Internationally Bestselling Quirky Children's Books; Adventurous Heroes Doing Good
Today we talk about weird food combinations, live, of course, because we are dangerous like that.
The YouTube embeds appear to be broken, but it’s here.
https://www.allrecipes.com/article/what-is-oleo/
https://www.liveabout.com/weird-food-combinations-4172230
This week our live podcast features the amazing Dee Harris, and strange celebrity stories and events, but mostly? It ends up being poop stories, and Shaun even shares a cop poop story of his own.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/strange-celebrity-facts
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=strange+celebrity+baby+names&ia=web
https://www.thetalko.com/celebrities-with-the-weirdest-phobias/
https://bestlifeonline.com/celebs-not-like-us/
https://www.thethings.com/adam-sandler-attacked-by-cheetah-story/
https://www.buzzfeed.com/spenceralthouse/celebrity-hurbly-gurblies
https://www.mensxp.com/entertainment/celebrities/87594-weird-habits-of-famous-people.html
On Thursdays, 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 or Captain Pontification. And no, we don’t always agree. 🙂
So, we have ourselves a new dog. A real new dog! In fact, two days from today we will have had her for exactly two weeks. It is another rescue and Carrie promised that we wouldn’t have to get another rescue. But at least this time it is a puppy.
The truth of the matter is that Carrie was browsing the available dogs on a rescue site, and she showed me this particular dog and I said, “Let’s get it!”
So, we did.
Actually, Carrie did, because she did all of the work filling out forms and speaking to people on the phone. But I drove the four and a half hours to pick her up, so I consider it even. It has been a fun couple of weeks, and we think that we may have lucked out again and gotten another good dog.
Of course, good is relative. I think this one is good. As a matter of fact, this may very well be the first dog (even a puppy) that I have fallen for to the point of letting her love up on me, snuggle quietly, and even lick my face frantically if that is her mood.
When we got this puppy, Carrie and I decided that we were going to name it ourselves and not let our daughters have a say in it because collectively they have named all of our previous seven or so pets. Somehow, we decided that her name was going to be Pogie. Carrie apparently knows that word from a song or something but when I heard it, I instantly liked it.
She is sitting in her crate right now barking and whining her head off because she cannot see us. She is in a timeout for peeing on the floor and Pogie and I are wondering when she will be totally house broken.
Okay, if you didn’t at least chuckle at that I want you to quit reading right now. Not really! Please don’t go, but I thought it was a funny non-mistake.
Pogie has kept us busy these last two weeks. It seems as though we have been doing shift work called, “Do you have eyes on the dog right now?”
Unfortunately, I have to work out of the house and that means Carrie has been pulling some overtime. But I appreciate her for it, and I always look forward to catching her with Pogie sleeping in her lap and her arms all askew while she tries to type and not wake the puppy.
I just realized that I basically wrote this entire blogpost solely so that I could make that joke about Carrie being in the kennel and other than that it really has no purpose.
I will give it a purpose.
If you forgot what it was like to be able to shower joy and happiness on a baby while not being bothered (except on the rare occasion) by all the extra work, go get yourself a puppy! There, that is my point. Having a little puppy will make you realize that you can have almost the same benefits without having a human baby. And the commitment is so much shorter!
Seriously though, if you have forgotten how to feel that loving joyfulness that only puppy belly smell can bring, you might want to remind yourself. Or you might just want to try and remind yourself by spreading your own love and joy to another person. It can make you feel just as good and sometimes much better. Just don’t try and pick them up and smell their belly!
Spread some love!
Spread some happiness and joy!
And, ALWAYS LOVE YOUR WAY THROUGH IT!
Peace,
Shaun
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 or Captain Pontification. And no, we don’t always agree. 🙂
Spring is almost here folks! Here in Maine, in Bar Harbor at least, the vast majority of our snow is gone and it is steadily getting warmer. To me, this is cause for great celebration. You may want to know why I am celebrating the arrival of spring.
Well simply put, I do not like winter. I was born and raised in southern Florida and I am not into winter sports at all. Nor am I into freezing my butt off when I want to go outside. To top it off, I am very opposed to layers of clothing covering my body, and we all know that layering is the way to stay warm. It creates quite a conundrum for me.
However, there are many benefits to living where we live. We don’t have nearly as much traffic to deal with. Our town has literally two traffic lights and I believe that there are three total for the entire island. We don’t have long lines to wait in anywhere, except during tourist season when our small-town logistics are overrun.
Also, it is incredibly beautiful here! Carrie and I don’t spend nearly enough time enjoying our natural surroundings. We are working on changing that. We have recently adopted a pseudo-selfish outlook of taking time for ourselves in order to have smaller but more frequent moments of fun and happiness before we run out of time to do stuff that we want.
You know what being able to have some fun does for you? It makes you happier. You know what happens when you are happier? You have a higher likelihood of spreading some of that happy around and being kind to other human beings!
So, folks, take some time to do for yourselves. Carve out a few moments or a few days to do something that you want to do. Something that makes you smile and makes you feel refreshed and energized.
Then share it!
You don’t have to share your activity (although that would be awesome) but share your newfound happy. Share your reinvigorated heart and smiles. It doesn’t cost you anything to try and give away some of your joy. If you do it right, it won’t even cut into your joy savings account because doing something for someone else should make you feel good enough to replenish whatever you gave away.
Try it!
Now go love someone and remember to always Love Your Way Through it!
Peace,
Shaun
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?
Email us at carriejonesbooks@gmail.com
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.
You can order now! It’s an adult mystery/thriller that takes place in Bar Harbor, Maine. Read an excerpt here!
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!
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 or Captain Pontification. And no, we don’t always agree. 🙂
Our beautiful, white, very fluffy and hairy dog, Gabby, passed away a week ago today. We tried to get home from our vacation early, in time to just let her know that we loved her, but we didn’t make.
That sounds very sad, and it is. I have shed a tear or two on multiple occasions, including right now, but I try to be stoically calm as the “big, strong man” of the house. I have been the discoverer of our last two doggie’s passing and I usually take those moments of private time to tell them how I feel about them and appreciate all of the love, happiness, and protection that they provide to my family.
I did not get that alone time on this occasion and secretly (not so secretly now) I regret it. In fact, this will be news even to Carrie when she reads this. That’s okay. I am old enough to just be who I am and not try to maintain any pretenses for the sake of tradition any longer.
I guess that is kind of the point of this blog post. Which, if you haven’t noticed, is my first blog post in like four or five weeks. I mean, we have been on vacation and had a multitude of other things going on, but I am back, baby!
Anyway, I think people just need to start being who they are. There are plenty of people who live by that creed already, but I think it is a majority who don’t. Why live by societal expectations and the widely excepted norms? You know of course that I am not speaking of societal norms like don’t hurt others, etc.
What I am talking about is don’t try to emulate social media influencers. Don’t try to wear the most fashionable trends. Don’t attempt to copy someone else’s personality. Just be your damn self!
Life is so much more enjoyable if you feel free and safe to just be yourself and live your life as you choose. There is so much bull crap surrounding us and telling us how we should live our lives and how we should look. I mean seriously, it is as old as Barbie the doll (I know it is so much older than that!) and as recent as social media, but still just as useless.
All you need to do is be who you feel you really are and act kind to others whenever you can. I believe that most of humanity is kind and caring. Those that are not end up in jail or as politicians (sort of joking there).
Cry when you want to cry! Help another when they need it! Spread your love and goodness as often as you can! Enjoy yourself and this short lifetime that you have been blessed with! Act like a dog damn it!
Take my advice and always Love Your Way Through It!
Peace,
Shaun
Carrie wrote a poem about Gabby, and she’ll post more about her tomorrow.
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?
Email us at carriejonesbooks@gmail.com
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.
You can order now! It’s an adult mystery/thriller that takes place in Bar Harbor, Maine. Read an excerpt here!
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!
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 or Captain Pontification. And no, we don’t always agree. 🙂
Last week I wrote about the four elements of long-lasting love. If you were kind enough to read my blog post then you remember that the fourth and most important element is forgiveness.
Today we will put that to the test.
You see, today is Friday. Yesterday was Thursday and that is the day that I am supposed to submit my writing attempts to Carrie. Carrie said nothing about me not writing a post last evening and has yet to mention it this morning.
Most likely it is her extreme kindness that is keeping her from telling me that I am a huge failure, again. Mind you, Carrie does not ever tell me that I am a huge failure (disappointing in the bedroom sometimes) but being human, I sometimes hear that in my head.
Side note from Carrie: I have never said anything about anything in the bedroom ever because I am an uptight New Englander. And I would not say that.
Back to Shaun: So, I am going to write this blog post this morning and email it to her without saying a word and see what happens. Please keep your fingers crossed for me!
I sometimes make out like Carrie is mean to me and hopefully you know that this is not true whatsoever! I just like to garner a little compassion when I can from whomever reads my posts.
Tomorrow, we are supposed to have a nor’easter that is forecast to bring anywhere from 11-18” of snow. I hate snow! While it can be beautiful at times and is fun to watch fall from the sky, I am not into winter sports that much and anything more than a couple inches means lots of clean up.
Remember that I am from Florida and never saw snow until I was seventeen years old. For me it was an exciting novelty for many years and even shoveling snow held a certain allure that made it fun. I am over all of that now, really over it!
Anywhere that you have snow and it stays around for a while you must have temperatures below freezing. Yet another thing that is not super attractive to me. I much prefer the warmth and humidity of the South.
However, knowing that I will have to do a lot of snow blowing and shoveling on Sunday actually makes me feel happy. I am alive and while my life is not perfect, it is a lot better than billions of other people in this world. Carrie and I remind ourselves of this almost daily and often do it together. If one of us is down about something and thinking that life just sucks all we have to do is remember what we don’t have to deal with.
I could list out the million ways that other people are suffering while we are not, but that would just be a waste of time. You can use your imagination or experience to know what I am talking about.
It is a rare life where you get out without having experienced horrible life experiences, and I would wager that if you leave this world free of super negative experiences, that your leaving was incredibly traumatic to someone else. Having written that, I realize that you could look at life as a circle of grief, a Venn diagram of sorts. Your circle may not include sadness or despair, but it overlaps with other circles, other lives, that most certainly do. It seems almost inescapable.
Of course, I never write to bring you down. So, celebrate! Rejoice in the life that you have now and realize that it could always be worse. I mean, you could have to shovel snow every day. Seize upon all of the positivity in your life, every day! Life truly is a wonderful thing and each and every one of you has a purpose of positivity that you must remember and try to grasp daily.
Now go out and make your life better, make somebody else’s life better and remember to Always Love Your Way through It!
Peace,
Shaun
The latest Rosie and Seamus book is out in the world February 1! That’s so soon, right? You should go order it because it’s super fun and also because it would make everyone happy!
The discovery of a dead town councilor’s remains unearths yet another nightmare for reporter Rosie Jones in the romantic thriller by New York Times and internationally bestselling author Carrie Jones
Things are finally getting hot and heavy between Rosie Jones and police sergeant Seamus Kelley as they approach their wedding date. But now Rosie finds human remains on the edge of a popular hiking trail in Acadia National Park.
Seamus determines the bones belong to a local, somewhat beloved town councilor and the investigation threatens to derail both their adorable Maine tourist town and Rosie and Seamus’s relationship.
To keep the community she loves safe, Rosie is going to have to face both the town’s demons and her own.
This is it! Our final installment in how to punctuate dialogue like a boss
And we’re talking about questions and quotations in dialogue because why not fry our brains a little more. Are you ready? And as a reminder, our last two podcasts also talk about this, so you should check them out.
Let’s start with . . .
Questions and Exclamations in Dialogue and there is not dialogue tag or beat.
They are just standing out there all by their lonesome.
When this happens, you just put the question mark or the exclamation point inside the last end quotation marks.
“Carrie is obsessed with manatees?”
“Carrie is obsessed with manatees!”
So the formula for that is:
BEGINNING QUOTATION MARKS + QUESTION OR EXCLAMATION + QUESTION MARK OR EXCLAMATION POINT + END QUOTES
Questions and Exclamations With a Dialogue Tag
Now let’s add a dialogue tag for those questions and exclamations.
So here again, the exclamation point or question marks are right there inside the second set of quotation marks. DO NOT USE A COMMA, TOO! BANISH IT!
And do not capitalize the dialogue tag. LOWER CASE THAT BABY! It’s all the same sentence even with the exclamation point/question mark in there.
“Carrie is into manatees?” they asked, pretty much scowling because that was weird.
“Carrie is into manatees!” he said, gesticulating at the manatee. The manatee winked.
BEGINNING QUOTATION MARKS + QUESTION OR EXCLAMATION + QUESTION MARK OR EXCLAMATION POINT + END QUOTES + lowercase dialogue tag and the rest of the sentence + PERIOD.
Okay. Moving on to this dangerous territory.
Quote Inside Your Dialogue
Sometimes, you’ll have a character who is telling you a direct quote from someone else or a book or a song lyric within their dialogue, right? So, we have to tell the reader that this quote is a quote they are quoting (look at all those quote words) and not something they themselves are making up.
How do you do that?
You use the magical punctuation!
So, you put those double quotation marks around everything the speaker is saying AND THEN you put single quotation marks around what they are quoting.
“Carrie said, and I quote, ‘I am so into manatees.’ ”
“Carrie said, ‘I am so into manatees.’ Sometimes it’s hard to be married to her.”
Amazing, right?
Knowing how to punctuate helps make agents, editors, and readers love you.
If you’re quoting someone else, you want to show it. If you don’t? You’re plagiarizing. That’s naughty.
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 “Summer Spliff” by Broke For Free.
WE HAVE EXTRA CONTENT ALL ABOUT LIVING HAPPY OVER HERE! It’s pretty awesome.
AND we have a writing tips podcast called WRITE BETTER NOW! It’s taking a bit of a hiatus, but there are a ton of tips over there.
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!
https://www.foxnews.com/us/colorado-man-sets-moms-home-ablaze-trying-clear-cobwebs-blowtorch-police
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 or Captain Pontification. And no, we don’t always agree. 🙂 But this time we definitely do.
Yesterday did not start off great for me. It was a stressful morning in a routine sort of way, nothing especially bad, but enough to put me in a bad mood for the majority of the morning.
Of course, I am a firm believer in setting your own mood and allowing yourself to not be negative if you have that choice. Yesterday was just one of those days where it was a bit harder to shake off the gloom of negativity.
And it only got worse.
While I was at a customer’s house working, I heard a noise that was obviously a dog in distress. There are no dogs near this house, routinely, so it struck me as odd. I was on the second floor and looked out of a window that overlooks the road.
I could see a dog lying on the edge of the road directly in front of the house where I was working.
I said, “Oh, shit!” and ran downstairs.
By the time I got downstairs, the poor pooch was gone, but I quickly located it at the house next door. It was a medium-sized mixed breed that was standing on its own and being held by the neighbor’s landscaper. I asked her if the dog belonged there and she responded that it did not.
The dog had no apparent broken bones and was very calm and friendly but was obviously injured because it was sneezing a lot and every time it sneezed, it sprayed blood everywhere. I was pretty sure that the landscaper was pretty much tapped out just holding onto the dog, so I asked her if she would be okay holding onto the dog long enough for me to go back to my truck and get something to use as a leash. She said she was fine.
After securing the pup and bringing it back to my truck, I took a picture of it and asked Carrie if she could post it on Facebook and try to find out who owns it. There are not a lot of houses in the immediate vicinity of where I was and not living there, I was not familiar with the residents and their pets.
Long story short, the owner was not identified in a timely manner and as soon as I was able to secure what I had been doing at the house, I loaded the dog up in my truck and headed for the vet. Carrie called ahead to our local vet and was told that they didn’t have an actual vet on duty that day. So, I had to drive the 45 minutes to the vet a couple towns over.
It was a fine ride and the dog and I enjoyed each other’s company. Or, at least I did!
We only had to wait a few minutes until the vet could exam her and it turned out that she had a significant facial injury that is very common in cases where dogs come into contact with a moving motor vehicle.
After saying my goodbyes, I left my new friend in the very capable hands of the vet, who just so happens to be our vet as well. Okay, we have two vets because we’re overachievers, but he is one of them and he is the type of vet you can trust when it comes to trauma.
Later in the afternoon, I received a call from the owner, and he was very frazzled and understandably it was not the best conversation in the history of conversations.
I didn’t care. Not everyone can maintain a normal level of courtesy under times of stress. It’s human nature.
Then he called me back this morning and it was a totally different experience! He was very apologetic, very thankful, and even offered to call me back and give me an update after his dog had undergone the necessary surgery.
And that my friends is why I took the time to disregard my plans for the remainder of yesterday and bring that beautiful animal to the vet. I wasn’t trying to be a hero. I don’t need any praise from anyone. But I do need people to feel good and I know that if you, yes you, the reader, everyone, doesn’t take the time to be compassionate and kind, even when it is putting you out, the world as we know it will literally implode!
They say that everyone is someone’s daughter, son, wife, or husband. The same can be said for animals. In fact, sometimes I think that there are people who love animals more than humans and that is okay. Wouldn’t you want a stranger to aid your loved one, be it human or animal, if they needed assistance?
Yes, you would!
So, next time you get the opportunity to do the same for someone else, friend, foe or stranger, you should jump on that opportunity to keep the world on its axis and keep the love flowing.
Remember to always Love Your Way Through It!
Peace,
Shaun
This is Carrie again. Shaun never thinks he’s a hero. He’ll save a drowning child in the hotel pool and never tell anyone about it. Where other people will trumpet saving a turtle in the middle of the road, Shaun will just do it.
Shaun’s pretty awesome. We need more Shauns.
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.
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?
Email us at carriejonesbooks@gmail.com
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.
You can order now! It’s an adult mystery/thriller that takes place in Bar Harbor, Maine. Read an excerpt here!
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!
“I talk to her all the time.” Shaun about his ghost doll friend.
It’s our second podcast and you can hear how:
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!
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.
You can order now! It’s an adult mystery/thriller that takes place in Bar Harbor, Maine. Read an excerpt here!
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?
Email us at carriejonesbooks@gmail.com
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.
You can order now! It’s an adult mystery/thriller that takes place in Bar Harbor, Maine. Read an excerpt here!
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!
When people look at our dog Gabby, they almost always say, “Oh, she’s so beautiful.”
Gabby, however, isn’t beautiful by breed standards. She’s actually a mess. Her muzzle isn’t boxy enough. Her back sloops. Her hips splay. She’s about twenty pounds too skinny.
And that’s mostly all because she was abused and starved her first year of life, tied by a chain to a tree in the Alabama fields.
But Gabby isn’t about shame. Gabby is about being – being joyous, loving, and keeping her flock of kittens and people and one other dog safe. Gabby doesn’t have shame about her imperfections.
“She’s the prettiest puppy ever,” people coo to her when we take walks.
“Who’s the beautiful baby?”
Or sometimes it’s just a simple, “Oh, what a beautiful dog.”
Gabby has no shame about her broken body that doesn’t meet AKC standards. She has joy even when she’s broken, hurt, limping along or having a bad fur day. We can learn a lot from Gabby.
On the entry “shame v. guilt” on her blog, Dr. Bréne Brown writes,
“I define shame as the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging – something we’ve experienced, done, or failed to do makes us unworthy of connection. I don’t believe shame is helpful or productive. In fact, I think shame is much more likely to be the source of destructive, hurtful behavior than the solution or cure. I think the fear of disconnection can make us dangerous.”
Dr. Bréne Brown
For many women and men, shame has a lot to do with not looking pretty enough, perfect enough, sexy enough, good enough. We stare at our eyes and worry about their shape, our lack of lips, our lack of butt, our lack of symmetry. Lacks. It’s always about lacks.
Gabby has no shame about how she looks because she’s a dog. People have no judgement about her lacks because they aren’t constantly fed how she’s supposed to look as a Great Pyr. They just see her dog soul shining through, her kind eyes and her fluffy, white fur.
We can’t quickly erase all the beauty programming that the media, our relatives, and even our friends and lovers have fed us, but we can know what triggers our shame and call it out.
Shaun says things like, “You are so beautiful.”
And I cringe.
I cringe and ask, “What about the scar on my stomach?”
And he’ll say, “Still beautiful.”
And I’ll keep cringing and say, “I think I’m losing my lips.”
“Still beautiful.”
“I have no eyebrows.”
“Still beautiful.”
What Shaun has is a great ability to pull me out of my shame spiral, but also empathy. It’s why he was a fantastic cop when he was a cop.
Brown writes this in the Semantic Scholar,
Wiseman identifies four defining attributes of empathy: (a) to be able to see the world as others see it; (b) to be nonjudgmental; (c) to understand another person’s feelings; and (d) to communicate your understanding of that person’s feelings (1996). Empathy is almost an opposite to shame.
Brown again
Empathy allows Shaun to be kind and patient when I’m being a dork about how I look when he’s giving me a compliment.
This is true about self publishing. I was teaching a workshop about publishing on Friday and some of the students were like, “There is such a stigma to self publishing still.”
And another guy was like, “That’s because some of those books suck.”
And that’s true, but some are brilliant. I said that.
I also said, “There are some traditionally published books that suck, too.”
We have to figure out to not worry about other people determining the worth of our work. Taste is subjective. Some people love Drake. Some people can’t stand him. That doesn’t devalue Drake. Same thing for Adele or Stephen King or Jayson Reynolds.
Yes, some self published books haven’t been copy edited or might not be structurally sound, but those books don’t determine the worth of your book.
Your book is yours. Its value isn’t about all the other self published books in the world. Its value is determined by your ability to communicate your story. Its value is determined by the joy and sense of accomplishment that it gave you when you wrote it.
Don’t go into the shame spiral. Be proud of who you are and what you’ve created.
Poop is nothing to be ashamed about.
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.
Resources
Wiseman, T. (1996). A concept analysis of empathy. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 23, 1162–1167.
Looking for help with substance abuse or mental health issues? In the U.S., call 800-662-HELP (4357) for theSAMHSA National Helpline.
Looking for help? In the U.S., call 1-800-273-8255 for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.
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My new book, IN THE WOODS, is out!
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!
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?
Buy limited-edition prints and learn more about my art here on my site.
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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.
This week’s podcast link if you can’t see it below!
