We have a podcast, LOVING THE STRANGE, which we stream biweekly live on Carrie’s Facebook and Twitter and YouTube on Fridays. Her Facebook and Twitter handles are all carriejonesbooks or carriejonesbook. But she also has extra cool content focused on writing tips here.
Carrie is reading one of her raw poems every once in awhile on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That’s a lot!
This podcast is about a butt ton of Coors Light on a Florida highway and flow states.
A few years ago, we talked about FLOW on our podcast and then I just did again over on our LIVING HAPPY newsletter, but I thought it would be pretty cool to talk about it for another hot second because more people are talking about it now.
We’re trendsetters, baby.
DOG TIP FOR LIFE:
To get that flow state, stay focused, persistent, give yourself time, minimize distractions and make it a tiny bit hard. It’s like chasing a cat. You always think you might catch it, but it’s not easy.
So all of us need to reach up, reach out, be responsible. Inaction is often just as horrible as bad actions, but we can always climb our way out of the hole we’ve dug by making those good choices, those kind choices (even when they are so damn hard).
Carrie Jones Books
It Isn't Too Late to Be There For Your Kids Our Most Personal Be Brave Friday Ever
It’s Be Brave Friday where Shaun or I (from Dogs are Smarter than People and Loving the Strange and just being an author in Maine) share people’s stories, but this week, I’m sharing ours. It’s the first time I’ve talked publicly about this and it’s kind of hard.
Trigger Warning for parent issues (not us).
We have an adorable kid who has autism and ODD and ADD. And here’s the thing. They are funny and creative and have big emotions about their world.
That isn’t the easiest thing to handle for some people.
And we get judged about them all the time. Their ADD manifests in wanting to do a project all night long when they’re really into it. Their ODD manifests in not dealing well when we tell them they need some sleep. Their psychiatrist has said on multiple occasions, “This is not the bridge worth dying on.”
They’re right.
But people don’t get that.
And they judge. A lot.
And whatever. I’m fine with that because though I’m self-deprecating to the point that I tend to drive other feminists crazy, I’m confident that I’m a parent who is full of love and appreciation for her kids. The judging doesn’t matter because what matters is the human who is growing and learning and becoming.
That’s not what this post is about though. This post is about our kid’s other mother. The one who gave up on them two years ago. The one who has to get texts from the kid in order to even think to visit with them. The one who is trained as a teacher but didn’t even send a text to their own child to ask them how their first day of school in a new school system went. And two weeks later, still hasn’t.
This post is about anger, honestly, because I am so angry on behalf of our kid. And I not usually brave enough to talk about this or my anger. I’m a pretty conflict averse human except when it’s about things that hurt others.
But this post is also about hope. We all have moments every single day to do the right thing. To reverse the path that we’re on and actually be responsible and good, to reach out with kindness and with love.
That’s hard sometimes when you’ve sucked for two years. But it’s going to be a lot harder after you’ve sucked for twenty.
So all of us need to reach up, reach out, be responsible. Inaction is often just as horrible as bad actions, but we can always climb our way out of the hole we’ve dug by making those good choices, those kind choices (even when they are so damn hard).
We can all do this. Every single one of us. In order to make our families, our communities, our nation and our world better? We have to.
Here’s the video where I don’t stick entirely on script because I suck at that, honestly.
BE A PART OF OUR MISSION!
Hey! We’re all about inspiring each other to be weird, to be ourselves and to be brave and we’re starting to collect stories about each other’s bravery. Those brave moments can be HUGE or small, but we want you to share them with us so we can share them with the world. You can be anonymous if you aren’t brave enough to use your name. It’s totally chill.
Want to be part of the team? Send us a quick (or long) email and we’ll read it here and on our YouTube channel.
LET’S HANG OUT!
HEY! DO YOU WANT TO SPEND MORE TIME TOGETHER?
MAYBE TAKE A COURSE, CHILL ON SOCIAL MEDIA, BUY ART OR A BOOK, OR LISTEN TO OUR PODCAST?
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 1990sor Captain Pontification. And no, we don’t always agree. 🙂
I am not a writer by trade and I don’t have the grammar skills nor writing craft that many of you have. However, I am here now to give you some advice on how important the proper choice of words is. This is extremely important, not just in writing but in everyday life, so listen up!
Choose your words carefully! Use them in an appropriate manner to get your true and intended point across. The ramifications of not doing so can be very detrimental to your audience and sometimes even yourself.
Please allow me to give you a perfect example of one gargantuan blunder that I made just a few minutes ago.
First, a little backstory. Carrie has been sick for a week, maybe even a couple days more, depending upon when she actually admitted to not feeling a 100%. No, she does not have COVID, it’s more like a common cold with all of the accoutrements, runny nose, congestion, sore throat, tiredness and last night, a slight fever.
Now, I love my wife more than anything, ever! I have tried to take care of her and make sure that she has what she needs. I have been forcing her to work less than normal and rest throughout the day. Hell, last night I even made her chicken soup (from scratch) with leftover stuffing dumplings.
But all of that tenderness and affection can be destroyed in but a moment!
I will start with the point that I was trying to convey to my lovely wife as she sat in her office chair working, coughing, blowing her nose and generally looking miserable.
This is what I tried to say:
“My dearest, I am so incredibly sorry that you have been feeling so horribly for so long! It seems as though this cold will not go away as quickly as I was hoping and it literally breaks my heart every time that I gaze upon you beautiful face and see you so obviously feeling like crap. Is there anything that I can do for you right now?”
And this my friends is what I said.
“Aw, I hope you feel better soon/ I’m getting tired of looking at you and you looking like shit.”
Yep, even though it was said with the most love, tenderness, and empathy, my word choices still made it a little less than desirable. And it was most definitely not the message I was trying to send.
So, while you ruminate on these words of wisdom I am going to try to get my wife to speak to me again.
No worries, I am sure that we will be okay (because my lovely wife is incredibly forgiving) and I am sure that Carrie will be feeling better soon.
This is why I always say, “Love Your Way Through It!”
Peace,
Shaun
NEW BOOK ALERT!
INCHWORMS, the second book in the DUDE GOODFEATHER series is coming out September 1!
A fascinating must-read suspense from New York Times bestseller Carrie Jones.
A new chance visiting a small Southern college. A potential love interest for a broken girl obsessed with psychology. A damaged group of co-eds. A drowning that’s no accident. A threat that seems to have no end.
And just like that Jessica Goodfeather aka Dude’s trip away from her claustrophobic life in Maine to try to get an amazing scholarship to her dream school has suddenly turned deadly. Again.
Devil Monkeys, Bloody Mary and Urban Legends that Make You Go, Huh?
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Welcome to Loving the Strange, an occasionally drunk dive into the weird things and people that we love.
And this is episode ten: Urban Legends Negative Entities or Devil Monkeys, Bloody Mary and Urban Legends that Make You Go, Huh? And there should probably be a content warning because some urban legends are scary things.
But first we wanted to give a shout-out to our patrons who help support the podcast via supporting Carrie over there. And that’s Autumn, Claire, Jenn, Pam, Joan, Nancy, Toni, Shay, Rachael and Sam. You all rock.
Carrie: I feel like we should start with the Devil Monkeys of Danville, New Hampshire. Shout out to my birth state of weirdness.
In this podcast we talk about a whole slew of urban legends and also why we pass along these stories.
if you liked what you heard today, please share us with your friends. That’s the absolute best way to help us keep on growing.
Screenwriter Blake Snyder and his Save the Cat method really made the term/lingo “B” story and “A” story super popular. And I think sometimes that damn “B” story gets us all confused a bit, right?
So, basically let’s just go over the terms first.
What the heck is an A story and a B story?
The A story is the book or movie’s big essence. People call it the “dramatic” core. It is the big plotline that the hero of the story follows on her journey.
The B story is the subplot basically. It supports the “A” story. It sometimes feels absolutely unrelated.
The FlyingWrestler blog defines it.
“It’s a secondary story that has its own beginning, middle and end, and is focused on its own problem, separate from but intertwined with the A Story.”
The scriptmag writes ,
“The B Story is your character’s secondary motivation or mission – the OTHER thing they have to accomplish. Your B Story may be a second problem or issue that your main character has to fix. And while your A-Story presents itself at the inciting incident and is solidified at the end of the first act with the acceptance of the adventure, your B-Story often can’t be identified UNTIL the second act begins, because it’s what is illuminated by the adventure beginning.
The FlyingWrestler blog again says,
“Just like the main A Story, the B Story’s main character should have a problem involving something external, which has its own significant life stakes. That means the problem isn’t only an internal issue, involving their need to grow and change in some way.”
So, the question becomes: Does my story have a B story? Or is it all A?
You don’t have to have a B story, but it can be helpful.
“The classic use of B Story in a movie is a romantic relationship that is secondary to a non-romantic A Story. The potential romantic partner often pressures the main character, intentionally or not, to deal with their “stuff,” and consider changing. But as with most such internal growth, the character doesn’t engage in it willingly, with “growth” as the goal. No, characters (like real people) tend to avoid change, until really significant external problems force them into it. Typically the pressures of both the A and B Story problems combine to do that. But even then, the hero usually doesn’t really change until some key moment in the final act where they (usually) snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.
“But first, both A and B Story usually reach a rock bottom “All is Lost” moment. So if the B Story is about a relationship, it’s usually broken and over at that point, as are the main character’s hopes for their A Story goal. They will have one last chance to try to solve both in the final act.
Flying Wrestler
If the B Story is a romantic relationship, something has to be in the way of it. It has to be focused on a conflict, and not going well. If two people fall for each other and get together and have a lot of sex, etc., without some looming threat to the relationship, that’s not a story. That’s a positive development for the main character. And we audiences get bored by positive developments. We thrive on problems and conflicts.
Scriptmag gives a great example:
The Wizard of Oz – Dorothy’s A-Story is to find the Wizard and get home, but the B-Story becomes helping Oz and her new friends. She had no idea she was going to have to do that until the adventure began.
Usually when a crisis happens the B story acts like John Wayne in a movie and comes in and saves the A story. They merge and the reader goes, “Ah! They were connected the whole damn time. Doh!”
This is true about life, too, right? We all want to become writers, but then we have this B story of another career or self-sabotage and we might resist it, and then it’s like? Will our B story come save our A story?
But that’s about us as writers, not our actual books. So let’s get back to that.
The B story or subplot changes how your reader sees the main plot, right?
What does the B story actually do for you? Because it’s all about you, right? Of course it is!
It allows you to bulk out your story, but it can sometimes add too much bulk to your story.
It can help with pacing and structure. It’s especially helpful if you make things really dangerous for those minor characters early on while things are kind of still in the set-up for the main characters. This is a bit of a variant from Snyder’s plot form, which tends to insert that B Story at the end of act one.
It allows you to skip boring scenes in the A story sometimes. How does it do that? By creating a jump to another character or another moment/interest.
If you do use other characters to carry that B story, then you have to make sure the reader is interested enough in those other characters. Like in Lord of the Rings. Tolkein puts everyone into smaller units. They each get their own goals. Each group gets their own plotlines. And in the finale every one of those groups matter.
WRITING TIP OF THE POD
Don’t be afraid to be complicated. A good novel isn’t a picture book and you want there to be a subplot.
DOG TIP FOR LIFE
Don’t be a one-trick wonder. Have multiple goals and live life to the fullest. Don’t just be an A story.
We have a podcast, LOVING THE STRANGE, which we stream biweekly live on Carrie’s Facebook and Twitter and YouTube on Fridays. Her Facebook and Twitter handles are all carriejonesbooks or carriejonesbook. But she also has extra cool content focused on writing tips here.
Carrie is reading one of her raw poems every once in awhile on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That’s a lot!
Share this if you want and also because it would be super nice of you!
A refrigerator is like life. It is full of culinary experiences which we often take for granted and for many of us, are often the same week after week.
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.
Hi folks!
I hope that you have had a wonderful week since I last wrote my Thursday blog post. One of my favorite things to do as of late is the new podcast that Carrie and I have been doing live on Friday evenings at 7 p.m. eastern time.
It is called Loving the Strange and usually we speak on topics such as ghosts, Bigfoot, lucid dreaming and anything not ordinary. However, this week we are going to be doing a hot chicken wing eating episode and are inviting our viewers to ask us questions during the podcast, similar to the show Hot Ones.
I Swear This Isn’t An Ad
I know that first paragraph sounded like a big advertisement for our podcast, and it was sort of, but in actuality I was giving some background for the rest of this blog.
Before I sat down and started typing I was starting to prepare for tomorrow night’s podcast. It is way too soon to start frying delicious chicken wings (Carrie is eating fake vegan wings, blech!), but I thought that I would start inventorying our hot sauce and picking out the ones for us to use, with Carrie’s input of course.
Note from Carrie: I have so far had no input.
We will start with the more mild sauces and work our way up to the hottest sauce that we have. Considering that we have 22 different bottles of hot sauce in our refrigerator, we will be skipping many of them because we will each only be eating six wings on the podcast. I am getting off track again, sorry!
My real point is that when I opened the refrigerator and thought about our hot sauces and how they change or enhance the taste of food I realized that a refrigerator is like life. It is full of culinary experiences which we often take for granted and for many of us, are often the same week after week.
How many of us just go through the motions of life and never spice it up with a dash of heat?
Making life more interesting and less mundane can be as simple as opening a “bottle” of hot life sauce and letting some fly. It is exciting, exhilarating, and oh so much better than just leading the same old bland existence all of the time!
Try it please!
Take a moment at the beginning of each day and say to yourself, “Self, how can I spice up my day today?”
You can choose a mild life spice or an insanely hot life spice depending on your mood. Just remember that the hotter and more adventurous the life spice you choose is, to use a corresponding amount less. It’s the same as food spice. If you use too much life spice, it can totally ruin the experience.
If you can’t bring yourself to add any life spice right now, you should at least watch our podcast on Friday. I guarantee that we will be feeling the effects of the hot sauces by the end and as long as Carrie can keep her fingers out of hers eyes it should be humorous.
Till then, start with some mild life spice and Love Your Way Through It!
Peace,
Shaun
LET’S HANG OUT!
HEY! DO YOU WANT TO SPEND MORE TIME TOGETHER?
MAYBE TAKE A COURSE, CHILL ON SOCIAL MEDIA, BUY ART OR A BOOK, OR LISTEN TO OUR PODCAST?
This podcast isn’t about writing. It isn’t about life tips. It’s really inspired by how Shaun and I are such opposites about so many things and yet we still love each other. There’s got to be a lesson somewhere in there, right?
It’s unscripted and fun and just meant to make you feel like you’re hanging out with two weird people talking about strange things.
Please like and share and subscribe, it totally helps us out!
This is Shaun, Carrie’s husband, and I’ve taken over the blog again to tell you what it’s like to live with a writer.
So, having cohabitated with Carrie (the writer) for many years now, I have learned quite a bit about her work style and ethic. I have also come to know that individual authors have differing work routines and habits that, hopefully, keep them motivated and working but often vary greatly from one author to another. Some habituations lend themselves to greater success than others, just like in any other career.
Today I am going to give you a glimpse into what a typical day in Carrie’s life looks like, as far as earning money goes at least.
First, let me say that I know that everyone’s life is different. Heck, in our house every day is different and any particular day can go off the rails in a split second. I am not trying to promote any particular way of working. This is simply a husband bragging about his wife, mainly because she works circles around me, and I am amazed every single day.
Me last year before the masks.
THE CARRIE DAY
Depending upon the day of the week, Carrie gets up between 6 a.m. and 7 a.m. Sometimes 5 a.m.
She will awaken earlier if it is a running day and she will get up and run on the treadmill or outside when it is not cold. Because I am lazy, I usually get out of bed after her, however, by the time she is done running, I will have made her a glass of ice water and her morning tea.
As soon as she is done running, we have said our morning pleasantries and she has given me a nice tight and sweaty hug, she sits down at her computer and goes to work. If it is a non-running day, the routine is the same except she hasn’t earned her glass of ice water and only gets a cup of hot tea when I drag myself downstairs. And the hug is dry.
Giving Up Coffee
As a sidebar, can I just say that I was a former coffee addict and even though every day is still an addiction struggle, Carrie was finally able to get me clean and now I drink hot tea every morning instead?
Total honesty compels me to say that on Saturday and Sunday mornings I do relapse and make us each a cup of Cuban coffee, but it is more of an enjoyment of the sugar-laden espresso-like goodness rather than a caffeine fix. Regardless of my relapses, I will sing the praises of switching from coffee to tea and how much better my body has felt for the past year or so because of it. You should try it if you are a coffee hound!
Back To Carrie’s Day
So, yes, Carrie literally goes right to work after she has awoken (or awoken and run) and she works diligently. A good portion of her days now are spent editing other author’s work or coaching other writers and I have watched as she has changed her work schedule over the years to find the best fit for herself.
For twenty-five minutes, and she actually uses a timer so that she doesn’t get too engrossed in what she is doing and lose track of time, Carrie will work and then take a five-minute break.
Unfortunately for her, she usually does other types of work on her five-minute break and that is okay if it makes her happy because the real purpose of the five-minute break is to get out of her chair and move around so she doesn’t get “dead butt syndrome.” Occasionally, she will do something that she enjoys on her breaks, such as visiting her dungeon art studio and painting in tiny, happy spurts.
Of course, this regimented schedule also has its caveats. I mean what parent can make it through the day without parenting? Sometimes these parenting breaks can really put a damper on your work flow. Regardless of whether it is a happy interaction or a stressful one, they can discombobulate the flow of information through your brain and your state of mind in general.
Heck, right now as I write this she is upstairs visiting with the seventh grader and most likely doing some general life counseling. If you have kids, you have to make time for them!
The To-Do List Of Awesome (By Of Awesome I mean OfHell)
This brings me to another thing that Carrie does every day, she makes a to-do list. She actually has more than one going at any given time and they include yearly, monthly, weekly, and daily lists. These lists are how she stays on track and tries not to forget anything. My favorite is her daily list, which she prepares the night before and I get a big kick out of watching how it morphs during the day depending on how things go. Not being a list-making type of person, I am truly amazed by how she utilizes and manipulates them in order to get everything done when it is supposed to be done.
Her most favorite worktime activity is being able to work on her own stories, which, sadly, she doesn’t get to do nearly enough. Daily, she attempts to have enough time at the end of the day, which for her is well after dinner, to enjoy her true passion of writing, and I love it when she does. The change in her personality is palpable and she is so much more carefree and happy. Plus, it means she can occasionally submit a new book to an agent or self-publish one online.
Speaking of which, she will be publishing the sequel to one of her most recent books, The Places We Hide, soon and we will be sure to give you plenty of warning before it comes out. In the meantime, if you would like to purchase any of her previously published books, read older blogs (written by her and much more interesting) or if you need some authoring or editorial help, you can find links to all of those services are below in the HANG OUT WITH US section, but also, just peruse the tabs above.
In short, my points are thus:
Be disciplined in your work ethic and utilize tools that help you to be more efficient. Always make time for family.
Always leave time in your day to spend a bit of quality time with yourself doing what you love
And most importantly, love your way through it.
Success will find you!
May you best wishes come true for you!
Shaun
LET’S HANG OUT!
HEY! DO YOU WANT TO SPEND MORE TIME TOGETHER?
MAYBE TAKE A COURSE, CHILL ON SOCIAL MEDIA, BUY ART OR A BOOK, OR LISTEN TO OUR PODCAST?
Hi! I know this is Carrie’s blog and you all look forward so much to hearing from her, but today I have commandeered it and I may do that once in a while because she is such an incredible woman and I don’t want her to be so overworked that her magnificence dulls.
Look! It’s Shaun!
By the way, this is Carrie’s husband. Actually, it should be Carrie’s Husband because that is the actual title I have come to be known by to a good portion of our friends. My birthname is Shaun though, if you didn’t already know, and I am okay with being Carrie’s Husband, because she is that crazy awesome!
But I digress. I am not an author by any means and Carrie asked me to talk about something to do with writing, maybe a prompt. Ugh, my brain hurts already! So, I took a few minutes to mull over what I would have a hard time doing if I was trying to write a book (I have tried and many accolades to you writer folks.) and I came up with so many ideas it is embarrassing. But I got stuck on one and that is, character traits and/or development. Heck, maybe these are two totally different subjects to you, but as I said, writing is not my bailiwick.
I thought, “I have no idea how to give words on a page human traits and make them feel real to people. How would I do that?”
Well, I decided that I would sit down and just think and reminisce about the people in my life who influenced me as a young person and who helped make me who I am today.
My mother and father divorced when I was two years old and I never saw him again until I was nine years old when he came back into my life bearing my two-year-old half-sister. He and my mother eventually got married again, my mother adopted my half-sister. They had another child, my younger brother, and eventually got divorced again when I was in my early twenties.
I never really liked my father nor did I mesh with his viewpoints on life, although as we both matured, we grew into a polite relationship of acceptance. In reality I just gave up on arguing with him and trying to make him see anybody’s point of view other than his own. Within this paragraph, there are hundreds of story possibilities, but I am only telling you this so that I can say that I was raised and influenced mainly by my mother and my grandfather. There were times when my mother and I lived on our own, with roommates (friends of my mother’s), and also with my grandparents.
Thinking about my mother, father and grandfather brings back so many memories, both good and bad, and to replicate their personality traits would be relatively easy because even as my memories seem to fade, memories of them are still strong and vibrant.
So, to make that supremely realistic character I am going to ask you to not think about those people in your life that are so easily remembered, but go beyond them and dig deeper. Think about someone whom you may have forgotten, someone who may not have been in your life long perhaps, but still left an impression, good or bad. We do need both kinds of characters after all.
Just writing this is causing me to remember people that I have forgotten. People who I didn’t otherwise know, but for a brief, chance meeting, but who still left an indelible mark upon me. Such an experience, possibly long forgotten by you, can help you create a character of difference or help you get out of a rut where you feel your characters are not deep enough or possibly seem to similar.
I don’t know if anything that I have written will be useable advice to you, but I can say that I have been thinking about this off and on for about four hours now and I have had a great time. Regardless of whether or not I have helped, I would recommend taking this thought journey! I am not one into yoga or meditation but just sitting quietly and pondering this I have basically run the full gamut of emotions and rejuvenated many memories that had faded from the forefront. Truth be known, my eyes are watery ,but that is just part of the process and sometimes I can be an emotional wimp. If there were no emotions involved, it doesn’t seem like a worthwhile experience whether you are trying to create a better character or you are just reminiscing.
Carrie and I have spoken about character building, in many ways, on our podcast Dogs Are Smarter Than People and I would invite you to listen if you haven’t yet made that journey. There’s a link below.
Thank you taking the time to read my ramblings and may you have a happy and safe 2021!
