yathriller – Carrie Jones Books

WRITING EVIL

In a couple of weeks, INCHWORMS, my next book in the Dude Goodfeather series will come out–or maybe it’s just one week? I’m not sure.

Bad author! Bad.

Anyway, recently a woman in a message on a social media platform said, “Carrie. You are such a nice person. Why do you write about scary things?”

And I said, “I don’t always write about scary things.”

And she basically harrumphed via messenger.

It’s true though that lately the books I’ve been putting out do have scary things that happen in them. They are serial killers and reporters in small Maine towns (in the Bar Harbor Rose series), there are killers and teens in Maine and the south (Dude Goodfeather series), there are demonic influences in Maine (Saint, Maine paranormal series).

So why?

A long time ago, I wrote in an essay for Hunger Mountain, what I still think is true right now.

“Our world is full of responsibilities. We pay bills. We do homework. We get sick. We argue with our relatives. We worry about war and the economy and finding someone to love. Fantasy offers hope. It shows us there are other potential Big-footed ways of living. There are possibilities of lives and worlds greater than our own and if those possibilities can be imagined, maybe our own lives can become grander things. Maybe we can be a boy wizard who defeats the ultimate evil. Maybe we can find an entire new world by leaping through a cupboard. Or even if we can’t be those characters, we can be our own heroes, pushing ourselves to our greatest limits by following their examples.
“When I write fantasy I am stunned by my characters’ abilities to deal with their massive problems and it gives me hope that I can deal with my own. Compared to fighting off a pixie invasion, dealing with the fact that I forgot to pay my cell phone bill is a breeze. I like that. I like the fact that characters don’t give up even when their mentors die; even when they are facing the ultimate evil and they only have a .02% chance of succeeding. I want to be more like that. So I write it.
“If you suck away the every-day complicating details like homework and parents, and make the dramas big you can really hit on those universal truths. You can build stories for kids that are about good and triumph and hope. Kids deserve those kinds of stories. They deserve characters who fight the trolls, who find Bigfoot. They deserve heroes like themselves. They deserve to believe in magic, in their dreams and in themselves.

I don’t know about you, but I get so sad about the world and mad and horrified and I do what I can to help, but I also write scary things, I think, to help me feel like there is hope and possibility, to give me a pathway towards understanding both my own inner failings and society’s.

Anyway, I hope you’ll check out my next book (or any other ones) so I can keep being an author for a living and not have to leave the house. Just kidding! Sort of!

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.

New Book Alert – SAINT – A YA paranormal

I have a new book! It’s about to come out!

Big breaths.

If you don’t remember, I’m doing this BIG EXPERIMENT where I’m independently publishing a book every month even though

I’m terrible at pushing my own books and getting people to buy them.

Yeah. That’s basically it. But I coach and edit so many writers who choose independent publishing over traditional publishing and I wanted to do a big year-long experiment and immerse myself in that world so I could learn about it, too.

But the problem is:

I still want people to buy those books because I really really love them.

Which leads me to the problem of:

I hate marketing my own books. It just makes me feel dirty somehow. Yes. I should probably go to therapy for this, but I can’t afford therapy thanks to American healthcare. 🙂

So, here goes:

My book coming out is SAINT. It’s super fun. It’s part of a series of stand-alone paranormals all set in the same world/same town in Maine. And I’m SO in love with the lead character Cole and his bestie, Norah. And also there are Bridge to Terabithia references. It’s such a book of my heart.

Think – Guy who levitates and is followed by birds.

Think – Guy who has a crush on his best friend and a skeleton knocking on his window.

Think -An evil curse on a town and a demon demanding guy’s best friend be sacrificed.

There you go!

Look! That’s me with Tobin and Tammy and Kekla and Katharine Paterson! Cool, right? Yes, I’m in Tobin’s armpit.

Okay. Here’s more about the book!

What would you do to make a difference?

After his best friend Norah was almost abducted, Cole Nicholaus has spent most of his childhood homeschooled, lonely and pining for Norah to move from best friend to girl friend status. When birds follow him around or he levitates the dishes, he thinks nothing of it—until a reporter appears and pushes him into making a choice: stay safe at home or help save a kidnapped kid.

Cole and Norah quickly end up trying to not just save a kid, but an entire town from a curse that has devastating roots and implications for how exactly Cole came to be the saint that he is.

Can Cole stop evil from hurting him and Norah again? And maybe even get together? Only the saints know.

From the New York Times and internationally bestselling author of the NEED series, Saint is a book about dealing with the consequences that make us who we are and being brave enough to admit who we love and what we need.

BUY NOW! 🙂 I made a smiley face there so you don’t feel like I’m too desperate.

You can read an excerpt right here.

And please buy it if you’re feeling like helping a writer pay for therapy some day. Or if you just like fun books. I’m a pretty good writer, I promise. 🙂

So many thanks for my awesome patrons who help support me write new books. I wouldn’t be able to do any of it (emotionally especially) without you cheering me on.

TIPS ON RIDING A MECHANICAL BULL

ACT NICE

1. Act nice to the short man with the white mustache who runs the gears for the mechanical bull. This is important once you get on said bull.

WONDER AND TOUCH

2. Wonder why the bull looks SO much bigger in person. Touch its horns but not too much, this annoys the bull driver man with the mustache.

WAVE GOODBYE

3. Wave to your friends. Who knows if you will ever see them again?

BOUNCE. TRY TO GET ON. BOUNCE MORE.

4. Bounce on your toes (if you are short, like me) and leap onto the bull, which is chest high if you are short. This is the WORST part of riding the mechanical bull for many people. If you are drunk this is hard. If you are an older man with a big belly and a good golf swing this is hard. If you weigh more than 110 pounds this is hard, unless you are a super athletic guy, or short (like me) and have no qualms about bouncing up and down to get enough momentum to sit astride the bull.

IMPORTANT NOTE: If you are even slightly cute and slightly female a lot of nice men who are more than slightly drunk will try to help you onto the bull. This is not because they are really nice. This is because they want to touch your butt.

SIT ON THE BULL

5. Look triumphant as people cheer the fact that you are able to actually sit on the bull.

PANT

6. Look shocked as you realize you’re already panting and THE BULL HASN’T STARTED MOVING YET.

CONSIDER PRAYER

7. Pray if you are the type to pray. Convert if you are the type not to pray.

HOLD ON

8. Hold on to rope.

IMPORTANT NOTE: If you are a man from Maine and you pull on your bicycling gloves, this will NOT help you stay on the bull. This is because millions of people in the audience (Maine’s entire population) will start yelling WUSS! WUSS! WUSS! at you and you will laugh so hard you’ll fall off before it starts.

pray for real

9. Pray again. PRAY FOR REAL THIS TIME unless you’re super-anti prayer and then maybe mumble mantras, look for Universe energy and drink some kombucha? Or vodka? Maybe just swig down some vodka.

DO NOT SCREAM

10. Ride the bull. It is okay to look stupid. It is not okay to scream. The bull-driver man with the mustache will MAKE you fall off if you scream. If you are a cute girl you will stay on the bull MUCH longer than anyone else even if you have no balance. Accept this. Bull-driver man doesn’t have that twinkle in his eye for nothing.

LEAN INTO IT,

11. Try to lean forward, back, and balance. Comment on how it seems as if they’ve put furniture polish (perhaps Pledge? It is a lemony smell) on the bull to make it slippery. Wonder if the bull likes it.

HOLD ON

12. Hold on to whatever you can hold onto, even bull-driving man.

spout cliches without the accent mark

13. Grab horns as you fall off. Hoist yourself back up by the bulls. You get bonus points for this AND you get to brag after by announcing to all, YES, I TOOK THE BULL BY THE HORNS!

WINK

14. Wink at bull-driving mustache man. Do NOT do this if you are a boy, unless you think bull-driving mustache man is a big Brokeback Mountain fan, which he probably isn’t because only the ladies are staying on the bull for more than two seconds.

GET COCKY LIKE AN ACTOR ON A YACHT OFF CANNES.

15. Get cocky. You’re on a bull. You’ve been on there for 40 seconds. Wave to your friends. Bow to your fans. Scream, I RULE THE WORLD. Look in mustached bull driver’s eyes. Uh-oh. You got cocky. His twinkling eyes turn evil. That bull is bucking a lot harder. You’re going to…

REGRET YOUR LIFE CHOICES.

16. FALL. Try to do this gracefully. It is impossible. So laugh and bounce back up. Thank God that you weren’t wearing a skirt. If you are wearing a skirt, thank God you’re wearing nice underwear. You are, aren’t you?

PODCAST

To follow that up, I give you a podcast that talks about writing and poop texts.

WRITING NEWS

IN THE WOODS – READ AN EXCERPT, PREORDER NOW!

My next book, IN THE WOODS, appears JULY 16 with Steve Wedel.

It’s scary. It’s romantic and it’s one of Publisher’s Weekly’s Buzz Books for Summer 2019. There’s an excerpt of it there and everything! But even cooler (for me) they’ve deemed it buzz worthy! Buzz worthy seems like an awesome thing to be deemed!

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

ART NEWS

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

PATREON OF AWESOME

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).

Check it out here.

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.

Tag: yathriller