People are trying to ban my book

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:

  1. I still have to work on clients’ stories
  2. The world is ridiculous
  3. I have a work ethic/neurosis that every month makes me constantly worried that I won’t earn enough money to support my family

That’s not what this post is about, but it’s probably something you can relate to because not all of you think you can relate to banned books. But you probably can.

Think of your favorite tv show, book, video, TikToker, YouTuber, podcast, movie:

  • Are they straight? Cis-gendered? Only have cis-gendered friends?  
  • Are they all white (the European descended kind of white)?
  • Never swear?
  • Never deal with sexual situations, kissing, allude to sex?
  • Not know what Marxism is?

If they don’t, then those people’s creative products are considered ‘inappropriate’ and have ‘no education value,’ by this book-banning parents.

I can’t speak to every book on that list. I do know about my book, my first book published, which won a ton of awards given out because it’s a pretty awesome book.

Back when it was released in 2007 some bookstores (not the big ones) didn’t want to stock it because it had the word ‘gay’ in the title. Amazing, right?

Apparently, we’re back in 2007 again.

This book was inspired because I couldn’t wrap my head around a local hate crime that happened in a high school. I tried to write my way through that. It’s not my most popular book, but it’s my most stolen-from-libraries book. There’s a reason for that. A lot of girls (at the time I wrote it) where feeling alone as they tried to navigate their way through a break-up with their boyfriends who had either come out during or after their relationships. My book helped not only them but also their ex-boyfriends create discourse, to feel less alone.

That’s what books do: they make us feel less alone.

And they also teach us through the safe distance of pages what it’s like to live through situations and lives and settings and conflicts that we might not live through ourselves. They build empathy, make us think. Sometimes they make us cry. Sometimes they make such big emotions and thoughts that people who are frightened want to burn them.

My book also features a main character who has epilepsy, but epilepsy isn’t the theme, the driving force, or defining trait of my character. It didn’t give her superhero powers or make her suddenly embarrassed. It was just something that was part of her. And that is why this book, my first published book, will always be important to me. I wanted to push beyond the epilepsy and disability tropes in fiction even as another kids book full of epilepsy tropes won one of children’s fiction’s highest honors within the next couple of years.

Obviously, there’s still a lot of work to do on a lot of levels.

Here’s the thing:

Books are easy to ban and burn because books are brave. They put thoughts and views and images of our culture, stories of our peoples, out in print—unable to be truly retracted, mistakes and all, grit and all, pain and all.

You can’t erase pain from our kids’ lives, but you can erase books from them.

You can’t erase experiences and thoughts from our kids’ lives, but you can pretend to by banning books.

But what you can do is push your beliefs down upon an entire generation so that they don’t have the intellectual or emotional room to build up their own.

That’s a bit of a lie though.

Kids are resilient. They are strong. They are thinkers. And they will scavenge out the stories that they need to hear, to be exposed to, to cling to. The thing is that we should trust them enough that they don’t have to scavenge. We should trust them enough to give them the stories that they need.

And banning books? Yanking them out of school libraries? That’s the kind of crap that means that we don’t trust our own parenting and our own kids’ brains to make their own choices, to ask us questions if they find books are inappropriate, to be able to talk through differences and examine thoughts and life and what it is to be human rather than just laying down edicts about what is appropriate and what isn’t for entire school districts, instead of just our own kids.

And that’s pretty sad.

Maybe if we all spent a little less time crusading against each other, we could spend a little more time teaching our kids that we are safe people for them to talk to if a book offends them or makes them question how things are done or confuses them. Maybe if we spent a little less time focusing on our own fears, we can all start lifting each other—and students—up together.

The link to the list is here. Yes, I know I’m in good company. I’m always in good company on these lists. The other authors are in good company, too.

NEW BOOK ALERT! WHEN YOU BRING THEM BACK IS OUT!

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 her services to raise the dead so that she can someday raise enough money to get out of her dead-end Maine island and away from her dead-head mom and her assortment of criminal friends.

But when she’s out raising Colonial Buck, Silas, the sexy golden boy of her high school tries to save her and is killed by a demon contained to cemeteries and who is collecting souls for his return to the world of the living. Distraught, Snow mourns Silas only to find him reanimated and trying to figure out how he could possibly be . . . dead?

A family curse.

An angry ex-girlfriend.

And Snow’s increasing desire for Silas complicates finding Silas his answers and stopping the demon.

If they can’t stop the demon from killing more people, it won’t be just their hearts that are broken, but the barrier between the living and the dead . . . forever.


If you love YA fantasy, good necromancers, and ill-fated, opposites-attract romance, get ready for an action-packed love story that will make you keep your lights on.

You can buy it here. And I hope you will.

ALMOST DEAD SERIES

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.

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.

What not to say to the hot guy in Customs and new series? What’s this?

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:

1. Business
2. Leisure
3. 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
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!

great new mystery
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!

That Time I Got to Be in Glamour Magazine, But Still Failed to Be Glamourous.

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
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!

great new mystery
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!

Do You Cast Characters In Your Books When You Write Them?

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!

Dear Bully, Ten Years Later

So, Megan Kelley Hall and I released DEAR BULLY, the anthology of authors telling their stories of being bullied, or standing by, or being bullies ten years ago last month. We were co-editors.

My involvement in the project was mostly inspired by two girls. One was a five-year-old, Jazmin Lovings who was relentlessly tormented by some other kids in her Brooklyn, NY kindergarten class. The kids even cut her hair without her permission.

Her story absolutely broke me. And I know (and knew) that I didn’t have enough power to change the world, but I had to at least try to do something, some small part.

Megan and a lot of the other contributors (and me) were also incensed and motivated by the story of Phoebe Prince, a young woman who had been bullied by schoolmates and who committed suicide.

We did a lot of interviews, but this one on NPR is lovely because it talks to a lot of us about being bullied AND being a bully and the lasting impact.

And I am still so proud of all the authors in there. 

HEY YOU! AUTHORS! I AM PROUD OF YOU!

For a lot of those authors, it was a big act of bravery to tell their stories. For a lot of them, it was a big act of bravery just to survive. For some of them, the bullying was so destructive it made them want to be invisible, to want to not exist.

And there are resonating truths in every one of their stories. Those truths are that pain is real, that actions and words can shatter us, that it’s hard to remember how awesome you are when people are telling you that you aren’t. 

Just in case you want a definition (and because I get all excited about sources), Bullying is defined by the American Psychological Association as:

Bullying is a form of aggressive behavior in which someone intentionally and repeatedly causes another person injury or discomfort. Bullying can take the form of physical contact, words or more subtle actions.

The bullied individual typically has trouble defending him or herself and does nothing to “cause” the bullying.

Though all the authors’ stories in DEAR BULLY involve bullying (stunning!) there are differences in the stories too.

Some authors hurt more and more often. Some used the experience to advocate for good. Some couldn’t recover.

For every one of us in there, the story is our own, and it is different. But one of the biggest, and greatest truths in those stories is that each and every one of us survived. We all lived to tell our stories.

And if you are reading this right now, you have lived too. You have to keep on living and fighting and trying to remember that you are awesome. 

People hating you doesn’t change that you have worth.


People being violent towards you, doesn’t mean you don’t deserve respect, and tolerance and love.


People ignoring you on purpose, doesn’t mean that you don’t deserve to exist.

BULLYING ON MEDIUM?

It’s a decade later and there is still bullying everywhere. Obviously on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook and YouTube and TikTok, but it’s also even on writing platforms like Medium. On Medium editors of publications often rail against new writers and their lack of professional grammar skills.

Here’s the thing: Your expertise doesn’t give you the right to pull other people down, to rail against them, to crush their dreams.

We all do a lot better as humans and as a society when we applaud each other for trying and working and evolving.

I’m not sure why people don’t get that.

Here’s Robert’s story about what’s happened to him over there.

Robert was lucky because he was massively supported by other writers, but sometimes? Sometimes even when other people support you against your bullies, the angry, mean voices are the ones that continue to take up space in your head.

James Rodemeyer 

Right when Dear Bully came out. James Rodemeyer couldn’t take it any more. He was in a IT GETS BETTER PSA. He was 14, tormented with anti-gay taunts like this: 

“JAMIE IS STUPID, GAY, FAT AND UGLY,” it said in one post. “HE MUST DIE!”

And before he died, after a year of constant cyberbullying, he wrote on his blog in 2011, “I always say how bullied I am, but no one listens. What do I have to do so people will listen to me?”

We have to tell our stories, but we also have to be strong enough and empathetic enough to listen to other people’s stories.

And we have to stop hating. We have to stop thinking it is okay to post anonymous hate. We have to stop thinking that kindness doesn’t matter. Kindness matters. So much.

The world lost Jamie. It’s lost so many beautiful people. But it hasn’t lost Robert; it hasn’t lost those 70 authors in Dear Bully; it hasn’t lost me and it hasn’t lost you.

To read more about Jamey and the Cyberbully Census launched after his death and inspired by him, check out here and here.

What Can You Do?

You can think about whether or not you might be bullying people?

Do you tease a family member mercilessly even when they ask you to stop and say it’s just joking? Do you help people when they are being bullied? Do you know what you should do to help?

There are some great resources here and here and here. I hope you’ll check them out.

BE A PART OF OUR MISSION!

Hey! We’re all about inspiring each other to be weird, to be ourselves and to be brave and we’re starting to collect stories about each other’s bravery. Those brave moments can be HUGE or small, but we want you to share them with us so we can share them with the world. You can be anonymous if you aren’t brave enough to use your name. It’s totally chill.

Want to be part of the team? Send us a quick (or long) email and we’ll read it here and on our YouTube channel.

LET’S HANG OUT!

HEY! DO YOU WANT TO SPEND MORE TIME TOGETHER?

MAYBE TAKE A COURSE, CHILL ON SOCIAL MEDIA, BUY ART OR A BOOK, OR LISTEN TO OUR PODCAST?

Email us at carriejonesbooks@gmail.com


HELP US AND DO AN AWESOME GOOD DEED

Thanks to all of you who keep listening to our weirdness on the DOGS ARE SMARTER THAN PEOPLE podcast and our new LOVING THE STRANGE podcast.

We’re sorry we laugh so much… sort of. 


Please share it and subscribe if you can. Please rate and like us if you are feeling kind, because it matters somehow. There’s a new episode every Tuesday!

Thanks so much for being one of the 263,000 downloads if you’ve given us a listen!

One of our newest LOVING THE STRANGE podcasts is about the strange and adorably weird things people say?

And one of our newest DOGS ARE SMARTER THAN PEOPLE episode is about fear setting and how being swallowed by a whale is bad ass.


And Carrie has new books out! Yay!

You can order now! It’s an adult mystery/thriller that takes place in Bar Harbor, Maine. Read an excerpt here!

best thrillers The People Who Kill
The people who kill

It’s my book! It came out June 1! Boo-yah! Another one comes out July 1.

And that one is called  THOSE WHO SURVIVED, which is the first book in the the DUDE GOODFEATHER series.  I hope you’ll read it, like it, and buy it!

The Dude Goodfeather Series - YA mystery by NYT bestseller Carrie Jones
The Dude Goodfeather Series – YA mystery by NYT bestseller Carrie Jones

TO TELL US YOUR BRAVE STORY JUST EMAIL BELOW.

I’ve got a new book baby because Seamus and Rosie are back!

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.

So yeah . . .

I have a new book coming out in the beginning of October! It’s the fourth book in the Bar Harbor Rose series and . . . well . . .

Rosie has been getting in trouble again.

And I’m super excited about it and hope you’ll check it out!

Here’s what people are saying about the series

THE PLACES WE HIDE combines the best of two worlds: Carrie Jones and suspense. The characters are fun, the storyline is interesting and it kept me engaged til the end. It’s rare that I don’t guess who did it, so I appreciate that wasn’t the case here. Highly recommended. – moi

Thoroughly enjoyed this mystery with plenty of twists and a strong sense of atmosphere. Would love to read another mystery starring Rosie! – 417writer

This is a great tale of suspense set in Downeast Maine. It’s full of great characters that you’ll wish you had as your own friends – mix in the excitement and nervousness of new love and perhaps a killer on the loose and it makes for a super read! – Laurie E. Flood

I’d intended to draw reading “Places We Hide” out because Carrie Jones is always a fantastic read, but sadly, I could not put this one down. Well-written, engrossing story line, and the characters are immediately relatable. Carrie Jones has a talent for really drawing you into her universe and by the end of the book, you can’t help but care about her characters even after the story is over. I’m hoping we’ll get to hear more about Rosie, Seamus, and the rest of their crew in the future. – countessdekay

You can order/preorder here.

And here’s an excerpt! I hope you’ll check it out!

As with all my work, this novel’s story and characters are fictitious. Certain long-standing institutions, towns, states, species, agencies, and public offices are mentioned, but the characters involved are wholly imaginary.

Chapter One

A bonding experience, Seamus calls it, the fun of going on a treasure hunt created from a small book that you can download off the internet.

            The whole island has been buzzing about it honestly: the possibility of finding a tiny treasure going off eight pages of pdf-clues that legitimately make absolutely no sense. Illogical rhymes, random words, and a couple of drawings on one page with arrows connecting different parts of images.

            Seamus, Lilly, and I are scouring the foundation of the old Dorr mansion up in Cromwell Cove, also known as Compass Harbor. People around here seem to use the words and labels interchangeably, so I’m not sure what is the proper proper noun for this little peninsula run by Acadia National Park where there are trails and an ancient foundation and floor of one of the old summer mansions of one of the park’s founders.

            George Dorr has another title, Father of Acadia National Park, and he’s one of the reasons the park actually exists.

            As I stick my hand into a hole in the brick foundation of his home, I wonder if I would have another title if I was famous and if it would be Reporter Who Attracts Danger.

            “Mommy! Find any treasure?” Lilly yells over. She’s covered in dirt. Mud has soaked through her leggings. She wipes her fingers on her face and scampers over to me, holding out her hand. “I found the most perfect stone ever!”

            “Wow.” I stand up from my squat and admire the tiny pebble in her palm. “Look at how smooth it is.”

            “I think it’s a beach stone.” She turns from me and yells to giant man we love. “Seamus! Is this a beach stone?”

            Seamus strides over. There’s no dirt on him anywhere somehow. His dark gray fleece is immaculate. His jeans don’t even have a wayward pine needle stuck to the denim.

            When I think about the bad men of my past—and the bad women—I always wonder if there was some sort of hint or clue that I initially missed about them, a warning or inkling that should have tipped me off that they were capable of massive evil and hurt. Do I gloss over the signs?

            Seamus is good, I remind myself. People can be good.

            “It’s a beautiful stone. It’s lucky.” Seamus taps Lilly on the end of her nose with his giant finger and she giggles. “Just like you.” He redirects his gaze to me. “My two beautiful, lucky ladies. Actually, no–I’m the lucky one.”

            “Yeah, you’re messing up your compliment, silly.” Lilly arches one of her eyebrows, a new trick that she’s mastered and doing constantly. She wipes her messy hand across her cheek, smudging even more dirt on her skin and in her other hand she keeps the stone. Her palm is flat and the stone stays in the center, almost like an offering to the sky or the trees or the world.

            “You can keep it,” I whisper.

            “That’s breaking rules! You can’t take anything from the park.” Lilly’s eyebrow falls down.

            “Yes,” I say, “but this is a special stone. A fairy stone. They brought it here for you as a gift.”

            An eyebrow raises, but her voice quivers and suddenly she’s so young again, a girl without all the evil in her life, no killers, no bad dads, no broken moms, just her and her goodness. “Really?”

            “Really.” Seamus closes her fingers around her fist. “I promise I won’t arrest you. The fairies wouldn’t take too kindly to that.” He pauses and winks at me over Lilly’s head. “Your mom wouldn’t take too kindly to that either.”

            I snag Lilly in a big hug, “Nope. Nope. No arresting my baby girl, Sergeant.”

            “Never.” He winks. “Unless she does something horribly illegal like snagging the last samosa and not sharing.”

            “What? Me never.”

            “You just did it with a corndog.”
            “You ate five of them!”

            “I’m a big man. It takes a lot of corndogs to fuel me.”

            I let go of both of them. “Wait. You fed her corndogs?”

            Seamus pivots Lilly around so her back is to him and she’s facing me. She’s smiling in a huge way that takes up her whole adorable face. His hands stay on her shoulders.

“She fed them to me,” he says. “Tell her, Lilly. How you insisted. How you told me that you’d never let me marry your mom if I did not give you the scrumptious, decadent sausage on a stick.”

“Breaded and fried,” Lilly adds. “So bad for us.”

“A fine, gourmet highlight of American cuisine,” Seamus adds. He gives her a fake false shake and continues in a ridiculously over-the-top imploring tone, “Tell her, please! Admit to this treacherous act of gluttony.”

Lilly does a thumb point backwards. “Totally him.”

“I am betrayed!” Seamus says reeling backwards dramatically, arms flailing and plopping on one of the different brick walls that made up the foundation of the estate. “All is lost!”

“You are such a dork,” Lilly says, hands on her hips as she stares at him. She turns back to me. “Mommy, you are marrying a dork.”

“I know,” I tell her, reaching a hand out to Seamus to help him up. It’s my good arm. The one that hasn’t been shot and doesn’t ever ache or remind me of bad things. “That means your bonus dad is going to be a dork too.”

She does the eyebrow wave and spirals off. “I’m going to go check this wall over here!”

Seamus pulls me down to his level on the mossy brick floor. For a few moments we just sit there, happy beneath the sunrays coming through the canopy of oak and ash leaves. I try not to think about ticks and spiders and about how we’ll have to change clothes when we get back home and inspect each other for ticks, try not to think about how too many corndogs could hurt Seamus’s cholesterol levels and heart health. I think the rule is something like every hotdog you eat takes thirty-five minutes off your life expectancy. How much would corndogs take?

“You’re worrying again, aren’t you?” he asks as he tucks me into his side.

I lean my head against the front of his shoulder. “Maybe.”

“About what?”

“Unseen threats. Mainly ticks and cholesterol.”

He pulls away a bit. “You aren’t going to lose us, honey.”

“But I’ve come so close to—”

“And we’re still here.”

“True.” I let his words comfort me for a minute and we yell back when Lilly yells about things like how she’s totally going to find the treasure or says ‘ick’ really loudly. It’s all lovely and calm and it does—it feels safe.

After a minute and out of nowhere, Seamus starts talking about George Dorr again.

“The thing people don’t know is that Dorr died without any personal fortune left and nearly blind,” he tells me. “He spent almost all his money making sure that this park was preserved. He kept buying more and more land, adding it to the park.”

            “That’s sort of sad,” I say.

            “I think he was okay with it. He got his wish. He made an entire park, preserved all this land.” He pauses. His hand strokes the top of my arm and the good kind of goosebumps rush through me. “Do you know that he swam in the water every single day of the year to prove to Congress that it was not too cold in Maine to have a national park?”

            “I did! Lilly wrote a paper on that!”

            “A paper?”

            “It was more of a project,” I admit. “Because you know—grade school.”

            He laughs. “Well, did you know that he didn’t really swim every day? Instead, sometimes in winter, he just dipped in his toe. So he just told them ‘I go in the water every single day of the year.’”

            “That’s sneaky!”

            “So sneaky,” he admits. “But that’s part of what life is, right? Reality is manipulated. We believe what we want to believe.”

He takes a moment and grabs my hand in his. This is when I know Seamus is being all serious. It usually terrifies me. But I swallow down anything I want to say and try not to imagine worst case scenarios like his divorce didn’t actually go through, he’s fallen in love with the gross firefighter who always talks about being naked; he’s leaving me; he has a terminal disease; he’s decided I’m not worth it.

            There are so many possibilities . . . horrible possibilities.

            “Baby?” His voice is a strong whisper. “What are you thinking?”

            “Nothing. What were you going to say?”

            “You’re a horrible liar.”

            “I know.”

            He smiles. “It’s a good trait.”

            “Harrumph.” My harrumph sounds like my long-dead nana, all frustrated and annoyed even though I’m not. I’m just feeling too studied, too known.

            And then to make it even worse he says, “I know you’re having nightmares. I know you’re still scared.”

            “I’m working through it.”

            “You don’t have to expect the worst all the time, Rosie. You can depend on people. Michelle, me, Gunner, Hannah, Summer. We have your back, you know?” He pauses. “You can quit your job at the paper. I know you hate it.”

            “I like it.”

            “You’re lying again.”

            “I kind of like it?” I offer. “I like learning new things and meeting new people. I just don’t like taking pictures of accidents and stuff. And I don’t like that people think I’m biased because of you and because I dispatched.”

            “People will always think things. You can’t care about that. You just have to be you.” He pulls me into a hug even though I’m dirty and he’s not very pro-dirt. “That’s not what I wanted to say. I just want to say that Gunner thinks you might need to get a little help with the nightmares.”

            “Therapy.” I sigh. “I’ve gone to therapy.”

            “Medication?”

            “I am fully functional!” I object, pulling away, but managing to resist the urge to stomp off. “My brain is just working through things.”

            “I’d lift an eyebrow at you if I was capable.”

            I grab onto his belt loop and pull myself back towards him, trying to be sexy. “I think you’re capable of a lot of things, Sgt. Kelley.”

            He kisses the top of my head and murmurs, “Just you wait and see.”

Want to read more? Just want to support a random author? Here’s the link to the ebook and you’ll be able to order paperback and hard cover too.

Things I’m Up To – Books and Poems and Podcasts and Interviews, Oh My?

I realized that I tend to never give update blogs — or at least I don’t in the way that marketers would want me to.

This is because I’m bad at talking about myself and my work.

But that changes for a hot second right now, my friends, and this is what I’m up to.

Feeling short is the #1 thing I’m up to
Still feeling short (but in a TARDIS).

WRITING BOOKS

I still have some books that will be coming out this fall/winter. And that’s a frantic/frenetic frenzy (look at that alliteration) of work.

What books?

Well, thanks for asking! Just kidding. I’m only pretending you’re asking.

October

THE THINGS WE SEEK

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.

November

ALMOST DEAD

This is an adult paranormal about a young woman who sees people’s deaths

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.

December

WHEN YOU BRING THEM BACK

This is a YA paranormal about a secret necromancer dealing with a family

Some secrets should stay buried.

Self-trained necromancer Snow secretly sells her services to raise the dead so that she can someday raise enough money to get out of her dead-end Maine island and away from her dead-head mom and her assortment of criminal friends.

But when she’s out raising Colonial Buck, Silas, the sexy golden boy of her high school tries to save her and is killed by a demon contained to cemeteries and who is collecting souls for his return to the world of the living. Distraught, Snow mourns Silas only to find him reanimated and trying to figure out how he could possibly be . . . dead?

A family curse.

An angry ex-girlfriend.

And Snow’s increasing desire for Silas complicates finding Silas his answers and stopping the demon.

If they can’t stop the demon from killing more people, it won’t be just their hearts that are broken, but the barrier between the living and the dead . . . forever.

January

THE PEOPLE WHO LEAVE

Jessica “Dude” Goodfeather’s mother walked off and left her and her kind stoner dad when she was just a little girl, but after a mysterious email leads to some serious questions, Dude and her friends realize that her mother might not have willingly abandoned them after all.

The third book in Carrie Jones’s exciting Maine mystery series forces Dude to grapple with the ghosts of her family’s past so that she can finally head towards a hopefully brighter future.

POEMS

My writing life started off as a poet. Yes! I know! Weird, right?

But poetry is what I first published and poems are where I express my anger and wonder and where I witness this world and try to find little, resonating truths.

So for August I started what I call a “fun project” with no expectations and started posting poems on Medium every day. It turned out to be terrifying and so much fun.

Getting poems back in my life earned me a whopping $5 on Medium, lol, but it gave me new friends and a new focus and outlet that I’ve missed so much.

If you want to go check them out, please do. I’m right (or write) here!

PODCASTS

And talking about MEDIUM, one of my new friends there is Martin Vidal and he’s going to be starting off our returning bonus podcast interviews for DOGS ARE SMARTER THAN PEOPLE this week! I’m so excited to introduce him and his marvelous mind and writing to you.

Martin’s going to be kicking off a series of new and established writers (of a bunch of genres) interviews. I hope you’ll check them out and give the authors some love.

Publishing a Book a Month is Fun, I Swear

Earlier this year, I decided to do this big experiment where I independently publish one book a month for the rest of the year and everyone thought:

  1. I was depressed or something.
  2. I was going to kill my career in traditional publishing.
  3. I was going to burn out doing that on top of podcasting, editing, coaching, and just humaning.

This is going to sound weird, but it’s really hard to only publish one book a month.

Why is that?

It’s kind of addictive being in charge of your own work and having deadlines and getting it out there.

This is especially true because I’m really excited about these books and I’m especially excited about THE DUDE/JESSICA GOODFEATHER SERIES and the BAR HARBOR ROSE series and I’m working on the third and fourth books in each of those right now. And it’s so fun! And scary. And it’s getting sexier.

I also have a couple of ideas for a crime procedural and a romance brewing, but those are big steps for me. So, I’m focusing on these book babies right this second.

I just want to let everyone know that INCHWORMS (The Dude Series Book 2) is out and having a good time as Dude competes for a full scholarship at a prestigious Southern college and getting into a bit of trouble.

Here’s what it’s about:

A fascinating must-read suspense from New York Times bestseller Carrie Jones.

A new chance visiting a small Southern college.
A potential love interest for a broken girl obsessed with psychology.
A damaged group of co-eds.
A drowning that’s no accident.
A threat that seems to have no end.

And just like that Jessica Goodfeather aka Dude’s trip away from her claustrophobic life in Maine to try to get an amazing scholarship to her dream school has suddenly turned deadly. Again.

So What Is My Point?

My point is that it can be fun to take risks and do what you want to when it comes to creating. And it’s okay to do that. Once you start worrying about what people might think or that they might judge you, you start holding yourself back. Don’t hold yourselves back, okay? You’ve got this.

THE UPCOMING BOOKS

September – INCH WORMS! Second in the DUDE SERIES!

October – THE TREASURES WE HIDEThird in the Bar Harbor Rose Series.

November – ALMOST DEAD, an adult paranormal set in a Maine campground. It’s so much fun. So quirky.

December – When You Bring Them Back, YA paranormal – This title might change. 🙂

January The People Who Leave. Third in the Dude Series!

BE A PART OF OUR MISSION!

Hey! We’re all about inspiring each other to be weird, to be ourselves and to be brave and we’re starting to collect stories about each other’s bravery. Those brave moments can be HUGE or small, but we want you to share them with us so we can share them with the world. You can be anonymous if you aren’t brave enough to use your name. It’s totally chill.

Want to be part of the team? Send us a quick (or long) email and we’ll read it here and on our YouTube channel.

LET’S HANG OUT!

HEY! DO YOU WANT TO SPEND MORE TIME TOGETHER?

MAYBE TAKE A COURSE, CHILL ON SOCIAL MEDIA, BUY ART OR A BOOK, OR LISTEN TO OUR PODCAST?

Email us at carriejonesbooks@gmail.com


HELP US AND DO AN AWESOME GOOD DEED

Thanks to all of you who keep listening to our weirdness on the DOGS ARE SMARTER THAN PEOPLE podcast and our new LOVING THE STRANGE podcast.

We’re sorry we laugh so much… sort of. 


Please share it and subscribe if you can. Please rate and like us if you are feeling kind, because it matters somehow. There’s a new episode every Tuesday!

Thanks so much for being one of the 263,000 downloads if you’ve given us a listen!

One of our newest LOVING THE STRANGE podcasts is about the strange and adorably weird things people say?

And one of our newest DOGS ARE SMARTER THAN PEOPLE episode is about fear setting and how being swallowed by a whale is bad ass.


And Carrie has new books out! Yay!

You can order now! It’s an adult mystery/thriller that takes place in Bar Harbor, Maine. Read an excerpt here!

best thrillers The People Who Kill
The people who kill

It’s my book! It came out June 1! Boo-yah! Another one comes out July 1.

And that one is called  THOSE WHO SURVIVED, which is the first book in the the DUDE GOODFEATHER series.  I hope you’ll read it, like it, and buy it!

The Dude Goodfeather Series - YA mystery by NYT bestseller Carrie Jones
The Dude Goodfeather Series – YA mystery by NYT bestseller Carrie Jones

TO TELL US YOUR BRAVE STORY JUST EMAIL BELOW.

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