Tag: authorhusbands

I Wish I Could Explain To My Kid . . .

On Thursday, my co-podcaster, Shaun, and husband guy, takes over the blog.

He’s adorable. I hope you’ll read what he says even if he does occasionally sound like a surfer dude from the 1990s or Captain Pontification. And no, we don’t always agree. 🙂

Do you remember being in middle school?

I do. I remember many variations of middle school because I went to at least three of them in different cities in Florida. The demographics of each one were vastly different and I am quite positive that my middle school experiences played a large role shaping me into the person I am today.

But, overall, all twelve years of my public school experience were not a huge deal for me. I would rather have been doing something other than attending school of course, but wouldn’t most of us?

Carrie: Cough. No. Learning is fun!

So, with that tiny bit of backstory in hand, I pose to you this question.

Which did (or do) you hate more?

Having to get up for school when you were actually the one attending or having to get up for school because you are a responsible parent and you have to get your child prepared for the day and then to school?

I know that question makes me sound like a horrible, selfish and unloving parent, but that is just not true.

It is really the fact that now that I am an adult, some things are so much harder!

I mean, it sucks having to get up and attend school when you are a kid.

It sucks having to get up and attend class when you are a young adult and going to college.

And it really sucks to have to get up and go get an education when you are well into adulthood, already have a college degree (probably a job and possibly kids) and just want a better degree because you actually care enough to try and make your life better.

Why then do we do it?

We do it because we want to live the best life possible and we want our kids to have an even better life than us in the end.

I wish I could explain all of this to my kid. I wish they would accept the fact that while adults don’t necessarily know everything, we damn sure know more about most things in life!

I wish I could explain to my kid that yes, in fact, you are growing up in a totally different world than I did, but that damn sure doesn’t make your fairly cushy life any harder than mine when I was your age!

I wish I could explain to my kid that yes, I do love you and care about you and I damn sure know what’s better for you than the people online!

Some day people! Some day they will appreciate us and most of what we have done for them. That is what we can hope at least. But if they don’t? Well, if they don’t, we were successful because they are better people or have better lives because we did our jobs as loving parents then so be it. We are all still winners!

So, take this convoluted blogpost to be nothing more than a reminder that you are doing a good job. You, parent, are doing what is right and all of your sacrifices, hard work, and lack of sleep is the job you took on when you decided to procreate and you are doing one hell of a good job!

Pat yourself on the back and have some “me” time when that little hellion is sleeping. You deserve it!

Remember, it is easier when You Love Your Way Through It!

Peace,

Shaun

NEW BOOK ALERT!

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.

What would you do to make a difference?

After his best friend Norah was almost abducted, Cole Nicholaus has spent most of his childhood homeschooled, lonely and pining for Norah to move from best friend to girl friend status. When birds follow him around or he levitates the dishes, he thinks nothing of it—until a reporter appears and pushes him into making a choice: stay safe at home or help save a kidnapped kid.

Cole and Norah quickly end up trying to not just save a kid, but an entire town from a curse that has devastating roots and implications for how exactly Cole came to be the saint that he is.

Can Cole stop evil from hurting him and Norah again? And maybe even get together? Only the saints know.

From the New York Times and internationally bestselling author of the NEED series, Saint is a book about dealing with the consequences that make us who we are and being brave enough to admit who we love and what we need.

BUY NOW! 🙂 I made a smiley face there so you don’t feel like I’m too desperate.

The cover. Creepy, right?

You can read an excerpt right here.

Shaun Pretends Like He Knows What I’m Reading

You should never cease learning and refining your craft.

Every Thursday, my main squeeze, Shaun, takes over the blog so I can have a rest and so you can get to know him a little bit better. This is his offering. He’s a bit off about the recent books, but it’s all good. 🙂 He still gets to be my main squeeze.

An adorable Florida man who moved to Maine
An adorable Florida man who moved to Maine

Hey there! It is Thursday blogpost time again and this week I am not experiencing that groggy feeling of last week, so here goes. I believe it to be a fact that most authors also love to read, so today I thought that I would give you a glimpse into what Carrie is currently reading. She is a multi-book at a time kind of reader and mixes business and pleasure into her reading, although, as a writer, she is always learning whenever she reads. I chose the five most recent books that I have seen Carrie reading and here they are.

What Shaun Thinks Carrie Is Reading Right Now

  • SAVE THE CAT! The Last Book On Screenwriting That You’ll Ever Need, by Blake Snyder.
  • SAVE THE CAT! WRITES A NOVEL The Last Book on Novel Writing You’ll Ever Need, by Jessica Brody.
  • PARANORMAL INVESTIGATION The Black Book of Scientific Ghost Hunting and How to Investigate Paranormal Phenomena, by Brian Sterling-Vete and Helen Renee Wuorio.
  • THE DAY SASQUATCH BECAME REAL FOR ME, by Steve Isdahl.
  • TOM BROWN’S Field Guide NATURE OBSERVATION and TRACKING, by Tom Brown Jr. and Brandt Morgan.

Quite the variety isn’t it?

I mean, really there are only two subject matters there, writing and the hunting of real and/or mythical beings, but both of them are very important to Carrie.

The first two books are strictly work related.

Carrie is of the mindset that you should never cease learning and refining your craft. There is always something new to learn, no matter how much of a veteran you are in your field and one of the easiest ways to gather new authoring intelligence is through reading other’s works!

The last three books are more leisurely reading content for Carrie, but believe it or not, they too are work related.

As a matter of point, everything that she reads can be considered to be work related due to the fact that she loves the intricacies of storytelling so very much that she can read for leisure and still look for new methods of writing and increasing reader interest.

Of course, the search for real or mythical beings is of interest to both of us and it also provides fodder for our new, live podcast, Loving the Strange, and as you can see, she has been delving into those topics quite heavily as of late.

I will say it again, reading is one of the most simple and fun ways to improve your knowledge of writing!

Other positive aspects of learning through reading, whether it be fiction or non-fiction, may be the generation of new book ideas or perhaps just an inkling that gets you out of a writing slump or provides you with that one little thing you were wracking your brain for to really make your book pop.

Lastly, reading is just plain great for your brain and has the added benefit of sometimes being wonderfully somniferous. 

I would also like to mention that the books that both Carrie and I have read in the last few years have been both traditionally and self-published with a high number of them being self-published.

As an author, Carrie believes that it is extremely important to support other authors.

This includes those authors who don’t have the benefit of being traditionally published and having all of the advertising attention that often comes with that.

Plus, the world of books gets vastly larger when you include the self-publishing realm and many of them are very good indeed! Carrie has ventured into the self-publishing world lately and has a number of awesome books that are available at her website, carriejonesbooks.blog.

So, make some time for yourself to read, have a great day and remember to always love your way through it.

Shaun

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 podcast ever
loving the strange the podcast about embracing the weird

HEAR MY BOOK BABY (AND MORE) ON PATREON

On one of my Patreon sites I read and print chapters of unpublished YA novels. THE LAST GODS and SAINT and now ALMOST DEAD. This is a monthly membership site (Hear the book chapters – $1/month, read them $3-month, plus goodies!). Sometimes I send people art! Art is fun.

On this, my second site, WRITE BETTER NOW, you can do a one-time purchase of a writing class or get two of my books in eBook form or just support our podcast or the dogs. It’s all part of the WRITING CLASS OF AWESOME.

It’s a super fun place to hang out, learn, read, and see my weirdness in its true form.

And I’m starting up a brand new, adult paranormal set at a Maine campground. You can read the first chapter here.

almost dead book by carrie jones
almost dead book by carrie jones

Shaun Takes Over and Talks About Character

            Hi! I know this is Carrie’s blog and you all look forward so much to hearing from her, but today I have commandeered it and I may do that once in a while because she is such an incredible woman and I don’t want her to be so overworked that her magnificence dulls.

An adorable Florida man who moved to Maine
Look! It’s Shaun!

By the way, this is Carrie’s husband. Actually, it should be Carrie’s Husband because that is the actual title I have come to be known by to a good portion of our friends. My birthname is Shaun though, if you didn’t already know, and I am okay with being Carrie’s Husband, because she is that crazy awesome!

            But I digress. I am not an author by any means and Carrie asked me to talk about something to do with writing, maybe a prompt. Ugh, my brain hurts already! So, I took a few minutes to mull over what I would have a hard time doing if I was trying to write a book (I have tried and many accolades to you writer folks.) and I came up with so many ideas it is embarrassing. But I got stuck on one and that is, character traits and/or development. Heck, maybe these are two totally different subjects to you, but as I said, writing is not my bailiwick.

            I thought, “I have no idea how to give words on a page human traits and make them feel real to people. How would I do that?”

Well, I decided that I would sit down and just think and reminisce about the people in my life who influenced me as a young person and who helped make me who I am today.

            My mother and father divorced when I was two years old and I never saw him again until I was nine years old when he came back into my life bearing my two-year-old half-sister. He and my mother eventually got married again, my mother adopted my half-sister. They had another child, my younger brother, and eventually got divorced again when I was in my early  twenties.

I never really liked my father nor did I mesh with his viewpoints on life, although as we both matured, we grew into a polite relationship of acceptance. In reality I just gave up on arguing with him and trying to make him see anybody’s point of view other than his own. Within this paragraph, there are hundreds of story possibilities, but I am only telling you this so that I can say that I was raised and influenced mainly by my mother and my grandfather. There were times when my mother and I lived on our own, with roommates (friends of my mother’s), and also with my grandparents.

Thinking about my mother, father and grandfather brings back so many memories, both good and bad, and to replicate their personality traits would be relatively easy because even as my memories seem to fade, memories of them are still strong and vibrant. 

           So, to make that supremely realistic character I am going to ask you to not think about those people in your life that are so easily remembered, but go beyond them and dig deeper. Think about someone whom you may have forgotten, someone who may not have been in your life long perhaps, but still left an impression, good or bad. We do need both kinds of characters after all.

Just writing this is causing me to remember people that I have forgotten. People who I didn’t otherwise know, but for a brief, chance meeting, but who still left an indelible mark upon me. Such an experience, possibly long forgotten by you, can help you create a character of difference or help you get out of a rut where you feel your characters are not deep enough or possibly seem to similar. 

            I don’t know if anything that I have written will be useable advice to you, but I can say that I have been thinking about this off and on for about four hours now and I have had a great time. Regardless of whether or not I have helped, I would recommend taking this thought journey! I am not one into yoga or meditation but just sitting quietly and pondering this I have basically run the full gamut of emotions and rejuvenated many memories that had faded from the forefront. Truth be known, my eyes are watery ,but that is just part of the process and sometimes I can be an emotional wimp. If there were no emotions involved, it doesn’t seem like a worthwhile experience whether you are trying to create a better character or you are just reminiscing.

            Carrie and I have spoken about character building, in many ways, on our podcast Dogs Are Smarter Than People and I would invite you to listen if you haven’t yet made that journey. There’s a link below.

            Thank you taking the time to read my ramblings and may you have a happy and safe 2021!

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!

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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