Internationally Bestselling Quirky Children's Books; Adventurous Heroes Doing Good
Look at all the stories you’re seeing, the dreams you’re doing, the lives you’re living.
Breathe out. In. Out.
You are making moments and they all make you. Not one moment. ALL the moments.
Go make more.
Breathe out. Breathe in. Look up. See stars.
xo
Sparty the Dog
How does your heart survive sometimes?
I don’t know.
I’m just so glad that it does.
That we are in this world together.
It’s okay to rest.
It’s all okay. Do what you need to do to thrive.
I am rooting for you and your heart.
xo
Cloud the Kitten
Hey there.
I see you.
Yep.
You.
Right there.
YOU ARE SO LOVED.
Look at you.You’re so shiny.
Do you see it? Because I do.
You make my eyes starry.
YOU are starry.
Don’t forget it, okay?
Let’s go get this Friday.
xo
Gabby the Dog
Sometimes you might want to have bunny ears.
Go for it.
Unless you’re willing to take risks, you can’t achieve your dreams.
Also, it’s totally okay to ask for help making those ears. I mean dreams.
xo
Gabby the Dog
Believe in yourself, in your imagination.
Success is having faith in your dreams, so much faith that you abandon worry. Success is going after what you want and doing it with kindness and perseverance.
The world needs those traits. The world needs you.
xo
Sparty Dog
Oh.
Can you smell it?
That is the poem you’re about to write.
That is the day you’re about to live.
That’s the dog nose you’re about to boop.
Inhale.
That smell is life, complex, beautiful. It’s you. It’s yours.
You’ve got this. Breathe in.Let’s go.
xo
Gabby the Dog
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So, two weeks ago the podcast featured poop texting and writing, but somehow only our random thought was uploaded and not the full broadcast.
Carrie feels this may have been her mother refusing to allow such things be out in the open. She raised Carrie better than this, honestly. No decent woman from New Hampshire talks openly about poop.
Shaun feels Carrie just messed up.
Sometimes you get married and you’ve been married for a long time and you remember that the beginning of your marriage is like a poem and there’s white space and new discovery in every line.
Sometimes you’ve been married a long time and it’s a routine, a science experiment that can be replicated. There can be beautiful comfort in a rut or a routine.
Some people want life to be poems.
Or not.
Some people want life to be expirments.
Or not.
Some people like patterns to their lives and their books, but some people don’t.
As writers and people, we have to decide if we want to be science experiments, or do we want poem moments again. Listen to the podcast to hear Shaun talk about poop texts, poop talks, Hallmark-quality texts and makes up brilliant poems and admits to excessive emoji use. Also, we haven’t really been married too long.
Random things in your childhood come up in your poems and stories. It’s okay to not realize this until your siblings tell you.Also, poop is funny.
Dogs smell their poop. They are proud of it until they kick grass on top of it. Dogs are not afraid of the poopy side of life. Embrace your dark side, but then know that the things you poop away should stay away.
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.
My next book, IN THE WOODS, appears TODAY!
TODAY!
Gasp!
It’s 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 order 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?
You can buy limited-edition prints and learn more about my art here on my site.
You can get exclusive content, early podcasts, videos, art and listen (or read) never-to-be-officially published writings of Carrie on her Patreon. Levels go from $1 to $100 (That one includes writing coaching and editing for you wealthy peeps).
WHAT IS PATREON?
A lot of you might be new to Patreon and not get how it works. That’s totally cool. New things can be scary, but there’s a cool primer HERE that explains how it works. The short of it is this: You give Patreon your paypal or credit card # and they charge you whatever you level you choose at the end of each month. That money supports me sharing my writing and art and podcasts and weirdness with you.
A long time ago, our daughter Em was taking karate, which was the only martial art available then in our town.
She was eight years old and tiny.
The instructor was Shaun size – sort of – and bald, super intimidating. He had all the little ones line up and kick rectangular strike pads. Em’s kick was so unexpected and powerful that the adult holding the pad fell over.
Did they tell her, “Good job?”
Nope.
They made her sit down.
“What did I do wrong, Mommy?” Em asked.
“Nothing, buddy. Nothing.”
And a mom next to us whispered, “You were too strong. They don’t know what to do with women who are too strong.”
Em got called back up and got to join the group again. This time the kids were kicking the instructor’s shin. It was Em’s turn. She wound up and executed the kick perfectly. The instructor lurched backwards, held his shin, and told her to sit down.
Again.
Em was smaller than the rest of those kids in there, but she was powerful and they didn’t know what to do with that. They couldn’t even understand it. How could this perfectly behaved, tiny child be so strong?
And sometimes that happens with us throughout our lives and our writing. Our power surprises even us. We’ll wonder where it came from? We’ll wonder what it means. And sometimes other people will not know what to do with it. Those people might be our mentors, or our families, or strangers on the internet.
But here’s the thing.
Don’t let them make you sit down or sit out. If you surprise them with your power? That’s on them. It’s not on you.
Don’t be afraid to dig deep to get your power.
Don’t let the other dogs out-alpha you. Pick your battles. But win. Don’t give away your shot.
The music we’ve clipped and shortened in this podcast is awesome and is made available through the Creative Commons License. Here’s a link to that and the artist’s website. Who is this artist and what is this song? It’s “Night Owl” by Broke For Free.
NEED is on sale for Kindle sales on Amazon for a mere $1,99 this month. Snatch it up!
ENHANCED, the follow-up to FLYING is here! And the books are out of this world. Please buy them and support a writer.
The last TIME STOPPERS BOOK is out and I love it. You should buy it because it’s empowering and about friendship and bias and magic. Plus, dragons and elves.
If you would like to purchase signed copies of my books, you can do so through the awesome Sherman’s Book Store in Bar Harbor, Maine or the amazing Briar Patch. The books are also available online at places like Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
For signed copies – email barharbor@shermans.com for Sherman’s or email info@briarpatchbooks.com and let them know the titles in which you are interested. There’s sometimes a waiting list, but they are the best option. Plus, you’re supporting an adorable local bookstore run by some really wonderful humans. But here’s the Amazon link, too!
You can buy prints of my art here. Thank you so much for supporting my books and me and each other. I hope you have an amazing day.
A new episode of Dogs are Smarter Than People, the quirky podcast with writing tips, life tips and a random thought comes every Tuesday! Check it out, like and subscribe!
A lot of the times that Carrie works with writers, she notices that they are pulling back from the emotion that is happening in the story. Instead of allowing the reader to feel the terror of being kidnapped or the anxiety of moving to a new place or the desperate sorrow of losing a loved one, the writer skims over these emotional times with a simple moment of telling like, “John was sad that his dog died.” Or worse. “The dog died. John went to school.”
These are lost opportunities. They are also places where the story goes flat or in writer speak, “fails to resonate.”
A lot of writers, especially children’s book writers, are kind people and by default they don’t want to hurt their characters or dwell in any negative emotions. They are trying to protect their characters and the readers.
But those good intentions don’t actually help anyone.
The real world has pain. Our stories have pain, too.
We have to learn to deal with hardships. Our characters do, too.
And the emotion of stories, the ups and downs, are the ride that our readers are signing up for. They want to feel with us, be transported into others’ lives.
For example, Harry Potter had hardship after hardship and so did his friends. J.K. Rowling didn’t shy away from the hard emotions and hard times. She’d add in beats, moments of dwelling in those big moments of joy and sorrow. What Harry felt, the reader felt.
The premise of your story needs to do this, too. It has to have an emotional hook that makes you wonder and care right away. Again, think of Harry Potter – the story of the boy who lived, a lonely orphan who must overcome the evil wizard who killed his parents. Just thinking about the premise fills you with thoughts and wonder and worry and so many questions. The emotional stakes are so high.
Embrace your emotions. Think about what makes you snarl, yelp, wag your tail. Go after the ball. Go after the moments that make you feel good.
Um… again… embrace your emotions. Don’t be afraid to express real emotion. It feels safer to hide your emotion, but passion makes better life and better stories. Be passionate about what you’re writing and about how your living.
Writing News
The Spy Who Played Baseball is a picture book biography about Moe Berg. And… there’s a movie out now about Moe Berg, a major league baseball player who became a spy. How cool is that?
You should totally buy Carrie’s book about Moe. It’s awesome and quirky and fun.
Thanks to all of you who keep listening to our weirdness as we talk about random thoughts, writing advice and life tips. We’re sorry we laugh so much… sort of. Please share it and subscribe if you can. Please rate and like us if you are feeling kind, because it matters somehow.
Carrie offers solo writing coach services, but she’s also teaching a Write! Submit! Support! six-month class online via the Writing Barn in Austin. For details about that class, check out this link. For more about Carrie’s individual coaching, click here.
The music in this podcast is “Check Them In” by Ema Grace and her site is here. We’re able to use this amazing music, thanks to Ema’s kindness and the Creative Commons.
We’ve all heard the statistics:
Some writers will sell you their books about how you can be a thriving artist versus a starving artist as if there is this dichotomy between the two, an either or situation.
Life isn’t that simple.
You write the story you want to write.
You hone it and craft it until it’s the best story you can make it.
You send it to agents and editors or self publish it.
That’s it.
That’s how you become published.
You might make a ton of money. You might not. One book might make $500. One book might make $100,000.
It’s not the easiest thing to control, but what you can control is whether or not you’re lonely.
That you can battle.
You can create an in-person writing group or an online group, but if you are lonely in your writing life, YOU CAN ABSOLUTELY make friends, form a pack.
It’s okay to want a pack to roam with, to howl with.
