Author: J.I. Soucie

Christian, wife, mom, and pet lover with a love and passion for reading and writing.
General Updates

Snow And Sunshine

J.I. Soucie

I’m sitting here at the dining room table with KLOVE playing on my iPad, my daughter bouncing a balloon around the house enjoying her winter break from school, my two dogs lying in the bright warm sun shining through the sliding glass doors. Several more inches of snow fell last night, upon which the warm sun shines and threatens to melt over the next couple of days. The snow is pretty and I don’t mind it all that much, but I must say I am itching to get outside in the warm Spring sun and feeling the warm sun and light winds on my skin while listening to the birds chirping and the dogs playing in the yard.

I have been quite busy lately. Still working on updating my poetry and Sackets Harbor books. I am checking to make sure the covers, book descriptions and manuscripts are all up to date and satisfactory. I am working on one book at a time and then will be adding them to Smashwords.

I am also updating the books information and covers on Goodreads.

I am still also working on my novel writing course through Winghill Writing School, and I am planning on writing a review on this as well.

Then recently I was contacted to do a book edit for a woman in the medical field. I have agreed to do a one chapter evaluation to see if we will be a good match for each other and if my editing skills will what she needs.

Then I have a couple of book reviews I am thinking of and will post them in the next couple of weeks.

So busy, but I’m taking my time and enjoying the creative process. Of course, the creative process doesn’t just apply to writing. I’ve been in my kitchen as well and posting pictures and recipes on another one of my blogs Happy Bellyz Cafe

I’m off for now. Have a great day and God bless!

~Janis

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Sounds of home…

J.I. Soucie

It is evening, and the day is quieting down. The dogs are asleep, the dishwasher humming and the pellet stove roaring away while my husband reads my daughter a dinosaur story and a Bible story before bed.

I haven’t been blogging much, I guess because I haven’t had much to talk about. Or so I thought. It seems I have some decisions to make.

I have four poetry books and one nonfiction book that are published and I was thinking of putting them on Smashwords. I took them off to try KDP Select but my sales bottomed out the last few months. KDP Select was a bust so I am going to go back to Smashwords. I have covers already and now I just need to make sure the manuscripts are update with relevant biographical information and then upload the stories.

Now something I don’t think I have mentioned before is that these books, are published under my maiden name of Janis I. Monroe. Anything I publish from now on will be under my married name and will look like this J.I. Soucie. I should have made a formal blog post when I switched my blog name. Sorry about that.

Next after updating the inside of the manuscript, I have to really think of the book descriptions. I am learning how to write better descriptions and really get smart about this kind of thing. I will be using the book the Indie Author Guide: Self-Publishing Strategies Anyone Can Use by April L. Hamilton, and I have read a blog post by Catherine Ryan Howard titled The 11 Ingredients to a Sizzling Book Description http://catherineryanhoward.com/2012/10/05/the-11-ingredients-of-a-sizzling-book-description/

I am at the point of admitting to myself I don’t know as much about being and Indie Author as I thought. I think there comes a point where we all have that realization or one that is similar. I have been doing more reading up on details and learning more about the craft of writing, editing, etc. I was getting ahead of myself and I am learning to slow down and take things one step at a time and to realize that it takes TIME!!! Any quality work requires effort and a great amount of time. I obviously didn’t realize this before and just wanted to write and things out there quick. Did it work? ..uh…no. I have the same five books published now as I did last year and the year before that. It is time for a change, folks, and I guess this is one Mom’s journey to becoming a better writer, editor, book cover designer, and publisher. May God guide my every thought and effort to make this happen.

I am off to get ready to sing my daughter some bedtime songs. Good night all!

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In the wee hours of the morning…

J.I. Soucie

Here I sit in the quiet of my bedroom, listening to the pellet stove roaring away, the clink, clink, clink, of the pellets dropping and the fire burning hot, the warm air filtering into the room. My daughter is a sleep, the dogs are curled up in the living room in the respective chair and couch, and my hubby is asleep, snoring lightly next to me on the bed.

The snow lies like a blanket outside and crunches underfoot. The air is cold, crisp and invigorating! I know, I just took the dogs outside only moments ago. One of the reasons I am awake. The cold has a funny way of “shocking” you into awake mode.

I have been reading The Power of Memoir… and the subtitle and author escape me for the moment. I will have to edit this post later, but the book has helped me with restructuring my memoir A Daughter’s Reflection. I am in the stages of picking apart the book and using index cards to help me with this. I could use Scrivener but I do hate being on the computer all of the time. Just seems like I have been on it way too much and it is a time sucker. However, there is such a thing as shutting the wireless off..so I guess it is not so much being on the computer as it is the Internet! There is something to be said about being connected to it all of the time and that usually means chatting on social networks or forums even though you (I) had originally attended to work on writing. I may start using regular index cards, but I will have to keep them away from my Chihuahua because she loves anything that is paper; she tears it to shreds. So, I have a dog that will and has literally, “eaten my homework”.

I am restructuring and rewriting A Daughter’s Reflection so much I will probably have to publish it under a different title. I guess we will see when I reach that part.

Well I must be off to sleep. Hope to get an early start to the day and to make the most of the time God has given to me. It’s a challenge, but working on it. (Aren’t we all?)

I pray you are all snuggled in warmly tonight. It has been one heck of a winter for us all. Snuggle up under those blankets and sleep tight!

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Change of Plans

J.I. Soucie

I had been contemplating lately on whether I should continue with a memoir, but even though I have good intentions, I don’t want to hurt or upset anyone in my family. I think I’ll write experience articles where I can share what I have been through, how it affected me, and what I did to get through situations and thus it all will be brief, unlike a whole novel on family stuff. That way, the articles focus mostly on me and won’t reflect so much on anyone else.

So, I guess it is now to fiction for me. I have a story idea but I need to work on coming up with the characters. This is my favorite part! I love developing characters and thinking about what they may look like, what their likes and dislikes are, etc. I can’t wait to get started.

Chat with you all a bit later and will let you know a little of what my story is about when I get it all together.

God bless!

General Updates

Stepping Back A Bit

J.I. Soucie

Lately, I have had to make the tough decision to step back from writing a bit. I won’t be going as hardcore as I was trying to write, but not getting much done because of stress and not balancing social media very well. Health conditions are also butting in and I am exhausted.

So I am going to step back a bit from social media and blogging, but I will continue to write a little bit of something every day if I feel up to it. Right now, until my health is figured out, I must do this.

I hate to, because I love to write and would love to full time, but it comes a point when something you used to love so much, is now nothing but a stressor. Just means a break for a while and to attack other areas that need attention and the down time will also give me time reevaluate things.

In the mean time, if I do post on this blog. It will be maybe once a month just to update everyone or if I have found something  of interest on writing or a good book. I guess we will see what happens.

God bless!

 

Facade, november nano

Month After NaNo

J.I. Soucie

So here we sit in December, just beginning the second week. Today manuscripts for Lulu’s Wrimo Accelerator deal are due today. Mine won’t make the cut, just because I am not ready to submit. For one it is not finished. However, the deadline for a free manuscript review is December 31st so I may shoot for that. I have my printed “chapters”, or what are proposed chapters at the moment, printed in front of me. I think I have one more to print. Today I am hoping to get some editing in.

Watched the show “A Good Read” on PBS and watched a couple of interviews with Maine authors. Stephen King was the interview I ended on. (Watch it here: http://video.pbs.org/video/1357861895/)I couldn’t possibly watch another interview after the creative juices were just flowing and my soul begging me to sit down and write. Stephen was the Big Name growin up in my house. Seems I was always shooed out of the room when someone rented one of the movies based off his books. I remember when IT came out and my brother told me the movie was based off a book that Stephen King wrote. I hadn’t a clue who Stephen was at the time, but my brother showed the book and my eyes widened and jaw dropped when I saw how thick the book was! I remember saying, “I wanna do that someday,” and then I went off playing never writing anything serious until over ten years later when I was seventeen and my mother was dying of cancer. I was writing in a journal, but wasn’t writing anything else. Not until the end of March 1999 just  a few weeks before my mother died, I wrote a poem for her, “Forever My Mother”.  Her death sparked a range of emotions I didn’t know I could feel and since I felt I had no one but God to talk to, I wrote. I wrote in my journal and then poetry…then…lyrics…then short stories…then my first attempt at a novel which I thoroughly enjoyed, but now is recycled though I have kept the character names.

After watching the interview with Stephen tonight, he helped me realize something with my current novel and what I was struggling with throughout NaNoWriMo and struggling with this morning. I was blocking the full range of emotions I used to write with after my mother died. My writing was full of driving emotion then and I believe that trying to always be positive and never show anything otherwise has really stumped the creative process. What am I thinking anyway? We’re human. God created us with emotions and our characters have emotions and reactions, otherwise they would be pretty boring.  Without emotion, or actions driven bey emotions, there isn’t drive to the story….no plot…no action!  D’oh! Time for major rewrite.

So I guess Stephen inspired me once again, but also taught me something, or rather reminded me, that we need our emotions to survive, to create, to drive us forward to that next pivotal moment in our story that could change everything!

Thanks, Stephen. Guess you just never know when you will be inspired and helped by someone, or just who that someone will be.

Now I must get going and get to work on my NaNoWriMo story and get as much done as I can before the 31st!

God bless and good night!

Facade, november nano

NaNo Day 30 – I won!!!

J.I. Soucie

Yep! I did it!!!! Man, I tell you I am sooo tired. I am seeing double trying to write this post right now. Exhaustion is taking hold.  I wrote over 50,000 words, but my story is not done yet! Good luck to everyone still trying to make that goal and CONGRATS to everyone who has made it!

November has been a challenging run by far and I admit, there were many times I wanted to give up because I doubted. Doubt and fear can ruin a lot. I must learn to never doubt again!

I’m heading off to bed!

Good night all!

 

Facade, november nano

NaNo Day 29 – On Board

J.I. Soucie

Wow! What a week it has been. The past few days have been pretty intense with doctor’s appointments, vet appointments, holiday preparation, then the big turkey day, Thanksgiving and finally here I am . Back to the blog. There have been a few nights I wasn’t able to reach the minimum word count due to exhaustion, but getting a few hundred words in was progress! Still, I have today and tomorrow left to reach the goal of 50,000. I am looking to go over, but the way I feel right now with exhaustion I’ll be happy to cross the finish line. I’m gonna try!! So I best get off here and get going.

Current Word Count At 10:23 AM EST: 47,963

 

Facade, november nano

NaNo Days 24 & 25 – Not So Good & Better

J.I. Soucie

Day 24 proved not to be such a good day for me word count wise. Day 25 has been much better and has helped me bump up my word count. A twin brother, Keith, has left the scene jealou of his brother, Wesley’s musical  career. Keith leaves but will be back. Jealousy is blinding his perception of life, and as such, has dire consequences. He will face his brother again, quite soon!  I made my word count on Day 25!

Total Word Count: 43.540

Getting a word count will be tougher tomorrow. Up at 5 to get hubby, and daughter ready and then a blood draw at 7, drop off the dog for dental work at 8, grocery shopping and Home Depot after that. Pick up dog at 2, appointment for me at 3 and appointment for daughter at 5! Ugh! Tired of thinking about it. It will all work out as God sees fit.

Good luck everyone and God bless!

Facade, november nano

NaNo Days 22 & 23 – Didn’t & Did

J.I. Soucie

For NaNo Day 22 I didn’t make the word count. I feel asleep at my computer again. This Lyrica is kicking my butt! Just a side effect that is said to go away over time. I hope it does. Just hope it helps with the fibromyalgia pain.

So this morning, the 23rd day of NaNoWriMo, I decided to try writing in the morning instead of the evening. And guess what! I got my word count in!!! Yess! Still have to plug it into the NaNo sit but I’ll do that when I know I am done writing for the day.

Finally in my story, things are getting pretty heated and my main character is about to get the surprise of his life! And it’s not necessarily a good surprise either. It is something that will change his life forever.

Can’t wait to get back to that scene so I am off!

Good luck!