friendship – Carrie Jones Books

Look, Ma! No Mask! Friendship Rocks!

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.

best writing coaches — HELP US AND DO AN AWESOME GOOD DEED

So, last night Carrie and I went to a friend’s house for a small gathering of fully vaccinated people who had also lived through their two week of after vaccination period. It was fun!

On the drive there we both expressed to each other that while we were looking forward to it, we were both also a little nervous. We have literally not interacted, in person, with any other adults in fourteen months. The exceptions to this are four occasions when we sat on our front porch and one of our friends visited with us from ground level or six feet apart and fully masked.

Like I said, last night was fun. It was great to see people that we hadn’t seen in person or even talked to in fourteen months. Friends! People who you can open up with, feel safe communicating your feelings with and who are understanding and supportive in most cases. One of the highlights of my evening, and I think Carrie’s as well, was when one married couple told us that they listen to our newish live podcast, Loving The Strange.

The best part about them telling us this is that they did it independently of each other. I was playing in our friendly poker game and the husband was sitting to my left, also playing.

One of the first things he said to me was, “I have been listening to yours and Carrie’s podcast and it has been cracking me up. I laugh so hard!”

I had no idea that he listened to our podcast.

Meanwhile, Carrie was socializing with non-poker playing people and this man’s wife told her that they listen to our podcast and love it. How cool is that!

For us, it was super duper cool! I mean we go into that podcast every Friday night at 7 with a bit of trepidation and nervousness.

What if nobody shows up? What if we suck? What if we say something wrong and hurt or anger someone?

Even though it is one of the favorite parts of my week, there are still concerns. We do it for fun; we do it for the entertainment of ourselves and others, but we really do want people to enjoy it.

In fact, we want people to LOVE it! If we can make you laugh or just entertain you with our own stupidity for an hour, we consider ourselves to be successful.

I have gotten a little bit off track here because I was intending for this blog to be about the amazing benefits of friends. I will try and get back on track, I apologize.

Remember, not only are friends great to have, but it is also great to be a friend! I have said this before in my blogs and I will say it again. You never know when one little thing, which you may think is silly or stupid, will have a profound effect on somebody’s moment or life.

Just this morning Carrie posted her usual inspirational Facebook post, which are always accompanied by a photo of one or more of our animals, and she got a really incredible response. A local woman who is one of her Facebook friends and an acquaintance in real life said to her something to this effect. Thank you for your post this morning, it has motivated me to make a change that I have been thinking about and putting off for a long time!

How cool is that? Remember that not everything that you say to people will be anything other than normal conversation. However, it is those one out of a hundred comments that really touch someone that can make all the difference in the world! Also remember to listen to us on Friday nights at 7 for Loving The Strange and always Love Your Way Through It!

Peace,

Shaun

You should totally like and subscribe to us somewhere because it’s cool to be kind.

LET’S HANG OUT!

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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.

Facing Your Fears

I make a big deal about being brave. That’s because I have a lot of anxiety about certain things:

LIST OF BIG THINGS I HAVE MAJOR ANXIETY ABOUT

My voice
Being in videos
Showing art
Dead clowns reanimating.
People I love dying.

Anyway, I’m pretty open about the things that make me nervous and over on Facebook, I’ve been having Be Brave Fridays where I do something that I am uncomfortable about and encourage others to be brave, too.

So, what I’m really uncomfortable about is showing my art. That’s because of a couple things:

It’s really personal
I’m not trained
My mother.

As I told a lovely woman that I met on Friday night, “My mom was amazing, but she had really defined notions of what our family could and couldn’t do.”

The lady said, “Oh, I get this. My mother is the same way. I get this.”

According to my Mother, If we were going to create things, it was supposed to be:

Meat-based meals
Babies.
Writing
Music.

She said to me on multiple occasions when I was little, “Nobody in this family has an artistic bone in their body. None of us can draw a straight line.”

But I really wanted to draw straight lines and make comics and paintings. I knew there was no point though.

None of us can draw a straight line.

I spent years and years wishing I could draw or paint. I spent years and years wishing I could make images without words.

Not an artistic bone.

When I was divorcing, I gave in and bought paint. I would stay up late into the night, painting. I had no idea what I was doing, but it was the only way I could think to get my emotions out into the world so that they wouldn’t fester inside of me.

It didn’t matter that they sucked because nobody would see them. I would paint over canvasses because I didn’t have enough money to buy more canvas. I would paint on newspaper pages (not a good idea), on the backs of old-fashioned notebooks, on anything.

Not an artistic bone in my body?

It seemed pretty true.

I became a writer and I wrote novels, but sometimes I would still get these images in my head. I would need to get them out.

So, I’d trudge down into the basement and paint.

It’s cold in the basement. The kitty litter box is in the basement. It’s easy to hide down in that basement. I hid.

Sometimes when I get stuck in a story, or can’t work out its theme, I paint.

Sometimes when I get lost inside my emotions, I paint.

A woman said to me on Friday, “You wrote all these books, too? I have never met anyone who is good at both before.”

And I laughed and was all self-disparaging and said, “You still haven’t.”

She gave me a look and said, “Oh, honey. Yes, I have.”

Oh, honey. Yes, I have.

Even writing that now? It makes me get all teary-eyed.

Painting is the places inside of me where I can’t make words work, where I can’t get things to express themselves via writing, so I have to go deeper.

There are places that are deeper than words.

It’s hard to show that to the world especially when:

You haven’t been trained
Nobody in your family can draw a straight line
There’s not an artistic bone in your body.
You live in a world where being vulnerable and authentic is often derided and scorned.

I started Be Brave Fridays because I was tired of hiding. I posted paintings even though I was positive not one single person would be kind. But people were kind and one person, Aymie Walsh (co-owner of CoeSpace in Bangor) sent me a message and asked me if I wanted to be in an Art Walk.

An Art Walk is a thing where people go from site to site and check out different artists. It all takes place during a set time period in a location like a city or downtown.

When Aymie sent me that message? I thought she might be punking me. I texted my daughter and she said, “Do it! Do it! Do it!”

My daughter is the bravest human I know. She’s faced all her fears now. She’s a field artillery officer. She went to Harvard. She’s jumped off buildings. She’s survived me being her mother.

Yes, there is a dog hanging out in the corner.

So, I said yes.

I said yes even though I kept hearing those phrases, wrapping themselves around my heart, over and over again.

Nobody in this family has an artistic bone in their body. None of us can draw a straight line.

I was an anxious wreck all last Friday. I had one of those existential life crisis moments where I didn’t know why I bothered to exist at all. I was a punk all day. I had so many fears.

So many.

Then we put up all my paintings on the beautiful white walls of CoeSpace. And something inside me shattered.

This could not be real.

I expected nobody to come. I expected people to mock me to my face. I expected to hear those same sentences only slightly twisted around.

You don’ t have an artistic bone in your body. You can’t even draw a straight line.

What are you trying to do?

Here’s the thing though. Nobody said those words to me.

But here’s the bigger thing. Even if they had said those words? They don’t get to make those words real. Only I get to make those words real. Only I get to have that power over who I am and what I want to be.

That’s something I have to learn over and over again in my life. That’s something that I have to remember and paint through because that realization? It’s a heart realization. It’s a soul realization. And it’s too big for words.

There are much better things to tell ourselves, to sing into our stories, and to bind our hearts with.

Oh, honey. Yes, you have.

Those words.

Those words made me braver. Aymie made me braver. My poor, sweet family that dealt with me all day? They made me braver.

I want you to be brave, too. Go after the person you want to be, okay? Sing out your story in the melodies that you want to hear. Become.

Become.

You can. You have. You will.

Over and over again.

WRITING NEWS

IN THE WOODS – READ AN EXCERPT, PREORDER NOW!

My next book, IN THE WOODS, appears in July with Steve Wedel. It’s scary and one of Publisher’s Weekly’s Buzz Books for Summer 2019. There’s an excerpt of it there and everything! But even cooler (for me) they’ve deemed it buzz worthy! Buzz worthy seems like an awesome thing to be deemed!

You can preorder this bad boy, which might make it have a sequel. The sequel would be amazing. Believe me, I know. It features caves and monsters and love. Because doesn’t every story?

Art News

You can buy limited-edition prints and learn more about my art here on my site.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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!

Art.

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

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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.

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.

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!

How to Be a Better Friend and Avoiding the #DEADTOME List

People lie – a lot.

And one of those lies is that they have a lot of friends. Or the opposite – that they don’t need friends. Or maybe that they’re friends and their friendships are all super perfect.

We all know that one is a lie. Nobody is perfect – not in an all-encompassing, always-right way. Those one-dimensional stick figure cut-out representations of friendships are best left to television shows and bad fiction, not in our own narratives.

Real friends are gritty and confusing and beautiful and triumphant. Real friends know that you don’t always have your stuff together and they love you anyways. Real friends have your back when you’re sobbing into the phone hysterically and real friends don’t tell your secrets or lie about you.

Unless they do.

And those friends then sometimes become the people about whom you’re sobbing into the phone uncontrollably. You forgive them. Or you don’t. But you are definitely aware that they aren’t perfect.

None of us are.

According to a 2017 article by Lydia Denworth for Psychology Today, there are three main elements to friendships. Those are:

Spending time with each other

Focusing on the positive parts of your friend and friendship, and

Helping each other.

What does that mean? The more time you spend with someone or thinking about them, the stronger the bond. The more you are silly, goofy, tell stories, dance around, build Legos with your friends, the more you associate them with happy chemical messages to your brain. The more you help your friend and your friend helps you, the more stable and good the friendship. (As opposed to those one-sided friendships where someone is trying to gain status through you, or always complains to you but never listens back, or always makes you pay the bill, etc.).

Allegedly, we have about five of those friendships in our whole entire lives. Those good friends? They are hard to find.

46482619_10157047105579073_5371350713865601024_o — Yes, this is my actual childhood handwriting.

When I was a little kid, I used to catalogue my friends. I don’t do that anymore. But back then, I basically created concentric circles of BEST FRIEND, GOOD FRIEND, POTENTIAL GOOD FRIENDS. People could move from place to place if I spent more time with them or felt closer to them. People could also fall completely off the charts. It’s all really childhood drama, and kind of extra, but it was there – this cataloguing, this being in ‘good graces’ versus ‘bad land of friendship exile.’

I’m not sure if I’ve grown up all that much, honestly.

Once a friendship goes toxic, I pull back. I give people second and third chances, but if they’re using me too much? I don’t ever reach out to them. If a friend lies to me? I don’t trust them much again. If a friend lies to someone else about me and I find out? I don’t trust them either.

44526547_10217306216311600_4607521708331499520_n 2 — My friends and I at an SNL party. These are good friends because…SNL party.

But here’s the thing – I still love those people, those no-longer-trusted-as-much friends. I love my friend that I caught cheating at a game night because he’s addicted to secret, social dangers. I love my friend that name drops constantly because she’s so insecure. I love my friend that lies because she hates her own life so much that she doesn’t remember what truth is anymore.

I will forgive almost everyone anything, until I won’t.

That’s because I know I’m not perfect either. I don’t dwell on my imperfections, the times I failed, but I have failed. A ton.

“We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.” – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

One time at my friend’s super-low-stakes weekly poker night, I explained that there are only five local people that are on my #deadtomelist. One called firefighters and my writing schmaltzy and then suggested I didn’t know what the word schmaltz meant.

He’s off that list now. He doesn’t matter.

One is a man who hurt dozens of women, a narcissist with a lot of issues.

He’s still on the list.

So, is the man who stalked me around town. So, is the police officer who wouldn’t listen when I tried to tell him about the man who stalked me around town.

And there’s one more person that I’m not going to mention.

You’ll notice people actually moved off that list, which I guess wasn’t named #foreverdeadtome, but just #deadtome.

Everyone at poker really wanted to know the names on my list. That’s because they didn’t think I could hate because I focus so much on love. But here’s the thing – I can hate. Everyone can hate. I just don’t dwell in the hate. My hate (when it happens) flies up like a rage, explodes like a firework and then disappears almost instantly except for a name on a list.

#Deadtome

He who hurts women

He who stalks

He who protects he who stalks

She who I will not mention

Beware of no man more than of yourself; we carry our worst enemies within us. – Charles Spurgeon

I’m privileged in that I don’t have to or need to dwell on that hate and I’m lucky. But the people who have done the absolute worst to me? The horrible things? They aren’t even on the #deadtomelist.

That doesn’t make sense, right?

But to me, for my mental health? Those people are so dead to me that they don’t even exist in my brain anymore. My brain is too full of beauty and friendship, of stories and dogs and cats and manatees, to get used up with them and their hurt and their evil. These people flash in my consciousness every once in awhile, but then they’re gone – so dead to me that I forget their existence.

The space they could inhabit? I fill it up with dreams, with friends, with love. So, that’s what I do.