Sunday, September 30, 2012

Fun Things to Get us all in Halloween Mode!!!

Here we are into the last day of September and seeing as it will tomorrow be the WITCHING MONTH, I guess now it's time for us all to prepare for it.

I always love Halloween, love the idea of dressing up, figuring out what to be each year, and how to decorate the porch.  Each year I ask the kids what they want to be.

For three years in a row when Mollyanne was little, she was Alice in Wonderland.  By the second or third year the ends of her costume looked like she was a ragged girl instead.

Jake has been Spiderman three years in a row, and when my ex and I heard he wanted to be it once again, we both said, "No, something else."  So maybe this year he will be Batman or another super hero.  My ex usually brings him trick or treating and I'm with the girls and Sean goes off on his own.  All in the kids neighborhood, but at our own pace.  Jake usually decides he is done quicker than the rest of them.

A few days ago, I discovered my ex has already getting prepared for Halloween as he had a cute prop that you push the button that makes noise and there's an image of a ghost inside that appears.  And later on I noticed another fun prop he had.

He was in the dining room at the laptop and I came into the kitchen to bring some dishes in and the kids food trash wrappers.  As I was at the sink, I heard his voice talking but it was kind of thrown across the dining room and I was wondering what I was hearing.  He has a prop that you can record the voices or sounds into and when someone gets within range it goes off.  It was too funny.

I told him it would be fun to have Julia shriek into it.

So, this morning I watched the kids while he headed out to Goodwill to get some outfits for his life size dummy.  My ex has always gotten into the spirit of decking out the porch for the big night.  Same with me.  I think it is lots of fun. 

We've always dressed up for the kids.  One year my ex was the Phantom of the Opera dude, another year he was a wrestler (now some pictures of that one were funny).  One year (not Halloween) we found my Mom's old wig from the old days and we all had fun wearing it while in Maine visiting.  This was when I was married to him still of course and we had really good and fun times.  Fun times now too, but as friends.  Anyway, I've got this classic picture of him wearing Mom's wig and he is holding a dish filled with a stack of pancakes.  Too funny.  I have all the pictures as I think it's important for the kids to someday have them.  My ex will always be in my life because he is the father of my children and I am very thankful that he was able to give me them.  They are my greatest accomplishment.

Let's see what I remember I was.  One year I was a exhausted housewife with old curlers and bobby pins in my hair and sticky notes on my housecoat saying, Go see doctor, etc...   another year I had a black cape that I have worn a lot for this.  One year, I had awesome cat's eye glasses, which a girl broke into my car and stole my pocketbook and she got my fancy cat glasses along with it.  And she made use of my debit card very quickly.  I luckily got that fixed since that year, I've always made it a point to have my car door locked everywhere I go.

Last year, I was a cracked doll.  Now that one was funny.  I was of course wearing the cape again with some elaborate skirts and fancy costume jewelry.  And I was in the kids bathroom painting my face, with dark lipstick, blush and a tinge of white.  Then I was drawing black cracks all over it.  Well, Sean my oldest was coming back from the pantry with his snacks to go down into the cellar with his friends.  He takes one look at me and probably died from embarassment and I thought it was hilarious!

Well, today I think I am getting into the season and am going to prepare.  I have ordered a few black roses, a gothic doll that can hang from the porch, and my black gothic angel wings that will be part of my costume.

I'm going to be a Fallen Gothic Angel this year.  Should be fun.  Plus I am thinking I can get some cool pictures of my girls with the wings too.  And the roses and the gothic doll prop could be great for my photography too and someday some illustrations.  The gothic doll is a fabric body with the plastic head and hands, black hair and her face is sort of beautiful with red blood stained eyes and dark red lips.

I'm looking at some of those floating eyes too thinking they could be cool in a fish bowl with some food coloring.  There's also some cool labels out there for witches spells etc... that you can attach to a jar or something and then put things inside.  I'm thinking I could make my own labels.  I saved a small glass jar that had saffron spice in it and I'm going to create some Drink Me labels to attach to it.

Last year, I made some chocolate perfume which I'm going to bring over as a potion to set on the table and let the women know what it is so that they can try some if they want.  Fun.

I've got a black journal that I am going to design two pages that will be open with some spells and drips of blood on it.

There's all kinds of really fun things.  My ex also likes to have scary music playing in the background.  One year we had Phantom of the Opera music playing in the background.  That was awesome.  Other years it has been Halloween Michael Meyers music and other creepy sound effects.

I love watching that first Halloween movie.  What a classic!  70's slasher movies are awesome.  I do love horror ones just as much as I love watching the old classics.  I really love all kinds of different movies.

He also has this cloaked skeleton that he hangs on the porch each year and in it's hand it holds a red rose.  It's really cool.  I should see if I can dig out one of my digital pictures of that to have on another post as we swing into season.

What do you want to be for Halloween?

Jennifer Jo Fay

Copyrighted September 30, 2012

 
Who wants to be Bella Swan this year?
 
 
 
 
This one was in the Haunted Forest last year.  I took my girls to it and this was one of the characters dressed up for part of the play event.

Thursday, September 27, 2012

Live in the Moment and Get Things Done

I know we all have this preconceived thought that we have this agenda that we have to live by, but in fact it's probably best that we don't really firmly plant ourselves in this existence.

Don't get me wrong, I think we have to have some sort of schedule, but I guess we should just go with the flow and do things as we feel it needs to be done.  There's always that brain in our head that just automatically tells us to do it.

And if we ended up not doing something, was it really important in the first place?  Like say, my handmade rag dolls.  Not to say I will ever finish one to completion.  I still have them and haven't thrown it out, but I guess they aren't my priority right now.  I still have the pattern and all the muslin fabric to make them at a later date if I want and I can always draw out a new doll face on them and finish at my leisure.  Even if I only finish one, that will be fine.

I'm holding onto the materials regardless, but it's not on my plate at the moment.

I took this last weekend to just quietly take a short break from writing.  I think I took a little time to knit up my headbands and take some notes online and do some research.

Earlier this week, I was able to get some of my notes typed up and I got my outline for The Glorious Money Tree trilogy typed up too.  Next I will need to get some ink for the printer so I can print my research notes and the outline for novel.

I think I posted a little here and at Triond, but didn't really post more often until today.  I think I was at a loss for ideas.  It happens.

Yesterday, I took a good deal of time to figure out my hard drive.  I had all my photo files backed up to a hard drive last year while my laptop was being fixed.  I had missing photos.  I finally plugged it into the laptop yesterday and found it all there.  All my missing photographs were there.

The only ones that were completely gone was the ones I took for someone's barmitzpha that I photographed and I had used my daughter's laptop for it last year.  Her laptop broke too and the photos on hers got lost.

But the important ones like all the ones I took of the brick house where my grammy grew up was the important one.

I've got a few stories about that:  Correct me if I already posted them in a previous post.

My grammy went to college with Marge Standish (the one who went on to publish the famous recipe books).  She and Marge both applied for a home economics job.  My grammy was the one they hired and Marge Standish went on to do her books.

The other story was that my Grammy and her sisters grew up in Durham Maine.  Some of their family were teachers.  There was a story once about one of them expressing their concern for a story one of the children had written.  One of the teachers said, "Oh, that's just little Stevie King." 

He grew up in Durham and lived nearby where my Grammy grew up.  This was told to me at my Aunt Harriet's camp after they got talking about me and the eerie dolls and they would sometimes compare me to Steven King for the fun of it.  Another aunt would say, "Oh, the dolls." when I would bring up drawing or photographing the dolls.

Today, I have posted about five articles or perhaps one more and this is the second one here today.  One there I might post here is a bunch of sayings and quotes I had written down in a book over the years and I decided to share them all in a post.  They are all classics by famous people.  Don't we all love to read them for great words to live by.

It's so important to be inspired.

Well, I will end this and consider myself done for today for posting.  I should try to write the next few chapters of The Glorious Money Tree and get it moving along some more. 

I just felt like knitting for a little bit too.  I'm waiting for my application to at least one of the craft shows.  They are both in November.  I want to at least do one of them and am opting for my girls school craft show.  The fee is cheaper than the other one, plus when I go there, I am bound to see a whole bunch of the moms I know.  Both would be fun.

And tomorrow night is Volleyball game night at my local church.  I haven't been since I was dating one way street and I'm missing everyone.  It will be fun.  There's either a bunch of card games or the volleyball where we all miss the ball of course.  I think one time I had to crawl under the bleachers to find it.

And of course there's always a meal with lots of desserts.  Everyone usually brings a dish.  I'm bringing just my body and the small charge for the meal this time and once I get their flyer I will see what they want us to bring for next time.

I usually have seen one of the girls as she always has a yardsale and I shop at her sale and we chit chat.

Jennifer Jo Fay

Copyrighted September 27, 2012

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Should We be posting Novels in Progress on the blog?

I'm at a standstill with this.  I got a phone call with Author house.  Of course the woman was trying to pitch to me about coming back to them, but I have stressed that it didn't work out financially and I don't have the money to fork over again.

She is also writing a book too and we just got talking about the other projects of mine and hers.  I was talking about how I've been posting the novels on the blog.  She did have a good point which I am thinking that I might not continue to post the novels on the blog.

I'm thinking the majority of this is because of The Glorious Money Tree which happens to be my best novel yet, and I'm seriously contemplating not sharing the rest of it here now. 

I'm really sorry as I know many of you have been reading and following along.  Now, I know that most people are very respectful and would never copy something, but I am deciding not to continue and will just let you know when I do in fact get it published.

My main reason for this is in case there is the one person out there that could possibly decide to take my idea and run with it to Hollywood and capitalize on my idea.  I'm truly sorry that it has to be this way, but I just cannot risk it.  Not that it would actually happen, but I'm not willing to take that chance. 

Plus, someone pointed out that it loses the novelty with the publishers if it's been posted in bits and pieces.  I think it was fine for me to do this in the beginning as I am an unknown published author and it sometimes helps to get feedback for something you are really proud of.

I really think I have a good thing here.  I will not knock on wood, but I think it does have a lot of potential to hit the nail on the head so to speak.

I think I would feel free to occasionally write poems on here, but I think from now on, it can't be the novels.  I think many would agree with me on this.

Unfortunately, the world is filled with people that do plagiarise and steal people's ideas.  It's too bad for this.

I will continue to write daily on other things as I love blogging and sharing, but I think I have to keep my novels a surprise from now on and I hope you won't mind that this is my decision.  I have to protect myself.

Jennifer Jo Fay

Copyrighted September 25, 2012

Monday, September 24, 2012

Have Your Kids be part of your novel writing

Have you ever thought about having your kids give you ideas for your novel writing?  I think it can be really fun to include them in what you are writing about.  Of course this depends on what you are writing about too.

I mean, you definitely don't want to include them in your writing process if it is in fact a novel for adults, a romance or a murder mystery or any other novel genre that is definitely geared for adults and not for kids.

But if it is a book that could be designed for kids, then by all means have them be a part of it.  Like if you are writing a children's book that comes with illustrations and is an easy reader or a picture book, let them be really involved in the process.

I think it is great to include your children in your thought process as they can learn from you and we can learn from them.

I'm finding that with my Glorious Money Tree trilogy, it is the perfect book to share with my children and see what they come up with for ideas.  Of course a lot of the written words would go above their heads and is definitely geared to adults and young adults but the theme of the novel can also be for younger kids.  Not the really little ones, but perhaps the ones that are at the Harry Potter age group and up.

My girls have been listening to me tell them what is happening with the good and bad fairies and the goblins and other magical creatures.  Mollyanne wants me to have a little boy for Sally's friend, Heather to like and she wants his name to be Christian.  She wanted the boy that Sally likes to be Christian but I told her, no he's already Ronny and Ronny fits.

Mollyanne has been playing Free Realms and has been showing me scenes from that and has been asking if I would write about some of it in my book.  And in one part of the novel, Sally gets read one of those Rainbow Magic books so I asked one of the girls which one her mother should read her and they told me a few of the ones that they like.

So just off and on, we would talk about different parts of the story, so they know what it is about.  Both of my girls are kind of writing their own little stories.  Julia has been busy making her own little cartoon, which is cute and one morning she was lying down on the neighbor's driveway with her feet crossed while we were waiting for the bus to come and she was busy working on her cartoon.  Classic.  It would have been a cute picture, if I had it with me and could manage to catch her off guard.

Julia has been writing a Littlest Pet Shop story in one of her notebooks. 

They liked it this weekend, as I went shopping with some friends (pretty much window shopping for me) and I ended up buying a few of those fifty cent notebooks one for me and one for each of the girls.  They always love a new notebook to write or draw in.  And I got sucked into a cool gemstone bracelet, soda lite.  It's not my birthstone, but it was pretty but it says to promote wisdom.

Now, I don't take big stock in all this stuff, but hey if it could send any extra wisdom my way, I'll take it.  Ha ha.

I've been doing a lot of research though this weekend on different things for either The Glorious Money Tree or any future writings.  The meanings of flowers, phases of the moon and meanings, meanings behind our eye colors (didn't even know there was such a thing), meanings of gemstones, fairy tales, gods and goddesses, witchcraft, spells, etc.....shapes of faces, hair colors, character traits and anything that could help with writing novels.

I don't really believe in all the meanings behind things and it really would not apply to every single person.  I know some people rely on all that very heavily, but I usually just think that it happens to be sheer chance that it fits what a person is going through.  Same with horoscopes, in the fact that it could fit and yet at the same time it could not or just be coincidence.  I don't know.

The reason for taking notes on this though could be maybe not so much for The Glorious Money Tree trilogy but perhaps for a future novel, I could have characters who could want to believe in this stuff or want to do witches spells and get heavy into tarot cards.  Who knows.

I've also started a reference guide of my own note taking that I am typing up to have on hand for any kind of writing.  I plan to print up the pages as I get them done so I can have the guide right handy at any time.

And the other one I thought of having on hand is a writing prompt guidebook from my note taking.  Any phrase of words that catches my fancy, it's written down and later I can just have it handy too.

I went through all the Chapters of The Glorious Money Tree and finished writing up my outline so I can have it handy.  It seemed like it took a good three hours to do this as I went back in and added stuff and began fixing things that needed fixing.

Like the biggest boo boo was ha ha Sally's mother, Lara's husband, I've been calling him Patrick for a while in recent chapters.  As I went back and fixed more things, I noticed that I had originally called him Brent.  Whoa.... can't have that.  I did have a good laugh with my ex about it and he said he could have an alias.  But better not to.

And then, I wanted to write a little more early on about Sally liking Ronny Caster, the stinky sock boy.  So there could also be some little love stories going on through out the trilogy and of course as they get older it could get more involved.  Maybe a love triangle of some sort could be interesting to delve into too.

Just things to think about.  Well, this will probably be it for today.  Jake's bus is almost ready to arrive and I'm thinking I should just spend time getting all my reference notes and the novel outline typed up so I can print it up tomorrow.

And I decided to have a quiet day yesterday just spending time to knit up the cabled headbands too.  One is done and I just have to sew it together and the other is halfway done.  The second one I made up my own lace edging on the sides of the cable and it's looking pretty.  I'm going to have to take some pictures and write my pattern up later, for a possible future knitting book, but that one would be probably more like two or three years down the road maybe.  The other ones come first.

And then I have the Ebay selling that is going well and I just happen to have my priorities where I want them and I'm happy. 

Jennifer Jo Fay

Copyrighted September 23, 2012



This was a pair of ballet shoes I bought at a yard sale earlier this spring.  I think I may search for more at next years sales.  I could envision some photos with a bunch of them hanging on a clothesline.



Thursday, September 20, 2012

Her Scented Bed and Bloodshed Battlefield by Jennifer Jo Fay (free verse poem)

This poem is one of my old writings I found a few nights ago.  They are roughly back from 2007-2008

Her Scented Bed and Her Bloodshed Battlefield

What pray tell did her scented bed look like?
It was that of a bloodshed battlefied with a fire
burning and waiting for the stained aftermath
from a war zone to totally painful.
The bed held dreams of being rescued by someone
who held the words of peace and compassion
upon his gentle hands.
Her bed coveted a burning candle that stayed lit.
And what of scented beds?  Were they laden with roses
or covered with moss? 
How did one begin to unearth a mass so dense.
She was the raw rose nailed down upon her scented bed
from which she couldn't escape from.
Hers was a burning bed, ready to erupt and burn
from fierceness of flames.
Bittersweet desires and memories folded upon
this bed covered in a quilt with calico hearts.
Upon this bed, she carved dreams and memories.
From the glorious heavens she was emerced with
her sunflower pencil in hand from her icon
Vincent Van Gogh.
Drawing her dreams, she had set aside
her Picasso Blue pen, but always
felt that both went hand in hand.
One was alive in the palms of her hand while
the other was sifting away into the depths of night.
Dreams cascaded upon her scented bed and
she thought of things to come.
Where would her life unfold to?  She was simply yet to know.
She was neither here nor there, yet the heaviness
of covers kept her trapped, captive
to a invisible metal that held her firm.
What color was her bed?
Love was like a thorn which
seemed to tack itself with a nail.
Between her jammed tight heart
there was a cloak of darkness and pain
which was ready to engulf her essence of soul.

Jennifer Jo Fay

Copyrighted 2007-2008

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The Importance of Character Descriptions: Novel writing

How many of you novelists often find the struggle to write about your characters?  This is an extremely important piece of the novel as much of the writing depends on really good character descriptions.  How do we go about defining our characters is really up to us and not someone else.

What ends up being a dilemma is that people often begin to criticize the novel and the characters in it.  I have not been immune to this.  Even in the editor's description of my first published novel this is one of the things that she seemed to pick apart.

Last year, when I had received the review, I really felt like I wanted to toss it out the door, but decided on keeping it.  I'm kind of glad that I did.  This was a paid book review for Black Roses first in my mystery series that got self published.

I didn't want to have it published and Author house kept it private to me.  Yet, as I read through it last week there were some good tips that I have carried on into my current writings.  She had complained of short and choppy sentences.  Which to an extent maybe she was right.

But, then as I think of this, I think all authors are allowed to have some short and choppy sentences.  Not every single sentence in a novel can be long and involved and sometimes short and sweet can be quite nice.  But perhaps I used the shorter and choppy sentences a little more often than I should have.  Who knows, but even so every writer does have their own style of writing and even though we all have this global guideline of how we are supposed to write down the English language, we also have our own set of rules that pertain only to us.

But, I took it to heart and I learned from that piece.

Also, she pointed out that I had no chapter breaks, which from now on, I will be doing.  And then the other point was that some of the character descriptions were out of place or didn't fit.  I will come to this important issue in a minute.

She did say that I mastered certain things so it wasn't all bad and she said I had mastered a look into the cruel world of a stripper and that thankfully we will never want to experience it.  Thank god.  Which I can also agree with that completely.  I wouldn't want to know.

Okay, so character descriptions can be hard to do.  I don't know.  I think this should really be up to the author.  Of course you do want to make it all believable.

Here is an example or two from years ago when I was writing and sharing my Lustful Evangelean romance novel with my woman's writing class.  I read different parts of it and some of the girls loved my character descriptions and thought that it was really cool that Evangelean had a white trashcan.

And then my writing instructor pointed out something about the college girl who borrows a cup of sugar from Evangelean and there's a secret there.  I probably should be posting some of this novel soon on here.  I dug up my half edited copy.  I think I had the girl drinking coffee or some other liquid and my instructor said she would rather see her drinking Oval tine. 

This would be a good point.  Well, she's a college girl and yes, she probably can only afford Oval tine and shouldn't be drinking the most expensive gourmet coffee.

I guess what I'm saying is that when we are doing some descriptions we have to work hard at making them fit.  But also I think a good deal of it should also be up to us.

Like if I want Sally to wear a polka dot dress, that is what she is going to wear.  And she should be wearing her favorite colors.

Perhaps my boy characters would like to wear stripes or another one is into the character t shirts of his favorite shows.

Maybe another girl only wants to wear leggings and no frills skirts.

Figure out what you want them all to be and go from there.  Of course you want them all to be different.

Like say Mary, Sally's mother's friend might end up being a real estate agent.  Well, she probably should be dressing the part.  And she's classy, so she should dress nice like a casual older woman.

Maybe Sally's best friend's mother likes to dress a little more sexy.  Who knows.

Also we have to think about who their character is.  What is their way of thinking?  It certainly shouldn't all be the same. 

I don't know, this would probably be a tough one for me, but I kind of just like to describe them the way I want and that is how it is.  If someone just doesn't like it, then that's okay.  It's their opinion.

I think we really walk a fine line when we are writing our novels and we should think really hard about how it should be, but then as we write and complete our writing process it is us and us alone that should decide how the whole thing should result in.  After all, it is our vision and not someone else's.

Hey, if someone doesn't want my college girl to be drinking Green Mountain Coffee Roasters or the most expensive brand, maybe they should write their own book where she drinks Oval tine.  Hey, maybe her gourmet coffee was a gift from a relative or something.

And we also have to keep reading our novels to make sure everything fits.

Like in Lustful Evangelean, I had Evangelean go off to her job and her lousy husband, Tom go to her place of work and do something he shouldn't have done and meanwhile neither one left their four girls with a babysitter. 

So, that one is a case where, yes, this really needs to be fixed as everyone will lose respect for Evangelean and toss the book in the trash. 

Your heroine and your hero have to be respected and liked in order for your audience to find it believable and want to finish the book or else it is clearly going to tank.

I still love Black Roses, because it was my first mystery novel I wrote.  The editor didn't think I should have mixed erotica with mystery and I think she had issues with the fact that yes, it was pretty much hardcore and the readers get quite the surprise.  Well, here I'm thinking, what did she expect?  It's about a stripper and a prostitute and yes, their life is pretty much hardcore. 

She did like that my stripper had a life outside of stripping and that I had mastered the facts of her wanting to escape that life and with her dealing with a stalker. 

What do they usually say?  Keep writing as perhaps the next novel will be even better.  My local editor had said this to me after reading Lustful Evangelean.  She really loved the story within the story so when I do go back and edit big time, I should focus on that. 

That was also the very first novel too, and it was very flowery at first.  My kids preschool teacher had said that she loved my writing.  Maybe that's just me trying to perceive the beauty in everything.  I mean, it was flowery to extreme.  I will have to share it with you sometime.  I probably shouldn't toss the original.  Actually, I did toss so much of the early one.  I had some first drafts that were handwritten and just tons of writings that never made it into the novel.

And a part of it had something to do with something from real life that I was going through.  My beginnings of a separation, but in the story I invented this different reality of course but those two things were a part of it.

But I was sparked to write the novel from a crush I had at the time on a preschool teacher of my youngest daughters.  I never did anything of course, but the preschool teachers (some of my good friends for life) decided to hire a male teacher that year, and he one day looked so sad.  I think he might have gone through a break up or something and then there was this little bit of flirting with him throughout the year.  I was shy so of course he never acted but he did do a good job of flirting.  And my friend Susie told me to can it and then she laughed and said, "If it helps, we all think he is gay."  Ha ha.  I think at one point in a woman's life whether you are married or not, you can think someone is hot.  There's no harm in it if it is just a minor flirting or a private crush.  We all know it needs to get canned quick.

So, I guess for a long time writing the novel was a fascination with it and pure fantasies.  I guess I was entitled to fantasies.  Isn't every woman?  That's kind of what the novel is about.  This girl who is approaching a time in her life where there is crisis, who is she, where is she going and what is she going to do with her life?  And is she happy in her marriage or is she not?  And in the story, Tom is quite what should I say?  Sleazeball?  That could kind of sum him up.  Of course so much different than my ex.

When you are writing, we take from reality, but it has to really be invented and imagined or else you have non fiction rather than fiction.

And then my editor, started talking about Hilary and Bill Clinton and how does she decide to take him back.  I might have to rethink this about the novel and decide some things.  She had a really good point.  Many women would want to see a heroine make amends with someone.  Or does she go completely the opposite and fall hard for Gauthier?  I guess I will be the one to decide the ending.

So, I guess how I want to end this post is to really think hard about all the aspects of the novel and think about how you want it to flow as a whole.

How it is perceived is completely up to you as it comes from your head and yours alone.

Jennifer Jo Fay

Copyrighted September 20, 2012


This was a photograph I took way back in 1992 when on a trip to York, Maine with my ex.  It was before I was married to him and his family and some relatives had rented a house there for the week and we were visiting for the weekend.  I think also my Mom and Dad came down for a day visit to meet his parents and have a dinner.

I was so nervous that when I was in my bedroom there, I spilled a container of water in the bedroom I was sleeping in.  While there, my ex and I slept in separate rooms.






Tips on Writing a novel and editing

Well, today is Thursday and I'm not sure if I'm ready yet to write the next Chapter of The Glorious Money Tree today.  I have written about three new articles on Triond under jfay1995.  A few on relationships and one on Monica Lewinsky publishing her tell all.

So, here's what I've been thinking about as of late as far as novel writing.  Yesterday, I finally started doing my first drawing for The Glorious Money Tree novel trilogy (young adult/adult genre).  Note:  It's still in progress and of course isn't finished but at least it is started.  It needs to have some ferns in it as it is the newest fairy in the novel in Chapter Fifteen, Peachanella.  And I will need to later dig out the colored pencils and do the color work for it.

Then, yesterday what I started to do is to go back into the Chapters and start a log of all the important things I need to know as I go along.  This is going to be extremely helpful as already in Chapter Fifteen and at page 70 or something like that, it is getting very complicated and I am going to need to have all my important facts on hand as I decide how it's all going to be connected.

Last week, I started to bring the whole novel so far into my word for windows software, as I think I should be writing it first there.  And later on when it is done, I will have to change it to html as Kindle Publishing wants it in this format.  And a few days ago, I discovered on a trip to Barnes and Noble to get my Angry Birds space game working, that it is also free to publish on the nook with them.  So, I may very well be publishing with both places and maybe others.  I may check into Bibliocracy books too.  Smashwords isn't compatible with Kindle so I am not sure if I will be going with them.  And I will need to read through all the guidelines to make sure everything is right.

My nephew wanted to play the Angry Birds and we couldn't get it to work.  It's working now, but unfortunately I'm not at their house now and am back in Vermont.  My sister said to make sure I have all my gadgets before I leave as there would be no hardship on the kids part if I left them.  ha ha.

Going back and writing down my notes, the skeleton of the story, and other highlights, I found myself editing the novel.  This is definitely a really good thing to keep up with when you are writing any sort of a novel.  The really fun part sure is the editing.


I keep thinking, what if I'm dead someday and get famous. And that is surely a big IF.  People really go dig up everything to use it say in biographies.  Like for Andy Warhol or any other artist, they use everything possible to let people know what their lives were like.  It's a form of documenting everything.  I mean, if you die and you were extremely talented in anything imaginable, people want to remember it in history to pass it on to the future.  That would be the only downfall if our world does ever end, that all the legacies would just evaporate into nothing and all that would ever remain are the spirits of our souls.

So as I was starting on the skeleton of the first chapters, I started to of course add more facts and information.  The story line really isn't going to change completely, but there will of course be more thoughts. 

I decided to change some of the wording.  For instance, Heather, Sally's best friend in the beginning says monies instead of money.  Which as I got thinking, hey, she's ten and shouldn't I have her talking more intelligently than that?  So I went back and corrected her grammar.  And as I went back, I worked on fixing some of the sentences that perhaps weren't complete.

Using It is for example, instead of it not being a complete sentence.  The majority of this was in their dialogue, but even so, I thought they should be using full sentences even when talking.

It does seem to take a long time to edit.  I think we need to go back into it many, many times because just going back in once you are never going to pick out all the mistakes.  It is so true about how everyone says, edit, edit, and edit some more.  You want your novel to be as perfect as can be, right?

Nobody, wants to read garbage, even if it is a smut book like 50 Shades of Grey.  I haven't gotten too much further yet, and am not really impressed but I will probably end up finishing the first book anyway.  I am not sure if I will be buying the other books that follow.

Any book where the writing is terrible you all know is going to get tossed in the trash so quick.  That's why you should really take all the time you need with your novels before you set out to publish them.  Make sure it lives up to it's potential as it will very likely determine the success of it.  We all want to have that same start as 50 Shades of Grey, Twilight series, and the Harry Potter novels, but we can never even begin to taste that success if we don't work hard in what we believe in.

Treat your novels as if they are your children, nurturing it, believing in your characters and having yourself jump into the story as if you were in their shoes.  Then it becomes believable.  Only then can it really work for you.

It's got to be your biggest passion to see the harvest come full circle.  It's like with art, we were always told to see the "Whole", and only then we can see.  That was perhaps the most important message I took away from The Maine College of Art many years ago.  Of course I took away all my expertise too, but that was a lasting impression amongst all the teachers.  It's the foundation of the art school.

Also, as I went back into the first few chapters, I noticed that I didn't describe some of the characters enough.  This may also be my next post here:  Character description tips.  Many people find this topic hard to figure out.  That's why there are so many books out there on the subject.

Perhaps what you might want to do is each day focus on a different chapter and see if you can fine tune it and make it just the way you want.

And as I got going, I thought that maybe I should be introducing the idea that even though Sally is only ten, she does like the boys.  A little love story might also be nice to introduce early on.

Well, that's about all I can think of for the moment.

Jennifer Jo Fay

Copyrighted September 20, 2012



Peachanella the campanula fairy.  Still very much in progress.  I used my Ellowyne Wilde doll below as the beginnings of the novel.  I think I started with the eyes and the heart shaped face, and I left it at that.



Tuesday, September 18, 2012

How to Pick the Genre for your Novel

How do you decide what genre to place your novel in?  I mean sometimes it is so easy to decide but then there are so many different types of novels for each genre, it can be a little daunting to figure out where to put it.

If you are writing a mystery, there is cozy mysteries, crime mysteries, detective, series, and so on.

For a romance, you have historical romance, erotica, suspense romance, modern romance, smut book, and on and on.

And then there is the fantasies.  This one kind of stumped me and I am now changing my mind about what genre or age group The Glorious Money Tree is going to be for.  It definitely is a fantasy trilogy. 

At first, I wanted it to be a children's fantasy/adult novel.  As it has the combination of fairies and all things magical and then the twist for adults where someone gets cancer.  I think I immediately wanted to call it a children's fantasy because of the magical aspect of it, but now have changed my mind.

While on a weekend trip to Maine, I told the idea of the story to my uncle, and then he raised the question that when I mentioned that someone gets cancer he wondered how that could be good for children.  Which is a very good point.

So, now it is going to be for teens and adults.  As, I don't really intend to change the story.  I never was really thinking it would be for little kids anyway as it is in novel form and little kids don't know how to read a full length novel.  They read children's books. 

I thought if it was to ever be turned into a movie, it could be for older kids.  Kids do have to deal with death all the time and they are resilient.  And in the movie and the book nobody would be actually seeing the woman's body as she would always be covered up, but she would be sick in a hospital bed probably.

Where it is a novel length, it is more for teens and adults.  I think it is easier to feel that we can go deeper into writing a novel for the older audience and we don't have to worry so much about is it going to safe for younger readers.

When you truly write for children, it is a quick and readable format with illustrations for them.  I do have a book that might someday get done that really would be for little eyes.  This one would be my Little Jenny and Bunbun story.  I've got it fully written somewhere.  I can't remember if I posted it on my blog way back or on Triond.  But it's a short story about me as a little girl and some of the things that went on with my favorite toy.  The story is short and to finish it, I should have lots of illustrations in it.  And I've written a first in the series of stories of Bunbun and Olga.  Bunbun and Olga get Bullied.  I don't think I have finished the little story yet.  I got inspired by the Arthur series on that but it's based on my favorite toys and my Bunbun and Olga paper dolls.

Little kids don't have the knowledge that older ones do and some people find it hard to write and entertain younger children. 

I think when you write for teens and adults you can definitely have lots more freedom about what you write.  Look at J.K. Rowling's books.  They are a little darker than for really young kids even if little kids have enjoyed her movies.  She pretty much wrote for the older kids and adults.  It's in novel form.

Stephanie Meyer is also meant for teens and adults (women).  She chose to write the vampire love stories which kind of excludes men as it isn't really their cup of tea.

When we set out to write a novel, we have to decide first who are we writing it for?  What type of audience do we want to read our story?  Then we have to find the niche.  Then we have the hard job of writing it and making it interesting so that our chosen audience would want to sit down for the duration and read it.

It's amazing how many genres are out there.  Years ago it was just mysteries, romance, children's books, young adult, non-fiction and a few others.  Over time there are now so many niches in this that can really make it all the more hard to decide where to put it.

So, now mine will be teen/adult fantasy.  That would seem about right.  I might have to do a little research about all the possible genres later.

Jennifer Jo Fay

Copyrighted September 18, 2012


Thursday, September 13, 2012

A Beautiful Day in Vermont!

The sun is shining here!  I woke up and did my regular routine start of the morning arriving at the kids house.  Today is picture day for my girls, so they had to go pick out a good shirt for it. 

Julia ended up going out in her tank top and no sweatshirt.  She was being rather slow this morning and finally we just said, "Just get out there before you miss your bus."  Tomorrow, she will have to make sure her backpack is packed the night before.

Last night, before leaving the kids house, I got started on the recipe book for Mom. 

Here's my possible title for the book.  At least it's sticking with me right now.

Memories of Mom, stories and recipes from a Beautiful Life

I started the first page with the title, my name of course and with Mom's high school picture underneath.  Underneath that is when she was born and her death date.

Then on the next pages, I started in with a dedication to Mom and an introduction.

I got a little further and started writing about her early childhood and a little bit of history.  I'm visiting my family this weekend so that should be a good time to get some details my Dad would probably know that I wouldn't.

Well, yesterday something funny came up.  I was posting some of the first batch of pictures of some of Mom's recipes.  One of my aunts started talking about wishing she had kept letters or something.  And Mom had given her some recipes.  I responded back and told her I have a bunch of my Mom's old letters that she wrote to her Nana and other people.  I slipped that I had a few from Dad to her too. 

Ha ha ha.  Well, then my aunt suggested that I put his letters in a scrapbook and give it to him on her birthday anniversary next month.  I kind of said neat idea, but it probably won't happen.  ha ha ha.

So last night, I got laughing to myself as I was attempting to fall asleep.  I got thinking, yeah, if I get this book published and he sees the stack of Mom's letters tied up in ribbon in a picture he's going to say, "Do you have those letters?"  Ha ha ha ha ha ha...........

"No Dad."

"Well, Dad, someday I'll make a scrapbook for you."  Not now.

This happened with some old pictures a long time ago too!!!!  I've always been one to borrow some of the old family photos to take pictures of them.  I've got the macro lens that will get nice and close.  I later returned lots of pictures, but I kept my favorites. 

He would keep saying, "Do you have those pictures?" 

I kept telling him I returned them, which I did for the most part and he kept saying, "Do you have those pictures?"

Finally the last time he was up visiting, I handed him a small folder with some pictures just to keep him quiet.  But I still have my favorites. 

My Nana had given a lot of pictures to my Mom.  Mom got her high school pictures and other stuff that maybe the other siblings wanted but she gave them to Mom.  She gave them to Mom for a reason.  I kind of think it was because she lived the closest to Nana, being only a few streets away and was in Nana's life the most.  They were best friends.

So that's the funny story, I got laughing to myself about.  It's kind of funny how I have my hands on some of these pictures.  But, I think I have them for a reason, as I can do special things with them to share with the rest of the family.  I think my Mom and my Nana would have wanted that.

Which now brings me to this beautiful sunny day in Vermont.  Last night I also watched Rear Window and I want to watch it again tonight.  I watched the Birds earlier this week. 

And then, I kind of looked through my apartment for things to use in my second batch of pictures to take.  Mom's favorite pie dish, the blue Pyrex bowl, an old egg beater, baby spoons, etc... an old box filled with negatives.

I opened up the box this morning and felt a little disappointed as it wasn't my Nana's ancient negatives.  It was just filled with modern negatives from the seventies.  I ended up dumping them all as nobody uses negatives anymore, and I can use my digital camera on all the pictures I like.

I'm forgetting her old negatives are in another box.  I won't ever get rid of those as they are ancient and not from my time.

I grabbed the old letters and some other small things like her special jewelry, her old stocking with her name on it and other stuff.

This morning, after the kids went to school and my ex went to work, I pulled out my mother's old blanket that my Great Nana had made and I started setting down flowers and pictures and other things on it.  I love the art of arranging the collages and set ups.  That is so much fun to see what you can come up with.

I'm not quite sure if I actually have my cover yet, but I might very well have part of it today.

I would like to bring different pictures into my Adobe Elements 7 and do a collage picture maybe including several different pictures.

I started reading the guidelines too for the Kindle Publishing platform.  It seems pretty easy, but there's a few things I'm not quite sure of.  They want it so readers can navigate throughout the book.  So I'm not quite sure how to do the contents page and if I should have the whole thing as a pdf or one of the other formats they want it in. 

I think I will have to start going into the kindlecentral  forum and begin to ask my questions.  There's also a free software that we can download to design (in house design).  I might try downloading it later before I go too far into the book.  Maybe it would be better to do it in that software so that it gets done correctly.

It will be a learning process.  Things I do know is that the format has to be in a basic font, black with no colored backgrounds.

I opened up the stack of Mom's letters and found the envelope with her light hair in it.  I took a picture of it on top of her old Gone with the Wind book with a flower nearby.

Well, I'll let you go for now.  The morning is still young, and I'm thinking of next typing up the next Chapter of The Glorious Money Tree.  I've had it largely hand written a few days ago and will get that going. 

I think one of the pictures I took this morning I will include in that chapter.

Talk soon.

Jennifer Jo Fay

Copyrighted September 13, 2012



This was the last Mother's Day Card I gave my mom and I framed it one year.  The other picture in this one before is a view of Congress Street, Portland, Maine done by well known Maine artist, Jon Legere.  I am remembering that I may have gone to college with one of his younger relatives.



This is the special music box that my Mom gave me on my last visit with her.  We cried.  Her best friend had given it to her.  And I am sure they cried too.    This is the blanket my Great Nana made.  Mom used to have it draped over her rocking chair in the living room.   The little duck is my very first piggy bank.  The funny thing about it is that underneath it is crudely signed Witchcraft.  I don't know if that gives me some inner meaning.  I don't know.  People in college were thinking I was a witch, for god knows what reason?  One of the guys came up to me and told me that's what they thought.  Must have been they saw something in my artwork? 

Maybe that's a sign that I ought to read up on witchcraft and tarot cards sometime for the fun of it (more for the idea of creating a character someday for a novel) ha ha



These were some of her old gloves I found and forgot I had.  The paper butterflies I have had in an envelope for a while, saving them for something to do with photography.  Well, here you go.


The little wicker heart is around the picture of my Nana, my mom's Mom.  Mollyanne wanted it when she saw me bring it back from Goodwill earlier towards springtime.  I let her have it and it's been hanging in the mudroom.  It's funny how we suddenly think we can use something in our photographs.  That's why I am not always quick to throw out something as I never know when something is going to come in handy for this.



That black fabric underneath I used for the set up.  It could later end up being cut up for the yo yo circles, but maybe I should leave a good piece for this.



As you can see, I've got to bring these into Picasa and fix them.  I can hardly wait to get that new Adobe cs5 or cs6 software hopefully by Christmas time.  I've been wanting it since last year and now I see they have the new one.  But either one will be good.  You can download lots of things from Brusheezy but you need at least the Photo shop cs5 to do it.  I do have Mystical, Photo Key pro, and a few others, but I don't think I can do it with those.


I definitely want this picture to be part of the cover.  Maybe I can collage some of the other pictures for the cover and have this one be right smack in the middle to stand on it's own.


Here's the letters!  ha ha ha.......    Long ago there was talk of a mushy letter Dad wrote that is in there.  It won't be published but I might just say there's a mushy letter in here that someday needs to go back to my Dad in some shape or form.  At the time we heard about the mushy letter, I was determined to find it and I DID!!!!!  Along with all kinds of other letters!  There's classics from Nana to Mom telling her and her cousin to be careful about swimming at the pit and to watch out for the boys.  ha ha ha.....

Here's her Gone with the Wind.  You don't see too many books nowadays with the pages all lined up like that.

Wednesday, September 12, 2012

What do you think about People Rewriting Fables?

What do you think of People rewriting fables?  I'm really not a fan.  I don't know. 

The reason I am writing this is because over the last few days when I have been writing at one of the writing communities, I've been reading more than several different articles that were posted on The Spider and The Fly.  Well, we all know and love the original written by Mary Botham Howitt back in 1834 and in 2003 Tony DiTerlizzi was honored the Caldecott Honor Book for his illustrations to go along with the story, for which I'm sure he gave her credit for it.

Well, as I got reading, some of these other articles they seemed to all be the same in which they stuck to the original moral of the story.  Their wording was different, but still it was the same original story that I've already heard before.  It was still the classic story about the spider and the fly and how the fly was lured into the trap.  Nothing changed there.

I really didn't care for any of them even though they were worded differently.  Don't kill my classic favorite fable.  I think by wording it differently they seem to believe they can call it their own.  I don't know, maybe they can.  I still think it does them a disservice to have something very similiar to a classic fable.  I would so much rather read something from them that wasn't a knockoff of something else.  Just saying, and I have a right to my opinion here and at any writing site.  If they don't like it, they can lump it.

It wasn't plagiarism they were doing, but in my mind they were still kind of copying the original fable.  What do you think?  I mean the moral doesn't change and they stick to the same idea as the original.

I'm just not a fan.

But should you rewrite a fable? If you want to rewrite a fable, I think you have to take it and make it really different.  What if the fly had to learn a different moral?  And the spider decided it wanted to go talk to children?

What if Cinderella decided to smoke pot and be a stripper?  What if Snow White decided that she was going to jump down the well?  What if Alice in Wonderland decided to climb a ladder and go up into Cloud 9 instead.

People have to learn to create their own fables.  Choose your own moral or stick to the same moral, but create your own storyline.

People all over the world seem to enjoy taking something from somewhere and then decide to rewrite it in their own way.  Make it different and your own.  Don't have the same beginning, middle and ending as the other one.

Say you want to write about Medusa and she turns people to stone.  What if she had shark heads on her head instead of snakes?  Or what if she decided to turn someone into bronze or silver instead of stone?  Or turn them to a tree?

You cannot repeat all the history and the things that have already been done in the world.  It's your job to write it in your own way and come up with something totally new and original to you.

These people really didn't plagiarize, but it was kind of like copying which still doesn't sit right with me.

And they honestly can't say I'm slandering them.  There's no names here.  I'm just stating that I was reading some articles on The Spider and the Fly being rewritten.  I think I have a right to talk and express my opinion about something that I kind of don't think is right.

We know and love all the original fables and not these newly rewritten ones that are very similiar.  If you are going to rewrite one, the whole thing needs to be changed.  And I think it should also be a different moral and different characters.  Like say, if you like the moral from the spider and the fly, make it the lion and the bunny.  And don't have it the same.

And speaking of slander, what about Octomom?  Are we all guilty of slandering her?  Many of us have been writing about her?  Does she have a right to come after all of us and sue us?  I don't think so.

So the few writers who chose to rewrite Spider and the Fly also have no right to come after me and sue me for slandering either.  I have a right to express my opinion just like everyone else.

Just think, if everyone decided to come after everyone for slander, we would probably be having everyone and the kitchen sink being sued for slander.  Think about it.  It would mean that none of us would have a right to express our opinion about anything.

I've decided to wait a few days before I publish something new at Triond as they are taking their sweet old time to publish quite a bunch of peoples different articles and I told Triond that I won't submit anything new until they can show me that they are going to publish the 3-4 that are pending.  If they want to keep profiting from us, they are going to have to learn to keep up the pace and let us submit and publish a whole lot quicker than waiting over a day or so or more to see our writings published.  They were publishing our writings within a matter of minutes.  I think they must be having some glitches.



Jennifer Jo Fay

Copyrighted September 12, 2012


Looks like this cat isn't amused by all the junk out there.

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

DIY How to Write and Publish Your Own Family Recipe Book

Do you have recipes scattered all over the place like I do?  Have you ever thought it would be fun to write and publish your own recipe book?  Are you the one who loves to be in the kitchen and have just spend all your waking childhood years watching Mom and Nana in the kitchen with their aprons on? 

Who doesn't remember them in there slaving away with all these delicious meals and desserts passed down for generations.  We all have favorite memories of growing up with our homemaker mothers and all the things that they meant for us.

One of my favorite memories was of Mom in the kitchen making chocolate chip cookies for us.  My sister and I would sometimes help.  I'm the oldest of three.  My brother was younger and usually didn't want to help.  We each took a turn learning how to mix the dough with the electric beater.  Then she would make the cookies. 

Our best part of this was getting to all take a spoon to the bowl after.  And each of us would get to take a turn to get to scrape the bowl after or to eat from the wooden spoon.  How awesome was that?  Salmonella?  Who cares? 

And what about that brownie batter?  Off and on, I've told either my sister or sister n law that I just made brownies and had the batter from the bowl.  They would both laugh and say something like, "You didn't wait for us?  No fair."

Or you've just made a delicious meal and you tell all your FB friends and family and then they say, "What time is supper?  I'll be right over."

"I'm coming through the phone lines as we speak!"

This last week is when I decided that yet another one of my projects is going to be writing out a recipe book of all my mother's recipes and getting it published.  My family and friends think it's an awesome idea.  It would be a book to celebrate Mom.  She's been dead for over 11 years to colon cancer.  She died at 54 which is really only half a life.

I know for years that some of my relatives have been wanting me to share some of her recipes and her photos and I just kept putting it off for what seems like such a long time.  Finally earlier this year, I started sharing some of my photos of her on FB for my family.  She's missed every day by everyone.

She was a community person, family girl, the girl next door, beautiful on the outside and more important on the inside.  She was a humble person, kind, compassionate, never greedy for more as she was happy with what she had.  I remember shortly before she died on the last time I saw her, she had brought me into her bedroom and gave me the ring I always wanted.  It was a ring that my Nana had given to her and it was passed down from a relative that had a villa in Italy.  I always wanted the ring and Mom used to say she might give it to my sister.  Well, she finally gave me the ring and a beautiful music box that played You are the Wind Beneath my wings.  She told me she didn't have a lot to give me, but that wasn't the point.  I didn't care.  But, I can tell you right now, as we both listened to that music play from the music box her best childhood friend, Sandra had given her a short while ago, we both hugged each other and cried.  I just have that memory of knowing it might very well be the last time I ever got to hug her as her daughter.

Anyway, I finally decided that I am going to do this recipe book for Mom most of all and then my family and friends will love it.  I think I am doing this for all that knew my Mother.

It will of course be a recipe book, but it's going to celebrate Mom, who she was, where she came from, stories of her and my memories of childhood days growing up in her kitchen.  It's also going to contain recipes and memories of my Nana, my Grammy, my Aunt Harriet and some recipes from other family members.  I also may include a few of our favorite recipes from some old cookbooks.  We loved those Marge Standish cookbooks and The Joy of Cooking.  Those are awesome books.  I won't include too many from those but just a few of our favorites.  Some of those pages are so spilled with food while they were baking. 

So, if you are thinking of doing your own, whether it is for family and friends or to publish and earn some money from it, here are some tips and ideas about how to go about doing it.

First, what you will need to do is gather all your recipes.  Over the years, I have collected her recipes, mine and I've got a few of those blank journals where I have written lots of recipes down in it.  Of course I will include some of mine too.

I've been known for writing them down on those index cards, any paper I have if I'm in a doctor's office looking at one of their magazines and clipping recipes from the newspaper. My mom and my Nana used to do it too.

My Nana also was always baking sweets.  Same with my Grammy.  My Grammy was a home economics teacher.

So after you have your recipes gathered, browse through them all so that you know which ones you may want to use.

Start writing them into your file on the computer.  I think what I am going to do is create a section for each type of recipe:

Entrees
Main Dishes
Appetizers
Meat Dishes
Soups
Vegetables
Pasta and Rice Dishes
Drinks and Smoothies
Desserts
Cakes and Cookies
Pies
Ice Cream
Miscellaneous
Snacks and Favorites

and more

That's just an idea of how you may want to organize them.  Then it's up to you if you want to have each recipe in alphabetical order or not.  I don't know if I want to bother with that.

You will want a content page, an introduction, perhaps a dedication page, reasons why you chose to publish your book, people you want to thank for making it happen, credits if you use someone else's recipes (like for me, I might want to get the okay to publish a few of the Marge Standish recipes or something else), maybe an index in case someone wants to look up a recipe with a certain ingredient.

Another thing would be to add some of your favorite stories as you go along.  People love reading about the people behind the recipes.  It adds a special touch to the book.

Do add pictures to your book.  People love to see visual images too.  It can make for an exciting book.  But if you aren't big on taking pictures, that's okay.  It doesn't have to have pictures on all the pages.  I think I am going to add some though as it would be a nice way to add some of my photography too. 

I've been reading Tina Fey's Bossypants and thought it was neat how she added some pictures into the beginning of each of the chapters.

The other very important thing you will want to think about is your cover.  This is a very important part of the process as this is what is going to get your readers and buyers attracted to your book.  Of course they are going to want to read inside and to have the recipes at their fingertips, but if you don't have a smashing cover and catchy title, then you are probably sunk.

Seeing as I am a photographer and artist too, I will doing the covers and artwork for all the books that I publish.  I did it for my first novel, Black Roses and I plan to for all of them.

I'm also thinking that I would love to have one or two of my favorite pictures of Mom on the cover along with a picture of her recipes and perhaps a favorite dish of hers.  Which will mean I will need to make some of the recipes and take pictures of them.  People also love to see the actual dish that has been done too.

Which means that you have to get creative with how you are going to compose your pictures.

Have some of your favorite dishes and casserole pans or other old kitchen gadgets?  Use them in your photography.  Like I am suddenly thinking of the favorite bowl we used to scrape the cookie dough from.  Might mean I have to make chocolate chip cookies soon!

Then, what you need to do after you have a good start into your book is to edit and make it perfect.  Decide what fonts you want to use and other stuff. 

I think the really fun part is creating and writing the books.  Now here is the harder part, but it can be done.  We see the world do it and we can too.

Your book is done and ready to go to the public.  Now get your ebook or whatever your format you want and go publish.

I'm going to be publishing all my ebooks with Kindle Publishing from now on.  I don't know a lot about how to go about it yet, but it is free to do if you want to do an ebook.  I'm sure it must cost some money if you want to go the other route.

I've downloaded the Kindle Publishing Guidelines and will attempt to read some of it later today.  Do your homework and know what you need to do before you jump into it.

I do know that they like you to have it in usually a pdf file.  I like my Microsoft Word software.  I also have OpenOffice (which you can download for free by the way).  I've used both and imagine you can turn anything into a pdf in both programs.

I'm not sure what the guidelines for the photos is.  I imagine if it's saved in your pdf file, it should be fine.  Maybe the guidelines for the cover is a little different.

None of my books are established and in with Kindle Publishing yet, but that is where I am going to go with next year and later.

The first one that is getting done is The Glorious Money Tree children's fantasy/adult novel first in the trilogy.  I'm hoping it will be done so I can publish it next year.  At least that's my goal.

We do have to set goals.

Then, I am thinking I would like to do the recipe book next for the family and friends and for Mom.  She would be proud of me I'm sure.  Once before she died, she told me I will do so many amazing things.  I think she was probably right.

It probably would be amazing to look back at all I have done.  I also will say, that there is a lot of it also gone.  I had a habit of ripping up things that I did and later changed my mind that I didn't like.  Or I loved the project at the time and later decided I didn't need it.  It probably would have been something else if I had documented a picture of every little thing I ever did.  But the thing is, I've been always wanting to have more space and would constantly rid myself of things that really weren't my best work.  Artists do that.

Even writings.  Earlier this year, I went through a bunch of old hand writings that I had written and never typed up.  Some of it is gone as I guess I didn't need it.  And some of it was venting and I decided to get rid of things where I vented about something.  When you vent, it can be also hurtful.

Anyway, do your homework before you plan to publish.  Don't go into it blindly like I did last year and fork over lots of money to get it done.  I just didn't do my homework and picked the first of three places I saw that seemed to be advertised on the Barnes & Noble site.  I didn't really know much at all about self publishing.  Read all you can before diving in.

And have fun with your cookbook.

I'm not sure what I am going to title mine yet.


Jennifer Jo Fay

Copyrighted September 11, 2012

PS.  Let's remember those who died in 911 and honor their memories by making our world a better place.









This one I took of myself one year in college at my Aunt Harriet's camp.  I took my tripod, camera and my long squeeze cord into the lake and went to a section that was further away from the camp and secluded and I took a bunch of photos of myself.  This one is slightly blurry but I've always loved the effect that came out of it.


My uncle always loved this little pen and ink drawing I did.


My Nana


My mom as a little girl


My Aunt Harriet's camp in Rumford, Maine.  Three generations of family gatherings all down the drain now.  My ex and I bought it after my aunt died quite a few years ago and about two years ago it was part of the court order to sell it.  What a shame to have to let go of the family camp, but things happen and my family just had to put it all in the past as really fond memories.

The lake below.  We all spent so many hours in that lake, swimming, jumping off the floats, catching fish and frogs, having kayak races around the island, finding the inlet and canoeing in to discover a mother moose and her baby.  So many, many memories.  My Dad remembers going as a little kid.  My Aunt Harriet bought her camp from and aunt and my Great Uncle Tony had the camp next door.  All of the neighbors down the dirt road a dead end one, would come visit often, some bringing baskets of blueberry muffins and other delicious dishes.



One of my drawings.  A woman was visiting from New Mexico when I did a craft show once and she bought this one.


Two of my old childhood dolls and my exes pooh bear and a band box his mother had made.


My Nana and Grampy and some of my cousins years ago.  I took this collage photo before I got married.


My sister's first cat, Ivy.  She was this stray cat she and her friends found and she brought it home!  This is Ivy during a party we had before my ex and I went on a trip to Martha's Vineyard.  My sister had a bunch of her friends over the night before and one of my cousins was visiting.  I think someone was having some fun and let Ivy taste a jello shot!  Doesn't she look a little tired here?  And then my sister was having some fun playing house of cards!


My best friend in college.  She and I did a photo session in a cemetery one year and she posed in the leaves for me.  I also have a picture of her looking really startled as a guy is pretending to shoot her with a plastic gun.  We had a man jogger coming by and we asked him to pose for a few pictures.  I should find it as she looks like she is scared to death!


A drawing I did one year maybe before kids I think.  The one below is the same girl in the leaves.



My hat in my first apartment in Vermont.  The cats had some fun with the hat and it got thrown out.



Jennifer Horton from Days of Our Lives.  These are a few of the pictures that I have chosen to draw from.  This was before the kids were born.  My favorite is the one up top although I like both.



Another collage picture.



My two boys one year.  This is the one I did for the Y2K drawing.  It's a larger picture with lots of words in it too.


My mother's wedding dress.  She used to keep it in the attic and one year she cut it up.  I ended up cutting up patchwork pieces and made a throw blanket for my sister, sister n law and one for me using some of her wedding dress.


My Nana's back room.  I've got the vanity now.  So many good memories in there.  It's where we all used to sleep for the sleep overs.


My Nana and my oldest Aunt.  My mom was the youngest of four children.


My Nana and Grampy's house.  This is what all the houses in the neighborhood looked like, many of them still do.  There's an upstairs and a downstairs.  My Nana and Grampy had the downstairs apartment.  In the picture below, the house in the background was my first apartment.  That's how close I was to my Nana and Grampy and just would walk through the field every Saturday to visit them and all the time when we had relatives visiting for a week.  And relatives were always visiting.  My Mom and Dad's house where I grew up was just up the other street from where my apartment was.  We could see all of our apartments from my Mom's kitchen window.



My Grammy and her little sister.


My Mom hanging out the laundry.  My exes old bus in the back ground.  That was a blast for camping trips.  And there's the pole that I got harnessed to as a little girl.  Remember getting harnessed so you wouldn't go into the road?


My Mom at her baby shower.  She was pregnant with me.


My mom.  She was quite the hottie in this picture.


My Mom with me and BunBun.  Bunbun and Olga Paper dolls got published last year along with another set.  An aunt and uncle gave her to me when I was one year old.  I still have her to this day.  She has no ears now.


Me playing in the sandbox at my Great Aunt Mary's house.  That was an awesome place to go visit and lots of second and third cousins to play with.


My Nana before marriage. 


Mom and Me.  She always loved the clovers.


My mom's family growing up.  She's the youngest one in the middle.


My Aunt Harriet and her little sister.  My Aunt Joanna is still alive, but my Aunt Harriet died of a stroke many years ago.  She died in her sleep at her camp and had to be air lifted out to a nearby hospital.   I think it may run in the family.  This was the old brick house where my Grammy grew up in Durham, Maine.  It became a well known historical house and back in the day had several articles in the newspaper about it.  It got sold before I was born I think.

I went to find where it was last fall and have a bunch of pictures of it, but I'm sure it changed since then.


My mom next to an old boyfriend.  Notice I cut him out of the picture, but it's awesome of her.


My Aunt Harriet as a kid. 


Me at Martha's Vineyard with my favorite hat, hence, before it's chewed up days.  And back when I was younger and skinnier.  This was the summer before I got married and moved to Vermont.


My Nana and Grampy's kitchen.  The door leads to the basement that both apartments share.  Grampy used to have all kinds of nuts and bolts, old jars, you name it down there.  I thought it was fascinating to go down and see a little something mysterious.  Not knowing what was down there.  Also great memories of Grampy coming up with another big liter of Moxie!  We grew up loving that stuff.


My son, Jake with my old doll and my old doll crib.  I know I've said that I wouldn't share too many pictures of my kids, but once in a great while, I don't think I will be able to resist it.  This was light years ago.  I loved that doll and crib.  Bun bun and Olga toys used to sleep in this and many nights they would sleep with me.  This doll used to cry Mama.  I'm not sure if she works anymore.


My Grammy.  She always had the most beautiful smile.  She was so proud of all her grandchildren.  She had six of them.  My Aunt out west has three too, all grown up with kids of their own.


My Nana and Grampy's living room.  Just imagine a crowd of ten-fifteen people in here all summer and at other times.  But summer's would usually be when the ones from further away would come visit for weeks on end.  A few would come out for a week, then the others would come for the next week.  We just had a blast all summer.  What an awesome thing to stay there playing games until 3am and then to just have to walk up the street when we had had enough for one night!  We would play UNO, Liar's Dice, Scrabble, Aggravation, Yahtzee and many other fun games all the time.  We would go on picnics, the beaches, state parks, shopping, etc....


My Grampy outside on his porch.  My Nana and Grampy have been dead for at least two or many more years and that era of visiting down there and life as I used to know it is long gone.  At least we have the wonderful memories.


My Mom at some point during her battle with cancer.  This has to be an earlier picture as in later pictures it is shorter and gray from after her chemo treatments.  When she was growing up her hair was of a beautiful chestnut color and then it got darker.  I've always remembered her with the darker hair.


 Sorry, I can't figure out how to delete this duplicate today.


My Grammy and my Aunt Harriet.  She never had kids when we were growing up, and then the year before my Grammy passed away, she met a family and became really good friends with their mother and took them in and suddenly she had a new family in her life.  The mother also passed away a long time ago to Leukemia.

 My Grammy in High School.


A picture I took at a cemetery once.  My painting class went there to paint on several occasions and I chose to take a break and walk around and take photographs.


Two pictures of me as a little girl.  I might have inherited a little bit of her chestnut hair color.  At least highlights.  It was always a light brown as a kid and then it got darker.  In high school it was more of a dark brown and now it's either a dark brown or closer to my Mom's final color.




The camp, using a fish eye lens.  Those are awesome.  I've got one for the digital camera and should try using it more.  Sean has used it more than me and he knows how to tweak the settings on the camera in order to use it well.


My Mom and Dad when they were either dating or first married.


My Great Nana Frances on the left and her sister, Grace.  Grace was very heavily into Genealogy and was a member of the DAR.  She was able to trace the family line all the way back to the Mayflower.  One year at my Nana's house all of the cousins loved hearing about the history.  And when I was in college I did my own little bit of research on it for a while.  I was able to trace it back to find a story of one of them getting into some trouble with Indians.


My Mom.

A scene from my Aunt Harriet's camp.  There's an inlet over near the mountains that goes way in.  One summer, an old boyfriend and I canoed as far as we could bring it and then we tried to bushwhack further in.  I wasn't a big fan of bushwhacking so I got us to turn around and go back.  He wanted to go further in.  This was the same time that we discovered the mother moose in the water on the way back and the baby was up in the grass.  That made me very nervous as we were very close.


My Mother as a little girl and then below with Sean as a baby. I think he got some of her chestnut highlights too, plus on my exes side of the family there was someone who had some red hair.  All we could think of at the time was, Where did he get the red hair?  Once a stranger pointed out to me of my red chestnut highlights.
 


My Mom and a friend behind bars!  What did they do?  Steal a soda?  ha ha


My Mom and my Grampy arguing about Money.  I think he may have been trying to hand her money or something of that nature and she probably was arguing to keep his money.  Grampy was always so thrifty and saved practically every penny.  Mom would also be the one to shove some one's five dollars out the car window when they were trying to give her some gas money or money for something else.  This was always funny, as there would be a big argument over it and my Nana's best friend, my best friend's Grandmother would be trying to shove it right back in.



The back of my Nana's house.  My best friend's grandmother lived past the field from that other house.  And her mother was my mother's best friend all through life.


My Grammy with her dad.  I love this picture of her and I think it is one of my favorites.


My aunt Harriet's camp again, that I had a little fun with.


My daughter, Mollyanne when she was little smelling a morning glory at her Gramma's house.


Flowers near my Aunt Harriet's camp.  There used to be a big wide open field as we would come into her driveway.  Once in a great while, we would see a deer there.  And there was a big rock formation that my girls would climb on.  They used to call it Rocky Day.


One of my favorite dolls and a drawing I did of her.  The cats got to her too and she broke.  I do have some other heads like her, but not one with the full body now.



Mom one winter.  Hear no evil?


A picture I took of a little boy at our grammar school one year.  Our college instructor wanted us to go find someone to photograph.  I felt much more comfortable going to find a bunch of kids to photograph rather than an adult.


Winona Ryder.  The one below was a drawing of a doll I did and Mom thought she looked like Joan Benet Ramsey.



One of my favorite drawings of a doll.  I love all the leaves on her.  Maybe she could be Mother Nature in the Glorious Money Tree novel.   hmmm...   That could be fun to add illustrations to that.



Another doll:  Pretty Dolly
 

This one is a little more Gothic. 


My son, Sean when he was little.


This one is behind my Mom and Dads house.  The smaller tree in the front is her lilac tree.  It used to be a little tiny piece from her Nana's house.  The house in the far distance was one behind a road we used to walk on to go to The Maine Mall shopping center.  Of course way back then, there was only Jordan Marsh and all woods and a pond before we got there.  And there was a little tiny grocery store behind Jordan Marsh.  When we were older the Mall got bigger with lots of shops for us to go hang out at when we were teenagers.  We used to ice skate at the pond.  Years ago, there was no Maine Mall and my Nana remembered going to fairs there and all kinds of other things.  The Maine Mall is so built up now and times have completely changed.  And the road we used to walk on to get to the Mall isn't there anymore because there's all these restaurants and shops now.



My favorite drawing that my Mom always loved.  She used to have a tiny picture of this one hanging on her wall.


Tammy doll.  From the Tammy and the Bachelor movies.


My Blythe doll.