Internationally Bestselling Quirky Children's Books; Adventurous Heroes Doing Good
Hey! Another podcast is up and in honor of Halloween, it’s about writing scary stories. We tell a couple of our own and we talk about the man currently standing outside the house staring at a tree.
Seriously.
He is absolutely still and just… staring.
Here’s the link to the podcast. I hope you’ll check it out.
And here’s the link to the words that go with the podcast.
Canadian Geese
By F.M.B.
Oct.2, ‘91
In the dim light of twilight you suddenly appear.
In swift and silent formation,
Determined in your flight to reach your destination,
Oh! Tell me who directs this urge
Never failing in direction?
Where are you now wondrous birds?
You break my heart headed for the land I love.
I shall remember you always
Indelibly imprinted in my brain.
Your silent flight guided by your leader.
When I was born, my mother was 35 and my father was 42, and he was the youngest child, too. 42 plus 18 equals 60, so my dad was 60 when I was 18. My Grammy Barnard? She was 33 when she had my dad. She was 75 when I was born, if that puts it into perspective. That’s like the age where when you die people say things like, “Well, she had a good, long life.”
She lasted in this world a lot longer than that.
My grandfather Barnard was 82 when I was born and died six years later. He was grim, austere, and full of edicts and judgements. He once ran for office as a communist. He’d been a stockbroker before that. He was not a kind man according to my mom.
He had a stroke in the bathtub and drowned, but my mom liked to pretend like Grammy Barnard finally had enough of his bullshit and held him under the water. She told this version only to me. She also would say, “You are so lucky to not know that man. He had a copy of Mein Kaumpf in the basement and when I called him on it, he said that it was good literature. Evil bastard.”
“Hitler or Grampa Barnard,” I usually asked.
“Both,” she usually said.
The point here is that I’d never known Grammy Barnard young.
The other point is that I’d never known Grammy Barnard not pining for youth.
The other point is that I’d never known her not stressed about death.
She would cry over the beauty of a tomato. She would cry over the pains in other people’s hearts.
Grammy Barnard Poem #2
March 11, 1927
A Wish
Love, she goes hand in hand with spring,
To thoughts of this girl then you will cling,
Go dear, and to her tell,
Of the desire you have in her heart to dwell,
Tell her while sweet spring is here,
Tell her while she still is near,
Tell her of moonlight, tell her of flowers,
Tell her of love, and its wondrous powers.
When she died she was 104. I was 30.
When the terrifying ex-communist, ex-stock broker, also known as Grampa Barnard died, my parents were already divorced. Everyone decided that my dad couldn’t handle living by himself very well. He was prone to melancholy, according to Grammy Barnard. My mom liked to say he was depressed. My dad would just say he “gets sad.”
He went to a therapist to talk about the divorce and how it made him sad and how his dad’s expectations also sometimes made him sad. He only made it to second grade. He could barely read. He was smart, but he was dyslexic before people really talked about dyslexia.
He was a sweet man. He forgave people anything. He forgave people everything. He was like a little hobbit who watched a lot of PBS and news shows. He would ask you insightful probing questions that would hit right to your soul. He could create tools for car engines. He could make a tree grow fast and strong in ways that honestly don’t seem human.
Anyways, Grammy Barnard had lived with my dad since I was six or seven and she had always been old to me. When I went over to their little ranch house, she always took my face in her hands and said things like, “Ah, look at your skin. It’s so beautiful. The beautiful skin of youth.”
This was awkward.
She was about four feet eight inches tall and had a hump in her back. She wore silk blouses and liked pickled herring. I’m not sure why these facts seem important but they are somehow important.
She was tiny.
She also wrote poems and made paintings and had no faith in either.
My dad liked to announce, “My mother is a poet. She is an artistic person. She cries at the beauty of a tomato.”
She’d roll her eyes and say, “Lew.”
And he’d say, “You are, Ma.”
And she’d say, “My art and poems are rubbish.”
“They are not.”
“They are!” She put her hands over her face almost always, hiding from the kindness. “I despair of them. I can’t come close to recreating the beauty of this world.”
Grammy Barnard Poem #3
Truth, May 19, 1927
They say how we think so we are
And I from my guess room not afar,
From the truth of the feelings you have for me
My sensing heart does well know when yours is on a spree
Delicate instrument ticking like the clock,
Accurate recorder of each emotions shock.
Timid quaking little hart,
This man who tore your life apart.
And then she died. At 104. I was 30.
I eventually took the money she left me and used it to help pay for me to Vermont College of Fine Arts to get a Masters in Writing for Children and Young Adults.
When I got to Vermont I heard all about the ghosts in the college. The stories didn’t bother me. I’d heard about ghosts before. But one night, during the first residency after Lisa Jahn Clough convinced me to not quit. I’d been feeling despondent because all the other students were so much more knowledgable that I was about everything.
I came from the world of poetry and newspapers. Sports writing. Columns. Play reviews. Stories about planning boards. Deadlines. Quick turn-arounds. Hard facts.
And here I was surrounded by people who were splurting out phrases like “objective correlative” and “emotional resonance” and “desire through lines.”
I was sure I didn’t belong, especially after one student berated my lack of confidence as an insult to all women everywhere. That didn’t help my confidence, by the way. Tearing people down for not being confident enough, usually isn’t the best policy for building them up.
Anyway, Lisa convinced me to stay. But when I looked out the window an hour or so after our talk, I saw in front of me, my grandfather, angry looking, wearing his austere clothes, blood coming out of his ear.
I was on the second floor and my grandfather was dead, long dead, and he stared at me with the most hateful eyes.
And then, I heard the voice of my grandmother behind me, loud and strong, “You are not rubbish.”
I whirled around. She wasn’t there. I turned back around towards the window and there was no creepy old grandfather full of judgement. He was gone.
It’s out! You can order my middle grade fantasy novel Time Stoppers Escape From the Badlands here or anywhere.
People call it a cross between Harry Potter and Percy Jackson but it’s set in Maine. It’s full of adventure, quirkiness and heart.
The Spy Who Played Baseball is a picture book biography about Moe Berg. And… there’s a movie out now about Moe Berg, a major league baseball player who became a spy. How cool is that?
It’s awesome and quirky and fun.
Thanks to all of you who keep listening to our weirdness as we talk about random thoughts, writing advice and life tips. 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!
I offer solo writing coach services. For more about my individual coaching, click here.
And finally, for the month of July, my book NEEDis on sale in ebook version on Amazon. It’s a cheap way to have an awesome read in a book that’s basically about human-sized pixies trying to start an apocalypse.
I am super psyched to be teaching the six-month long Write. Submit. Support. class at the Writing Barn!
Are you looking for a group to support you in your writing process and help set achievable goals? Are you looking for the feedback and connections that could potentially lead you to that book deal you’ve been working towards?
Our Write. Submit. Support. (WSS) six-month ONLINE course offers structure and support not only to your writing lives and the manuscripts at hand, but also to the roller coaster ride of submissions: whether that be submitting to agents or, if agented, weathering the submissions to editors.
Past Write. Submit. Support. students have gone on to receive representation from literary agents across the country. View one of our most recent success stories here.
In honor of Halloween, I’m telling some ghost stories this week.
Ghosts I have seen:
Weirdness that has happened at past seances:
I might go into detail later, or maybe not.
It’s weird how other people will try to tell your stories for you, how there are so many interpretations of truth. Like I remember talking to my mom about when I found the pot pipe in my stepsister Lori’s bedroom. I don’t remember much about it other than it was super pretty and I was playing with it. My mom, freaked out. But according to my brother I ran out of Lori’s bedroom with the pipe and a bag of weed.
I was six.
“You were such a narc,” he said. “You were always such a narc.”
I don’t remember any of that except my mom gasping when I held the pipe and said it was pretty and her telling me it was dirty and to give it to her.
My mother likes to tell this story about when I was one year old and had just had an eye operation. When I was born, my eyes didn’t track on objects at all so they thought I was blind. Then they realized I saw – but I just saw blurs and maybe color. So, they operated on my eyes, and afterwards put patches on them so for a month or so, when I was a year old, I was in complete darkness.
My mom marveled because I would kind of toddle around the house on the same paths I always took. I’d crawl behind the couch, stand up at the end, walk to the picture window, press my cheek against the cold glass and stand there. I would talk to people who weren’t there. I would shake people’s hands. There was nobody there to shake with.
“Spirits,” my Aunt Rosie would whisper. “She talks to spirits.”
When I was born, I came out with the caul around my head and body, the umbilical cord tightening around my neck. Caul in Latin is caput galeatum, which means ‘helmeted head,’ and it’s basically when a piece of membrane sticks to your head. People have been superstitious about it forever. It happens like one in every 80,000 births for a piece of the membrane to stick, but it’s even rarer to be born inside the amniotic sac, which is what I did. They call this born in a veil.
Spoiler: I’m not sure who ‘they’ are.
Aunt Rosie was my dad’s sister and she’s Portuguese so according to my mom she believed a lot of weird shit. I’m not sure what the correlation is other than maybe my mom being bigoted about Catholics maybe?
In the world of science, cauls usually happen to babies who are born early. According to my mom, I was over a month late.
Aunt Rosie insisted this made me see things, ghosts, futures, pasts. She brought me to a psychic who agreed but said I would never use my gift. He insisted I’d be a writer and a real estate agent… He was half-right, I guess.
Throughout history, caul bearers were persecuted because they were expected to be leaders and special.
Honestly, that sounds right even if caul bearers weren’t special, there was a panic that they might be. And for some people in power? Panic is enough to warrant death. A suspicion of losing their own power is enough to warrant crushing everyone else. Current leaders never want new leaders to arrive and suplant them. It’s way better to kill them off when they’re young before they can get powerful, before they can fight back. Humanity. Got to love us.
I’ll have ghost stories all week. I hope you have fun with them!
It’s out! You can order my middle grade fantasy novel Time Stoppers Escape From the Badlands here or anywhere.
People call it a cross between Harry Potter and Percy Jackson but it’s set in Maine. It’s full of adventure, quirkiness and heart.
The Spy Who Played Baseball is a picture book biography about Moe Berg. And… there’s a movie out now about Moe Berg, a major league baseball player who became a spy. How cool is that?
It’s awesome and quirky and fun.
Thanks to all of you who keep listening to our weirdness as we talk about random thoughts, writing advice and life tips. 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!
I offer solo writing coach services. For more about my individual coaching, click here.
And finally, for the month of July, my book NEEDis on sale in ebook version on Amazon. It’s a cheap way to have an awesome read in a book that’s basically about human-sized pixies trying to start an apocalypse.
I am super psyched to be teaching the six-month long Write. Submit. Support. class at the Writing Barn!
Are you looking for a group to support you in your writing process and help set achievable goals? Are you looking for the feedback and connections that could potentially lead you to that book deal you’ve been working towards?
Our Write. Submit. Support. (WSS) six-month ONLINE course offers structure and support not only to your writing lives and the manuscripts at hand, but also to the roller coaster ride of submissions: whether that be submitting to agents or, if agented, weathering the submissions to editors.
Past Write. Submit. Support. students have gone on to receive representation from literary agents across the country. View one of our most recent success stories here.
So, my mom was a really big proponent of eating meat with every single meal.
She didn’t like fresh vegetables except for corn on the cob and cucumbers. To be fair, she only like cucumbers when they were thinly sliced and put on a massive caravan of mayonnaise and smooshed in between two slices of white bread.
Wait.
I liked
She was also fine with tomatoes and lettuce (ice berg) on hamburgers.
That was pretty much it.
So, when I had Emily (my kiddo) and I was reverting to my vegetarian ways, my mother FREAKED OUT and would legit drive 2.5 hours to visit us just to cook roasts.
My favorite cookbook was Horn of the Moon, which was a vegetarian cookbook written by Ginny Callan who owned Horn of the Moon restaurant. I didn’t see the cookbooks until after the restaurant closed or I totally would have tromped to Vermont and sobbed, hugging this woman, who I sort of thought as my vegetarian food savior.
Anyway, one afternoon my mom called and asked me what I was cooking.
“Creamy Green Bean Soup,” I said.
And she said, “Sweet Mother of God, Carrie. What is wrong with you? You don’t do that to green beans. Are you trying to die?”
So…. Yeah…
Here’s the recipe adapted from Horn of the Moon.
Adapted from Horn of the Moon
The calorie estimate is probably high.
Curse out your mother for harshing on your soup as you boil 5 cups of water in a big pot.
Add cut green beans to water once the water boils.
Return the water to boil, cover.
Lower the heat to simmer and let it simmer for 30 minutes.
Write a poem about your mother.
Realize that whenever you were little and drew your mother would declare, "Nobody in this family are artists. Not one of us has a lick of artistic ability."
Realize you would rather be an artist that a writer.
Let this sink in.
While you are despondent over the course of your life as a writer not an artist, melt 2 tablespoons of butter in a bit pan.
Once butter is melted, saute the onions and herbs until those onions are a light brown.
Realize you should be drawing this right now instead of writing about it.
Once the onions are done, add the contents of the pan to the green beans and water. Turn the heat off of the green beans and water.
Let everything sit a bit because it's super hot - much like your temper right now.
Puree about 3/4th of that green bean mix.
Use a blender.
Put the pureed mix back into the soup pot.
Throw in bay leaves.
Bay leaves would be fun to draw, wouldn't they?
Wonder if your whole life is a lie and you should have been an artist instead of a writer.
Write a poem about it.
Melt the rest of the butter in that pan you'd been using before.
Add flour to melted butter. Use low heat.
Stir it until it gets a light brown color.
Find cream. Whisk that into the butter and flour.
Add one ladle of soup to it.
Do this two more times then pour all of that back into the soup.
Add salt. Add pepper. Add milk. Add hot sauce. Taste it. Adjust it to what you want it to be.
Wish you could adjust your parents' beliefs about art and family proclivities the way you can adjust soup taste.
Simmer on low heat.
Simmer for 15 minutes.
Use this time to sign up for art class.
As you know, these weekly recipes are my attempt to getting the family to eat more food without meat. And I always put down their verdicts.
Man Verdict: You know what would make this perfect? Ham.
My Verdict: Have you been communicating with my mom in the spirit world?
Dogs’ Verdict: Ham or bacon. Either would be okay. You could drop some on the floor, you know. That would be nice.
It’s out! You can order my middle grade fantasy novel Time Stoppers Escape From the Badlands here or anywhere.
People call it a cross between Harry Potter and Percy Jackson but it’s set in Maine. It’s full of adventure, quirkiness and heart.
The Spy Who Played Baseball is a picture book biography about Moe Berg. And… there’s a movie out now about Moe Berg, a major league baseball player who became a spy. How cool is that?
It’s awesome and quirky and fun.
Thanks to all of you who keep listening to our weirdness as we talk about random thoughts, writing advice and life tips. 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!
I offer solo writing coach services. For more about my individual coaching, click here.
And finally, for the month of July, my book NEEDis on sale in ebook version on Amazon. It’s a cheap way to have an awesome read in a book that’s basically about human-sized pixies trying to start an apocalypse.
I am super psyched to be teaching the six-month long Write. Submit. Support. class at the Writing Barn!
Are you looking for a group to support you in your writing process and help set achievable goals? Are you looking for the feedback and connections that could potentially lead you to that book deal you’ve been working towards?
Our Write. Submit. Support. (WSS) six-month ONLINE course offers structure and support not only to your writing lives and the manuscripts at hand, but also to the roller coaster ride of submissions: whether that be submitting to agents or, if agented, weathering the submissions to editors.
Past Write. Submit. Support. students have gone on to receive representation from literary agents across the country. View one of our most recent success stories here.
A lot of us writers who dabble or write full-out fantasy or science fiction deal with these little devils. But what does it mean to be immortal? And what does it take to write them?
It’s while it’s being lived that life is immortal, while it’s still alive. Immortality is not a matter of more or less time, it’s not really a question of immortality but of something else that remains unknown. It’s as untrue to say it’s without beginning or end as to say it begins and ends with the life of the spirit, since it partakes both of the spirit and of the pursuit of the void.
If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead, either write things worth reading or do things worth writing.
Us, writers, are pretty obsessed with immortality and mortality, not just as a conceit for our own lives, but also in our work. But immortality is a messy beast in writing.
Why?
Immortality lowers the stakes. In our culture, we tend to think of death as the worst possible outcome. It’s the big evil that we often use to justify our own evil deeds. We usually try to avoid it at all costs and it makes the stakes in our writing really high (and therefore the reader really interested) if we put one of our character’s life at risk.
It’s hard to get the reader worried about a character that is immortal.
There are some interesting thoughts on how to deal with immortal characters in fiction here and here and especially here where CLEVER GIRL HELPS breaks down types and degrees of immortality.
Once you’ve read those hints, let’s talk about the big question, which is:
So, if immortality is so difficult to write, why do we keep writing immortal characters?
In an interview with Salon’s Sophie Roell, author Stephen Cave says of our obsession with immortality,
It’s a human universal. Among all of the animals, we probably uniquely are aware that we’re going to die. We try to avoid the worst, to keep going one way or another, yet we must live in the knowledge that it is futile – that ultimately, the worst thing that can possibly happen will happen. That all our projects and all our dreams — everything we’re striving for — one day it will all be over. And this is terrifying. So we are very keen to hear any story that can allay this fear and say death isn’t what it seems, and we can just keep on going indefinitely.
Longing for immortality and grappling with our mortality is pretty close to a human universal. It’s something all writers (who are humans) can relate to and therefore are compelled to write about.
So, we do.
And we try to do it well, but it’s hard. When the highest stake of death (of the immortal) isn’t possible, what is the second highest stake you can put in place of that?
It’s up to you and your character to decide. Decide well! It’s a cool thing to think about for you, your life, and your story. What is the highest stake in your own life? If you say death, what’s the second highest? Sometimes it’s good to put our own brains through the same questions that we launch on our characters.
It’s out! You can order my middle grade fantasy novel Time Stoppers Escape From the Badlands here or anywhere.
People call it a cross between Harry Potter and Percy Jackson but it’s set in Maine. It’s full of adventure, quirkiness and heart.
The Spy Who Played Baseball is a picture book biography about Moe Berg. And… there’s a movie out now about Moe Berg, a major league baseball player who became a spy. How cool is that?
It’s awesome and quirky and fun.
Thanks to all of you who keep listening to our weirdness as we talk about random thoughts, writing advice and life tips. 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!
I offer solo writing coach services. For more about my individual coaching, click here.
And finally, for the month of July, my book NEEDis on sale in ebook version on Amazon. It’s a cheap way to have an awesome read in a book that’s basically about human-sized pixies trying to start an apocalypse.
I am super psyched to be teaching the six-month long Write. Submit. Support. class at the Writing Barn!
Are you looking for a group to support you in your writing process and help set achievable goals? Are you looking for the feedback and connections that could potentially lead you to that book deal you’ve been working towards?
Our Write. Submit. Support. (WSS) six-month ONLINE course offers structure and support not only to your writing lives and the manuscripts at hand, but also to the roller coaster ride of submissions: whether that be submitting to agents or, if agented, weathering the submissions to editors.
Past Write. Submit. Support. students have gone on to receive representation from literary agents across the country. View one of our most recent success stories here.
This past weekend was sort of scary.
Why was it scary? Carrie’s worst case scenario of presenting happened. She was scheduled to give a four-hour seminar on public image, but when she arrived the place wasn’t unlocked, there was no water, but worse- there was no A/V. It was not pretty.
And then…
We went to a party, a SNL-themed party, and because our friends are good at peer pressure and we were dressed as Spartan cheerleaders, we stunted and Carrie had to jump on Shaun’s back in a short skirt (with modesty shorts!) and she was so nervous that she actually got sweaty.
So, it turns out that Carrie was totally afraid to do a cheering stunt.
Carrie:This is because I am old and have broken knees.
And Shaun had to face his fear by actually performing the cheer.
Writing (like living) can be full of fear.
Over on The Write Practice, Jeff Elkinstells of “Three Tricks to Overcome Your Fear of Writing.”
How does he deal with the fear?
And he also has this awesome idea for desensitizing yourself from fear, which is our …..
Take fifteen minutesto write something that scares you. Maybe it’s a scene you’ve been avoiding in your work in progress, maybe it’s a story you’ve been nervous to start, or maybe it’s a letter you’re scared to write. As you work, if fear raises its head, try one of the techniques above to work through it. – Jeff Elkins
Dogs have all kinds of fears just like people do. When dogs have fears, we use treats to encourage them for brave behavior, we don’t force them out of their safe places, and we don’t shove their fear in their face and shout “GET OVER IT, BUDDY.”
Because that’s not cool.
We deserve to give ourselves the same respect. Reward yourself for being brave, don’t insist on pushing yourself into your fear too hard and too fast.
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 “Night Owl” by Broke For Free.
It’s out! You can order my middle grade fantasy novel Time Stoppers Escape From the Badlands here or anywhere.
People call it a cross between Harry Potter and Percy Jackson but it’s set in Maine. It’s full of adventure, quirkiness and heart.
The Spy Who Played Baseball is a picture book biography about Moe Berg. And… there’s a movie out now about Moe Berg, a major league baseball player who became a spy. How cool is that?
It’s awesome and quirky and fun.
Thanks to all of you who keep listening to our weirdness as we talk about random thoughts, writing advice and life tips. 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!
I offer solo writing coach services. For more about my individual coaching, click here.
And finally, for the month of July, my book NEEDis on sale in ebook version on Amazon. It’s a cheap way to have an awesome read in a book that’s basically about human-sized pixies trying to start an apocalypse.
I am super psyched to be teaching the six-month long Write. Submit. Support. class at the Writing Barn!
Are you looking for a group to support you in your writing process and help set achievable goals? Are you looking for the feedback and connections that could potentially lead you to that book deal you’ve been working towards?
Our Write. Submit. Support. (WSS) six-month ONLINE course offers structure and support not only to your writing lives and the manuscripts at hand, but also to the roller coaster ride of submissions: whether that be submitting to agents or, if agented, weathering the submissions to editors.
PastWrite. Submit. Support. students have gone on to receive representation from literary agents across the country. View one of our most recent success stories here.
Where I live, my friends are weird and tourists visit. A lot. They fly or drive and ramble through our national park hitting the TOP TEN DESTINATIONS OF ACADIA NATIONAL PARK and when we meet them at our comedy club or at a restaurant, they’ll brag about seeing the sunrise on Cadillac Mountain, about having pop-overs at Jordan Pond, about driving the Park Loop Road and seeing Thunder Hole.
Don’t get me wrong. All of that is awesome.
But what mostly happens, is that the tourists almost always say, “I love it here. I think we’ve seen everything, right?”
And I never know if I should tell them the truth, that ‘No, you haven’t seen everything. You’ve seen the tourist things at one brief moment in time. You haven’t seen winter. You haven’t seen our bed races or our cantankerous town meetings. You haven’t seen volunteers spend a day giving out water to marathon runners with no goal other than to help. You haven’t seen the volunteer firefighters get up at 2 a.m. to put out a fire or respond to a car accident and then witnessed them stand in sub zero weathers for hours to keep a road closed. You haven’t seen a talent show at the grammar school. You haven’t seen a fist fight on Main Street after bar close.”
Okay. Maybe they’ve seen that.
Where I live people tell stories of bad parking jobs, winters where there were no snow, winters where there were 500 feet of snow, about times when a girl was crushed by a boulder that she and her friend had been jumping on and somehow dislodged. The friend survived because her petticoats got caught in a tree. She dangled all night before rescue came.
People here tell stories of jumping off docks, parties in fishing shacks with cheap beer they stole from convenience stores. These stories? They are lullabies and mantras, ways that they rock themselves to solace because the past is over and the future can sometimes be scary, but story – stories – you can craft and shape and collect.
People here tell stories and create them every winter, clustering together in small groups and large, fortifying themselves with bonfires and wood stacking, community theater and random nights out at the few restaurants that stay open all year. Sometimes, I think we might actually worship those few restaurants for being there and supporting a community where the numbers dwindle every year.
And there are places and movements to remember and try to retain the stories of people who were here before this town was called Eden. Part of the Abbe Museum’s mission is to remind us that “Maine is a Wabanaki place.”
And people here complain. They complain about a lack of housing, about a dock, about taxes, about politicians. They make petitions and protest and worry. And it’s all good, because it means they care enough to complain, to protest, to make a petition.
The tourists don’t get to see that. And I am sad for them. But I’m also sad for me – for all the places that I visit and don’t get to really see and experience because I won’t get to spend even a year there, because I might not venture off a well-beaten tourist path and really breathe in a place. Because I won’t get to see the beloved stories of a town or a city or a country and hear what makes a place real. And because some of those stories of the past, of other cultures before, aren’t sung out as loudly as other stories.
What makes a place real isn’t buying a t-shirt or getting a meal at TripAdvisor’s #1 ranked restaurant. What makes it real is something that moves and breathes and changes. Because what makes it real are its people and how they interact with place and with each other. I feel so lucky whenever I get to get a glimpse of that. I hope you do, too.
It’s out! You can order my middle grade fantasy novel Time Stoppers Escape From the Badlands here or anywhere.
People call it a cross between Harry Potter and Percy Jackson but it’s set in Maine. It’s full of adventure, quirkiness and heart.
The Spy Who Played Baseball is a picture book biography about Moe Berg. And… there’s a movie out now about Moe Berg, a major league baseball player who became a spy. How cool is that?
It’s awesome and quirky and fun.
Thanks to all of you who keep listening to our weirdness as we talk about random thoughts, writing advice and life tips. 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 tomorrow!
I offer solo writing coach services. For more about my individual coaching, click here.
And finally, for the month of July, my book NEED is on sale in ebook version on Amazon. It’s a cheap way to have an awesome read in a book that’s basically about human-sized pixies trying to start an apocalypse.
I am super psyched to be teaching the six-month long Write. Submit. Support. class at the Writing Barn!
Are you looking for a group to support you in your writing process and help set achievable goals? Are you looking for the feedback and connections that could potentially lead you to that book deal you’ve been working towards?
Our Write. Submit. Support. (WSS) six-month ONLINE course offers structure and support not only to your writing lives and the manuscripts at hand, but also to the roller coaster ride of submissions: whether that be submitting to agents or, if agented, weathering the submissions to editors.
Past Write. Submit. Support. students have gone on to receive representation from literary agents across the country. View one of our most recent success stories here.
When I was little I decided to be a vegetarian. This was caused by:
My family was not cool with this decision. My mom would try to sneak meat in the spaghetti sauce. She would moan about me only eating the sides. She would bribe me with stuffing. And she would moan, “THERE ARE NO VEGETARIAN DISHES TO FEED YOU.”
Spoiler alert: My mom was not big on vegetables unless they had cheese on them.
By the time I went to high school, I was basically existing on carbs and apple juice. My boyfriend decided this was terribly wrong and bought my mom a Moosewood Cookbook, which was super sweet of him.
She sighed, flipped through it, read his inscription and said, “There is nothing in here I want to cook!”
But we made her try the tempura vegetables and the cheese bean pot. It did not convert her from her canned-vegetables, meat-eating ways. But I did appreciate that she tried. I’ve been missing her a lot lately and she’s been showing up in my dreams, standing just a few paces ahead of me. There’s always this moment where I recognize the back of her head.
A lot of my friends have recently lost their moms, too. So, I think I’m mostly sharing this recipe out of mom love and mom missing.
This recipe is mostly influenced from the Moosewood book, but is also influenced by The Spruce Eats, which is a cooking blog you should definitely check out because it’s a real cooking blog, unlike this. 🙂
This is taken from a very old copy of the Moosewood Cookbook, mixed a bit with the fantastic The Spruce Eats. And also I totally round-up on the calories. But also, I'm completely guessing on the calories. Shock!
NOTE: If you use thick veggies like sweet potatoes, you might want to pre-steam them, because they take awhile to cook.
SECOND NOTE: You can add a dash of sesame oil in the oil if you want.
THIRD NOTE: Try not to overmix the batter.
Look at your beautiful vegetables. Cry at how cute they are.
Realize the truth: You miss your mom.
She might be alive. She might be dead. But you miss her. Unless she was a totally sucky mom and then you miss the mom that you should have had.
Moms are complicated.
Dads are complicated, too. Obviously. But we're focusing on moms right now. No.
Focus on the vegetables. Think about how you'd like them to look under the tempura batter. Make them into cool pieces. Tiny broccoli floweret trees. Onion slices. Carrot hunks. Cauliflower blossoms. Mushrooms of wholeness if they are little.
They are so pretty. Wish you could show your mom. Take a photo and show Instagram instead.
Make the batter. Think of how flour is messy.
Beat the egg yolks into water. Then when it is smooth add the flour, salt, and sugar. Keep stirring until the batter is all combined but do not stir forever!
Chill that flour for 15 minutes
Heat the oil in a really large pot. Remember how your mom would not let you do this when you were little because she thought you'd burn yourself.
Try not to burn yourself.
If you are me, you burn yourself.
Do not be me.
Dip veggies in the batter (which is no longer in the fridge). Then drop them into the oil, which should be at least 325-degrees Fahrenheit.
Do not burn yourself again. Ban everyone from the kitchen because they will be gasping and telling you not to burn yourself and honest to God that is so distracting that you probably will burn yourself.
Have someone get the first-aid kit.
The veggies are done when they are puffy, brown, and have risen to the surface. Maybe we should call them Resurrection Vegetables? That would be cool, actually. Worry that this is offensive somehow. Decide not to call them that just in case.
Plop the on some paper towels to soak up extra oil.
Eat those babies with rice and a tamara-ginger sauce. Or just clean and sauce free.
Man Verdict: I love these. Thank you for not using tomatoes.
Dog Verdict: YES!
Carrie Verdict: My mom would still hate them.
It’s out! You can order my middle grade fantasy novel Time Stoppers Escape From the Badlands here or anywhere.
People call it a cross between Harry Potter and Percy Jackson but it’s set in Maine. It’s full of adventure, quirkiness and heart.
The Spy Who Played Baseball is a picture book biography about Moe Berg. And… there’s a movie out now about Moe Berg, a major league baseball player who became a spy. How cool is that?
You should totally buy Carrie’s book about Moe. It’s awesome and quirky and fun.
Thanks to all of you who keep listening to our weirdness as we talk about random thoughts, writing advice and life tips. 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.
Carrie offers solo writing coach services. For more about Carrie’s individual coaching, click here.
And finally, for the month of July, my book NEED is on sale in ebook version on Amazon. It’s a cheap way to have an awesome read in a book that’s basically about human-sized pixies trying to start an apocalypse.
I am super psyched to be teaching the six-month long Write. Submit. Support. class at the Writing Barn!
Are you looking for a group to support you in your writing process and help set achievable goals? Are you looking for the feedback and connections that could potentially lead you to that book deal you’ve been working towards?
Our Write. Submit. Support. (WSS) six-month ONLINE course offers structure and support not only to your writing lives and the manuscripts at hand, but also to the roller coaster ride of submissions: whether that be submitting to agents or, if agented, weathering the submissions to editors.
Past Write. Submit. Support. students have gone on to receive representation from literary agents across the country. View one of our most recent success stories here.
Writing is lonely. I get it. And some writers are actually – gasp! – extroverts who want feedback in a group setting with other writers where they can drink coffee or brews or have snacks and dip and discuss how to make their writing better.
That is lovely.
That is not everyone.
And it is okay if it is not you.
I was talking to one of my favorite writers that I’ve mentored last week. And she said, “You don’t have a reader, do you?”
And I was like, “No. I trust no humans.”
She laughed.
This is only partially true. I trust my agent of awesome. I trust my editors. But I’ve had some wicked bad times with critique groups. Here’s why:
Sometimes your group will have an alpha writer. She is the goddess of the group and once she says something? All the other writers will grovel and try to get her to love and mimic everything she says.
If she says, “It needs more emotional resonance during this paragraph where you are describing the city.”
Then, they will say, “Yeah. I’m not feeling this paragraph.”
And they will also say, “Whoa. Yeah. This paragraph has no heart.”
And these will be the same people who told you before group how much they loved the exact same paragraph. I have seen this happen over and over again. I’m not a fan of it.
Not all readers like the same thing. So, I’m not a fan of Fifty Shades of Gray. If I were in that author’s writing group, I’d have TOTALLY screwed up her book if she listened to me.
And that would have impacted our economy and a lot of people’s sex lives.
A lot of critique groups have different genres represented, which is awesome, but a lot of times they skew to the literary genre of adult contemporary. I once witnessed a woman with one literary fiction novel absolutely skewer and make cry another woman who had published multiple romance novels that were bestsellers.
We all have different tastes.
I lost my chill and left that group, which leads me to this…
While writing is communication between the writer and the reader and therefore relies on others, it is also an art. And when you create something, something that you feel strongly about and work really hard over it? Well, sometimes when people criticize it, even constructively, it hurts your soul and if you have no chill? Yeah. Critique groups can suck.
It’s not good to have an assault charge on your record if you write picture books, just saying.
So, unlike beta readers, they can’t really focus on the structure and pace of the story. That makes it really hard to figure out what might be structurally wrong with the story or its pacing or its emotional through lines.
Plus, it’s also really frustrating when the story is super good and you want to know what happens next.
So, unlike the alpha-mentor situation, sometimes a writing group will be made up of a bunch of really crappy writers all trying to help each other, but not really knowing how to, but still being super confident about giving writing advice.
This usually doesn’t end well.
I have been in two different critique groups where someone’s husband has wandered into the room totally naked. And it was just… If you aren’t expecting a naked man in the room when you’re talking about plots and subplots and believable dialogue…? Well, it makes it a little weird. Not in a good way.
My point is that critique groups can sometimes suck and hurt you, and hurt your story. So, if you’re in one and it starts feeling toxic? It’s okay to leave. Writing well is about learning how to hear your voice, the voice of the story, and then crafting that in such a way that others get it too. Yes! Sometimes critique groups can help with that and that is awesome. But don’t be afraid or be hard on yourself if it doesn’t work for you.
You are still awesome.
It’s almost out! You can order my middle grade fantasy novel Time Stoppers Escape From the Badlands here or anywhere.
People call it a cross between Harry Potter and Percy Jackson but it’s set in Maine. It’s full of adventure, quirkiness and heart.
The Spy Who Played Baseball is a picture book biography about Moe Berg. And… there’s a movie out now about Moe Berg, a major league baseball player who became a spy. How cool is that?
You should totally buy Carrie’s book about Moe. It’s awesome and quirky and fun.
Thanks to all of you who keep listening to our weirdness as we talk about random thoughts, writing advice and life tips. 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.
Carrie offers solo writing coach services. For more about Carrie’s individual coaching, click here.
And finally, for the month of July, my book NEED is on sale in ebook version on Amazon. It’s a cheap way to have an awesome read in a book that’s basically about human-sized pixies trying to start an apocalypse.
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A long time ago, our daughter Em was taking karate, which was the only martial art available then in our town.
She was eight years old and tiny.
The instructor was Shaun size – sort of – and bald, super intimidating. He had all the little ones line up and kick rectangular strike pads. Em’s kick was so unexpected and powerful that the adult holding the pad fell over.
Did they tell her, “Good job?”
Nope.
They made her sit down.
“What did I do wrong, Mommy?” Em asked.
“Nothing, buddy. Nothing.”
And a mom next to us whispered, “You were too strong. They don’t know what to do with women who are too strong.”
Em got called back up and got to join the group again. This time the kids were kicking the instructor’s shin. It was Em’s turn. She wound up and executed the kick perfectly. The instructor lurched backwards, held his shin, and told her to sit down.
Again.
Em was smaller than the rest of those kids in there, but she was powerful and they didn’t know what to do with that. They couldn’t even understand it. How could this perfectly behaved, tiny child be so strong?
And sometimes that happens with us throughout our lives and our writing. Our power surprises even us. We’ll wonder where it came from? We’ll wonder what it means. And sometimes other people will not know what to do with it. Those people might be our mentors, or our families, or strangers on the internet.
But here’s the thing.
Don’t let them make you sit down or sit out. If you surprise them with your power? That’s on them. It’s not on you.
Don’t be afraid to dig deep to get your power.
Don’t let the other dogs out-alpha you. Pick your battles. But win. Don’t give away your shot.
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 “Night Owl” by Broke For Free.
NEED is on sale for Kindle sales on Amazon for a mere $1,99 this month. Snatch it up!
ENHANCED, the follow-up to FLYING is here! And the books are out of this world. Please buy them and support a writer.
The last TIME STOPPERS BOOK is out and I love it. You should buy it because it’s empowering and about friendship and bias and magic. Plus, dragons and elves.
If you would like to purchase signed copies of my books, you can do so through the awesome Sherman’s Book Store in Bar Harbor, Maine or the amazing Briar Patch. The books are also available online at places like Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
For signed copies – email barharbor@shermans.com for Sherman’s or email info@briarpatchbooks.com and let them know the titles in which you are interested. There’s sometimes a waiting list, but they are the best option. Plus, you’re supporting an adorable local bookstore run by some really wonderful humans. But here’s the Amazon link, too!
You can buy prints of my art here. Thank you so much for supporting my books and me and each other. I hope you have an amazing day.
A new episode of Dogs are Smarter Than People, the quirky podcast with writing tips, life tips and a random thought comes every Tuesday! Check it out, like and subscribe!
Jessixa Bagley’s artistic career has been a mix of comics, fine art, and illustration. She’s worked with publications such as: The Chicago Reader, The Seattle Weekly, The Stranger, Nickelodeon Magazine, and Highlights.
Carrie Jones is the The New York Times bestseller author of the Need series, Time Stoppers series, Flying series, Girl, Hero, Tips on Having a Gay (ex) Boyfriend, and Love (and other uses for duct tape). She is also the coauthor, with Steve Wedel, of After Obsession and the upcoming In the Woods. She also co-edited Dear Bully. She also writes picture books about unconventional spies. Her books have been published all around the world, been bestsellers in France (thank you, France), and have received numerous awards.
