a lot of quirky

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The character in your story is pretty much the key to make it all work, to inspire the readers to keep turning the page or scrolling down the screen.

Dwight Swain writes:

“A character is a person in a story.

“To create story people, you grab the first stick figures that come in handy; then you flesh them out until they spring to life.”

So, the question becomes how the heck do you flesh them out, right?

Matt Bird writes, “Character is the human element of your story, the aspect that the audience actually cares about.”

And that’s the big deal.

You can have the best plot in the world and most of the time, it won’t matter because people want characters that they can cheer for, commiserate with, worry about.

Bird believes that there are certain elements that need to be there for readers to care about your character: 1. They have to identify with them (the character). 2. The character needs to be resourceful. 3. The character needs to be active. 4. The character who is misunderstood is more lovable than the one who saves the cat. 5. The character doesn’t have to be likeable to be lovable. Go for lovable. 6. A character who is vulnerable is good and even a badass can be vulnerable.

In the Secrets of Story, Bird brilliantly splits three aspects of hero/protagonists into three needs: 1. Believe – They have to feel like the character is real. 2. Care – The reader has to be emotionally engaged with the character’s journey. 3. Invest – The reader has to be into the character. Bird says this comes from active characters who are resourceful and aren’t like the other characters in the book.

Bird further goes on to say:

Matt Bird from his blog (link here). http://www.secretsofstory.com/2017/07/how-to-create-compelling-character.html But it’s his first bit that interests me the most right now. Humans are stunningly complex. We contradict ourselves. We don’t always make sense and to encapsulate all of that in a novel is pretty impossible, so we have to pick and choose the contradictions and details to highlight. How do you deal with that?

Swain writes,

“A story is a record of how somebody deals with danger. One danger, for a simple story; a series of inter-related dangers, for one more complex.”

He advocates developing your character only so much as it is needed to deal with the story or to ‘fulfill his function in the story. You give an impression and approximation of life, rather than attempting to duplicate life itself.”

Swain believes that character begin with a fragment and then the author adds more and more on to that character, individualizing her until she becomes more real, more believable.

That individualization occurs through free association and layering in observations and details. What begins as a fragment of an idea (guinea pig hero) becomes a believable, lovable character as the author “supplements” that fragment with “Thought and insight.”

And that can be hard.

Swain thinks it’s hard because in real life, we tend not analyze people’s behavior and motivations. We take them and their actions for granted, he says.

“Consequently, when we try to build story people, we find that we lack a grasp of mental mechanisms: motivations.”

And motivations? They are a big deal. They are why characters go after goals. They are the yearnings that we readers connect to.

So, Swain says this is where the imagination steps in.

“To understand a man,” he writes,” you have to grasp the essence of that wholeness . . . its gestalt, the totality of its configuration.. . Each of us is an entity, a personal and private whole that transcends its components.”

I advocate taking a journal or diary when you’re really lost developing a character and go somewhere safe and observe people, think about why they might be acting the way they are. What is it that’s going on with them. Practice trying to understand people and you build those character development skills.

NEW BOOK OUT! It’s super fun. An adult paranormal/mystery/romance/horror blend. Think Charlaine Harris but without all the vampires. Instead there are shifters and dragon grandmothers and evil police chiefs and potential necromancers and the occasional zombie and a sexy skunk.

It’s out November 1, which means you can buy it now, and I seriously love it. So, it would be cool if you bought it so I can be all motivated to write the next book.

Oh, and it’s quirky.

This is because most of my books are quirky.

Be ready to resurrect your love of the paranormal in the first novel in the Alisa Thea series—the books that give new meaning to quirky paranormal.

Alisa Thea is barely scraping by as a landscaper in small-town Bar Harbor. She can’t touch people with her bare skin without seeing their deaths and passing out, which limits her job and friendship opportunities. It also doesn’t give much of a possibility for a love life, nor does her overbearing stepfather, the town’s sheriff. Then along comes an opportunity at a local campground where she thinks her need for a home and job are finally solved . . .

But the campground and its quirky residents have secrets of their own: the upper level is full of paranormals. And when some horrifying murders hit the campground—along with a potential boyfriend from her past who may be involved—Alisa starts to wonder if living in a campground of paranormals will end up in her own death.

Join New York Times and internationally best[selling author Carrie Jones in the first book of the Alisa Thea Series as it combines the excitement of a thriller with the first-hand immediacy and quirky heroines that Jones is known for.

It’s fun. It’s weird. It’s kind of like Charlaine Harris, but a little bit more achy and weird.

Almost Dead Series – Meet Alissa Thea, a sexy skunk, a haunted campground and a lot of quirky

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In the summer months, the Portuguese part of my family really loved their sangrias, which they usually made from Tempranillo from Rioja, but if things were desperate, they would use Bartles and James.

One of my aunts would shove all sorts of sliced fruit in there, something orange (sometimes booze, sometimes an orange, sometimes both) and put a ton of ice and some sort of soda water. I always thought it was magic. Sometimes I’d get to suck on some of the fruit, which was probably illegal now that I think of it.

This is a more Thanksgiving take on that same thing.

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Sangria of Thanksgiving Awesome for Writers Who Need Some MagicRecipe by CarrieCourse: UncategorizedServings4

servingsPrep time5

minutesCooking timeminutesCaloriesha

kcalStuff That Goes In It 1 cup apple cider * 1 750-ml bottle dry white wine * ¼ cup orange juice (about one navel orange) * ¼ cup brandy, if you are fancy — Calvados * Sparkling water or club soda to put on top * One apple, cut into ½-inch cubes * ¼ cup pomegranate seeds or another apple or pear How to Make It Look, you’re a writer, you deal in magic. You create worlds and story and happiness. Take a deep breath. It’s your time to have some magic. * Find a pitcher that can contain six quarts of fluid. Look up what a quart is. You’re a writer, you’re used to researching things like “how to kill a demonic pixie;” this should be easy. * Put fruit in that pitcher. Look at that. Fruit is sort of magical isn’t it, like a narrative arc that makes sense. Gorgeous. * Put wine in there because it’s the most important magical ingredient. Think about writing a book with alchemy. Tell yourself you are practicing it right now. * Put in the apple cider, juice, and brandy. Wonder if any of your characters drink apple cider. Decide not to worry about it. THIS IS ABOUT YOU AND YOUR NEEDS, WRITER! Not those demanding characters. * Put it in the fridge to make it cold. Wait impatiently. * Stir it. Top it off with that sparkling water. Drink it and let your mind take you to magical places that do not include dialogue punctuation, character motivation, or plot.

Notes * This beautiful, magical recipe is adapted from the fantastic site, Wine Mag, and it’s from Emily Saladino. Hit the link and you’ll get to the real thing.

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If you checked out this post, you’ve spent some time figuring out your character’s flaws, and now it’s time to actually use those flaws to make a better novel.

And the first thing you need to do is let the reader know about that character’s flaws and where it came from.

HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?

You want to show the reader why the character is the way they are.

Can you blame their childhood? Or something terrible? A lot of times our negative scripts in our brains or something horrible happening to us characters creates that flaw that is currently keeping us from having a nice, happy story.

Can you blame conditioning? Not the kind of conditioning you do for being fit, but the kind of conditioning that teachers, parents, the robots, the authority figures put you through. Is the flaw or negative belief system inherited via education or example?

Is it just your character’s brain? Sometimes our characters are not the smartest tools in the shed and they have big lies that motivate them or big flaws in their thinking or their logic because they make wrong assumptions because of things that they’ve experienced or seen in the past.

MAKE SURE THE FLAW WORKS

You want your character’s flaw to flow well with the character. Most of us don’t know that we have flaws and we might ignore it (and bristle when someone brings it up) or think it’s actually a strength. A Slytherin doesn’t think cheating on a test is a bad thing. They think it’s being cunning or ambitious. A Carrie Jones doesn’t think being self-deprecating is annoying. She thinks it’s being authentic.

REMEMBER THAT ONE FLAW LEADS TO ANOTHER

A lot of times you have one specific flaw destined and planned out for your character, but then they go and add more. That’s good. Most of us have more than one flaw.

If you feel like donating a random dollar for these writing tips, please feel free!

Character flaws: Creating lovable imperfections

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I’m teaching a class over at the Writing Barn about character and we’re half-way in. I’ve talked about character motivation and goals, yearning, making them memorable, human worth, stakes, and the big lie. But one of the most important factors in creating a character’s inner landscape is the humanizing flaw.

The humanizing flaw is about where your character is messed up.

It’s part of what’s holding them back from getting their goals and yearnings.

It creates conflict. It keeps them away from that Superman perfection.

NowNovel writes:

Character flaws serve multiple purposes. Often, they’re the faults and shortcomings that create conflict between key players in a story. Yet flaws are also useful for creating attraction between characters. Without them, characters feel wooden, ‘too perfect’. Without them, attraction might seem too instant.

I have some issues with this term from a disability perspective, honestly. And the first type of flaw that editors/coaches/teachers will cite is:

THE PHYSICAL CHARACTER FLAW OR DISTINCTIVE DETAIL? This might be about a character’s appearance. It might be about something that goes against society’s “beauty norms.” It might be about something in their physical nature that makes them different and potentially judged negatively for.

The way your character deals with/thinks about/relates to this “flaw” is important. Is it a positive attitude? A negative one? An impartial attitude? Their perception of their flaw helps build their character.

So, both I and author Libba Bray can’t see out of one of our eyes. Libba usually talks about this in a jocular way. I usually blurt it out, unthinking, while I explain that I have a horrible time seeing people raise their hands in Zoom sessions. How we handle our blind eyes helps define who we are as people. It’s the same thing for characters on the page.

NowNovel talks about finding “beauty in the eye of the beholder,” saying:

“The common phrase ‘beauty’s in the eye of the beholder’ reminds us that attraction is often highly subjective. One character might joke with another, saying, ‘What do you call a potential boyfriend shorter than six foot? A friend’ The friend, on the other hand, might have a strong attraction to shorter men.

“Often someone’s ‘flaws’ – a mole, some or other detail – is also what gives them their ‘them-ness’. It’s the distinctive detail that another character associates with them. It represents them in the other’s mind’s eye.

“When writing romance between characters, think about physical details a character might dislike about their own appearance. There could be a ‘too much’ or ‘too little’ that a lover wouldn’t have any other way.”

THE PERSONALITY OF POOPINESS OR EMOTIONAL FLAW These are big ones, really. And they can be confusing. Think of going on a date with someone. It’s your first date and then you have a few more. They text you a lot. They want to hang out with you all the time. You think, “Oh, what a cutie!” But then it turns out that if you don’t text them back within the hour, the send out an all points bulletin looking for you.

Aspects of personality that seem lovely can be turned around into a negative and vice-versa.

Or, as NowNovel says:

“The imbalances in people are often the things that attract and repel others.

“This push and pull between finding emotional flaws or imbalances attractive and frustrating makes relationships interesting. The character who ‘chivalrously’ holds the door for the other could easily become irritating in their determination to hold up gender ‘roles’ or traditions.

“These double-edged character qualities are especially useful when you want to show how characters pass from hating to loving each other (and vice versa). An extrovert character who finds another’s shyness off-putting, for example, might find themselves getting drawn more and more to their quiet or gentle quality.”

It’s hard to manage those flaws sometimes.

And finally, we have . . .

THE IDEALOGICAL WHAT THE HECK IS WRONG WITH THEM FLAW Just like each of us, our characters have an ideology. There are values that they live their lives by. They have beliefs.

It’s a bit like going on Facebook or Twitter or TikTok and seeing a bunch of memes that lean a certain way politically. You quickly know how a person on your friends’ list stands if they share those things, right?

When your characters have different ideologies, one might decide the other’s way of thinking is a flaw. One might be a vegan. One might be all about meat and potatoes. One might love STAR WARS. One might think STAR WARS is a capitalistic venture creating bipolarities meant to dumb down the world.

Sometimes a character might think another’s idealogical flaw or difference makes them hot. The difference in belief systems can help a character in a young adult novel rebel against their family if they are expressed in a potential love interest. It can be a place to insert humor and conflict in your characters, but it can also repel characters.

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SHEET PAN DINNER RECIPE FOR WRITERS WHO ARE NOT DOING WELLRecipe by CarrieServings8

servingsPrep time25

minutesCooking time45

minutesCalories280

kcalStuff That Goes In It 2 (15 ounce) cans chickpeas, rinsed and drained * ½ butternut squash – peeled, seeded, and cut into 1-inch pieces * 1 onion, diced * 1 sweet potato, peeled and cut into 1-inch cubes * 2 large carrots, cut into 1 inch pieces * 3 medium russet potatoes, cut into 1-inch pieces * 3 tablespoons vegetable oil * 1 teaspoon salt * ½ teaspoon ground black pepper * 1 teaspoon onion powder * 1 teaspoon garlic powder * 1 teaspoon ground fennel seeds * 1 teaspoon dried rubbed sage * 2 green onions, chopped (Optional) How to Make It It’s happened.

You have realized it, little author.

Writing is a f-ed up business and it’s not all in your control. You’ve gotten rejected again because the market allegedly isn’t into time-traveling hamsters for YA novels. Pshaw!
So go, preheat the oven 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).

Find a large sheet pan and grease it. Pretend it’s your readership. You want them to be prepared. * You gave up on traditional publishing and have done everything you could to sell books. Bought Publisher’s Rocket, joined Facebook groups, read a million craft books. And you’ve sold two. To your mom.

It’s okay. You’re a writer not a marketer.

Put the chickpeas, potatoes (both kinds), squash, carrots and onions on the sheet pan.

These are your books. They are all there. They are beautiful. Now drizzle some oil on them and toss them around so the oil is everywhere.

Wish them luck. * Combine the spices (salt counts) in a bowl or something. God knows.

**Sprinkle onto the veggies.

Toss it all again**, damn it. Cry. Think about pen names. * Think about Chuck Wendig’s latest post about dealing with the writing business where he says:

“I cannot control geopolitics and global pandemics. I cannot control whether the editor who’s had my novel on their desk for nine months will happen to pick it up on a day they ate some bad charcuterie and can’t focus because they need to run to the loo every ten minutes. I can’t control markets, reviewers, who else publishes the day my book comes out, or even (very frequently on the trad side of publishing) my covers and titles.

“But I can control other things. I control the effort I put into my craft. I’ve now written twenty-two novels, and by the time you read this, it might be twenty-three. LOOK TO THE SUN was my tenth.

“I can control whether I keep going or take a break, whether I give up altogether or come running back to the game. I am responsible for whatever ends up on my pages.” * Put the pan in the oven for 25 minutes.

Stir it.

Cook it 20 minutes more. Your novels should be done. The effort was worth it. The chickpeas are a little crisp like a good plot. The veggies are lightly browned like some nice emotional development. Call it good.

Write again tomorrow.

Add salt or pepper and green onion if you feel like it. Call it good.

Notes * This recipe is much more readable and inspired by the lovely recipe here by Kim on Allrecipes.

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It’s Be Brave Friday and I’ve not had the bravest of days, really. That changes now with this post, right?

Here’s a painting on wood (a board from a bookshelf originally from a wonderful woman’s house, which was previously owned by a family of other friends of me).

It’s raw like my feelings right now. It’s a bit haunted like the world right now.

But it’s there–created. And like me, probably not done.

As most of you know, sharing anything I’ve painted is really hard. But I’m all about rewriting those negative scripts and rewriting new ones and cheering each other on while we do. If you are trying, thriving, grieving, becoming, celebrating, evolving? I’m rooting so hard for you, for all of us.

And if you want to support me, please buy one of my books (links above in the BOOKS category) or join my Patreon, it’s really fun! <3

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On Thursday, my co-podcaster, Shaun, and husband guy, takes over the blog.

He’s adorable. I hope you’ll read what he says even if he does occasionally sound like a surfer dude from the 1990s or Captain Pontification. And no, we don’t always agree.

Here’s Shaun It is 7:25 p.m. in Bar Harbor, Maine and I still haven’t written my blog post! You know what that means? That means Carrie can’t relax until I have it written and she can then post it. I feel so bad right now, but also very lucky.

I feel lucky because I have an incredibly understanding wife! I would love to lie and tell you that she is pacing back and forth in the living room, smoking a cigar, and swearing at me like some old salty newspaper editor waiting for a reporter to turn in a story. But, I can’t. She used to actually be a newspaper editor. Did you know that?

It is partially her fault that I am running so late. I had been running plenty late on my own and told her that I would get it done right after dinner. When we sat down to dinner, an informal affair tonight in the living room, in front of the tv, we started to watch a romantic-Christmasy movie.

I feared the worst, but as it turned out, the movie was not bad at all and much better than I imagined it would be. That, my friends, is why I am so very late, instead of just late. The movie was just too good!

So, I blame it on Carrie. I blame it on Carrie that I have such a wonderful life. I blame it on Carrie that I wish that I had the ability to replicate all of the romantic words and actions in that movie so that I could make her feel loved in just the way that I do love her.

I wish I could show her how I love her in the same manner that makes people watch those silly Christmas romance movies for the entire month of December! The kind of love and romance that somehow makes her eyes leak when she is just lying on the couch watching a silly movie.

Alas, I can’t. Try as we may, in real life you don’t get to script your words, actions, and emotions. But you can keep trying and keep learning and keep apologizing.

I am lucky!

Remember to learn, apologize, keep trying and always, Love Your Way Through it!

Shaun

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You suck. You will never be good at anything. Wow. You just equal ew.

A lot of us have a critical inner voice. We might call it our internal editor or our internal critic, but it’s a bit of a destructive bastard, honestly.

It criticizes.

It thinks only of the worst case scenario.

As J’aime ona Pangaia writes:

“If you take some time out for yourself, an inner voice tells you that you are lazy and/or selfish and that you’ll never amount to anything. When you work hard, keeping your eyes on your goals, this inner critic will lambaste you for not having a life, or quality relationships, or for being a 2-dimensional workaholic. Your inner critic will get you coming and going.

“Most people are so used to hearing their inner critic monitor and judge their every thought, word, action and appearance, that they don’t even realize the steadily eroding effect it has on them until they are plunged into a flat-out depression. A common approach these days is the decision to “not indulge in negative thinking”, so ‘affirmations’ are chanted as if they were magical mantras that will somehow eradicate the messages of the inner critic.”

For a lot of writers, that internal critic or inner editor makes us completely blocked and unable to write on the page.

According to Lisa Firestone Ph.D. for Psychology Today,

“Getting to know and challenge this “voice” is one of the most essential psychological hurdles we can overcome in striving to live our version of our best life.”

So, how do we overcome that voice. Where does it come from? Why does it torment us like this?

Again, Firestone:

“We can start by understanding one major concept: we are, in many ways, ruled by our past. From the moment we’re born, we absorb the world around us. The early attitudes, beliefs and behaviors we were exposed to can become an inner dialogue, affecting how we see ourselves and others. For example, the positive behavior and qualities our parents or early caretakers had helped us form a positive sense of self as well as many of our values. If we felt love, acceptance or compassion directed toward us, this nurtured our real self and the positive feelings we have about who we are in the world. However, the critical attitudes and negative experiences we withstood formed and fueled our anti-self. Early rejections and harmful ways of relating affect a child’s budding self-perception, not to mention their point of view toward other people and relationships in general. These impressions become the voices in our heads.”

Firestone details a few steps: 1. Pay attention when the critic pops up. Realize it’s the critic being an insulting troll. 2. Write down what that critic says, but use the YOU pronoun rather than the I pronoun. It gives it less power and sometimes writing things down makes us realize how silly they are. 3. Give a hot second to figuring out what your inner critic sounds like. Your mom? Dad? Brother? A teacher? Who does it feel like is talking to you through this voice? Does it sound like your avo? 4. Stand up to the critic. I do this by creating an internal cheerleader, but you don’t have to be that extreme. When something self-hating happens, says, “Shut up. Look at all this awesome I am. I do this and this and this and think this and this and this, you inner critic dork.” 5. Try to look for patterns that happen. Does your internal critic’s voice only speak up when you’re writing? Trying to revise? When you’re studying? Want to try something new? Look for when it happens and if you are limiting your actions and behaviors because of that damn voice.

Tasha Harmon has a great PDF all about taming that inner critic and what she suggests is remembering this, the “inner critic’s job is to protect you from harm/ensure you are okay.”

It’s interesting to think of The Inner Critic as Trying to be Helpful–but failing. That inner voice is trying to keep us safe, but it’s overactive and does too good a job. So it creates worst case scenarios and tells us what those scenarios are. Then we often believe them and that’s where the stagnation happens.

Tasha suggests “seeing the inner critic as the scared child; recognize the fears, acknowledge them with compassion.”

It’s a different approach than Firestone’s. One is about facing them down. One is understanding them and controlling them with empathy and love.

Harmon also suggests trying to visualize your inner critic. I do that all the time. Mine is John Wayne. My inner cheerleader is Grover from Sesame Street. You can draw a picture to do that if you need to. Or you can write out dialogue where you and the critic chat. Ask them why they won’t stop talking about certain things and what they are trying to accomplish with their negativity.

According to Pangaia,

“Give an ear to your inner critic; it would love to lose the weight of all that under recognized vulnerability! The power of its insults have been in direct proportion this vulnerability. Your inner critic is just trying to help you become more aware of who else you are inside so you can take better care of all of your selves”

How you deal with those negative internal voices and scripts is up to you, but I hope that you’ll look them in the eye or hug them or whatever you need to do to give them less power over you. That power that they have? They don’t deserve it and you? You deserve to live as big and full and amazing a life as possible. You deserve that inner cheerleader. Grover says he’s totally good with me loaning him out, but I bet you can find your perfect one, too.

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This little baby (the character arc) is how your character evolves or doesn’t after she/they/he go after their yearnings and goals. It’s how they change during the story.

Do they start off confident and end up scared?

Do they start off scared and end up confident as all get out?

That’s a bit part of the change that happens to them (the character) because of the things (events) that happen in the novel.

If they end up in a better place? That’s a positive change arc.

If they end up in a worse place? That’s a negative change arc.

If they end up in the same place? That’s a static arc.

Usually you have: 1. A character wanting something. 2. A character trying to get that something. 3. Things getting in the damn way as they try to get that something. 4. A big climax and oh-la-la they have changed.

So, for all that to happen, the character has to have some goals or wants. And they have to have the motivation to get that goal/want.

You have to make your character want something and give them a reason for wanting it. Then your awesome readers read the story to see if they can get it. That’s why you throw in obstacles because you don’t want it to be too easy, right?

Obstacles can be events (hurricanes), other people (bosses, spouses, fathers, kids, vampires), or the character’s own self.

The thing is that these obstacles have to eventually make the character grow in one way (positive) or another (negative).

Then at the climax—poof!—the character is different. They are no longer who they were on page one and they’ve become something cooler or less cooler, their world is better or it’s degraded into a dystopian hellscape.

NEW BOOK OUT! It’s super fun. An adult paranormal/mystery/romance/horror blend. Think Charlaine Harris but without all the vampires. Instead there are shifters and dragon grandmothers and evil police chiefs and potential necromancers and the occasional zombie and a sexy skunk.

It’s out November 1, which means you can buy it now, and I seriously love it. So, it would be cool if you bought it so I can be all motivated to write the next book.

Oh, and it’s quirky.

This is because most of my books are quirky.

Be ready to resurrect your love of the paranormal in the first novel in the Alisa Thea series—the books that give new meaning to quirky paranormal.

Alisa Thea is barely scraping by as a landscaper in small-town Bar Harbor. She can’t touch people with her bare skin without seeing their deaths and passing out, which limits her job and friendship opportunities. It also doesn’t give much of a possibility for a love life, nor does her overbearing stepfather, the town’s sheriff. Then along comes an opportunity at a local campground where she thinks her need for a home and job are finally solved . . .

But the campground and its quirky residents have secrets of their own: the upper level is full of paranormals. And when some horrifying murders hit the campground—along with a potential boyfriend from her past who may be involved—Alisa starts to wonder if living in a campground of paranormals will end up in her own death.

Join New York Times and internationally best[selling author Carrie Jones in the first book of the Alisa Thea Series as it combines the excitement of a thriller with the first-hand immediacy and quirky heroines that Jones is known for.

It’s fun. It’s weird. It’s kind of like Charlaine Harris, but a little bit more achy and weird.

Almost Dead Series – Meet Alissa Thea, a sexy skunk, a haunted campground and a lot of quirky

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The Mansplainy Writers Guide to Broccoli, Cheddar and Brown Rice CakesRecipe by CarrieCourse: DinnerCuisine: vegetarianDifficulty: EasyServings4

servingsPrep time10

minutesCooking time30

minutesCalories280

kcalServing size is two cakes.

Stuff That Goes In It Cooking spray – so he can’t bro-splain how you didn’t grease the pan and everything stuck. * 1 tablespoon unsalted butter * 3/4 cup chopped yellow onion * 4 garlic cloves, chopped * 3/4 cup unsalted vegetable stock (such as Swanson) * 12 ounces fresh broccoli florets, cut into 1/2-in. pieces * 1 (8.8-oz.) pkg. precooked brown rice * 1/4 cup whole-wheat panko * 1 tablespoon grainy mustard * 1/2 teaspoon black pepper * 3/8 teaspoon kosher salt * 3 ounces pre-shredded reduced-fat sharp cheddar cheese, divided (about 3/4 cup) * 2 large eggs, lightly beaten * Sliced green onions (optional) How to Make It Why oh why, did you have to read that blog by Mr. Mansplain I’m The Best Writer in the Universe guy? Did you want to ruin a perfectly good day? Yes. Yes, apparently you did.

Now turn the oven on 450-Fahrenheit.

Why did he think “kill your darlings” originated with him? Or “butt in chair?”

Seriously? The ego. * Spray the cooking sheet with cooking spray.

Take a deep, calming breath. * Do not go back to the website to see his smug face or read that just the term “mansplaining” mean we’re infantilizing women.

Instead, melt butter in a big ole skillet over medium-high.

Add garlic and onion.

Sauté for 4 minutes. * Add stock and broccoli. Bring to a boil; cook 3 minutes.

Do not think about the author who name drops other authors’ names every two minutes. Don’t tell them that you know all the authors they are talking about. Swoon about the workshop she took with Rita Williams Garcia. Nod nicely when she talks about her tweet volley with Salman Rushdie. * Find rice.

Heat rice following the directions on the packages.

Don’t think about the author in your workshop who won’t stop complaining about how harrowing writing is. “It’s ripping open a vein and bleeding on the page.”

Don’t think about all her sob-story tweets and how many fans she gets by complaining.

Don’t think about how she makes writing into a ‘mystical, mystical gift that drives me to penultamate heights and miserable lows, but I am compelled to fight through it and share my genius gift to the world.”

Do not give her the finger via a gif.

Instead . . . * Put the broccoli mix, panko, mustard, rice, pepper, salt, and 1/2 cup of the cheese into a big ole bowl.

Find the eggs. Put them in too and stir.

Make eight different (2 1/2-inch) patties.

Put the patties on the pan and spray them with cooking spray.

Bake at 450°F for 15 minutes.

Add the cheese on top.

Bake for 4 more minutes or stop when the cheese gets all melty.

Put green onions on it if you want.

Eat and worry that you’re a mansplaining, harrowing (woe is me) or name dropping author. Decide you aren’t and call it good. Refrain from going on the internet and looking at those authors’ accounts and getting annoyed.

Notes * This recipe is adapted from Cooking Light. The link is here. https://www.cookinglight.com/recipes/broccoli-cheddar-brown-rice-cakes

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On Thursday, my co-podcaster, Shaun, and husband guy, takes over the blog.

He’s adorable. I hope you’ll read what he says even if he does occasionally sound like a surfer dude from the 1990s or Captain Pontification. And no, we don’t always agree.

Here’s Shaun If I was to ask you what your favorite place in your residence is, what would be the reply? I am sure that the answers would vary greatly, but I am also sure that many of you would answer the same as I would.

Bed!

I love, I mean absolutely love, my life! Because of this love of my life, I strive to utilize every waking moment to its fullest. However, there is nothing more relaxing than lying down in bed and going to sleep in complete comfort. Especially if you have the warm body of your beloved cuddled up next to you.

Beds are special. Think about what happens in a bed; love is made; life is created; books are read; movies watched; dreams and nightmares take shape and sometimes unfold into reality; and our brains go to places not normally seen out of bed. Not all bed experiences are positive, but we can damn sure try and make them that way.

Early humans apparently slept on piles of leaves, grasses, and even ash, all designed with the idea of comfort and critter control in mind. We have evolved just a bit in our technology and design and now some of us have beds that are so comfortable that they can even self-adjust and regulate while we sleep.

That is a beautiful thing!

Take a journey with me here. Imagine your significant other, smelling like holy hell, reaching down to grab your hand as you sit in your animal hide nightgown in front of the fire. “Would you accompany me to bed, my lovely?”

You look up with your soot smudged face. “Nothing would give me greater pleasure my darling.”

Walking into your shared shallow cave, you look down at the bed. “You haven’t changed out these leaves in weeks and the ash needs replenishing!”

“Aw, geez. Come on I will do it tomorrow at first light. Just lie down with me, baby.”

Never have you been able to stay mad at your partner, so of course, you lie down. They also lie down and snuggle up with you from behind, trying to stay warm as the fire wanes and the temperature drops.

You fall asleep but wake up shortly thereafter. Even through your animal hide nightgown you can feel something poking you in the small of your back. Angrily you swipe behind you, trying to hit the offender. “I am too tired for any shenanigans!”

You can feel your mate rustling around behind you, reaching over your shoulder and groggily replying, “Sorry, love. I was sound asleep. But this stick must have been buried in the leaves and was poking you in the back.”

Out of the corner of your eye you can see the stick flying out of the cave, making sparks fly as it lands in the embers of the smoldering fire.

“Oh, bummer,” you sadly reply as your bed partner resumes his cave shaking snoring.

So you see, even with the technologically advanced sleeping surfaces that we have now, mistakes can be made and sleep can be interrupted. That is why I never bring sticks to bed!

Hey! I know that was stupid but at least you know how good you have it.

Just remember, always extinguish your open fire before sleeping, never bring sticks to bed, a liberal sprinkling of ash will keep the bugs out and always Love Your Way Through It!

Peace and sweet dreams,

Shaun

NEW BOOK OUT! It’s super fun. An adult paranormal/mystery/romance/horror blend. Think Charlaine Harris but without all the vampires. Instead there are shifters and dragon grandmothers and evil police chiefs and potential necromancers and the occasional zombie and a sexy skunk.

It’s out November 1, which means you can buy it now, and I seriously love it. So, it would be cool if you bought it so I can be all motivated to write the next book.

Oh, and it’s quirky.

This is because most of my books are quirky.

Be ready to resurrect your love of the paranormal in the first novel in the Alisa Thea series—the books that give new meaning to quirky paranormal.

Alisa Thea is barely scraping by as a landscaper in small-town Bar Harbor. She can’t touch people with her bare skin without seeing their deaths and passing out, which limits her job and friendship opportunities. It also doesn’t give much of a possibility for a love life, nor does her overbearing stepfather, the town’s sheriff. Then along comes an opportunity at a local campground where she thinks her need for a home and job are finally solved . . .

But the campground and its quirky residents have secrets of their own: the upper level is full of paranormals. And when some horrifying murders hit the campground—along with a potential boyfriend from her past who may be involved—Alisa starts to wonder if living in a campground of paranormals will end up in her own death.

Join New York Times and internationally best[selling author Carrie Jones in the first book of the Alisa Thea Series as it combines the excitement of a thriller with the first-hand immediacy and quirky heroines that Jones is known for.

It’s fun. It’s weird. It’s kind of like Charlaine Harris, but a little bit more achy and weird.

Almost Dead Series – Meet Alissa Thea, a sexy skunk, a haunted campground and a lot of quirky

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One day when I lived in Ellsworth, Maine (I don’t any longer.) I threw on some ballet flats and jumped in my MINI, zipped up my driveway hill and there was my dog (Scotty) barking and protecting the driveway from a car that had fallen into a ditch and the man trying to shovel the car out.

I jumped out, put Scotty in the car and said, “Can I help?”

The man was Joe, an older guy who has some major health issues and lived down the street.

He was like “oh yeah.”

A white-haired lady inside the car looked at me and said, “Please.”

She had a front-wheel drive car. It had no super cool studded tires like the MINI. And she’d tried to get up the snow-covered monster hill that was my road and slid all the way down. Her car was tilted at this funky angle that no car should have to endure.

Joe and I got behind it and pushed.

We pushed some more.

My ballet flat went in the snow. I fell down. Joe fell down. The car didn’t move.

We tried again. We tried again. And again.

I lost feeling in my butt since it was so cold because i didn’t put a jacket on or anything and my hair was wet from the shower once I realized there was a problem out on the road.

I had never lost feeling in my butt before. It was pretty weird.

This whole time that Joe and I were fighting against the wicked machine that was Mrs. Austen’s unbudging car, I was thinking about helping people and books and writing because let’s face it … you get bored pushing cars that don’t move.

So a lot of the time when people start to criticize books they get really … um … agitated (and rightfully so in a lot of cases) if they think the female character gets rescued too much. And people are sort of SUPER sensitized to it so much that they flip out if anyone helps out the female character ever.

And I get that.

I get that female readers need to know that they can rescue themselves, that they don’t need a boy to do it, and that if girls think that then it makes them dependent. I mean, I thought about that all the time when I wrote the NEED books. And Zara (my main character) thought about that all the time. I think about it when I write the Rosie mystery/thrillers and Alisa’s haunted campground story.

But it also makes me worried.

Because the truth is that we all need rescuing constantly. We all need help. Boys need help. Girls need help. Authors who are neurotic about their next book coming out need help. And I want a balance in books and in movies. I want different genders and ages and races and religions and physical abilities to help each other, to respect help, to be able to receive help.

It’s about balance and intention and not being a stereotype or trope.

And the thing is that in real life? You just do it. You just help (hopefully, unless you’re in a reality show or something and think it’s all about you).

I wasn’t about to ignore that older woman in her car because she was: 1. Older
2. Female

Judging from her bumperstickers a different political party than I am.

I didn’t think, “Hm … Perhaps, I shouldn’t help her because she should get that car out of the ditch all by herself even though she does have a cane and a fake hip that hasn’t fully healed yet. If I help her, I am actually oppressing her.”

And Joe who almost died the year before didn’t think that either, I bet.

Yesterday was an election in our town. People got all riled up. People were mean to female realtors, but not male realtors. People were cranky and unkind on political posts about local politics.

But the thing is? Almost all those people are going to be there helping each other out when help is needed. How do I know? Because I’ve been a reporter here and I’ve seen it over and over again.

Helpfulness is just as natural as hate–if not even more so. It just doesn’t get as much press.

So, I guess that’s my point. Go help somebody today! And thank somebody who has helped you.

Here is mine: Thank you to everyone who has rescued me from writer insecurity this year, who have saved me from sad, who has made me laugh, who bought a book or let me edit your story or supported me on my patreon.

You have totally been my rescuers and I owe you! YAY YOU!!! xoxxo

NEW BOOK OUT! It’s super fun. An adult paranormal/mystery/romance/horror blend. Think Charlaine Harris but without all the vampires. Instead there are shifters and dragon grandmothers and evil police chiefs and potential necromancers and the occasional zombie and a sexy skunk.

It’s out November 1, which means you can buy it now, and I seriously love it. So, it would be cool if you bought it so I can be all motivated to write the next book.

Oh, and it’s quirky.

This is because most of my books are quirky.

Be ready to resurrect your love of the paranormal in the first novel in the Alisa Thea series—the books that give new meaning to quirky paranormal.

Alisa Thea is barely scraping by as a landscaper in small-town Bar Harbor. She can’t touch people with her bare skin without seeing their deaths and passing out, which limits her job and friendship opportunities. It also doesn’t give much of a possibility for a love life, nor does her overbearing stepfather, the town’s sheriff. Then along comes an opportunity at a local campground where she thinks her need for a home and job are finally solved . . .

But the campground and its quirky residents have secrets of their own: the upper level is full of paranormals. And when some horrifying murders hit the campground—along with a potential boyfriend from her past who may be involved—Alisa starts to wonder if living in a campground of paranormals will end up in her own death.

Join New York Times and internationally best[selling author Carrie Jones in the first book of the Alisa Thea Series as it combines the excitement of a thriller with the first-hand immediacy and quirky heroines that Jones is known for.

It’s fun. It’s weird. It’s kind of like Charlaine Harris, but a little bit more achy and weird.

Almost Dead Series – Meet Alissa Thea, a sexy skunk, a haunted campground and a lot of quirky

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Recently, Shaun and I realized that we were a little much for our community. Some of our friends assured us that this was okay. That Maine was full of characters.

“You’re dynamic,” they said.

This made Shaun happy because the word has sort of a superhero aspect to it. DYNAMIC MAN has a pretty cool ring to it.

But since I’m a writer and editor and writing coach, I thought, “Whoa… So I’m evolving? Cool.”

This, of course, confused poor Shaun also known as Dynamic Man, so I had to explain it a bit too him. And then I figured I might as well make a blog post about it because I’ve probably talked a bit too much about Hot Customs Guy and butt shapes lately.

What’s a dynamic character? It’s a character that changes in the course of your story.

They grow. They evolve or devolve. They learn something about their world and that learning impacts who they are.

Sadly, being quirky doesn’t equal dynamic. To be dynamic your character has to change somehow.

The change in the character can be HUGE or it can be SMALL, but for a character to exist there has to be some change.

Important thing to remember: Not all characters are dynamic even if they are your lead character, but (especially in kidlit) dynamic characters are pretty much the thing.

A place where you tend not to see a dynamic character is in multiple installments of a series. Think James Patterson novels following one guy or woman. Think Sherlock Holmes’s character.

But almost always the main character will change in a story because of the things that happen in your story. Sometimes that change shifts their world view or gives them new positive characteristics, but sometimes that change is just a strengthening of the awesome that’s already there.

And sometimes that change is someone heading to the dark side like poor Anakin or that guy in Breaking Bad whose name I can never remember. Walter? Walden?

But for a character to be dynamic, there needs to be change. I’ll be talking about static characters this week, too! So hang on.

NEW BOOK OUT! It’s super fun. An adult paranormal/mystery/romance/horror blend. Think Charlaine Harris but without all the vampires. Instead there are shifters and dragon grandmothers and evil police chiefs and potential necromancers and the occasional zombie and a sexy skunk.

It’s out November 1, which means you can buy it now, and I seriously love it. So, it would be cool if you bought it so I can be all motivated to write the next book.

Oh, and it’s quirky.

This is because most of my books are quirky.

Be ready to resurrect your love of the paranormal in the first novel in the Alisa Thea series—the books that give new meaning to quirky paranormal.

Alisa Thea is barely scraping by as a landscaper in small-town Bar Harbor. She can’t touch people with her bare skin without seeing their deaths and passing out, which limits her job and friendship opportunities. It also doesn’t give much of a possibility for a love life, nor does her overbearing stepfather, the town’s sheriff. Then along comes an opportunity at a local campground where she thinks her need for a home and job are finally solved . . .

But the campground and its quirky residents have secrets of their own: the upper level is full of paranormals. And when some horrifying murders hit the campground—along with a potential boyfriend from her past who may be involved—Alisa starts to wonder if living in a campground of paranormals will end up in her own death.

Join New York Times and internationally best[selling author Carrie Jones in the first book of the Alisa Thea Series as it combines the excitement of a thriller with the first-hand immediacy and quirky heroines that Jones is known for.

It’s fun. It’s weird. It’s kind of like Charlaine Harris, but a little bit more achy and weird.

Almost Dead Series – Meet Alissa Thea, a sexy skunk, a haunted campground and a lot of quirky

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It’s Halloween season and it’s time, my friends. It is time.

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Oh! The Horror! Baked Mashed Potato Witch Fingers (for writers and other weirdos)Recipe by CarrieCourse: AppetizersCuisine: vegetarianDifficulty: EasyServings7

servingsCooking time1

hour Stuff That Goes In It 1 large Russet potato, cooked and mashed * 2 tablespoons oil or vegan butter * Salt, to taste * 35 skinned and roasted almond halves * 1 teaspoon red chili powder or paprika * 1/4 teaspoon turmeric (optional) * 1/2 tablespoon cornflour (optional) How to Make It Oh, it’s a scary day when you have 35 skinned almond halves, isn’t it? It’s okay. Find a bowl, baby writer. Do not forget to look behind you as you reach into the cupboard. You may never know what’s lurking there.

You okay?

Is that heavy breathing yours?

Maybe look around the kitchen one more time.

In a bowl, put the mashed potato and oil and salt and cornflour together and mix it all up so none of the evidence (I mean ingredients) are recognizable.

Preheat oven to 400°F. Check first to make sure there aren’t any creepy things in there like zombie heads or you know . . . spiders. * Find a baking tray, line it with parchment paper. Do not think about how that parchment paper is like skin in that Hannibal Lecter movie.

Take calming breaths. * Scoop that potato dough out 1 tsp at a time. You’re okay. Was that a noise from the other room? A growl maybe?

Ignore it so the tension increases and now roll that dough in your palms. Shape it so it looks like a finger.

Look over your shoulder.

Jump because every good horror recipe/book/movie needs a jump scare. * Get the almonds and put one on each of the fingers like it’s a creepy fingernail.

Hear another noise. Check your cell to see if you have coverage. YOU DO NOT HAVE ANY BARS!

Keep cooking so that we have even more tension. * Put all those fingers on the skin (I mean parchment). Do it till you’re done.

Realize that maybe there’s a vengeful spirit here in your abandoned house where you are the last person cooking who has been waiting an eternity to exact revenge on the time when their mom didn’t let them have any mashed potatoes (which haven’t existed since the beginning of time, but whatever. Horror can have plot holes). * Look at the fingers. Make knuckle marks with a knife.

Clutch that knife and turn around because you hear creepy whispering.

Aw. There’s nothing there. Awesome! * Bake those fingers in a 400°F temperature in an oven for 20-30 minutes. Clutch your knife, put your back up against a wall and whimper for awhile as the silverware flies out of the drawers.

Don’t take those fingers out until their bottoms are browned. The insides should be mushy and soft, kind of like yours right now, am I right? * Take them out of the oven and put them on a wire rack to cool.

Offer them to the ghost. Make friends. Release them from their eternal quest for potatoes. Chill together.

Notes * I found this brilliant, creepy recipe that I’ve adapted over at the fantastic https://www.onegreenplanet.org/vegan-recipe/baked-mashed-potato-witch-fingers/

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Be ready to resurrect your love of the paranormal in the first novel in the Alisa Thea series—the books that give new meaning to quirky paranormal.

Alisa Thea is barely scraping by as a landscaper in small-town Bar Harbor. She can’t touch people with her bare skin without seeing their deaths and passing out, which limits her job and friendship opportunities.

It also doesn’t give much of a possibility for a love life, nor does her overbearing stepfather, the town’s sheriff. Then along comes an opportunity at a local campground where she thinks her need for a home and job are finally solved . . .

But the campground and its quirky residents have secrets of their own: the upper level is full of paranormals. And when some horrifying murders hit the campground—along with a potential boyfriend from her past who may be involved—Alisa starts to wonder if living in a campground of paranormals will end up in her own death.

Join New York Times and internationally bestselling author Carrie Jones in the first book of the Alisa Thea Series as it combines the excitement of a thriller with the first-hand immediacy and quirky heroines that Jones is known for.

“From the first sentence of Carrie Jones’ novel, I could tell that here was a bright new writer who was going to set the world of young adult letters aflame.” -Kathi Appelt, award-winning poet and author.

You can buy it here!

WANT TO READ AN EXCERPT? HERE YOU GO!

Chapter One

My whole life I’d been waiting for someone cool to show up, someone who didn’t care about my weirdness, someone the opposite of my stepfather. Turns out that most people cared about the things that make you different from them and they didn’t care in a nice way. They cared in a way that made them call you a freak, a weirdo, a way that allowed them to point at you on the school bus, at the Y, or when you were just walking down the street and they’d murmur things.

So when I met Candace, it was pretty much the biggest event in my little life on Mount Desert Island in Maine.

It was a big deal because she was chill with what happened to me when I was with other people.

Every person I touched, skin on skin, without fail, I saw how they die. I always tried to not touch people because who wanted to see them screaming in a car accident, beaten by a husband, broken in a ditch on the side of the road or alone in a nursing home gasping for breath? Ever since I was little, it had been my secret—this magic, this curse, this broken bit inside of me that didn’t make me special, just made me a freak. Sometimes I would sneak out of our little house in Hulls Cove, stand outside alone in the stars, staring at those tiny specks breaking through the darkness, and I would pray to be normal, to not have people die, to not see people die, but those prayers were never answered, and so I just retreated more and more into myself—the untouchable girl, the girl who was alone.

I had been alone for years and years.

Death kept me from life.

Maybe that was how it was for everyone?

Sometimes someone else’s death came slamming inside my head and just marinated in there for a while, refusing to let go. When that happened, I went to the cemetery up by Holy Redeemer and hid among the truly dead. The living never went there and I tried to exorcise myself from the deaths I’d seen—the ventilators, the fires, the falls.

It was not easy.

And it was not something I got to talk to people about. I couldn’t go to a therapist or a priest or the grocery store checkout lady and say, “When I touch people, I see how they die.”

The only one I ever talked about it with was Candace.

And Candace wasn’t normal.

She was even less normal that I am.

Candace was Undead. That was capitalized on purpose like it was a scientific word for a whole species and maybe it was? I didn’t know. I didn’t know nearly enough.

Ever since I met Candace at that landscaping gig two years ago, I’d hoped that I’d meet another Undead. I mean, it wasn’t as if they ware frolicking all over Bar Harbor, Maine, but it wasn’t like a lot of people were even in our little, rural, coastal town until the tourists and the summer people started coming in May. But still, if there was going to be a state where the Undead congregated, you’d kind of imagine Maine, right? Long winters. Black flies. Setting for countless Stephen King novels.

What I’m saying is that I didn’t meet a ton of people, dead or alive. I liked it that way. I grew up on this big island with its tiny population and I’d already seen most everyone’s deaths, or everyone who had touched me at least. After you saw a certain amount of lying alone in a nursing home, a hospital, upside down in a car, trapped inside a burning building, drownings, drunk asphyxiations, falls down rickety stairs, and bone-crunching plane wrecks, you tended to not want to see any more.

Landscaping kept that interaction down to a minimum. First, you wore gloves and for me to see people’s deaths, I had to touch them, skin to skin. Second, it wasn’t like waitressing or retail where there was a constant barrage of people coming and going. You worked with your same crew. Occasionally a caretaker or property owner came out to dictate where to put the plants, or where to weed, or whatever, but normally it was just you and the flora and your coworkers, and you already had lived through their deaths before they did. So, it got—You got used to that.

It was a bit easier when the deaths had already happened because then, with the Undead at least, you know that they’ve officially moved on, and their death may have sucked, but it wasn’t the final end, that they’d have more good times afterwards.

It took me a long time to know that.

That’s because it took me twenty-three years to meet an Undead.

When I met Candace, I’d been pruning lilacs at the edge of a summer estate in Northeast Harbor on Cooksey Drive, just down the street from one of Martha Stewart’s summer places. Everyone else on our four-human crew was off in other vectors, mowing, transplanting, picking up brush and deadfall. It was all normal, start-of-the-season stuff. Wealthy people don’t like evidence of real nature on top of their other Pinterest-inspired, designer nature, so some of the guys always got pinecone and acorn collecting duty. Believe me, I was happy to be assigned trimming.

Candace came striding across the freshly-growing lawn. All the remnants of winter had already been raked away from the grass at the front of the three-story cottage, which was really a mansion, but for some reason the wealthy rich from away liked to call them cottages. I’d say that they were doing this because they were trying to fit in and not be pretentious, but that is hard to believe because they never seemed to care about being pretentious or fitting in at any other time or in any other way.

There’s a Dorothy Parker quote that says something about God must not like money because look at the people he gave it to. I get that. Whenever I saw one of our wealthier clients heading my way, I’d get instant social anxiety, and that wasn’t because I was worried about seeing their deaths. It was because I’m really not super cool with people talking down to me or thinking they’re better than me, or worse, grabbing my butt.

From her stride, it was obvious that Candace was walking with a purpose. She was just under six feet tall, and had long, lustrous hair the color of dark pine tree trunks, rich and nuanced. I steadied my nerves.

When she got to me, she didn’t instantly say anything. Instead, she studied me for a moment and asked in a silky voice with an accent I couldn’t figure out, “What are you?”

“What am I doing? Pruning.” I kept on pruning too. The clippers are a nice tool to keep you from having to really interact with someone.

“No,” she repeated. “What are you?”
“A gardener?” Sometimes the super wealthy are not super smart, no offense to them. I

resisted the urge to talk slowly because that’s insulting. And I know all about people insulting you because they think you’re not smart.

She squinted at me. Her hands went to her hips and she stood there for a moment, just studying me, I think. The late May wind blew at her linen shirt and trousers and her hair.

In a huff, she yanked the mass of her hair up into a ponytail, and then she stuck out her right hand. “Candace Moonshower.”

“Alisa Thea.” I started to reach out my own hand.

She jumped back, recoiling. “Take off your gloves. They are absolutely filthy.”

If I wanted to keep my job, no matter how much I didn’t want to do something, I couldn’t ignore a client’s legal requests that weren’t pervy,. Though I knew it wasn’t a good idea, I peeled off my right glove. It dangled from my left as I reached out and steeled myself for what I knew was about to happen. A death and then I’d probably pass out. It was the same routine since I was eight. And fifteen years later I still wasn’t used to it.

Her hand was larger than mine. Her fingers engulfed my fingers as they closed and tensed and gripped. Almost instantly, images of a man standing over her, leering, wearing clothes that made no sense, a uniform? Confederate? Was it a cosplay gone bad? No. Yes?

I was her, kicking, screaming, trying to get to a knife that was tucked away beneath my petticoats, but I didn’t get there in time.

Panting and woozy, I broke off the handshake and this impeccable Candace woman in front of me, on her well-manicured lawn, in her well-manicured linen, stared at me and tilted her head and said it again, “What are you?”

“Nothing … Nothing …” I stumbled backwards, dizzy, fighting to stay conscious and trying to make sense of the death I saw.

Her death? It felt wrong. It felt … past.

“I’m a zombie,” she announced as she grabbed my elbow, steadying me. “I don’t eat people. I will deny it if you blab, Alisa Thea, but I am certain that you’re not a zombie, but you’re something aren’t you?”

“We’re all something,” I blurted, turning away, stomping off, and then pivoting back before my common sense stopped me. What had she just said? The words came ricocheting out into the air. “A zombie? Why are you playing me like that?”

“I’m not playing you.” She raised an eyebrow and actually smiled. “That’s the easiest way to describe the Undead as a group, don’t you think? That or vampires? Ghouls? Wights? Lichs? Draugrs? Revenants? Shall I go on?” She stepped closer to me, picked up the sheers that I dropped, turned them around and handed them back. “What did you see when we touched? You saw something, didn’t you?”

“I don’t like to tell people.” I took the sheers and rolled my shoulders out, hoping to feel less brain fuzzy.

“That’s cowardly.”

“Cowardly? It’s kind.” I thought of my mother. “There’s no blessing in knowing how you’ll die.”

“Die?” She stands up straighter. She takes my hands in hers, but I’ve already seen her death once. I don’t have to see it again. Still, I tremble under the intensity of her stare. “It’s a blessing. Tell me what you saw.”

There is no point trying to argue with rich employers so I tried to steady my breath. “I saw a man standing over you, doing unspeakable things. He was wearing a uniform. It looked like a Confederate uniform.”

Her eyes clouded. “You saw my death.”

“That’s what I see.” I swallowed hard and tried to resist the urge to make eye contact.

“It already happened.” Her long fingers cupped my face beneath my chin and she turned my head so that I’d look up into her face as she said, “You mustn’t be afraid of it.”

I swallowed so hard that her fingers moved with my jaw muscles. “Of death?”
“No. Your power. Is that all you see?” She released my chin.

I kept eye contact, but I couldn’t bring myself to speak again. The word yes seemed stuck in my throat, completely incapable of making its way out.

“Sometimes death is just the beginning,” she said, putting her arm around my shoulders and walking with me back to the house where she insisted that I refresh myself and clean up and have some sweet tea. “A blessing instead of a curse. But not all the time. Definitely not all the time.”

After I was done trying to calm my nerves and look presentable, I came back out. Candace was just passing through, she told me, but if I ever had a problem, she said, ever couldn’t find a safe place to land, then I was to go to Backwood Hollows, a small RV campground just off the island, across the bridge in Trenton. “Use my name. They owe me.”

We were on the front porch, looking past the lilacs with their purple blooms that were just beginning to bud and down to the white-caps of the Atlantic Ocean. It was uncomfortable. No. I was uncomfortable.

“Do I owe you?” I asked and took a sip of the tea.

“Not yet.” She laughed.

“I don’t think I want to ever owe you,” I admitted and took another sip.

Greg, my boss, saw me and started striding towards us. He was using his I’m-going-to-fire-you walk, probably because he thought I was slacking off.

And that was the end of my conversation with Candace. She was never at the house again. Two years passed and I hadn’t seen her anywhere, not at the estate before I got fired, not even randomly at the store. She only showed up in my dreams. And in those two years, a lot of things changed.

I lost my job and my income. I tried to work at a bar, but they wouldn’t let me wear gloves unless I was washing dishes, but they never let me just wash dishes because I was “too cute to hide in the kitchen.” That’s their words not mine. But the moment I started interacting with people, I’d end up touching some random tourist and then it would all be over. I’d see a death, pass out sometimes, get fired, and it would start all over again.

The island wasn’t big enough to not have that kind of work history follow you around and it took less than two months before nobody would hire me, not even those people who were desperately searching on Facebook to hire anyone. But I wasn’t anyone. I was nothing. My stepfather taught me that a long time ago.

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On Thursday, my co-podcaster, Shaun, and husband guy, takes over the blog.

He’s adorable. I hope you’ll read what he says even if he does occasionally sound like a surfer dude from the 1990s or Captain Pontification. And no, we don’t always agree.

Green velvet is an amazing thing!

I was having trouble, once again, thinking of a topic for today’s blog. Of course I enlisted Carrie’s help and she managed to jog a memory in my wee, little brain.

Nowadays, pulling forth memories is akin to filling my hand with sand and not spilling any.

But, back to green velvet.

When I was a kid, yes, this is a tale of bygone eras, my grandparents had a set of matching living room chairs that were covered in green velvet. I don’t remember caring much for most particular chairs, as I was more of a couch sprawler, but they had value to me.

These chairs, and the couch to a lesser extent, were how I made my living between the ages of five and seven. You see, when you sat in these chairs, which also had a removable seat cushion, your pelvic structure was tilted backwards.

Back in the old days, kids, people used to actually carry cash on them. In order to spend cash and make everything equal upon payment, you usually received change in the form of metal tokens called coins.

I discovered that when people sat in these magical green velvet chairs their change seemed to flow out of their pockets and fall into the crack behind the back of the chair and the cushion. I simply had to come along behind them, lift up the cushion and bam, instant candy bar!

It was like the ancient equivalent of a side hustle.

My single mother and I lived with my grandparents at this time, as did their other three adult children, so I got to check the cushions often. Because there were so many adults in the house, there were lots of adult visitors. I called them foreign investors and they almost always made a contribution to my secret snack fund.

One day I came home from school and found my grandmother vacuuming under the cushions of my magical green velvet chairs. I was stunned. As soon as my grandmother saw me she shut off the vacuum to say hi and as she turned I noticed that her hand was clinched into a fist.

“Hello my sweet, amazing, handsome and best ever grandson,” she said with a smile on her face.

I just stood there in shock, barely able to even respond. “Hi.”

She opened up her hand as she held it out to me. “Look at all this change I found in the cushions of the chairs.”

Then she dropped it in her pocket and went back to vacuuming.

Not many days in my youth were as drastically horrible as this one. Now somebody else knew my secret. I mean, I was sure this must have been the one and only time Grandma had ever vacuumed the chairs. Maybe she would forget about it quickly and I wouldn’t have to get up at some unearthly hour to get to the chair stash before she did. I mean, she was a “housewife,” never worked and therefore probably enjoyed the spoils of the furniture as much as I did.

But fortunately, I was wrong. I continued to harvest proceeds from the chairs until Mother and I eventually moved from that house.

Later in life, when I was a teenager, I discovered why my grandmother never had a need for my change. She would, on occasion, give me money to spend so that I could have fun. You know, buy beer or whatever.

Once when she was giving me some cash, I asked her how she even had money since she didn’t work. My enterprising grandmother told me that as the runner of all errands and keeper of the house, she had her ways. She then went on to explain that her loving husband would give her a certain amount of money to purchase things, like groceries, and that she was a very experienced shopper.

Basically, my grandmother was embezzling funds from her own husband and just not balancing the books appropriately. Good for her!

There is no real point to this blogpost other than the telling of a fond childhood memory. But sometimes, those are the best kind of memories. The memories long forgotten and still cherished upon remembrance. Maybe soon I will tell you the tale of how I used to try and get my grandmother to quit smoking. It never worked, cost her a substantial amount of embezzled cash and was probably the one thing that regularly made her mad at me.

Thank you for helping me remember the “good old days” and as always, remember to always Love Your Way Through It!

Shaun

ALSO CARRIE HAS A NEW BOOK COMING OUT! It’s super fun. An adult paranormal/mystery/romance/horror blend. Think Charlaine Harris but without all the vampires. Instead there are shifters and dragon grandmothers and evil police chiefs and potential necromancers and the occasional zombie.

It’s out November 1, which means the pre-orders are up now, and I seriously love it. So, it would be cool if you bought it so I can be all motivated to write the next book.

Oh, and it’s quirky.

This is because most of my books are quirky.

Be ready to resurrect your love of the paranormal in the first novel in the Alisa Thea series—the books that give new meaning to quirky paranormal.

Alisa Thea is barely scraping by as a landscaper in small-town Bar Harbor. She can’t touch people with her bare skin without seeing their deaths and passing out, which limits her job and friendship opportunities. It also doesn’t give much of a possibility for a love life, nor does her overbearing stepfather, the town’s sheriff. Then along comes an opportunity at a local campground where she thinks her need for a home and job are finally solved . . .

But the campground and its quirky residents have secrets of their own: the upper level is full of paranormals. And when some horrifying murders hit the campground—along with a potential boyfriend from her past who may be involved—Alisa starts to wonder if living in a campground of paranormals will end up in her own death.

Join New York Times and internationally best[selling author Carrie Jones in the first book of the Alisa Thea Series as it combines the excitement of a thriller with the first-hand immediacy and quirky heroines that Jones is known for.

It’s fun. It’s weird. It’s kind of like Charlaine Harris, but a little bit more achy and weird.

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If you know me, you know that I have a tendency to say things that have sexual connotations without realizing it until it’s far too late.

And to make it worse, once I realize that I’ve accidentally said something naughty? My whole face breaks into an OMG expression. My eyes get big. My eyebrows are so ashamed they try to hide in my hairline and my mouth usually gapes open.

Keep that in mind.

My publisher once sent me to Toronto because one of my books was up for a big teen book award for best kiss, I think.

So, when I disembarked the airplane in Canada (after the lady in 7A got in trouble) I had to go through Customs, where I embarrassed myself in front of the very attractive man who looked a lot like him:

Sigh.

How did I do this? How did I humiliate myself in front of he who shall now be known as Very Attractive Customs Man?

Well, when you enter Canada, the Very Attractive Customs Man will look at you, look at your passport, look at you again, and say, “Why are you entering Canada?”

And if you are me, you will try to remember the three categories on the sheet that you can check off, which are something like:

Business
Leisure
Something Else that I can’t remember because I have lost too many brain cells

And if you are me, you will be nervous for absolutely no reason and blurt out, “Pleasure.”

Pleasure, my friends, is not on the list.

I think that maybe I blurted this out because I couldn’t remember the word “leisure.”

And if you are me, this word will make you conjure up images such as this:

And if you are me, you will get the Horrified Carrie Face and stare at Very Attractive Customs Man and go, “Oh! Oh no! Oh my gosh! That sounds so naughty, doesn’t it? I swear it’s not like that! Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh! ”

Gasp!

And if you are me, Very Attractive Customs Man will stare back at you blankly for three seconds and then he will start laughing uncontrollably. He will start laughing so hard that he will bend over at the waist and HOLD HIS STOMACH!

And if you are me you will stand there and turn red.

This is proof that you can be an author and still be a total dork. So fellow dorks, take heart, you can still have your dreams even if the execution of those dreams becomes terribly, terribly embarrassing.

ALSO I HAVE A NEW BOOK COMING OUT!

It’s super fun. An adult paranormal/mystery/romance/horror blend. Think Charlaine Harris but without all the vampires. Instead there are shifters and dragon grandmothers and evil police chiefs and potential necromancers and the occasional zombie.

It’s out November 1, which means the pre-orders are up now, and I seriously love it. So, it would be cool if you bought it so I can be all motivated to write the next book.

Oh, and it’s quirky.

This is because most of my books are quirky.

Be ready to resurrect your love of the paranormal in the first novel in the Alisa Thea series—the books that give new meaning to quirky paranormal.

Alisa Thea is barely scraping by as a landscaper in small-town Bar Harbor. She can’t touch people with her bare skin without seeing their deaths and passing out, which limits her job and friendship opportunities. It also doesn’t give much of a possibility for a love life, nor does her overbearing stepfather, the town’s sheriff. Then along comes an opportunity at a local campground where she thinks her need for a home and job are finally solved . . .

But the campground and its quirky residents have secrets of their own: the upper level is full of paranormals. And when some horrifying murders hit the campground—along with a potential boyfriend from her past who may be involved—Alisa starts to wonder if living in a campground of paranormals will end up in her own death.

Join New York Times and internationally best[selling author Carrie Jones in the first book of the Alisa Thea Series as it combines the excitement of a thriller with the first-hand immediacy and quirky heroines that Jones is known for.

It’s fun. It’s weird. It’s kind of like Charlaine Harris, but a little bit more achy and weird.

The Places We Hide by Carrie Jones (That’s me. If you click the image, it will bring you to the Amazon page!) The third book in Rosie and Seamus’s story of adventure, mystery, and death is here!

I hope you’ll support me, have a good read, and check it out!

romantic suspense set in Bar Harbor Maine Sometimes the treasure is not worth the hunt . . . .

When a little boy goes missing on a large Maine island, the community is horrified especially almost-lovers Rosie Jones and Sergeant Seamus Kelley. The duo’s dealt with two gruesome serial killers during their short time together and are finally ready to focus on their romance despite their past history of murders and torment.

Things seem like they’ve gone terribly wrong. Again. Rosie wakes up in the middle of the woods. Is she sleepwalking or is something more sinister going on?

What at first seems like a fun treasure hunt soon turns into something much more terrifying . . . and they learn that things are not yet safe on their island or in their world. If they want to keep more people from going missing, Rosie and Seamus have to crack the puzzle before it’s too late.

To buy it, click here, and let me know! I might send you something!

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Did you know that scientists classified women’s rear-end shapes? Or that people think that butt-shape is linked to character?
Yes. I know! This is terribly important information. So important that the Black Eyed Peas have sung songs about bottoms.

***What you gon’ do with all that junk?
All that junk inside that trunk?
I’ma get, get, get, get, you drunk,
Get you love drunk off my hump.
What you gon’ do with all that ass?
All that ass insigh’ jer jeans?
I’m a make, make, make, make you scream
Make you scream, make you scream.
Cos’ of my hump, my hump, my hump, my hump.
My hump, my hump, my hump, my lovely lady lumps.

— “My Humps” by the Black Eyed Peas***

Anyway, scientists have split us female bottom owners (not male bottom owners, of course) into four basic categories:

Round
Square
Upside down heart
Heart

Sigh. So it looks like I need to get a booty-pump.

And also, people are also saying that your bottom shape tells something about your personality. And I say, “Um…. no.”

A lot of mentors tell authors to just get their butt in the chair and write, which is sort of simplistic and sort of true, but also not how all creative people work.

Some of us (me) don’t need that mantra because I have a big guilt complex about not working when I’m SO lucky to be a writer, but also because I (cough) actually look forward to writing.

But not all writers are me. And those who aren’t? Yelling “PUT YOUR BUTT IN THE CHAIR” like some sort of drill sergeant really doesn’t help.

As author and blogger Gail Gauthier said,

The expression butt-in-chair has come to mean, I think, a strategy that involves simply soldiering on. It’s often seen as a method of working for those who are strong enough that they can just put their shoulder to the grindstone and push. When I see it used, it is often accompanied by a certain amount of judgement addressed toward those who don’t have the natural discipline to simply plow through a project.

Author and teacher J. Robert Lennon wrote just this past April that what he termed “the ass-in-the-chair canard” “…is in fact an insult to almost everyone who has ever struggled with the creative process, and as a teaching tool is liable to do more harm than good. It embraces several dangerous lies: that writer’s block is the result, first and foremost, of laziness; that writing (indeed, any creative pursuit) is like any other form of labor; and that how hard you work on something is directly correlated with how good it is.” As he also says, being able to sit down and work relatively easily without struggle isn’t a moral victory making one writer superior to another. It is simply a method of working.

Gail Gauthier

Telling people they are lazy because they are blocked or not producing really is kind of uncool. Life is more than butts, isn’t it? To be the best authors we can be, we have to be students of nature and people, of interactions, of life and emotions so that we can replicate that on the page.

If your butt is always in the chair, you can’t always do that.

Plus, you run the risk of dead butt syndrome, and nobody wants that.

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Print

Mushroom Burgers of BUTT IN CHAIRRecipe by CarrieCourse: DinnerCuisine: vegetarianDifficulty: MediumServings4

servingsPrep time5

minutesCooking time25

minutesTotal time30

minutesStuff That Goes In It 2 cups finely chopped fresh mushrooms * 2 large eggs, lightly beaten * 1/2 cup dry bread crumbs * 1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese * 1/2 cup finely chopped onion * 1/4 cup all-purpose flour * 1/2 teaspoon salt * 1/4 teaspoon dried thyme * 1/4 teaspoon pepper * 1 tablespoon canola oil * 4 hamburger buns, split * Optional: Sliced tomatoes and mayonnaise and lettuce and raw onion and cool condiments like crispy chili How to Make It Stand up. Shake your fist at all those writing mentors who say, “To write you have to put your butt in the chair.”

Ha! Like it’s that easy?

Writing isn’t just about sitting!

It’s also about nourishment, nourishing the muse, and also your stomach, damn it.

Let’s make burgers! Where we don’t kill any animals. * Find a really large bowl. You can’t do that in front of your computer, can you? Well, you can, but you can’t put the first 9 ingredients into that bowl. * Combine all those ingredients. Think about how nice it is to be out of a chair. * The whole “butt in chair” thing comes from Mary Heaton Vorse who told author Sinclair Lewis, “The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair.” * Feel a little angry at her even though she is dead and was probably cool and stuff. But you can stand and write, too. Or flop down. It isn’t all about the chair, Mary! * Take some calming breaths and shape the stuff in the bowl into four 3/4-in.-thick patties.

Google Mary. Realize she was a novelist and social activist. Feel guilty about thinking ill of her.

She also wrote creepy things. * Find a big and heavy skillet.

Use those writer wrist muscles to lift the skillet onto the burner.

Put oil in.

Turn the burner onto medium.

Wonder if you can earn money blogging on Medium.

Decide no.

Bet Mary made a lot of money.

Add burgers; cook about 3-4 minutes on each side; they should be a nice light brown color. * Put the burgers on buns and add the stuff you want to add.

Find Mary’s “Sinister Romance” story online. Read it.

Eat standing up and toast Mary.

Notes * This recipe is adapted from Taste of Home

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On Thursday, my co-podcaster, Shaun, and husband guy, takes over the blog.

He’s adorable. I hope you’ll read what he says even if he does occasionally sound like a surfer dude from the 1990s or Captain Pontification. And no, we don’t always agree. And lots of times his jokes get me all embarrassed.

I am having a really hard time with this blog today. I feel badly because Carrie can’t post it until I have written it and I hate being the last thing she does at night.

Unless it’s in the bedroom!

Hopefully you laughed at that, because right now, as you read this, even if it’s three days later, I am still getting berated for sullying her good reputation. And deservedly so!

Sometimes I can’t help myself. I say things that are funny! Okay, they are funny to me. I tend to think, in comedic terms, as if I am a very popular (and wealthy) stand-up comedian. Yet, after all of these years, I still forget that most successful stand-up comics who make jokes about loved ones probably run these jokes by said loved ones.

That will be my new excuse when I get in trouble for making a joke that involves Carrie. “I was just trying out a new joke for my stand-up routine, baby.”

I will give you a perfect example. The other night, we were talking about how we both still wanted to go on an extended backpacking trip. Part of the Appalachian Trail or five nights out in the woods anywhere, for example.

I looked at Carrie with longing in my eyes and she said, “Of course you will have to carry most of the weight for our supplies.”

And this is a true statement. I am bigger and stronger than Carrie by nature and sheer physical size. However, Carrie also has chronically pained shoulders and bad knees. As in, both knees. As in she has to wear knee braces when running or hiking.

So, I know that if we ever go on a hiking trip where we spend the night or multiple nights in the woods, camping, I will indeed be carrying most of the weight. This does not bother me one iota! In fact, it makes me feel good and proud. All of those manly things that make us macho, caretaking, personality types feel good about ourselves.

And I looked Carrie in the eye, very lovingly, and I said, “If you were a pack mule, we would have to put you down.”

She laughed! She laughed so hard that she was holding her stomach and rolling on the couch. Then she got a gleam in her eye, an evil gleam!

She looked at me. “I am going to post that.”

“Okay, just make sure you give some back story.”

No, response from Carrie who was busy typing away on her phone.

We had a good rest of the night and I got up the next morning and I go on Facebook so I can share Carrie’s posts and I see this:

Shaun just told me that if I was a donkey I would be put down. I honestly don’t know how we are still married. Edited to add: Oh! I know how! Because I am patient and forgiving like a good pack animal. Lol

I am a lucky man! I love my wife more than anything! I do and I just want to say that love is about forgiveness and understanding!

I don’t know who had more forgiveness and understanding in my story, but it doesn’t matter, without, nothing works well!

Remember that and remember to always LOVE YOUR WAY THROUGH IT!

Now, go make somebody laugh,

Shaun

The Places We Hide by Carrie Jones (That’s me. If you click the image, it will bring you to the Amazon page!) The third book in Rosie and Seamus’s story of adventure, mystery, and death is here!

I hope you’ll support me, have a good read, and check it out!

romantic suspense set in Bar Harbor Maine Sometimes the treasure is not worth the hunt . . . .

When a little boy goes missing on a large Maine island, the community is horrified especially almost-lovers Rosie Jones and Sergeant Seamus Kelley. The duo’s dealt with two gruesome serial killers during their short time together and are finally ready to focus on their romance despite their past history of murders and torment.

Things seem like they’ve gone terribly wrong. Again. Rosie wakes up in the middle of the woods. Is she sleepwalking or is something more sinister going on?

What at first seems like a fun treasure hunt soon turns into something much more terrifying . . . and they learn that things are not yet safe on their island or in their world. If they want to keep more people from going missing, Rosie and Seamus have to crack the puzzle before it’s too late.

To buy it, click here, and let me know! I might send you something!

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One day when we were doing press for the anti-bullying anthology, DEAR BULLY, something that I never imagined would happen, happened.

No, I did not suddenly learn how to fly.

This is Super Girl. She can fly, and rock a cape.

No, Grover did not propose.

Some day I will, Cawwie.

Instead, I was in a real photo shoot with a real make-up artist and real stylist and real photo shoot coordinator and real photographer with assistant.

For Glamour Magazine.

Yes, seriously. Glamour Magazine.

And I wore make-up. And it was cold, but I still managed to not fall down or turn into an ice cube.

It was for the Dear Bully anthology that Megan Kelley Hall and I are doing with Harper Collins, so I couldn’t cop out because it’s for a good cause.

Laurie Faria Stolarz had a submission with “Dear Bully” as its title. Isn’t that a good title? She is a genius. And also very nice. So we used it for the whole book.

And so anyway, I was totally out of my comfort zone and the whole time that I was panicking and thinking, “Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. I have to wear make-up. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. People are going to see my picture. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. I have to wear clothes that do not belong to me.”

Really, it’s true. You wear clothes that are not yours at these things. So, I was kind of thinking I’d get to wear something glammy because it is GLAMOUR MAGAZINE, but since they did the shoot in Maine, it was basically …. um…. LL Bean.

Yep. I was in Glamour wearing Maine anti-glam clothes.

Someday, I swear, I’ll be glammy. Really. I will. It’s on my bucket list.

I am on a cow. That is on the bucket list of me, Grover, and I manage to do it fabulously and glamorously, don’t I?

Yes, I know Grover. You do.

But the point here is that if YOU EVER have to do a photo shoot with Glamour, do NOT be scared because the people are so awesome and nice and kind and patient. It’s amazing. I fell in love with all of them. They were just that cool.

The Places We Hide by Carrie Jones (That’s me. If you click the image, it will bring you to the Amazon page!) The third book in Rosie and Seamus’s story of adventure, mystery, and death is here!

I hope you’ll support me, have a good read, and check it out!

romantic suspense set in Bar Harbor Maine Sometimes the treasure is not worth the hunt . . . .

When a little boy goes missing on a large Maine island, the community is horrified especially almost-lovers Rosie Jones and Sergeant Seamus Kelley. The duo’s dealt with two gruesome serial killers during their short time together and are finally ready to focus on their romance despite their past history of murders and torment.

Things seem like they’ve gone terribly wrong. Again. Rosie wakes up in the middle of the woods. Is she sleepwalking or is something more sinister going on?

What at first seems like a fun treasure hunt soon turns into something much more terrifying . . . and they learn that things are not yet safe on their island or in their world. If they want to keep more people from going missing, Rosie and Seamus have to crack the puzzle before it’s too late.

To buy it, click here, and let me know! I might send you something!

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Okay. So, one of my favorite things to do is see fan trailers or castings of the NEED books. It makes me ridiculously happy – like in a dance around the kitchen sort of way.

And people always cast super awesome Zara and super awesome Nick and super awesome Grandma Betty, but nobody ever EVER ever casts Zara’s dad.

Spoiler Alert: Zara has a biological dad. Yes, most people do.

Anyway, when I was writing NEED and CAPTIVATE, I liked to imagine things. I didn’t usually have any actors in mind for any of the characters. That’s just not the way my muse rolls.

Yes, I am Grover and I am Carrie’s muse and internal cheerleader. Can you think of a better one? I am an inspiration even when on the potty.

Sorry for that!

Anyway except for this one character, I totally had someone in mind, and hopefully he will never see this and think I am some sort of weird-novelist-fangirl, because that would be horrifying for me – and possibly for him.

Maybe he would be honored, Cawwie.

I doubt it, Grover. He was the inspiration for an evil pixie.

I was the inspiration for the hottie Nick, was I not?

Um, well…. no Grover. Sorry.

Grover in cosplay

The inspiration for the hottie Astley? It must be me. Look at how dashing I am in the trench coat and the cape. Not many can pull off the look, you know.

Um. No. Grover! I am so sorry. Grover! Please do not pout! Anyway, here he is…. Jared Leto… who is how I imagine the pixie king.

And now that I’m about to release another super cool haunted campground paranormal called ALMOST DEAD, I’m doing it again and one of the characters, Luc, is absolutely inspired by this actor who coincidentally was on Lucifer, The Temptations, and Buffy.

Yep. I’m talking David Bryan Woodside. Of awesome.

Spoiler: I gave him tattoos.

Second spoiler: He is not entirely human or at least–not entirely a normal human.

Here’s a blurb about the book. Be ready to resurrect your love of the paranormal in the first novel in the Alisa Thea series—the books that give new meaning to quirky paranormal.

Alisa Thea is barely scraping by as a landscaper in small-town Bar Harbor. She can’t touch people with her bare skin without seeing their deaths and passing out, which limits her job and friendship opportunities. It also doesn’t give much of a possibility for a love life, nor does her overbearing stepfather, the town’s sheriff. Then along comes an opportunity at a local campground where she thinks her need for a home and job are finally solved . . .

But the campground and its quirky residents have secrets of their own: the upper level is full of paranormals. And when some horrifying murders hit the campground—along with a potential boyfriend from her past who may be involved—Alisa starts to wonder if living in a campground of paranormals will end up in her own death.

It’s set to release November 1 and I hope you’ll check it out!

Carrie Jones Books: Recent Episodes

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