Tag: life

Stupid Writing Advice

Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and Motivation
Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and Motivation
Stupid Writing Advice
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Everyone gives advice in life and in writing and you know that they are usually intending to be helpful and all that, but sometimes you just want to scream at them to shut up.

I know! I know! That sounds harsh. But the truth is harsh.

Sometimes it’s hard to listen to people giving you advice when you know that they’re cheating on their wife or are a pathological liar or are just a really bad writer. Yet, these people almost always are still super assured of their RIGHTNESS, in their own brilliant advice, and their confidence and sometimes condescension makes you want to give them the finger.

You know we’re right. You know these people.

And sometimes these people are just repeating these edicts or mandates because they’ve heard them forever and they don’t think about them anymore, they just accept them as truths.

They aren’t truths.

So, here is a piece of writing advice that drives Carrie crazy.

DON’T USE ADJECTIVES OR ADVERBS. EVER.

Writing Tip of the Pod:

Use adjectives, adverbs, made-up-words. Use whatever you please, but make sure it sounds good.

Adjectives and adverbs are not the antichrist and there are places when they come in handy and make things beautiful. Like here:

“Below the knee, the hairiness came to a halt, and his legs narrowed into tough, bony, almost fleshless calves, terminating into shiny, cloven hooves, such as one might find on any billygoat.” – Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses

That sounds pretty damn good, doesn’t it?

But in a excerpt like this next one? Not so much.

His icky hair stopped right under his ugly knees. His narrow, bony calves ended in shiny hooves.

The point is to know what you’re doing. Find your style. Define it. Command it.

Dog Tip for Life:

You get to define you. Not others. Advice? Take it or leave it. Whenever something is presented to you as an absolute truth, take a moment and think about it. Question it. Question everything.

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 NEWS

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.

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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.

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How to Get Signed Copies: 

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.comand 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!

Art Stuff

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 out tomorrow! Check it out, like and subscribe!

The Book Baby I Never Thought Would Get Published and the Human Baby I Never Thought Would be in the Army

 

Um… I got the third TIME STOPPERS book in the mail – the one that’s coming out super soon.

In sad news, I didn’t actually get to open the box of books, which is the ultimate writer happy moment because someone else did.

I know! I know! This means: 

  1. No unboxing video
  2. No glorious moment when I sob at the fact that I gave birth to a book baby

 

This makes me superstitious like: Why? Why didn’t I get to open my own box of books? Is this an omen? Does the universe hate me?

But here is the adorable book (Photo taken by the person who accidentally opened the book box and sent me the photo via cell phone).

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It’s super cute, isn’t it?

And I am now an anxious ball of freaking-out author, honestly because:

 

  1. I want people to notice that my book baby exists so that they can read it but also so that I can continue to have a writing career. Spoiler: You have to actually sell books to have a writing career. Sad, sad truth, I know.
  2. I am bad at self promotion.

 

And this book isn’t my normal book. It’s middle grade, not young adult. It’s the book that’s closest to my heart because it’s the book I wrote for Em when she was a kid. It’s the book that made me quit my job as a newspaper editor and get a MFA at Vermont College and become a writer in the first place.

 

Carrie Jones Dear Bully 70 Authors tell their stories
Em of Awesome

 

And last week, Em (who is no longer little) left after being home on leave and went back to Fort Benning. Her special task force has been deployed to Afghanistan already and I’m not sure if she’s going to be going, too.

Someone in her task force has already died.

I know you’re supposed to accept that possibility. I’m not good at accepting that possibility. And my heart breaks when I think about that soldier’s family.

Recently, a friend told me about a conversation that they overheard about Emily. It was basically….

“There’s this local girl. Her parents are pretty liberal. She went to Harvard. She’s beautiful. She joined the Army. By choice. By choice!”

“What?”

“Yeah, I know right? And she’s a field artillery officer now.”

And that conversation is basically about people’s preconceived notions about who joins the United States’ military and why. Here’s the thing: There is no one type of person who joins and they all don’t join for the same reasons. Some of the people in there are Republicans, some are Democrats. There are all races and religions and genders and IQs.

There is no one way to be.

Which is part of what this country is supposed to be about – the freedom to speak, to think, to assemble, to worship, a freedom of the press.

Freedoms.

And that’s what my Time Stoppers series has been about, too. Only in a kids’ book because that’s what I write.

Anyway, I dropped Em off at the airport that’s a couple hours away from where we lived and cried all the way home. I know! I know! I’m supposed to be all tough and brave and Army mom.

But I am not tough or brave or Army mom.

I have a hard time even asking for people to like and review my book on places like Amazon. But I do know that when people try to define an entire group/category as one thing or one thought or one demographic? I’m going to bristle.

It’s our differences that make us amazing. It’s our diversity that makes us stronger and pushes us towards progress. And I am so proud of Em for being brave and strong and putting herself out there in a world that currently doesn’t always value that. And I am so proud of the kids in this book series that I initially wrote for her. Because they do the same thing.

I hope you’ll read it.

I hope you’ll review it somewhere.

And I hope you’ll spread the world.

We all depend on each other, my friends. That’s the biggest truth out there. We all have roles (which can change) but together? We’re a pretty awesome team.

 

Writing News

Next and Last Time Stoppers Book

It’s almost out! You can pre-order my middle grade fantasy novel Time Stoppers Escape From the Badlands here or anywhere. The official release date is August 7! 

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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?

You should totally buy Carrie’s book about Moe. It’s awesome and quirky and fun.

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.

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

Writing Coach

Carrie offers solo writing coach services. For more about Carrie’s individual coaching, click here.

Ebook on Sale for July – and July is almost over! 

And finally, for the month of July, my book FLYING is on sale in ebook version on multiple platforms, which means not just Amazon. It’s a cheap way to have an awesome read in a book that’s basically Men in Black meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer but with chocolate-covered pretzels.

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Appearances

Carrie will be at The Books-A-Million in South Portland, Maine on August 8. She’ll be at the Maine Literacy Volunteers Festival on September 8.

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The Space Where Our Power is At

Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and Motivation
Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and Motivation
The Space Where Our Power is At
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“Between stimulus and response there is a space.

In that space is our power to choose our response.

In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

Victor Frankl

Heidegger said that “being” is always in relation to something else. Human life is “da sein,” which is often translated into “being in the world.”

That’s a pretty cool phrase – being in the world.

How we experience our nows is part of what is necessary to live fully and presently as possible. Experience is part of being. (Gendlin, 1996).

But the thing is that so many of us forget to experience our existence, our being, our space in this world. Why should we do this?

It helps center us.

Focusing on our experience helps make us remember who we are in the moment and it makes us feel better.

Where is the space that our power is at? It’s in that focus, that attention to experience.

A pretty mellow exercise to do this is as follows:

  1. Pay attention to your body.
  2. How does it feel?
  3. Are your feet on the floor? Does it feel right to be touching the ground?
  4. Move on to your legs. How are you standing, walking, sitting in this world?
  5. You have a back. It’s supporting you. How is it doing that?
  6. Your arms, your hands, your fingers. Your fingers are pretty magical. They are sense magicians, bringing information from the outside into your brain. How cool is that?
  7. How does the light or darkness feel against your skin? Do you smell things? Is there wind?
  8. Now think about you in this space and say, “I am.”
  9. You are.
  10. I am.
  11. Did you see anything? Feel anything? Release anything?
  12. Now say, “I am here.”

You are. You are in this world.

Creating resonance and cohesion in your life and your story. Tips on how to make life better.
Resonate

Dog Tip for Life: Dogs are always in this world, vitally connected to it. They know that their existence is part of everything. I am here pretty much oozes off a dog’s every moment.

Writing Tip of the Pod: Just like we have to fully feel our own existence, we have to feel our characters’ existence, what is like to be them, interacting with the world we’ve created for them. Imagine yourself as your character. Imagine yourself as your character doing that exercise. Now write down a paragraph as them, first person.

Carrie Jones Books NYT bestselling author's writing tips and life tips. Plus, dogs.
This is a happy dog

WRITING NEWS

Yep, it’s the part of the blog where I talk about my books and projects because I am a writer for a living, which means I need people to review and buy my books or at least spread the word about them.

I’m super good at public image and marketing for nonprofits but I have a much harder time with marketing myself.

So, please buy one of my books. 🙂 The links about them are all up there in the header on top of the page.  There are young adult series, middle grade fantasy series, stand-alones for young adults and even picture book biographies.

Time Stoppers Front and Back Covers – US versions
Sarah Emma Edmonds
Need
Time Stoppers
Flying
Things We Haven’t Said
Moe Berg

CARRIE’S APPEARANCES

I’ll be at Book Expo America in NYC on June 1 at 11:30 – 12 at the Lerner booth signing copies of the Spy Who Played Baseball. A week before that,I’ll also be in NYC presenting to the Jewish Book Council . Come hang out with me!

The Podcast

Dogs are Smarter Than People, the podcast
Look, Mom! It’s a podcast.

And please subscribe to and like our podcast if you listen and spread the word. It’s kind of you and it makes us feel happy. The RSS feed is here.

The Worst Things My Dogs Did

I love dogs.

I love my dogs. I mean look at them. I’ve had a great line of awesome rescue dogs that have blessed my life.

Dogs make you stronger
Prom dog

But sometimes? Sometimes horrible things happen. Things that seem like they should not happen in real life. Things that seem like they should only happen in horror movies.

One of those things? Well, once the dog, the big dog, the big dog with the massive bladder let loose the contents of her bladder on hardwood floor of the upstairs hallway.

We discovered this because there was a puddle on the downstairs floor.

“What is that?” the man asked.

“Um… pee?”

“That’s not pee.”

“It smells like pee.”

“It can’t be pee. It’s dripping from the ceiling.”

And I foolishly said, “It really smells like pee.”

The man then unleashed a massive stream of cursing that really belonged in record books. He vaulted up the stairs and cursed more.

“The BAD WORD BAD WORD BAD WORDING BAD WORD dog BAD WORDED AND BAD WORDED up here.”

“It will be okay,” I said.

“It is so not okay,” the man said.

I grabbed paper towels and bleach spray and bleach wipes and headed up the stairs.

The man grabbed a mop and bucket and continued to swear.

“Urine is literally dripping from our ceiling. OUR CEILING!”

The dog went out on the porch, which would have been a much better place for her to unleash the contents of her doggy bladder of Olympian size.

This whole event happened immediately after we came upstairs because the basement had  flooded. Our basement had never flooded before. There had been two inches of rain and I guess it inspired basement flooding and doggy bladders?

Yeah. I’m reaching there.

Anyway, this all happened during a day in which nothing went right, but I totally held it together anyways. This happened during a day where the one thing I was looking forward to for AN ENTIRE YEAR got cancelled because a projector at a movie theater broke.

It happened.

The dog had a massive accident. The accident found a knot in the wood and dripped through it onto the kitchen floor.

It was messy and disgusting and swear worthy.

And we survived. Right?

I love dogs and people and humanity, but man… if we don’t mess things up beautifully sometimes.

But what matters is loving through it, surviving through it, continuing through it.

And also bleach wipes.

Bleach wipes are important.

 

https://carriejonesbooks.blog/dogs-are-smarter-than-people-the-podcast/

One time when I was a emergency dispatcher, I came home and Tala and Scotty, my then-dogs, greeted me at the door, all doggy happy. Scotty, was my new dog and he was a rescue dog from Alabama who was in a kill shelter and for a long time we had thought that he was perhaps a grandpa who likes crawfish and BudLite a lot and was somehow caught in a dog’s body – like he was a shapeshifter who got stuck.  He had a puncture wound in his neck when he got here, two small holes. So, I think a vampire is to blame.

He’d also been shot.

His tongue had also been flayed and had healed, but one side didn’t work.

You know I’m a grandpa in real life – a human grandpa who likes BudLite.

Before that night, I had already witnessed him:

1. Get ice out of the refrigerator.
2. Use his paw on a door handle to open a door.

And now, he did this….

Do you see that? It’s a drawer that was COMPLETELY shut when I left the house. This means he grabbed it with his mouth and got it open at least a little bit and then he either wedged his nose in or something and opened it more.

Why would he do that? Oh, he was probably sick of dog food and bored because I was gone. Which is bored doggy behaviour, I know, but I present more evidence….

This was just part of the mess the dogs made. Notice the bottle of corn syrup was still standing up? Would a dog do that?

“No! A dog would not do that,” said Tala. “A dog would do this! Look at all that powdered sugar mixed with shoe! Yummy! I give it 5 stars!!!”

Side note: Dog saliva combined with powdered sugar on a wood floor creates a glue-like paste that is impossible to vacuum or mop up. It must be attacked with Clorox bleach wipes. I swear. I did not know this that night.

And finally, though they ate peanut butter chips and brown sugar and confectioner’s sugar and Crisco shortening and Shepard’s Pix mix and Italian seasoning mix, they did NOT eat this….

Do you know what that is? It is chocolate!!! Chocolate KILLS dogs. And they left it, only tearing open the end. I sort of imagine Scotty holding Tala back and saying, “Baby. It smells good, but it’s poison. It will kill us. Let’s go lick up the sugar.”

See? I swear he was human!

You know it, baby. Now go get me a beer while I lick the sugar off this here rug.

I miss Tala and Scotty and all the dogs I’ve had before. I miss them even though they weren’t perfect. I miss them even though they had flaws. That’s the thing, if the living creatures we love are flawed? That doesn’t mean they aren’t worthy of love. That doesn’t mean they aren’t worthy of our love.

Nobody’s perfect. Not even a dog. But that’s okay. It just means that they are real.

WRITING NEWS

Yep, it’s the part of the blog where I talk about my books and projects because I am a writer for a living, which means I need people to review and buy my books or at least spread the word about them.

I’m super good at public image and marketing for nonprofits but I have a much harder time with marketing myself.

So, please buy one of my books. 🙂 The links about them are all up there in the header on top of the page.  There are young adult series, middle grade fantasy series, stand-alones for young adults and even picture book biographies.

Time Stoppers
Time Stoppers Front and Back Covers – US versions
Dear Bully
Flying
Need
Things We Haven’t Said
Sarah Emma Edmonds
Moe Berg

CARRIE’S APPEARANCES

I’ll be at Book Expo America in NYC on June 1 at 11:30 – 12 at the Lerner booth signing copies of the Spy Who Played Baseball. A week before that,

I’ll also be in NYC presenting to the Jewish Book Council . Come hang out with me!

I’ll be at Sherman’s Bookstore in Bar Harbor on April 28 from 1-2.

To find out more about my books, there are links in the header. And if you buy one? Thank you so much. Let me know if you want me to send you a bookplate.

PODCAST

The podcast DOGS ARE SMARTER THAN PEOPLE is still chugging along with over 3,000 listens.

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.

 

THE CLASS AT THE WRITING BARN

The awesome six-month-long Writing Barn class that they’ve let me be in charge of!? It’s happening again in July. Write! Submit! Support! is a pretty awesome class. It’s a bit like a mini MFA but way more supportive and way less money. We’ll be having a Zoom class to learn more about it and I’ll share the details as soon as they are official.

Write Submit Support

Tips on Not Going to Jail on a Friday

My Post-2
1. When you say “hi” to a mean lady while perusing the turnips in the produce section and she TOTALLY ignores you, pretend she did not hear you. Do not decide she is rude. Do not throw a turnip at her. This counts as an assault, possibly with a deadly weapon, depending on the hardness of the turnip.
2. When the mean lady cuts in front of you at the fish counter at the grocery store and then asks what the difference between sea scallops and bay scallops are, then follows up that question with the comment on the price ($4.49/lb) and then asks if they’ll be fresh tomorrow, and then asks for a different amount than originally specified, and then once she’s finally done buying a pound of scallops, asks about whether it’s halibut season, not because she’s going to buy any, (“Gosh, aren’t they cheaper in late Spring?”) and then verifies that the price for the damn scallops was $4.49 not $4.41 Do not kill her, no matter how tempted you are. Dunking someone into the lobster tank is not a good idea either. This counts as murder. You go to jail for a long time for murder.3. When the fish man finally gets to you and finishes your order in 20 seconds do not ask him why he skipped you in the first place, or lecture him about it, because he has probaby had a hard day, plus he might give you bad fish in the future. Try to smile. It will be hard.

4. When the nice cashier lady asks you if you found everything okay and how your day is going do NOT get hysterical and tell her about the mean lady saga and then compare it to being invisible and unloved and unworthy and how maybe you should just have an all-dessert lunch to make up for it, so you can be sugar high and guilty feeling as well as depressed over your new invisible status because then the nice cashier lady might call the police who might take you in for disturbing the peace, especially if you stand on the check-out line and try to choreograph a dance in a mad attempt to prove that you are human and you are visible.

5. Just calmly walk out. Smile. Get in car. Do not run red light. Do not bash into mean lady’s car when she decides to stop at a GREEN LIGHT! Yes! Yes! I swear she did.

6. Just go home, crawl into bed. Vow to never go to grocery store again. Feel guilty for being so angry. Wonder if perhaps you need therapy. Wonder if you’ll see mean lady there.

BOOK APPEARANCES

I’ll be hanging out at the launch of THINGS WE HAVEN’T SAID on March 15th and having  a panel discussion with editor Erin Moulton, Aaluk Edwardson and Ella Andrews at Water Street Bookstore in Exeter, NH. 7pm!

Things We Haven’t Said

“How to describe the feeling of not being believed? It is the feeling of disappearing.” -Stephanie Oakes

PODCAST AND BOOK NEWS!

Moe Berg

My nonfiction picture book about Moe Berg, the pro ball player who became a spy,  is still coming out March 1 and I’m super psyched about it. You can preorder it. 

The Spy Who Played Baseball

Podcast

In my big writing news, the podcast, DOGS ARE SMARTER THAN PEOPLE, is live!

My Post

LIVE!

Please go leave a comment, or a review, and pretend to listen, because I’ve been freaking out about this so hard. It’s on iTunes and Stitcher and Castos at the moment and the RSS feed is also here. The feed has bonus material and free things. It’ll be on GooglePlay if I can ever get the screen to validate to not be just a big webpage of blankness.

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