Jordan Castillo Price's Blog, page 17

Feed yo' face! With bananas.

I'm on a banana kick lately. I was visiting Dev Bentham and had one in the car with me, and it was all overripe and kind of gross, and she suggested I freeze it and eat it that way. So I did. And it was interesting! Actually, she told me it was like eating ice cream, and while I wouldn't go that far, I'd allow that it does taste like some weird natural ice cream substitute bar from the health food store. And it's cheap!


Peel them, stick them on a plate and freeze them. Once they're frozen I put them in a baggie. Less messy to eat sliced up. But sometimes I just gnaw on the whole frozen thing like a caveman...with a freezer...and access to bananas.

I took on a new responsibility teaching a water aerobics class, and it kind of kicks my ass (not gonna lie.) While I realize the amount of potassium in a banana is kind of overrated*, according to this article, they're better for you post-workout than Gatorade.

*legumes, baked potatoes and leafy greens are better sources

Mr. Perfect would not approve

Recently I became a Historical Society member. I was a bit baffled when I finally received my membership materials, because whoever did the data entry on their end made not one, not two, but three mistakes in my address. I’m actually shocked it ended up in my mailbox. Read the rest of this month's JCP News, and get a progress report on my writerly goings on, too!

On writing...Crash

Character voice involves more than just word choice. What's it like to write from Crash's perspective? Find out in this month's JCP News

Hear Victor Bayne take on the FPMP

Vic and Jacob go to great lengths to maintain a harmonious home. While the cannery is huge, it’s grown difficult to avoid the elephant in the room…the elephant with the letters FPMPscrawled on its hide.

12 hours of thrills and chills—another riveting performance by the voice of Vic, Gomez Pugh.





Buy At Amazon







Also available at Audible, coming soon to iTunes

















What Listeners are Saying"One of the things that I find very interesting is the author's choice of narrator. Specifically, I think Gomez Pugh has captured Vic's and Jacob's personalities perfectly. He also does a great job with the secondary characters." - Denise

"As Denise said, he has captured Vic and Jacob perfectly, but he also has captured Chicago, the pace and personality of the city comes through. His voices are distinct and they bring the characters to life in a way that reading alone doesn't always." - Allison

"Now whenever I reread my favorite JCP books, I automatically 'hear' Gomez Pugh. He is the perfect combination of masculine and snark, with perfection in suspense and dry humor. Immaculate timing in his vocal resonance." - Sherry

"I love the voices that Gomez uses for all his characters..they fit so well." - Lee

No One Likes a Crooked Head

So I was reading this delightful blog post on burnout (Chuck Wendig has such an enviable voice) and especially adored the line, "Writing sometimes feels like digging ditches, but you have to remember: it’s you digging ditches in a magical fantasy land that you control."

It got me to thinking about goals. It's a perennial discussion I have with my writing friends. My main quantifiable goal was to quit my day job. And after that, goals began feeling counterproductive. I've given up saying "I will write a novel in x-amount of months" because all that does is force a shitty, unpublishable novel out of me and make me miserable.

Some of my writing pals have certain monetary goals, or bestseller lists they want to hit. None of those goals lit me up. I clearly remember a cluster of us standing there in a parking lot earnestly describing what we wanted, and I blurted out, "My goal is to get my head on straight."

Hypnosis, meditation, therapy. Maybe some of it helps. I'm in a really good spot right now, that's freaking exciting.

As far as I can tell, what helped inspire me the most is to watch another author—Sean Platt—working hard and sharing his process without bragging about any milestones he's met. I don't know his typical wordcount (which undoubtedly smokes mine), I don't know how much money he makes (ditto), and we're not on the same charts so I don't need to watch him trouncing me. But I have a perception that he and the rest of his team are "successful" (there's a slippery definition, right?) and listening to him podcast about his daily writing discipline has inspired me to show up early, show up fully, and don't check my damn email or facebook until I'm happy I've got a fat chunk written the mojo's exhausted for the day. Once I slide out of creative-mind, it's gone for the day and I get sucked into admin, social media and correspondence.

What about you, what do you find motivational?

JCP News April 2016

What's going on this month in my little corner of the world?

-I muse on sleep quality
-And there's a pretty cool podcast you might enjoy
-How do my readers use ebooks? I asked them!
-New JCP raffle to enter
-Progress report on Spook Squad audio

...plus I thought this chick listening to ebooks in a field of poppies was kind of hilarious.

Find it all here

Win a JCP journal!

Since this raffle was a big hit, I'm running it again. A JCP Journal of your choice! They really are nice, gorgeous printing, thick paper, available in lined or unlined pages.Raffle runs through Saturday April 16. http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/efd0af5a22/?


See all the journal choices here: http://www.cafepress.com/jcpgifts/s__journals

Taste some delicious M/M/M, free

This special promo of The Starving Years is $0 exclusively on Amazon for a limited time through Saturday, April 9. If you've never read it, here's your chance! Tell your friends and help them discover a new-to-them MM author.

If you like strong personalities, simmering MMM chemistry, and page-turning action, make this your next read.

THE STARVING YEARS
The chemistry between these three men is undeniable, but is it enough to save New York?

Imagine a world without hunger.

In 1960, a superfood was invented that made starvation a thing of the past. Manna, the cheaply manufactured staple food, is now as ubiquitous as salt in the world’s cupboards, pantries and larders.

Nelson Oliver knows plenty about manna. He’s a food scientist—according to his diploma, that is. Lately, he’s been running the register at the local video rental dive to scrape together the cash for his outrageously priced migraine medication.

In a job fair gone bad, Nelson hooks up with copywriter Javier and his computer-geek pal Tim, who whisks them away from the worst of the fiasco in his repurposed moving truck. At least, Nelson thinks those two are acquainted, but they’re acting so evasive about it, he’s not sure how they know each other, exactly. Javier is impervious to Nelson’s flirting, and Tim’s name could appear in the dictionary under the entry for “awkward.” And with a riot raging through Manhattan and yet another headache coming on, it doesn’t seem like Nelson will get an answer anytime soon.

One thing’s for sure, the tension between the three of them is thick enough to cut with a knife...even one of those dull plastic dealies that come in the package with Mannariffic EZ-Mealz.

Grab it at Amazon!

What makes something funny?

A touching post by Kaje Harper got me to thinking about humor and its subjectivity. What some people find cute or funny, others are immediately turned off by. There's someone who complains about my cat thinking it's hilarious, whereas I feel offended on my cat's behalf whenever it happens. (I AM a crazy cat lady, you don't want to go there if you're trying to impress me.) Humiliating or insulting someone else? Also pretty excruciating. So what does that leave us with? Puns? Exaggerations? In-jokes, where the part that's funny is the part where we trust each other to get it without overexplaining? Out and out silliness?

In writing I'm a big fan of the wry callback. It's a trust thing. I trust you to remember I made a remark about this thing 100 pages ago and now I'm bringing it back.

As much as dumb gag gifts don't generally humiliate or insult anyone, I'm bewildered by the number and variety available on Amazon, like this yodeling pickle. I like that it doesn't hurt anyone's feelings, I suppose. But I'm still baffled. Maybe it's the new version of silly pranks that never fooled anyone, the stuff you could order from the back of a comic book, like whoopie cushions or see-behind-you glasses.

What about you, what kind of humor do you like? Are pranks and jokes funny to you, or just uncomfortable?

Win a JCP journal!

Win a gorgeous JCP journal of your choice for all your innermost thoughts! I own a few of these journals and the quality is stellar. Luscious printing on the cover, sturdy pages inside.

I've run raffles for the past couple of months to tout my mailing list signups and try to drum up a few new reviews, but I'm raffled out for the moment, so this will be the last raffle I do until the gamifying bug bites me again.

Enter here! Raffle runs through 3/30.