BIG. HAPPY. ANNOUNCEMENT.

I know.
I said I was taking the month off...
But this is too big to keep to myself.

Steph Campbell and I keep waiting for the right time to talk about our ideas, and our books, and we've both been busy...
Anyway. We finally said - It's time.
We loved everything about My Heart for Yours. It was an amazing book to work on together and to write and I've re-read it more than anything else I've written.

Teaser for the first new Crawford book?

A secret love.

A life lost too soon.

A destiny reversed.

You’ve met Tobin & Delia.

This is Eamon’s story…

The prequel to My Heart for Yours.

MY FATE FOR YOURS.

You can add My Fate for Yours on goodreads HERE, and obviously you can find the rest while you're there... ;-)

Also - the Shadows Trilogy got a facelift, and as a big, huge thank you ALL THREE books are in one ebook for 0.99 :-D HERE

 - As always - help in spreading the word is SO much appreciated. SO much.

You peeps are awesome!!!!!!

Happy writing everyone!!

What's new in your world??

~ Jo

Z = ZZZZzzzzzzzz

WHEW!
Made it!

Which means I'm taking the month of May OFF of blogging...
I know I've taken weeks off before, so we'll see if this actually lasts.

If something HUGE happens, I'll do a post, otherwise you can find me on Facebook or Twitter or Tumblr!

It's been fun!!!

And here's some pretty I made yesterday :-)

You can pick up all three books for 0.99 here :-D


~ Jolene

Y = You

Just curious what y'all do with your lives when you're not writing...

I sew.
I play with my dog, Sadee, and tell my husband how much cooler dog people are than cat people while he strokes his obnoxious furry cat ;-)
Watch Top Gear (UK and American), The Walking Dead, Falling Skies, and Gossip Girl (the last one is for laundry and/or sick days)
I love to be outside - hiking, running, walking, snowmachining...
My kids are pretty awesome ages - 6 and 9, so I'm pretty stoked about our summer and the camping and fishing I hope we get to do.
And I'm a chronic organizer - seriously, the high from cleaning a closet top to bottom is almost as good as finishing a first draft. I know. Sick ;-)

What about you??
What do you do with your non-writing time?

~ Jolene

X = X Marks the Spot

I will never forget that part of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

He's teaching and tells his students - "X never, ever, marks the spot."

And then he's on the trail to find his dad and the Holy Grail and X ends up marking the spot... Which was made funny because of the foreshadowing.

It got me to thinking about cliche's in writing...
Probably it should have gotten me talking about foreshadowing, but my brain didn't jump that way.

I think sometimes we use archetypes, cliches, and tropes to our total advantage, and sometimes they're overdone, but I found a few lists, and thought I'd share...
And then I realized that YA Highway put together a list that had the three articles I wanted to share (LaPolla, Bransford, Strange Horizons), but also a few more, so here's the list, stolen from the awesomeness of YA Highway:

• Archetype versus Cliche - author/former agent Nathan Bransford
• Breaking the Storytelling Mold - Lee and Low Books
• Stories That Are Overdone - Strange Horizons
• Avoiding Obvious Symbolism - agent Sarah LaPolla
• Subverting Tropes
• Conquering Cliches -- or Using Them - author Janet Sumner Johnson

I have to say that I think there's nothing wrong with cliche's and common tropes - they sell books, they're fun to play with, and sometimes a fantastic place to start. 

You just can't overdo...

Thoughts?

Rants?

Ideas?

Other articles?

Because I will say that Chuck Bass is easily my favorite character on Gossip Girl, and he's the most ridiculously overdone.

~ Jolene

W=Writing Journey...

BEFORE I jump into my post, just wanted to share...

I put all my paranormals into ONE ebook. FINALLY.
These are definitely paranormals for people who like contemporary - a love story in each, and a finale that I totally loved writing.
It's only 0.99 on Amazon for a bit, just to be nice :-D
You can find it HERE!!

SO - back to my post. WRITING JOURNEY:

My dad is one of those people who just sort of assumes (within some amount of reason) that he can do pretty much anything. He may not be great at it, but he doesn't much care. If someone ELSE has done it, that means it's possible, so he can do it.

I grew up with this in my house, and I wish every kid could grow up with this.

A few times in high school I thought it would be amazing to write stories for a living, but I was afraid to try. Afraid to put myself on paper that way. Instead I put myself on the stage.

In college I thought again how cool it would be to be a writer, but again, I thought - That's for WRITERS, I mean who am I to think I can do THAT. So... Again, I did theater.

I will say that my theater experience has led me to a million fantastic exercises for characterization, which has helped me in millions of ways while writing.

Again, after college, as I was teaching high school and then middle school and French and math and history, I thought - it would be very cool to be a writer, but I still felt like I couldn't do it.

Then one day as we were driving down the road, my husband mentioned that he loved my imagination and that I should write a little, just for fun.

I thought, why not?

That was in the fall of 2009, and I'd be embarrassed to say how many projects I've written since then.

I will say that I'm SO glad I finally got that notion out of my head that writing was something for OTHER people and that I couldn't do it.

Because I can. And I am.

And this post is now feeling a little cheesily inspirational, but I hope you like :-D

What started you in writing??

~ Jo