Jordan Castillo Price's Blog, page 18
March 23, 2016
Win TWO JCP audios!
March 16, 2016
Oh shi...I mean, crap.
Such a Victor Bayne moment. I saw a cute little lime green Ford in the YMCA parking lot and pulled up to park beside it. As I walked between the cars, my gym bag swung and tapped the sideview mirror...and the mirror casing fell off.
I was like, fuck, I noticed a cute car and then I BROKE IT.
I tried to pop it back on and it didn't seem to really fit well. Then I had no idea what to do. Should I go inside and have them page the owner? Should I set the casing on half-assedly and let them think THEY broke it? (I wouldn't actually do a dick move like that but it was tempting.) Eventually I set the casing on the windshield over the steering wheel so the driver couldn't miss it.
When my class was done she was there (yay!) so I could at least have some resolution. She told me she hit her house with that sideview and now that part doesn't fit right, so it wasn't me after all.
Don't miss the most recent PsyCop news in this month's newsletter.March 15, 2016
Cover update and PsyCop news - JCP News March 2016
It's that time of the month already! (Not that time! Newsletter time.) Enjoy the fresh new cover from one of my favorite backlist titles, The Starving Years, and get the most up-to-date goings on in all things PsyCop.
March 11, 2016
Feeling Lucky? Win a JCP-Firsts prize pack.
Among the Living (PsyCop)
Payback (Channeling Morpheus)
Persistence of Memory (Mnevermind)
Perfect for someone who's new to M/M or just new to JCP! And if a winner already owns some, but not all, of these titles, they can gift their extras to a lucky friend.
Hit the Rafflecopter here. Contest closes Saturday night.
(ereaders not included :-)
March 4, 2016
So darn close!
The thing about goal-setting for me is that it can feel so arbitrary. I try to strive for things within my control, since I can't control what other people do or how they feel, or even if something I do pleases someone else. (I know, that's kind of dry and thinky.) What I mean is, I can try to delight someone else, for instance, but I strive to be satisfied in the doing of it. I can't control whether they are delighted or not, or if they even notice. Recently I made a lunch for someone who told me she felt pampered, and that was freaking awesome, but I try to focus on my intention when I did the making.
What about career then? My main goal was to quit my day job and write, which I did over five years ago. Since then, goals became more nebulous, maddeningly difficult to define. Setting goals to write faster quickly left me frazzled and unhappy. And I can't control things like how many people buy a given story or how many leave reviews. Again, my main goal is to focus on process and write things that delight me, and hope they delight my readership too.
All this to ramp up to the fact that I'm close to an external goal that's really arbitrary, but it would be very fun for me to reach.
I'm offering Mnevermind 1: The Persistence of Memory free on Amazon for a limited time. It's already the #1 freebie in the categories Psychological Suspense, and Science Fiction Romance. I think that's GREAT for an M/M title among the mainstream. But it's #150ish overall free on Amazon. I'd LOVE it to pop into the top 100. I know it's arbitrary but I think it'd be fun to nudge an m/m title over that line.
If you have an Amazon account, you can help by grabbing the free book there. Even if you've bought it from another vendor in the past. (If you've already bought it from Amazon, thank you very, very much! It won't let you buy it again but I still very much appreciate it!) And please tell your friends! 
March 3, 2016
You know you're a cover designer when...
I've looked at so many stock photos it's a wonder I don't recognize the models walking down the street. Maybe if I went out more, I would.
Last night I was watching Second Chance and when the FBI agent threw down a handful of photos of "suspects" he'd questioned, I spotted a stock art model I'd seen a million times before :D
(Not this guy, Starburns from the show Community. I just thought it was a funny shot.)
March 2, 2016
Delve into Mnevermind for free
I'm convinced that many readers who love the weird, awkward, wry and tender moments in PsyCop would love my Mnevermind Trilogy. And to give you a chance to check it out, I'm offering book 1 free for a limited time.
(Sometimes the Amazon freeness doesn't carry over to countries outside the US. Unfortunately this is beyond my control, but hopefully another vendor will work in your country. If not, book 1 will at least be deeply discounted for a limited time. I did have one UK reader confirm she found it free at Amazon.co.uk)
Discover the haunting Mnevermind trilogy, a reality-bending M/M story of a regular guy, his dad, their foundering business, and a kindred spirit they find in an unexpected place.
February 26, 2016
The Trouble with Troubleshooting
Why can't things just work?
It's funny and engaging in ficiton. Conflict and adversity make stories interesting. In real life, bleh, I'd like something to just work.
Lately it's my back and my wireless router. My back has never not hurt and my wireless router was stellar, until it wasn't. I'm one of those tenacious folks who can't just shrug and say "I don't know what's wrong," I'm addicted to fixing things.
Let's hope moving the router (which worked fine a week ago from its current location, but let's not think too hard about that) and a trip to the chiropractor will make this day less discouraging. And also that lunch with a friend will brighten my day.
February 23, 2016
Get Wood today
Celebrate Vic's Birthday with an all-new PsyCop short
Victor Bayne might not be handy when it comes to carpentry, but if there’s one tool he does know how to wield, it’s the tiny metal doohickey that comes with ready-to-assemble furniture from SaverPlus.
The shelves aren’t for the cannery—Vic would never manage to sneak cheap pressboard and veneer past Jacob’s watchful eyes. Jacob’s Uncle Leon, however, is nowhere near as fussy. And since he’s only got one arm, he’ll need help putting together his new treasure.
It’s no surprise to find the instructions baffling and convoluted…but were they always so disturbingly dirty?
This PsyCop interlude is a cute, sexy romp that will delight readers who’ve enjoyed the series through PsyCop #3, Body and Soul.
Get Wood at the following vendors:
Amazon
BN
Kobo
iTunes
"I'm never going to be able to assemble furniture again without an unholy grin dancing across my features. Wood was a fantastic short read." - Jeanette
"Warning: don't try reading Wood next to your sleeping significant other. I think I broke something in my brain trying to hold back the laughing." - Julie
February 18, 2016
Expect the unexpected...when Photoshop goes weird
I first learned Photoshop in 1998 and keep up a training schedule on it to this day because it's one of those programs that's always evolving. There's a local website I manage for a friend and she sent me a PDF to post. I think the document must've been made on a copy machine, it was all crooked and wacky. Since I needed both a jpg for the site and a pdf for users download, I pulled it into Photoshop. I could've just converted it and been done, but the crookedness was BUGGING ME. I tried manually rotating it by grabbing the corner but I couldn't get it quite right. I used to use the ruler tool to straighten out things like that more accurately, who knows how many versions ago. I didn't see that tool anymore. But I saw a command called "crop and straighten" and thought "That's exactly what I want to do!"
So I hit that command and...Photoshop chopped the document into a bunch of bizarre little pieces, each one its own document. Ha ha!
It's a garbage pickup calendar, nothing glamorous, I assure you :D
(And I remembered that command is supposed to be for slapping down a bunch of photos on a scanner at one time and then separating them later.)
