Terrific Thursday Mash-up!

I know what you’re thinking . . . Wow, back-to-back posts!? No worries, I’m still keeping my once a week slacker blogger status. I haven’t made enough money yet to hire those angry clowns to chase me around the house until I get stuff done. I just make exceptions for Curiosity Quills Publishing sisters like Gerilyn. But while I have your attention (hopefully), I’d also like to mention I’m on J.Keller Ford’s blog today for a guest post about What Made Me Write 18 Things. So check it out!

And my hubs has been insane in the membrane for this Thrift Shop rap by Macklemore *warning: if you do have a listen, there is quite a bit of inappropriate language if your kiddos are in the room* Probably because the thrift shop is hubs favorite place to buy some goofy T-shirts. Then I heard this interesting convo on the radio station about how some people are afraid of thrift shop clothes because demons can attach themselves to them?! This was in response to a segment on the 700 Club when a viewer wrote in to Pat Robertson and asked him about it. I don’t agree with his response, but I thought I should mention it here because it might spark a cool paranormal book idea for one of you . . . and because it leads into Gerilyn’s guest post on her true paranormal experience. Take it away, friend!

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Okay, this isn’t a scary or spooky story (though, I guess the latter depends on the reader’s perspective), but I think it’s good to remember that not all paranormal experiences are.

The backdrop needed to understand this is that I live in my great grandmother’s house- the top floor of a two family home (my grandmother lives in the first floor house).  Great gram’ma, Mary Zenzian (maiden name Capp), was psychic—incidents from predicting the year of my sister’s birth as my mother and father walked out of the church on their wedding day to go to the reception, to feeling it when her brother, a cook in the army during WWI had received a severe grease burn on the face.  I spent a lot of days, from infancy to the age of four (when she passed away) with her.  As you can imagine, I don’t remember much, but my mother says there was a connection between gram’ma and me, and seeing I’m the only one to inherit even a touch of Mary’s ‘gift’, I would say I’m inclined to believe mom.

Okay, enough background info.

About a month after we first moved in, my husband and I were tasked with spending a week house/pet sitting for my parents.  The day we’re supposed to leave I’m puttering back and forth across the house, making certain the everything is packed and ready to go for the excursion.  It was the first morning since moving in that I’d been forced to make instant coffee, ’cause we were out of ground.  I don’t even know what made me notice it, but I walked through the kitchen and noticed that the coffee maker had been switched on.  It wasn’t fully electric- one has to manually press the button to start the pot.  I don’t think much of it, I just switch it off and keep going about what I’m doing. 

Then it happens again, 4 or 5 times, again.  Now, my husband wouldn’t touch the coffee maker ’cause if our house has a barista, then it’s me, and he knows it, and our son, Alex, was only 1 at the time and not nearly tall enough to reach the counter the coffee maker was on.  I can’t figure out what’s happening, but I don’t want to leave the house with the thing plugged in, in case it keeps malfunctioning, which could possibly start an electrical fire.  I unplug it and we leave for the house sitting chore.

At the end of the week, my mother helps us bring all of our stuff (and Alex) back into the house and we cross through the kitchen.  I see the coffee maker (now, thankfully having ground coffee in my possession) and I—thinking I’m joking- quip to my mother, “Did gram’ma have a thing about coffee?”

My mother just looks at me for a moment and then says, “Yeah.  She would get up before anyone else in the morning and put a fresh pot of coffee on the stove—you could smell it throughout both floors.  Why?”

So, I tell her about what happened while we were packing.

Her Vulcan-plucked eyebrows shoot up.“Your great grandmother clearly doesn’t want you drinking instant coffee.”

Thirteen years later, I only ever drink instant coffee in extreme, caffeine-deprived emergency . . . and I apologize aloud for it every, single time.

Buried

Book One of The Paranormalville Trilogy

Fane’s Cove isn’t the average coastal town- not with wandering apparitions, disembodied voices and poltergeist activity occurring on a regular basis- but the residents are used to it.  As far as they know, it’s simply always been that way.  Somehow, Cadence McKenna can’t shake the feeling that normal-seeming new resident Grey Addison is hiding something stranger than all of the town’s odd happenings combined and she’s determined to find out what that is.

Buried is a YA paranormal / urban fantasy tale by Gerilyn Marin, serialized and published at Curiosity Quills, every Tuesday.

*Oh, I love a grandmother who doesn’t let her granddaughter drink instant coffee *gag*

One more cool thing I wanted to share. It’s something my fabulous editor and friend, Krystal Wade, emailed me this week. It’s a link to another post by Agent Rachelle Gardner, who talked about manuscript perfection. She also discussed author rights and responsibilities, and why thinking negative thoughts can be a good thing. I found it very insightful.

So was my Thursday post T-E-R-R-I-F-I-C?! Did you check out any of the links? Want to read Buried? Are you gonna pray first before you pop some tags;-)

Introducing A Fabulous Scribbler of YA Fantasy Tales

J. (Jenny) Keller Ford is a quirky mother of four, grand-mother and scribbler of young adult fantasy tales. She has an insatiable appetite for magic, dragons, knights and faeries, and tries to weave at least one into every story she conceives. Her muse follows her everywhere and talks incessantly, feeding her ideas for stories 24/7.

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When she’s not torturing her characters mercilessly, J. Keller enjoys living in sunny Florida, listening to smooth jazz, collecting seashells, swimming, bowling, riding roller coasters and reading. Her most loyal fans (beside her family) consist of two Australian Shepherds, a mixed-breed hippy dog, and a precocious orange cat, all of whom believe J. Keller is their slave. She thinks they might be right.

Tell us about what you write.

I write YA fantasy, mostly, though I do stray into the fantasy New Adult genre. I love fantasy because I enjoy the freedom the genre provides. I can make up any kind of world I want, create my own rules, laws, limitations, settings, and no one can say it can’t happen like that. Sure there are some standards like unicorns and gnomes and dragons, werewolves, vampires, pixies, etc. As an author, though, I can elaborate or change any of the standard ideas, so long as I can make the audience suspend belief. I mean, whoever heard of glittering vampires but Stephanie Meyer did it with her Twilight series and her fans didn’t mind at all that Edward glittered, appeared in photographs, and didn’t sleep in a coffin.

Can you give us a sneak peek into your typical day?

My day starts pretty early. I’m up with my youngest son at 6:00 a.m. He’s a senior in high school and it’s our quiet time together to chat before he heads off for school. After he leaves and I get back from my 30-minute walk, I hop in the shower, get some coffee and food in me, then sit down at the computer. As I’m currently (and desperately) looking for a job, I hit up all the job sites as well as send e-mails to all the employment agencies I’ve signed with. I spend about 2 – 3 hours popping out resumes and job networking before I settle into a day of writing. And yes, I write every day. Hours upon hours I tap away at my keyboard on any one of the multiple projects I have going. I exercise throughout the day to keep my mind active. I make dinner almost every night. Sadly, I don’t have much of a life outside of walking or riding my bike (a lack of money tends to put a damper on other activities). My hubby is disabled so I tend to write and read all day. When my sons are up to it, we’ll play games like Taboo, Scrabble, Backgammon, Othello, or Pictionary, but they are usually off in their own world as a teen and 20ish year old should be. I usually go to bed around midnight.

What’s your favorite craft book? Favorite fiction book?

I have several excellent books I keep around me all the time. I would be lost with my dictionary and massive thesaurus, but I also have The Copy-editor’s Handbook, Writing Fiction, by Janet Burroway, and Characters & Viewpoint, a Writer’s Digest book. I need to get the 2013 copy of Writer’s Market. It’s a MUST HAVE for every writer.

As for a favorite fiction book? Lordy, you might as well ask me to pick a favorite star in the sky. There are so many I love. I have to say the ones I cling to the most are usually fantasy-related in some way, Young Adult, and the story sucks me in like metal to a magnet.

Describe your personality in 5 words or less.

Loving, faithful, stubborn, prideful, passionate

Tell us anything fun about yourself, related or unrelated to writing.

I LOVE collecting seashells. I could spend hours searching the sand for that ‘perfect’ shell. When I say perfect, I don’t mean without flaws, but it has to have character. Sometimes I look for color. Other times I look for unusual. Sometimes I look for broken. My favorite shells are olives. I love their polished shine from being tumbled in the surf and they always appear as if they have hieroglyphics written on them. I would love to travel around the globe to different beaches and collect seashells. Right now I have Ziploc bags full of all kinds of shells and when the mood strikes me, I make things out of them (picture frames, jewelry boxes, mirror frames, etc.) and give them away. I love making gifts for people from my personal collection of hand-picked shells.

Peeps can stalk Jenny here:
 
 
Links to where they can purchase Make Believe MakeBelieve-eBook-Cover-web-500px
 
 
Blurb about The Amulet of Ormisez, my story in Make Believe:
 
The Amulet of Ormisez by J. Keller FordThere is only one way to save Elton Fletcher’s brother from an insanity-ridden death.After years away from home, fighting for his people, Elton returns to discover his only sibling, Cayden, possessed by greed and malice, and responsible for malicious, unthinkable deeds. Cayden, though, isn’t the only one afflicted by the Amulet of Ormisez, and Elton finds himself in yet another battle, where the price of failure could be his own life.
 
*Don’t you just LOVE that cover? Okay, so have you purchased Make Believe yet? Read it? If not, it makes a wonderful Christmas gift . . . just saying:-) It’s sitting on my Kindle right now and I can’t wait to read it over Christmas Break . . . only 2 more days. Thank God! The same alien who sucked out my students brains this week stole mine as well ~Cheers!

Six Sentence Sunday

  For Six Sentence Sunday, alls you have to do is post six sentences from your novel or WIP. This week my six sentences are from page 31 of 18 Things, the first book in My So-Called Afterlife YA trilogy, coming soon from Curiosity Quills Press. If you want to find out more, or check out some other great sets of six sentences, follow the linky link! Writers appreciate comments and constructive feedback!

Sliding my sunglasses to the top of my head, I look up at the sun and a cloud finally moves in front of it. For a moment, I block out the sounds of the lake around me and all I hear is the water and the wind. A warm and soft breeze blows across me like Conner whispering from the grave, “It’s okay. Go on, go on.” And it’s a release, a revelation, something I’ve heard so many times before but never listened to. Life does go on, and it should.

Sooo, whaddya think? If you are so inclined, I’d greatly appreciate it if you visit me over at J. Keller Ford’s YA Fantasy Author blogfest  . . . where she’s let people like me take over her blog this week and today is my turn! Come on, you know you want to:-)