Holiday Indie Book SALE Blog Hop

I love a book sale, book sales are good!
(feel free to not understand that terrible reference)

Well, I know  I haven't been one for posting recently. My ability to write coherently has waxed and waned over the past 6 months. BUT! I've got something special for my lovely blog friends. A paperback book sale! My dear friend Grace Pennington and I put it together over the last couple of weeks, and we were excited for it to hit the streets.

Now of course, I'm a lame brain and never got around to posting this on the actual start of the sale, but fret not, for there are still 3 days to empty your wallets for these fabulous indie authors!

Made by yours truly. The color is a little darker in real life.

Also, we have a special giveaway running through Friday the 6th. There are three nerdy goodie packs, including shiny-fancy notebooks, trinkets, and a hand-knitted bow tie!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

SALE FINISHED.

Okay, I think I've made enough nerd references for this post, don't you? Time to stuff your stockings with these fabulous books.

Melody Valadez

    Those Who Trespass: https://www.createspace.com/4404436

Faith Blum

    A Mighty Fortress: https://www.createspace.com/4420971

Marilynn Dawson

Mom's Little Black Book: Godly Advice for the High School Graduate:

https://www.createspace.com/4249405

Becoming the Bride of Christ: A Personal Journey:

https://www.createspace.com/3672131 Volume One

https://www.createspace.com/3933868 Volume Two

https://www.createspace.com/3958072 Volume Three

https://www.createspace.com/3958097 Volume Four

https://www.createspace.com/3958124 Volume Five

https://www.createspace.com/3960362 Volume Six

https://www.createspace.com/3964570 Leader's Guide

Molly Evangeline

    http://www.mollyevangeline.com/holiday-sales

Kelsey Bryant

    Family Reunion: https://www.createspace.com/4428655

Christina & Melody Grubb

    http://www.etsy.com/shop/DaybyDayCreations

Aubrey Hansen

    Peter's Angel: https://www.createspace.com/3988112

Red Rain: https://www.createspace.com/3813172

Morgan Huneke

    Across the Stars: https://www.createspace.com/4259184

    The Experiment: https://www.createspace.com/4410811

Vicki Lucas

    Toxic: http://vickivlucas.com/books/toxic/ (Discounted to $10 through Paypal)

J. Grace Pennington

    Never: https://www.createspace.com/3940500

    Firmament: Radialloy: https://www.createspace.com/3816448

    Firmament: In His Image: https://www.createspace.com/4480518

Jordan Smith

    Finding the Core of Your Story: https://www.createspace.com/4064194

My Bookshelf Lacks X-Y-Z

Hello there! I've been terribly busy, but I'll save that for my next post. For now, here is a cool challenge that The Book Chewers had for their weekly blog link-up!

Prompt: Have you read a book starting with every. single. letter from the alphabet?! Make a list of books you've read, from A to Z! (Bonus points to those who've read those tricky letters, like X and Z.)

Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery

Blackthorn Winter by Kathryn Reiss

Counting on Grace by Elizabeth Winthrop

Dream of Night by Heather Henson

Eva Underground by Dandi Daley Mackall

Fire & Ashes by Katie Lynn Daniels

Gods and Kings by Lynn Austin

Hattie Bigsky by Kirby Larson

Indian Captive by Lois Lenski

Janitor’s Boy [The] by Andrew Clements

Kimchi & Calamari by Rose Kent

Lost Time by Susan Maupin Schmid

Merchant’s Daughter [The] by Melanie Dickerson

{CURRENTLY READING AND THEREFORE IT DOESN'T COUNT :-(} Never by J. Grace Pennington

Okay for Now by Gary D. Schmidt

Penderwicks [The] by Jeanne Birdsall

Q.

Red Rain by Aubrey Hansen

Small Acts of Amazing Courage by Gloria Whelan

Thunderhead by Mary O’Hara

U.

Vanishing Violin [The] by Michael D. Beil

Water Street by Patricia Reilly Giff

X.

Y.

Z.

SO CLOSE.

AND

                           YET

so far

The Book Chewer's link-up is a ton of fun, and it's given me an idea. Wouldn't it be cool to do an A-Z series on your favorite books? I must remember to try that some time.

Happy Mid-July

 Ah, the Quill is back! Now in 2D with a fresh new url. ;-)


 Here we are, in July. In the past couple of weeks I've started two college courses and joined a writing critique group that is run by one of my best friends. I guess you could say that I'm busy, as I never seem to have the time to fit in anything new.

 The cool thing about my critique group is that our motto is "No Fear" and there are only three other members besides myself. It's not that hard to share my precious work with people I know well. The uncool thing is that it forces me to stop being lazy about writing and complete 2 short stories a week. If you know anything about me, I'm just happy to finish one chapter in a WIP per week. So.




Also, here is an example of my atrocious editing skills for your enjoyment. Its a collage of the funniest moments from season 7 of Doctor Who. I'm going to make a better one soon.

Carrot Colored

My mom and I had been planning on baking a cake together, so last night I started grating carrots and we went to work on a carrot cake. When the cake was out of the oven and mom was making the frosting, I debated having a slice of cake so late at night.

 "Whatever you want, you're the one who is going to be eating this."
 "What, you don't want any?"
 "No."
 "But what about you, dad?"
 "Nope."

 . . .

Me: "I thought you wanted carrot cake. I would have made chocolate cake if I was going to be the only one eating it. This is too much cake for me!"

So now I have a huge sheet pan worth of cake to eat. That thing is going in the freezer. xD

Oh, and I was given a Go Pro Hero 3 camera as a graduation present. It takes a bucketload of editing to give a photo color and you can't zoom in or it looks weird but I'm thankful to at least have a camera again. :-)

This is me, proving I'm still on the face of the Earth. Good to speak to you again, blogger buddies! How is your spring shaping up?

Number Coma

I am a math nerd. I just can't help it. It used to be the most despicable thing I'd ever had to do but now I love it. Go figure. However, this week is an intro to funtions, which basically just puts me in a Number Coma.

It's funny how GIMP can make a horrible web cam snapshot into a cool pic.

Enough said.


My pillow is putting the washing machine off balance and it sounds like a cat is trying to escape the washer.

My friends and I have really weird conversations on twitter.

@jessverve This is what you're doing when you aren't online? O.o
— Jeremiah Stiles (@Lycanis_Lykos) November 27, 2012

"May the odds be ever in your face!" -My friend Elizabeth.
— Jess (@JessVerve) November 26, 2012

 I am really lacking writing skills right now. Haven't been able to write all week.


 Love you all. <3

It's the weekend, kinda.

I need to outline my Ocean novel. My Female Main Character is becoming emotionless and I randomly sent a brumbling college student into her house to steal a sandwich and she hit him with a rolling pin. Then it was never mentioned again.

Though I don't usually share character names on my blog, I'll give you some tidbits from the aforementioned novel:

--After polling my Word War friends, the consensus was that I needed to name a male character Graham. This led to a dilemma, of which I will post about soon. But for now, Graham is the captain of the Men's Swim Team.
--One male character was supposed to be called Gordo (because I've been reminiscing on Lizzie McGuire) but heaven forbid that the only two prominent male characters names start with a G. So he is now Finley. Which happens to be a football player on my favorite NFL team. But that is a coincidence.



  My apologies for forgetting about the VHS Blog Tour. I'll be re-announcing that in the next few days and it'll be super  awesome.

 I'm off to catch up on last week's math. And clean my desk.

Verve Soap.


Just sayin'.

Okay For Now

 I didn't get a chance to post this on the VLA blog, but I thought it was pretty awesome. Here is Gary D Schmidt reading from his book Okay For Now. I wish he did his own audio books.

What exactly is that?

 Officially, I start homeschool next week. I've been lining up classes and eyeing (I just checked this word in the dictionary, Blogger spell check... that is how it is spelled grrrr) the free courses given by universities.

 But it's not as boring as it sounds. Because I... found a course... in pirate.

If your library is awesome enough to give you a free account on Mango Languages, you can learn Hawaiian, Icelandic, Biblical Hebrew, and the ever popular Pirate.

 I've never been much of a pirate gal, but if I complete French and Dutch this year, or I get bored, I'll definitely check it out.

 Because I have no clue what 'Pirate' means.


 And something else pretty interesting: Khan Academy now has game programming courses. I have no intentions of becoming a Javascript champion, but it looks like something fun to fool around with.


I'm off to see if anyone is up for an early morning word war. G'day!

Life in 140 Characters

 Okay.

 Enough.

 I need off of Twitter.

 Every time I go to write a blog post, I think up one sentence and abandon the draft. I compose in fragmented segments with the given Twittiquette grammar, e.g. "Because if the itinerary of someone so important was secret, the entire media would be waiting there with cameras. #LameMysteryShow"

 Obviously anyone in their right mind would not start every sentence with the word 'because'. I'm even starting to do this with my novel, and that is not acceptable unless that is how your character really talks/narrates.

 I don't know when I'm going to do it, but it'll be soon. The whole reason I got so hooked on it was because all of my friends are easier to reach on Twitter, though in vague and incomplete ways. Facebook has even become a big time waster for me. To be honest, I'd like to prove that I could have a following as a writer and not be on FB. Because in the end, sites like FB, Twitter, Pinterest, Tumblr... they are all the same. And I'd really love to just go back to email.

 And message boards.

Does anyone remember those? Y'know, the really slow-loading categories with topics and lots(x1938924) of comments that really don't mean anything at all?

 To make myself feel even older, I dare say I want to watch a VHS.

 Funny saying as I now have a DVD/Blu-Ray player on my snazzy wonderful laptop.

 Who the heck cares about blu-ray, anyways? -sigh-

Beefy cheesy.

 When most people think 'healthy' sandwich, their imagination tends to end here:

Source: bookfaked.com via Alex on Pinterest

Which is fine, but who wants to eat something so boring all the time?


No matter what, I'll always be a meaty cheesy girl. I told my mother a few minutes ago that I was going to go on Facebook and post "Made a double cheeseburger" under life event. It was that good.

Source: organicgardensnetwork.blogspot.com via Carma on Pinterest

Recently my parents have been bugging me to make food for myself, so I started with burgers. I've found a lot of great stuff on Pinterest, we'll see where that goes; so far there seems to be a lot of great recipes if you judge it by it's photo.

 Anywho, here are three songs that have been on repeat today. The first artist is from Prince Edward Island and I feel like I'm listening to a modern Anne of Green Gables with every song. The second is... ugh, I know, I'm listening to LIGHTS. But it is a good song, so there. It's like a grungy Owl City, only still Christian. I think. The third is a new band from Australia.


 There is your extremely short and frivolous blog post. Enjoy!

The Candy Wrap music video.

-dies laughing-

See, clean humor is great! And plus, it's Chris August... where could you go wrong?

'cause it's the 15th

and yeah I just got paid

I'm workin' hard for what I got

to fulfill what I crave

not girls, or cars, power and respect

but to have all the candy one could possibly collect

in my backyard

in a fort that I built

it has three candy isles

and they're all full of milk
turned ice cream

Pinterested

 Oh, no. I've gotten a Pinterest account. Even after I said I wouldn't.

Source: 25.media.tumblr.com via Nancy-Alicia on Pinterest

 But you have to admit, there are a lot of awesome resources on that site for writers. I'm RAOPing (Random Acts of Pinning) stuff about the ocean. Maybeee I'll give you all a link to one of my boards. Some time. LOL


 And I have also joined the 'Baked a Recipe Found on Pinterest' club. Pumpkin cream cheese muffins. Yepp. <3

Blueberry Pancakes.

 Right now, I'm about to start work on a scene in my novel describing someone's first experience with blueberry pancakes. This is a huge deal to said character, because she isn't used to Americanized food. The whole novel has been largely geared towards describing everything as though it's new, but I want to do something different in this scene. And here's the other tough part about it: she doesn't like pancakes. What was I thinking when I created her character profile?!

*edit with updates*

 It seems my cat needs to use my manuscript for her morning reading time. So I have more time to procrastinate and plan this scene. Any thoughts to how I could go about it?

 I was able to pry the character's profile out from the grasp of my cat, and I noticed that I never filled any interests in for her besides swimming, which is already in a lot of the scenes. So she's rather boring.


 What can I do to help her when she insists on being so contrary and yet tries so many new things willingly?

TAG once again.

 Ahem.


 So I oft ignore tag awards because you have to spend five hours on the responses.

But this one is short. Thanks very much to my blog-acquaintance, Rinskii!

First, I have to tell seven unknown details about myself.

1. I can't stand junk food. I mean the really junky stuff. Hand me a Hostess Coconut Doughnut and I'll probably sneak it to my dog Monsieur Iron Stomach under the table. Weird. That's me. But then, I consider fresh carrot, cucumber, beet and celery juice dessert many times. Or sun tea with a splash of organic cherry lemonade <3 <3 <3 <3 But home made cookies? THAT will not go to the dog.

2. I'm not really that great at spelling. I still have problems with 'gnat'. Just today I was hand-writing one of my manuscripts and could not recall 'soldier' (I remembered the D eventually). I use spell check, and abuse it.

3. I still watch High School Muscial. At least once a year. Yeah. I watched 1 & 2 this week, and let me tell you: I've seen enough cheesy caresses to last me a month.

4. I am an anti-GMO person, and some times that can make me seem like an earthhugger, but I assure you they are not one in the same.

5. I'm too serious. See numbers 1 and 4 ^.

6. We're not done yet? This section has taken me two days...

7. I'd rather do a '7 Things You Don't Know About My Character Section'. And I really like Cameron Mitchell music.



 What are your favorite song lyrics?

I like a lot of songs, mostly for the instrumental. Usually I don't have a line of lyrics that I adore. But I shall give you a song anyways. This whole song? Brilliant.


 


What is your favorite book/series? That is a very mean question to ask me. ROFL Just kidding. Favorite book is either The Mozart Season or My Friend Flicka. They both have things that I can relate to in little ways.  I don't usually like series but right now I'd have to say my favorite is Benjamin Pratt & The Keepers of the School by Andrew Clements. That dude is a genius.


 What is your favorite Movie/TV series? HEARTLAND!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 I can't wait until the 6th season premiers next month... Alberta Canada is so pretty! I would have put a trailer to season 5, but people were so obsessed about making kissing scene montages I guess they forgot to upload that. Whatevs.

Who inspires you?

Jesus Christ. Obvious much? :-D While we're talking Bible figures, I also like Esther for some reason.

What is your dream job?

Ummm... I'd have to say being a professional author, nutritional biochemist, and a film maker.




 Now I have to tag 7 people. They get to fill out theses questions, too! Since Lidia's idea of posting your responses in the comment section worked so well last time, you are more than welcome to post yours there if you do no wish to on your blog.

Lidia
Nonii
Jonni (forgot her blog address)
Aubrey (that link takes you to an excerpt of her new novel translated into lolcat. it's a good giggle or twelve)
"AM REEEDING YO MIND"
Katie Daniels (I doubt she'll see this but she's cool soooo)
Grace Pennignton (okay... well I'm just adding the people I talk to on Twitter. Lazy much?)
And anyone else I forgot because I have yet to eat breakfast... just pretend your name is there. ;-D


I'm off to work on a tag quiz for characters. Au revior. However you spell that.

My Reading List Fall 2012

Ahhh... I've got some humorous blog posting coming your way soon, but until then, I'm going to post my reading list for this fall. I'm going to have to become friends with the persons at my library that order books, to be sure, to be sure.

*drum roll*

 ZE REEDING LISTZ (Darn, Aubrey. Thanks a lot. ;-D)

The Scarlet Pimpernel by Emmuska Orczy
The Book Theif by Markus Zuzak
Get Thee to a Punnery: An Anthology of Intentional Assaults Upon the English Language by Richard Lederer
These Happy Golden Years by Laura Wilder
Folks, This Ain't Normal by Joel Salatin
John Adams by David McCullough (started this last year and didn't finish)
Sleeping Freshman Never Lie by David Lubar (re-read; yessssss it was that good)
Firmament: Radialloy by Grace Pennington (missed the sale on July 4th... have to beg the library!)
Peter's Angel by Aubrey Hansen
National Velvet by Enid Bagnold
God and Kings: Chronicles of the Kings by Lynn Austin (got this for free on Amazon)



"EN AVANT THE CARTS!"

 I also want to read some of the other self-published books that were suggested for the VLAs, like Pirate Daughter's Promise, Charity's Diary, and the Destiny Trilogy, but I'll probably read those after I get some of the classics and non-fiction crossed off my list, :-D


( As a side note: prayers that I can afford a laptop to replace my old one would be appreciated, so I can get going on my senior year of homeschool. )

Morning

 It's funny how one can complain about life being too eventless to be fun, because when they actually become busy, all they can talk about is how nice it is to not be so busy.

 I don't like to be busy in the sense that I hate going out and doing errands. Just forget about trying to convince me to spend time with my fellow teenagers--what a waste it would be to drive to some place and pay good money to be a part of a 'camp' or 'workshop' that teaches me nothing and smushes me in a room with a bunch of attention grabbing-iPhone listening-unresponsive kids and expect me to have fun.

 This summer, I volunteered at a business that happens to have a lot of kid volunteers. There was one girl who found out I was older that her and afterwards would not even look or respond to me if I asked her a question or for help finding someone. I know I can be moody sometimes, but I hope I'm not that moody. Thankfully the volunteering session is over for the summer, because there was more than one issue with the place. But it's over, so I'm not going to go on and on ragging about it.

Girl: "Your a SENIOR?!"
Me: "Well, kinda. (didn't want to get into the homeschool/odd grade thing) Most people think I'm 12."
Girl: "No, I thought you were a Freshman or something."

Yep. True story.

Give me some fun loving, interesting adults any day. Or some sociable homeschoolers. Contrary to popular belief, homeschoolers are actually more sociable than today's average teen.


 On a good note, all of my free time has led me to write a lot more (anddomorechorescoughcough). But more than that, I've learned about the importance of making my own writing habits and rules, instead of listening to the NaNoWriMo system or the Writer's Digest techniques all by themselves. The truth is, I don't like to just write a whole novel in a month and spend the next 30 years of my life editing it. If I'm going to write it, it doesn't need to be perfect but it needs to have a good structure. And I'm also not into conventional plot arcs. Things become too predictable if you write in the same way that the bestsellers in Writer's Digest do.
  Newbery medalist Gary D. Schmidt (The Wednesday Wars, Okay For Now) uses a typewriter for his first draft, only pounding out about 500 words a day.  I really like that pace for myself. The average Young Adult novel has a chapter length of 2,000 words. I prefer to write by hand, so this means that with 500 words a day, I can easily write about two chapters a week. To be honest, I'd rather have two great chapters than a whole pile of irrelevant scenes crafted during NaNoWriMo.

 That's all for now, folks! By the way, if it crosses your mind I would love if you'd vote in the Verve Lit Awards. The deadline is August 15th.

Have a lovely day,

-Jessie

Write Et

Howdy!

So there's some good news.

By ignoring the urge to go internet wild, I actually got some writing done.

Good writing.

Great.

I just neglected this blog for awhile. Sowwy.

*holds out music player* Here is a tune for your troubles




 And here is a really funny post about teenagerizms that are really inspiring if you are trying to write 'mainstream' teens *coughcough* Raspberry Cappuccino: Teenager Posts

On that note, I'll leave you to listen to music and read Anne of Green Gables.

 

940 chirps of randomness.

"Hey, I just met you. And this is crazy. But you've got cookies. I mean come on. You've got COOKIES."

My characters are about to start daring each other to eat sashimi. This could get ugly.  They sound like they are dying.

Listening to my Deceptive Soundtrack while writing Ocean. Talk about two different moods. xD Ominous VS Poetic.

This is the only picture I could find that was worth uploading.

Everyone is writing romantic plots into their stories today, and for once I am not.

#YouKnowYouUseTwitterTooMuch when you start responding to emails in two sentences.

My Mother dubbed me the Sun Tea Steeper of the household. I love sun tea. <3

The Mighty Macs. Seriously good. What's up with all of the awesome 1970's true story movies suddenly? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mighty_Macs (I apparently watched the short version on Netflix. Figures. It was still an awesome movie.)

Why you should research before writing: a group of unihabited islands I was going to use in a novel was recently inhabited as a gay-only kingdom. o.0

Still trying to figure out how not one but THREE Nick Jonas songs got on my NaNoWriMo playlist... o.0  No, I have not gone mad. I deleted them off of the playlist shortly upon finding this information.

Watched Vanishing of the Bees. If you're skeptical about the negative effects of GMO and pesticides, watch that movie. Icing on the cake so to speak. Food Inc & Fresh are good movies, too.

I don't like it when a TV show leaves a season with an engagement cliffhanger. *grrrrr* Example One (I really like the music in this one):

Wondering if I should strand my character on a cay for a chapter. Thoughts? ...No takers? Okay, no sand bar character abandonment, then.

Chocolate covered cashews. Om Nom Nom.


I'm not going to say who's ahead, but the indie authors are kicking butt in ALL categories of the VerveLitAwards. 


"Are you sure you want to log out?" No, I was just kidding.

So apparently no one knows how to spell Lady Antebellum or Downton Abbey. 



Not only do I need Heartland intervention, I need twitter intervention (twittervention). I use that thing WAY more than necessary, and it keeps me from updating my blog!
 Do you like the new layout on my blog? I like it.
 Sorry for recycling my tweets, but that's what's been going on with me lately. I think it might be a healthy decision to stop going on there for a day or two. Just a thought.

June

 Two. Weeks. Of. Crazy. Two weeks straight of driving to events, errands, pseudo family reunions, getting up early for my job (though that is only once a week), a concert, and just being tired in general. I'm ready for a summer vacation! I know it sounds lazy and unsociable of me, but....

 I still have to do some last minute things for the Verve Literary Awards (which didn't get as many nominated books as I had hoped because I didn't have the money to buy some of the books that were really awesome) and I have some reviews that were postponed, so this means that the voting cannot start yet. >.>

 Deceptive. It's getting there. And as you have probably guessed if you follow me on Twitter a lot, there is something in it about Erlenmeyer flasks (or is that masks ;-D) and that my teenybopper characters are lazy and just want to sit around playing video games or some garbage all day. Jerks. But I'm really starting to love my sub-main character. The FMC is trailing behind because she is SUCH a nerd. Some times I wonder if the readers will think she is boring. If I post an excerpt of some of her inner monologues, will you all tell me if she's too nerdy?
 But the writing process isn't all lollipops, for I wrote an emotional scene and it fell flat due to the hugely mundane and overused lines that the characters said. It's going to take a lot of editing.

( BLAH, not much to blog about now. Sorry. <3 )

Is it all just words?

 She walked across the never ending pathway near the beach today. She stopped when she saw an albatross. Sat in the salt breeze. Then, it was not just words. Home had almost come back to her heart.

 (Excerpt Copyright 2012 Jessica Verve)
Today, without an endless stack of library books waiting to be read, I started writing again. Third person seems to be the forgotten point of view lately. I'm kind of sick of writing in so many people's minds, you know what I mean? I'm going to test out 3rd POV in some of my stories and see what happens. Without even thinking about it, it seemed to work for the story above.

 And in important news, I won an e-book giveaway! :-P I guessed how long Aubrey Hansen's new historical fiction Peter's Angel would be when she finished Draft 2 (124k, just 190 words short of her final total !!! ) and won a free copy of Jordan Smith's new book, "Finding the Core In Your Story"! It looks really interesting. Especially since I'm a huge fan of Month Of the Novel....

...I'm really excited to read it. Be looking for my thoughts on the book.


 Also, I've finished about two chapters for Camp Verve. I guess I better hurry up, huh?


Well, I hear rumors that I'm about to participate in the new family tradition of giving the dog a flea bath. That is all for now.