Tag: carriejones

Buckeye Balls of Easy Land

Print Recipe
 Buckeye Ball of Easy Land
Buckeye Balls Of Easy Land
Course dessert
Cuisine american, midwestern, vegetarian
Keyword buckeye
Prep Time 45 minutes
Cook Time 10 minutes
Passive Time 30 minutes
Servings
people
Ingredients
Course dessert
Cuisine american, midwestern, vegetarian
Keyword buckeye
Prep Time 45 minutes
Cook Time 10 minutes
Passive Time 30 minutes
Servings
people
Ingredients
Buckeye Balls Of Easy Land
Instructions
  1. FInd a baking sheet. Line it with wax paper. Think about whether if you were really desperate you could melt crayons and use that. Hope you are never that desperate for wax paper.
  2. Find a bowl. TAKE OFF YOUR BLING! Mix peanuts butter, confectioners' sugar and butter and vanilla WITH YOUR HANDS! Worry that this is way too tactile for you. Think about how clean it is to write fiction compared to this. Vow to never whine about your job again.
  3. Mix that stuff until the dough is smooth-looking like a sleazy man under the dim lights of a hotel bar in a small town in Maine. I don't know where that came from. Worry about your thought process. Does wax paper give off fumes that cause hallucinations or maybe bring up repressed memories? Anyways, shape the dough into little balls. Each should be about 2 teaspoons of dough. Put those balls on the waxed paper and shove it into the refrigerator.
  4. Find the stove. On the stove put water into a pan and make it simmer. Above that simmering pan put a bowl or another pan. In that top pan melt the chocolate with the shortening. Stir it. When it's smooth take it off the stove.
  5. Take the balls out of the fridge. Put toothpicks in the ball. Dip ball into chocolate. Put balls back onto our good friend, wax paper. Do this with every single ball. Put the pan of chocolate balls into the fridge for at least 30 minutes. Rejoice. Try not to think about wax paper shortages, sleazy men in hotel bars, or the fact that your hands are going to forever smell like peanut butter.
Recipe Notes

You can put the toothpicks in the balls before you put them in the fridge or after you take them out.

Don't forget to take the toothpicks out before you give people the buckeyes! 

FULL DISCLOSURE: I am not a baker. I’m more of a cook.

Shaun legitimately just said to me today, “I’ve never seen anyone cook like you. You’re so good.”

And I said, “What about your mom and stuff?

And he paused and said, “Yeah. They were good cooks.”

And I said, “What’s different then?”

And he said, “Well, they follow directions.”

He quickly started laughing because he realized how mean that sounded. So,  we’re still married. 

Anyway. I’m not so good at following directions and baking? Baking usually requires that. So Buckeye Balls are one of my go-to recipes because they are easy.

 I actually took a photo! I know! I know! Shocking! 

Man Verdict: I LOVE THESE.

Dog Verdict: WE LOVE PEANUT BUTTER. NO CHOCOLATE THOUGH.

Me Verdict: These are good, But my hands feel weird. 



WRITING AND OTHER NEWS

ART.

I do art stuff. You can find it and buy a print here. 

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

TIME STOPPERS!

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.

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is Timestoppers3_005-678x1024.jpg
This book looks really large. 

MOE BERG 

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?

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is My-Post-copy-6-300x300.jpg

It’s awesome and quirky and fun.

FLYING AND ENHANCED

Men in Black meet Buffy the Vampire Slayer? You know it. You can buy them here or anywhere.

Flying

OUR PODCAST – DOGS ARE SMARTER THAN PEOPLE

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!

dogs are smarter than people carrie after dark being relentless to get published

WRITING COACH

I offer solo writing coach services. For more about my individual coaching, click here.

WRITING BARN

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.

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is 786d9806-f7ed-494b-83a4-a5c0d4d0ddee-300x300.jpg

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. 

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APPLY NOW!

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People Laugh At Me. All the time. Writing and Structure and MINI Coopers and Big Packages

Sometimes you have to be flexible.

All my adult life I had wanted a MINI Cooper and I totally got one in 2009, which was awesome and amazing. The MINI itself was cute and small and huggable. Yes, my car was huggable. I hugged it a lot. Do not judge.

However, one day at the post office right around this time of year, I realized that there are certain issues that come with buying a MINI Cooper. I got my mail out of my po box and found a yellow slip that said I had a package.

I thought, “YAY PACKAGE!”

Okay, I actually said, “Yay package!” 

And some guy near me murmured, “That’s what she said.” 

Then he laughed and laughed and laughed. 

Moving on.

I was hoping that it was some sort of present for me, because I am like that. I like presents. A lot. Kind of like the kids in CHRISTMAS STORY. I am like that. Out of all the famous fictional characters out there, I am ashamed to admit that I am the most like Ralphie.  

Anyway, I went to the counter and the post office lady who was super nice said, “Oh, Carrie. You have a huge package. Can you come to the side door?”

So I squeed and people laughed and I went to the side door. And there was a package that was as big as me. 

“What is it?” I asked, thinking it was maybe a leg lamp or something. 

“It’s from Amazon,” she said. “Do you think you can carry it?”

And then I said, “Um….”

And then I said it again, “Um…”

And then she said to another nice post office lady who was pretty strapping looking, “Why don’t you bring it to door 4?”


This was the point where I realized:

  •  That it wasn’t a present for me. Inside the package were presents for this family that I heard about on the radio who needed help this winter. So, it was a couple comforters (Transformers and Disney) and dolls and Wow Wee Cubs, and an electric razor.
  •  That it definitely wasn’t a leg lamp.
  •  That it wasn’t food from Harry and David, which nobody sends me anymore. Sadness.
  • That it wasn’t going to be easy fitting it into my MINI.

So, I hopped out of the post office, into my MINI, drove the MINI to the back cargo door. The lady at the door started laughing.

“Oh man…” She grabbed her stomach. “Oh man… How are you going to fit that? Oh man…”

And the thing is… I already had the gear of my daughter Em and her best friend Belle who were both on the swim team crammed in the backseat and I had groceries in the trunk.

“Don’t laugh,” I ordered Laughing Post office Lady. People in the parking lot had now joined her. 

“No,” I begged, “Seriously…”

“It’s so ridiculous. Oh my gosh, honey. Hahahahaha,” she said.

Everyone just kept laughing, which was nice because they were happy, but it wasn’t really helping me out. 

And then I said, “Hey? Does anyone have a knife?”

At this point everyone stopped laughing because you can’t talk about weapons in public, but some wild-eyed, knife-owning man gave me his knife. I did not turn it on the laughers, I swear. Instead, I slit open the box, took out all the contents and crammed them into my back seat, earning semi-respectful glances from the laughers.

Problem Solved. 

This is why if someone wants to send me a leg lamp, it would be much better to send it to my home address.

Tying it all together. 

So that story reminded me of us writers drafting our stories. We think we’ve got it all figured out, that we have all the scenes ready and the plot perfect and then we realize that it doesn’t all fit. That we have to rethink things, jam them around, squish them together in different ways and sometimes dismantle things. 

Dismantling things can be scary, but sometimes it’s the only way to get everything to fit, right? Don’t be afraid to dismantle, to build something stronger. 


WRITING AND OTHER NEWS

ART.

I do art stuff. You can find it and buy a print here. 

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

TIME STOPPERS!

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.

This book looks really large. 

MOE BERG 

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?

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is My-Post-copy-6-300x300.jpg

It’s awesome and quirky and fun.

FLYING AND ENHANCED

Men in Black meet Buffy the Vampire Slayer? You know it. You can buy them here or anywhere.

Flying

OUR PODCAST – DOGS ARE SMARTER THAN PEOPLE

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!

dogs are smarter than people carrie after dark being relentless to get published

WRITING COACH

I offer solo writing coach services. For more about my individual coaching, click here.

WRITING BARN

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.

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is 786d9806-f7ed-494b-83a4-a5c0d4d0ddee-300x300.jpg

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 image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is 5b972961-d571-4514-8b96-9928956614bb-300x169.jpg

APPLY NOW!

A Story Is About More than Mechanics and Grammar. Dogs are Smarter Than People Podcast.

Too often we really focus only on the mechanics of story. Writers and student-writers are told to make perfect sentences, understand the use of the semi-colon, and to spell words correctly.

“Do not turn in a manuscript to an agent or editor unless it’s perfect,” is a pretty big industry standard. 

  • Be perfect.
  • Write perfectly.
  • Have perfect grammar. 
  • Have a perfect plot.
  • Spell everything perfectly.

Here’s the thing: Your story won’t ever be perfect especially if you’re working on it all by yourself. Do the best that you can. Spell all the words. But do not fret about it forever.

So much of our writing life is spent making sure the mechanics of our stories are perfect, that we sometimes forget about the psychological aspects of our stories, the heart. 

It happens to us from the very beginning in grade school. Our teachers focus on the paragraphs, the spelling, the grammar because they’re trying to teach us to effectively communicate with the written word, but they sometimes forget to talk about our imagination, our cleverness, how our stories show our deeper selves and feelings.

How many of us worked super hard on a fourth-grade story that we thought was the most amazing story ever only to receive it with a note like, “Good job with your paragraphs!” Or, “Well done with your spelling!”

Random Thoughts

Our random thoughts this week both focus on imperfection. Shaun says in the first one, “I’m not exciting today.” 

And the second one? Ho boy. Carrie feels super vulnerable about the second one, because it shows her totally tipsy because of her social anxiety and Shaun mixing WAY TOO STRONG a drink. 

The point though, is that much like our podcast, our thoughts aren’t canned or perfect. We are real people, not polished, but pretty awesome anyways. 

SHOUT OUT

The music we’ve clipped and shortened in this podcast is awesome and is made available through the Creative Commons License. Here’s a link to that and the artist’s website. Who is this artist and what is this song?  It’s “Night Owl” by Broke For Free.

Writing Tips:

Don’t forget about the heart of your story, the resonance. Forget about the mechanics for a bit. What is this story actually about? What is its heart?

People like to call it a theme, but that sounds too much like grade school to us. The heart of the story is the big, essential inside part of the story’s hero. Her catalyst. Her life’s question and realization. To find it, ask what your character’s heart wants and needs. To find it, think about the lie about the world (or herself) that your character believes. That’s how you find the heart.

Dog Tips

Dogs don’t care about mechanics of things. They care about the heart of things. Be a dog.

Writing and Other News

Art.

I do art stuff. You can find it and buy a print here. 

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Time Stoppers!

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.

Time Stoppers Carrie Jones Middle grade fantasy

Moe Berg 

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.

FLYING AND ENHANCED

Men in Black meet Buffy the Vampire Slayer? You know it. You can buy them hereor anywhere.

OUR PODCAST – DOGS ARE SMARTER THAN PEOPLE.

Flying

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!

dogs are smarter than people carrie after dark being relentless to get published

Writing Coach

I offer solo writing coach services. For more about my individual coaching, click here.

Writing Barn

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. 

Apply Now!

A Story Is About More than Mechanics and Grammar.

Too often we really focus only on the mechanics of story. Writers and student-writers are told to make perfect sentences, understand the use of the semi-colon, and to spell words correctly.

“Do not turn in a manuscript to an agent or editor unless it’s perfect,” is a pretty big industry standard. 

  • Be perfect.
  • Write perfectly.
  • Have perfect grammar. 
  • Have a perfect plot.
  • Spell everything perfectly.

Here’s the thing: Your story won’t ever be perfect especially if you’re working on it all by yourself. Do the best that you can. Spell all the words. But do not fret about it forever.

So much of our writing life is spent making sure the mechanics of our stories are perfect, that we sometimes forget about the psychological aspects of our stories, the heart. 

It happens to us from the very beginning in grade school. Our teachers focus on the paragraphs, the spelling, the grammar because they’re trying to teach us to effectively communicate with the written word, but they sometimes forget to talk about our imagination, our cleverness, how our stories show our deeper selves and feelings.

How many of us worked super hard on a fourth-grade story that we thought was the most amazing story ever only to receive it with a note like, “Good job with your paragraphs!” Or, “Well done with your spelling!”

Random Thoughts

Our random thoughts this week both focus on imperfection. Shaun says in the first one, “I’m not exciting today.” 

And the second one? Ho boy. Carrie feels super vulnerable about the second one, because it shows her totally tipsy because of her social anxiety and Shaun mixing WAY TOO STRONG a drink. 

The point though, is that much like our podcast, our thoughts aren’t canned or perfect. We are real people, not polished, but pretty awesome anyways. 

Writing Tips:

Don’t forget about the heart of your story, the resonance. Forget about the mechanics for a bit. What is this story actually about? What is its heart?

People like to call it a theme, but that sounds too much like grade school to us. The heart of the story is the big, essential inside part of the story’s hero. Her catalyst. Her life’s question and realization. To find it, ask what your character’s heart wants and needs. To find it, think about the lie about the world (or herself) that your character believes. That’s how you find the heart.

Dog Tips

Dogs don’t care about mechanics of things. They care about the heart of things. Be a dog.

Writing and Other News

Art.

I do art stuff. You can find it and buy a print here. 

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Time Stoppers!

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.

Timestoppers3_005

Moe Berg 

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.

FLYING AND ENHANCED

Men in Black meet Buffy the Vampire Slayer? You know it. You can buy them hereor anywhere.

OUR PODCAST – DOGS ARE SMARTER THAN PEOPLE.

Flying

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!

dogs are smarter than people carrie after dark being relentless to get published

Writing Coach

I offer solo writing coach services. For more about my individual coaching, click here.

Writing Barn

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. 

Apply Now!

A Story Is About More than Mechanics and Grammar.

 
 
00:00 / 00:17:08
 
1X
 

Being Evil is a Waste of Time

I was talking to my daughter Em recently about how she was at a Wal-Mart in Georgia and a woman dropped some stuff and how Em helped the woman pick up her things.

Em wasn’t looking for praise and good-person-pats-on-the-back, she was confused by how other people chose not to help that lady.

For Em, her instinct was to help and to be kind.

But it wasn’t that way for the other people who were there.

At the grocery store in Maine that same day, Shaun (my husband) was in line and a lady had pushed her cart right within an inch of his legs. He backed up an inch to get a better angle to get something out of our cart, hit her cart and immediately apologized. His instinct was to apologize for something that wasn’t his fault.

I have trained him well.

Just kidding! Just kidding!

But the woman acted like it was his fault that her cart was in his space. And then… his instinctive kindness fluttered right away.

When I looked at the lines in the store, I was amazed by how many people seemed so sad or angry, frustrated or anxious. Few people smiled. Most people actively frowned. A lot complained.  They were miserable and sure, some of them probably had reasons to be, but all of them?

So many of us are so lucky. We get to have electricity and phones and indoor plumbing. We have problems, too, obviously. People get sick. People have depression or anxiety. Our friends die. Our kids get in trouble. But we also have so much.

We focus so much on the evil though, just slip into that mindset of ‘everything sucks’ that we sometimes forget the good.

That world of evil and misery is not the world I want to live in and it’s not the world I want everyone else to live in either.

Finding Meaning

There’s a theory out there that a lot of us are unhappy, anxious, uneasy, depressed because we want to find meaning in life and finding meaning? That can be pretty damn hard.

We find religion and go to therapy and the gym in the hopes of finding salvation – emotional, spiritual, phsycial. We convert to different ways of thinking, believing, acting in the hopes that… that what? That we get meaning. That we feel better. That we live better.

Even the stories we write, we’re told by editors and agents and teachers, “Let’s see how that character changes and grows. Or how that character digresses. Bring that character to a new place of self awareness, to a new self.”

It’s all so tremendously linear. The growth of a person or book character is condensed to simple steps, actions forward.

But are people like that? Do we work like that?

That’s where some of the disconnect comes in. When we do evolve, we don’t always evolve in a straight line. When we look for meaning, it isn’t always found after a simple pattern of forward steps.

The people who intrigue me are the people who just live. They live kindly, help others, and are just… they are beautiful.  Their instinct is to be kind and they don’t even lose it after it’s met with anger or fear. They actually cultivate the kindness.

Kind Kids

There were some teens like this where I was on Saturday.

My local YWCA has a holiday bazaar where kids go around with volunteers to buy presents for their family. Volunteers act as store keepers at “stores” where items go for .25 to $5 (or so). Every kid has an escort that takes them around to these store tables loaded down with donated items. The escort is usually a volunteer from the local high school. More volunteers wrap the presents.

It’s pretty adorable.

IMG_8566

The best part is watching the high school kids interact with the younger kids. All these kids are obviously awesome because they are sacrificing their Saturday morning to volunteer, but there was this one kid who totally stood out to me and this wasn’t just because he was wearing a sleeveless Celtics t-shirt jersey when it was 9-degrees-Farenheit.

Nah, Mike impressed me because he broke my stereotypes about bros in sleeveless jerseys. He was on the younger side of high school volunteers, but he was so amazingly wise or patient.

“Would your gram like this?” he’d ask the boy he was assigned to, picking up a set of bird mugs.

The boy would stare at the mugs for about one minute, absolutely blankly. Then, he’d turn away. Mike didn’t even flinch. His tone and demeanor didn’t change.

They’d move on to another item.

Then another item.

Then another.

Mike never groaned. Mike never rolled his eyes. Mike was just… He was patient and awesome and kind, so kind.

IMG_8565

“I love him,” said one of the adult volunteers who’d walked through the frigid weather to the Y so that she could volunteer this morning.

“I would like to marry him,” another lady said, “you know if I was 70 years younger.”

Mike wasn’t the only one who was awesome. There were students volunteering who were wiping phlegm of their temporary wards off their hands, and doing it so discreetly so they wouldn’t hurt the kids’ feelings. There were students carrying more than their weight in presents as the followed their charges scrambling through a maze of volunteers and tables laden with gifts all donated by local people and merchants.

And right then, I realized that I wanted kindness to be my religion just like the Dalai Lama said. I wanted that to be the default choice in my life: the choice of kindness.

my-religion-is-very-simple-my-religion-is-kindness-35

For that kid, for Em, for Shaun – their initial choice is to be kindness. Humanity might crush that kindness away sometimes, but that’s their instinct, their true natures. Of course, they’re going to mess up. They’re human. I’m going to mess up. I’m human. But I’m going to actively choose kindness even as I fight against the things that I think are evil.

Kindness might not be a direct shot to meaning and decreased anxiety, but I really think that they are linked. The more times you can be kind, that you can give, that you can lift people up instead of smashing them down – helps.

There is meaning in goodness.

There is meaning in us.

IMG_8574
Gabby and her frog. She loves and protects him and sometimes even gives him the bed and sleeps on the floor. Why? Because she’s kind. 

 

Writing and Other News

Art.

I do art stuff. You can find it and buy a print here. 

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Time Stoppers!

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.

Timestoppers3_005

Moe Berg

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.

FLYING AND ENHANCED

Men in Black meet Buffy the Vampire Slayer? You know it. You can buy them hereor anywhere.

Flying

OUR PODCAST – DOGS ARE SMARTER THAN PEOPLE.

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!

dogs are smarter than people carrie after dark being relentless to get published

Writing Coach

I offer solo writing coach services. For more about my individual coaching, click here.

Writing Barn

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. 

Apply Now!

“

Hash That Cauliflower, Baby

Cauliflower Hash Recipe
Cauliflower Hash Recipe

This baby is a no-brainer in my quest to make the family eat less meat.

Why?

Because when you mash up a cauliflower? It’s almost like a potato or something. It becomes magical.

This super easy recipe is perfect for my little magical family. I hope it’s perfect for yours, too.

This recipe is completely adapted from An Edible Mosaic.


Print Recipe


Hash That Cauliflower, Baby

Writers like to hack things up. No, wait. That's editors.

Cauliflower Hash Recipe

Course Main Dish, side dish
Cuisine vegetarian
Keyword cauliflower

Prep Time 10 minutes
Cook Time 12 minutes
Passive Time none we are not passive

Servings
humans


Ingredients

Course Main Dish, side dish
Cuisine vegetarian
Keyword cauliflower

Prep Time 10 minutes
Cook Time 12 minutes
Passive Time none we are not passive

Servings
humans


Ingredients

Cauliflower Hash Recipe


Instructions
  1. FIND A SKILLET.
    Is the house to messy? Did you find one?
    PUT THE OIL IN THE SKILLET AND TURN THE BURNER ON MEDIUM HEAT.

  2. Is the oil sort of medium heatness? Good.

    PUT THOSE CAULIFLOWER TREES in there. DO NOT STIR! DO NOT TOUCH IT! I know. I know. This is hard.

    Distract yourself from your need to stir by using your writer imagination.

    Imagine they are white little trees. Or warts? Why do they look like warts?

    Rethink this recipe.
    Rethink cauliflower.
    Refuse to think and COOK CAULIFLOWER FOR ABOUT 3 MINUTES. It will start to change color a bit.

  3. STIR IT NOW.

    ADD THE SPICES AND WATER.

    FIND A COVER TO THE SKILLET! Panic because you forgot about the cover. PUT THE COVER ON TOP.

    COOK FOR 3-5 minutes.

    The cauliflower will be tender but not a giant mush.

  4. TAKE THE COVER OFF.

    TURN THE HEAT TO LOW.

    ADD THE GARLIC.

    COOK 2 MINUTES and STIR LIKE YOU HAVE NEVER STIRRED BEFORE! THIS IS YOUR TIME TO STIR! CLAIM IT!

  5. Sorry for the caps lock. I got excited.

    STIR IN THE LEMON JUICE.

    Watch it evaporate. This takes less than a minute.

  6. Sprinkle parsley on it.

    If you aren't really a vegetarian, put a fried egg on there. But... you know...

MAN VERDICT – There is not nearly enough of this.

CARRIE VERDICT – I didn’t get to eat any.

DOG VERDICT – Neither did we!

Writing and Other News

Art.

I do art stuff. You can find it and buy a print here. 

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Time Stoppers!

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.

Timestoppers3_005

Moe Berg

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.

FLYING AND ENHANCED

Men in Black meet Buffy the Vampire Slayer? You know it. You can buy them hereor anywhere.

Flying

OUR PODCAST – DOGS ARE SMARTER THAN PEOPLE.

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!

dogs are smarter than people carrie after dark being relentless to get published

Writing Coach

I offer solo writing coach services. For more about my individual coaching, click here.

Writing Barn

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. 

Apply Now!

 

Writing Tip Wednesday – Step Outlines and Structuring Your Story

The structure of a story is sort of a pain in the butt for a lot of writers.  In a story, the structure sort of goes like this:

 

  1. Something happens.
  2. Which causes something else to happen.
  3. Which makes something else happen.

And the evil part of being a writer is that you have to hack out all the things that aren’t part of those steps. You have to keep that something happens-makes something else happen-causes something else to happen movement in all the scenes in your story.

What are the scenes? They are the places where things happen.

Some writers use a magical tool called a Step Outline.

What’s a Step Outline?

It’s something I just made into a proper noun. A step outline (no longer a proper noun) is where you show the way your story develops by outlining the scenes.

So, for an example, the story I’m working on right now goes: 

  1. A girl and her friend sends in the girl’s DNA test to figure out who her father is.
  2. She freaks out about this and her friend comforts her by the ocean but she has a horrible feeling.
  3. At work that horrible feeling continues and she gets an ambulance call that a girl’s been hit by a car.
  4. She rushes to the scene and is the first one there. The area is crowded with tourists and the little girl dies. Something magical is emitted from our hero’s hands and the little girl comes back to life.
  5. The video of the rescue goes viral and two strangers come to her work, discussing her healing the girl and the lack of a man’s name on her birth certificate.

As I write that down, I realize it isn’t perfect. How does scene two truly bleed into scene three in the manuscript? Now, I know that I have to go back and make that connection a bit stronger. Step outlines are magic that way.  By breaking the scenes down, we see the connections but also the gaps, the places where we need to make it stronger.

You can also break down those steps and bigger scenes into smaller scenes. Every beat of action doesn’t deserve a step, but every little scene (a page or so) does.

Step outlines are a pretty basic tool, but they are pretty brilliant ways of understanding the cause and effect and pacing of our stories. Try it out and tell me what you think!

 

Writing and Other News

I’ll be hanging out at Virginia Beach this weekend for an awesome book festival.

Art.

I do art stuff. You can find it and buy a print here. 

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Time Stoppers!

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.

Timestoppers3_005

Moe Berg

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.

FLYING AND ENHANCED

Men in Black meet Buffy the Vampire Slayer? You know it. You can buy them here or anywhere.

Flying

OUR PODCAST – DOGS ARE SMARTER THAN PEOPLE.

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!

dogs are smarter than people carrie after dark being relentless to get published

Writing Coach

I offer solo writing coach services. For more about my individual coaching, click here.

Writing Barn

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. 

Apply Now!

 

First Tip on How to Make Your Life and Writing Life Better – Dogs are Smarter than People Podcast.

Shaun: So, Carrie’s not the best in the mornings and too much noise, clutter, extra to-do items pretty much throws her completely off her game.

Carrie: One of the reasons that the dogs and I do daily motivating thoughts on my Facebook and Twitter accounts is because it helps ground me and make me feel less cranky and stressed…. Usually. Shaun, however, is a morning person who craves noise and tropical music while I’m a Pachibel’s Cannon morning person.

Shaun: True.

Carrie: So, this week’s podcast is the first in a series of podcasts about how to make your life and your writing life better and our first tip is….

DOG TIP OF THE CAST: Just say no to the stuff you don’t want to do. You don’t have to say yes to invitations or the extra responsibilities. You don’t have to respond to every single text and/or email. You get to be in charge of these ancillary parts of your life. If you don’t want to email/text/talk to someone, there might be a really good reason why. In this life, we have a limited amount of time to expend. Expend it well. Do it on your terms. Dogs get this.

WRITING TIP OF THE POD: Yep. Same point. Write the stories that you want to, that resonate with you. Say no to the stories you think other people want you to write.  When you get rid of the baggage, the things you don’t want or need to do, you free up your mind of clutter and give it space to create.

Listen to the full podcast to hear Shaun’s random thought all about marketing – KaPerPi. It’s knowledge, awareness, public relations and public image. It’s pretty cool.

SHOUT OUT

The music we’ve clipped and shortened in this podcast is awesome and is made available through the Creative Commons License. Here’s a link to that and the artist’s website. Who is this artist and what is this song?  It’s “Night Owl” by Broke For Free.

Writing and Other News

OUR PODCAST – DOGS ARE SMARTER THAN PEOPLE.

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!

dogs are smarter than people carrie after dark being relentless to get published

Art.

I do art stuff. You can find it and buy a print here. 

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Time Stoppers!

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.

Timestoppers3_005

Moe Berg

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.

FLYING AND ENHANCED

Men in Black meet Buffy the Vampire Slayer? You know it. You can buy them hereor anywhere.

Flying

OUR PODCAST – DOGS ARE SMARTER THAN PEOPLE.

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!

dogs are smarter than people carrie after dark being relentless to get published

Writing Coach

I offer solo writing coach services. For more about my individual coaching, click here.

Writing Barn

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. 

Apply Now!

 

 

Our First Tip To How to Make Your Life and Writing Life Better

Shaun: So, Carrie’s not the best in the mornings and too much noise, clutter, extra to-do items pretty much throws her completely off her game.

Carrie: One of the reasons that the dogs and I do daily motivating thoughts on my Facebook and Twitter accounts is because it helps ground me and make me feel less cranky and stressed…. Usually. Shaun, however, is a morning person who craves noise and tropical music while I’m a Pachibel’s Cannon morning person.

Shaun: True.

Carrie: So, this week’s podcast is the first in a series of podcasts about how to make your life and your writing life better and our first tip is….

DOG TIP OF THE CAST: Just say no to the stuff you don’t want to do. You don’t have to say yes to invitations or the extra responsibilities. You don’t have to respond to every single text and/or email. You get to be in charge of these ancillary parts of your life. If you don’t want to email/text/talk to someone, there might be a really good reason why. In this life, we have a limited amount of time to expend. Expend it well. Do it on your terms. Dogs get this.

WRITING TIP OF THE POD: Yep. Same point. Write the stories that you want to, that resonate with you. Say no to the stories you think other people want you to write.  When you get rid of the baggage, the things you don’t want or need to do, you free up your mind of clutter and give it space to create.

Listen to the full podcast to hear Shaun’s random thought all about marketing – KaPerPi. It’s knowledge, awareness, public relations and public image. It’s pretty cool.

SHOUT OUT

The music we’ve clipped and shortened in this podcast is awesome and is made available through the Creative Commons License. Here’s a link to that and the artist’s website. Who is this artist and what is this song?  It’s “Night Owl” by Broke For Free.

Writing and Other News

OUR PODCAST – DOGS ARE SMARTER THAN PEOPLE.

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!

dogs are smarter than people carrie after dark being relentless to get published

Art.

I do art stuff. You can find it and buy a print here. 

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Time Stoppers!

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.

Timestoppers3_005

Moe Berg

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.

FLYING AND ENHANCED

Men in Black meet Buffy the Vampire Slayer? You know it. You can buy them hereor anywhere.

Flying

OUR PODCAST – DOGS ARE SMARTER THAN PEOPLE.

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!

dogs are smarter than people carrie after dark being relentless to get published

Writing Coach

I offer solo writing coach services. For more about my individual coaching, click here.

Writing Barn

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. 

Apply Now!

 

 

Our First Tip To How to Make Your Life and Writing Life Better

 
 

00:00 / 00:15:49
 

1X

 

Who You Are Is Enough But You Can Still Be Even More

Sometimes it feels almost impossible to feel like you are enough, that all your work and all your love matters to the people you want it to matter to. Sometimes it feels like no matter how hard you love or try or work, you can’t get it right, make a difference.

Here’s the thing: You can’t save the world.

Sometimes you can’t save even one person. But if you try and you love and you listen, you are doing your absolute best and your absolute best is a gift to those people; and it’s a gift to yourself.

That doesn’t mean you will always be awesome and perfect, understanding and full of empathy because nobody can always be that perfect.

But trying? Loving others. Listening. Being.

It is important.

Yet, it’s so hard to believe.

 

I was recently talking to someone brilliant, 24 years old, beautiful, good, and that person thought that they had already wasted their life.

There are a million metrics and achievements this person has already notched off – things that I can’t even imagine achieving. That didn’t matter. It wasn’t enough.

They called themself a loser. Their life, they claimed, was a waste.

But from my viewpoint as someone who is not that person? All I can think about when I think about them is wow.

Just wow.

What an incredible human.

If I can believe that about them why is it so hard for them to realize how cool, amazing and wonderful they are? Why is it so hard for so many of us to believe it about ourselves?

Half the women I know have created themselves and their dreams and expectations in the likeness of a rom-com, which is explained so well in this column by Heather Havrilesky in Vulture. She wrote:

But your concept of yourself makes no sense. You got it from a rom-com. Age 35 is not an expiration date on your beauty or your worth. It doesn’t matter if every single human alive believes this. It’s your job to cast this notion out forever. I’m 48 years old and I’m determined not to tell a story about myself that started in some beauty-product boardroom, among unimaginative corporate marketing professionals. I fail at this quest often, but I’m still determined.

But then there are a bunch of us who don’t or didn’t care about rom-com images. Some of us have massive savior complexes. Some of us want glory. Some of us want to be remembered forever. Some of us have modeled our lives off Marvel movies and Captain America or Ancient Macedonian kings. We’re not much better off.

From fourth through eighth grade my true life ambition was to take a bullet meant for Bono of U2. I would dive on stage, heroically be killed, die in his arms painlessly somehow. And all of Ireland would be so overcome by my sacrifice that they would instantly broker peace. The entire world would do the same.

Saviour complex, much?

220px-U2_October

I was a weird kid, obviously, raised on too much Doctor Who and Star Trek. But I wasn’t about romance or babies. I wasn’t into getting married. I didn’t want to be defined by my husband or my marriage or my kids. I wanted to define me. I know! I know! The horror.

But we don’t have to be saviors either. There is so much pressure to be something that our culture, our society, our books and movies and television show, Instagram photos and YouTube videos want us to be.

But what makes us feel truly like we have a purpose, that we aren’t a waste of space and resources, that we matter?  For a lot of us, connections, doing good, friendships. For some of us that still isn’t enough? We are on an endless quest for more, to be better, to do better, to make the most of our time on this earth. Or we are on an endless quest to meet the expectations that society has placed upon us.

We have to find a way to discover who we are and what we want.

Superheroes

Havrilensky wrote:

I’m going to choose to embrace narratives that make me feel more alive and able to contribute whatever twisted crafts I can to this world, while I can.

I’ve been posting a piece of art or a video on my Facebook every Friday because it is what scares me. There’s this weird vulnerability in those forms of communication that make me feel especially vulnerable, but I want to be a better artist. I want to be unafraid about who I am. Those scary Friday posts are part of me going for that instead of just hiding my paintings in the basement.

I grew up poor but in a pretty intellectual household. There were assigned roles. I was the quirky weird one wearing Snoopy shoes. My brother was the ambitious gorgeous one. My sister was the good one. I was the one who read books, who was nerdy and self-righteous. I heard narratives about who I should be all my childhood. I bet you did, too.

Superheroes-2

Mine were: 

You’re shy.

They thought you were blind when you were born. You still don’t notice things.

You are weird.

You are smart. You’re the smart one.

You aren’t an athlete. You have weak ankles.

You aren’t an artist. Nobody in this family is an artist.

Superheroes-3

But who I thought I was meant to be was also defined by what was said about my much older siblings but never said about me: 

Your brother is so successful.

Look at his dimples. He’s so beautiful. People just stare and stare at him. What an athlete.

Your sister is so kind. Her heart is so big.

Your sister loves children. Your sister is so good.

plot pacing and proms writing tips
Me in a U2 shirt, hiding my face because I’m the quirky one, not the good looking one.

Those narratives shape us. Combine them with comparing ourselves to television tropes and superheroes, rom-coms and Instagram perfection and it’s hard to be okay with who we are. Shakespeare said that comparisons are odious. There’s a reason for that. They make us feel shame. They make us feel jealous. They make us feel less. Or they make us think of others as less.

Here’s the thing: Nobody is less. I’m going to leave you with two solid paragraphs of Havrilensky because her article is brilliant and true.

What if you just decided that you’re an artist, today, right now? You’re sensitive and erratic, maybe. You’re maudlin and also expansive. What would it look like to own that identity, as a means of making art, sure, but also as a means of owning your FULL SELF? You wouldn’t feel as angry at other artists. You would recognize them as kindred spirits. You might notice how your shame matches theirs, and fuels all of you. You might feel proud of your small creations and you might start to see how every single thing you’ve done, every place you’ve been, every town you’ve lived in and left, every friend you’ve gotten to know and then forgotten, they all add up to a giant pile of treasure.

You are 95 years old, looking back at your 35-year-old self, and this is what you see: a young woman, so young, so disappointed, even though everything is about to get really good. She doesn’t see how much she’s accomplished, how much she’s learned, how many new joys await her. She doesn’t know how strong she is. She is blindfolded, sitting on a mountain of glittering gems. She is beautiful, but she feels ugly. She has a rich imagination and a colorful past, but she feels poor. She thinks she deserves to be berated because she has nothing. She has everything she needs.

What is it that you want to be? Who do you want to see? Be that person. Love that person.

Writing and Other News

OUR PODCAST – DOGS ARE SMARTER THAN PEOPLE.

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!

dogs are smarter than people carrie after dark being relentless to get published

Art.

I do art stuff. You can find it and buy a print here. 

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Time Stoppers!

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.

Timestoppers3_005

Moe Berg

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.

FLYING AND ENHANCED

Men in Black meet Buffy the Vampire Slayer? You know it. You can buy them here or anywhere.

Flying

OUR PODCAST – DOGS ARE SMARTER THAN PEOPLE.

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!

dogs are smarter than people carrie after dark being relentless to get published

Writing Coach

I offer solo writing coach services. For more about my individual coaching, click here.

Writing Barn

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. 

Apply Now!