Pressure Points

Anyone remember Blurred Lines? The first book I completed a first draft of? And remember when I said it was going to be a trilogy?

Book Two, Pressure Points, is officially in the works!

I figured to celebrate I would release a working cover and blurb. Keep in mind that the synopsis may morph as writing continues.

Gwen Scott, Sam Richardson, and Chris Quinn brought down the government. They were trying to take over the world, so they deserved it.

Now, an EMP has wiped out all electronics, Gwen has been missing for two months, and there's talk of a group trying to take back control of the country.

Sam, Chris, and the crew must make unpredictable alliances to find Gwen.

Gwen must face the biggest betrayal she's ever experienced, all the while trying to protect everything she cares about most.

Thoughts? I'm terrible at blurbs. The cover photo is actually one my mom took when we visited Galveston beach this summer. I used a couple of apps on my phone to over-lay a sniper sights picture and words. Jo Ellen is my working pen name. It's subject to change if I think of something I like better.

Pressure Points will feature almost every character from Blurred Lines in some way, shape, or form. Even if it's just a mention. I tend to write books with large casts, but there will only be 3-4 main characters and only three main POVs.

Two and a half chapters and 3,000 words in, I think it's going well so far. 

Let me know what you think of the cover and the story in the comments! Also, what do you think of the pen name? Any other suggestions? I would like "Jo" to be in it somewhere because it's my online nickname.

I'm Back!

Hey guys, it's been a while! Life's been...well, it's been life. A little crazy, a little stressful, a little great. For months now I've been saying, "I need to blog!" and something else always demand my attention before I can post something. Today I said, "I am going to blog today." I'm finding that it works much better than saying I "need" to.

So, I got accepted to Colorado Christian University. People keep saying, "That's really far! It's in Colorado right?" To which I reply, "Yes, it's far, Duh, It's in Colorado. It is called Colorado Christian University. And I'm attending their online program. I never even have to set foot in Colorado." Isn't that amazing? I love online college. I'll be majoring in Criminal Justice with a focus on Criminology.

I also graduated in May! A whole year early. It was exciting. And terrifying. I attended a home school graduation in Searcy, AR. I was a certified paralegal before I even received my diploma. I'd been taking online paralegal classes since January. Last week I finished my last Advanced Paralegal final. I'll be getting the certificate soon.

I also got three new puppies. Ruby Jade was my graduation present. Sammy Dean was my mom's Mother's day present. River Rose is my "hey you've got a job and can pay for your own stuff now" present. I'm still paying for her. They're all little sweeties! Yorkies all under five pounds (River's actually not even three pounds).

I also got a job. I'm a paralegal's assistant at a local law firm. The extra money is nice!

I turn 18 in October. I am holding on to my childhood for dear life. I'm still stuck between wanting to be an adult and have an apartment and a career and all that and wanting to be a "kid" and watch Disney movies while curled up in my floral bedspread and never get up. And chocolate milk. And mac & cheese. I'm not giving those up either!

We went on a youth group trip to Eureka Springs to see the Passion Play and go to the Holy Land tour. It was so amazing!!

 Pictures and Selfies with Jesus!:D 

A Word From The Bus

I'm coming to you live from the church bus on the interstate on the way to WINTERJAM!!!!!!!!!!!! As my youth group is make sure everyone gets a selfie with everyone (some of them are seriously hilarious), I once again come to the realization that I have the best youth group in the universe!:D We all piled in the bus, took our selfies, and are jamming to kLove radio ready for a night full of fun and worship. We made a silent vow not to complain about how loud the bus is and trust our youth pastor not to drive too crazy;P Pictures will come soon! The bumps are making it hard to type on my phone. Excuse any typosXD If any of you have been to Winterjam or are possibly there tonight, let me know!!:D

Beautiful People #6: Love Is In The Air

February's Beautiful People linkup is about love and shipping!:D It's hosted by Cait and Sky.

And I'm seriously beginning to think there's something wrong with my blog because the button never works. Anywho! I'm going to do this for two different stories: My NaNo novel, Blurred Lines, and for a short story I'm writing. The Blurred Lines characters are Gwen and Sammy. The short story characters are Nate and Ruby. A little background on the stories: Blurred Lines: Gwen is a private investigator. Sammy is an ex-FBI agent trying his hand at private investigating. They both decide to pursue a case and meet at one of the houses of a victim's family. Short story (I need a name for itXD): I used a writing prompt for this. The writing is that every person is born with a countdown on their wrist counting down to when they meet their soulmate. 1. How long have they been a couple? Gwen and Sammy: At the end of BL, they've been together or literally only a few days. At the end of the second book, Pressure Points, it's been either a year, or a year and a half. not sure yet. Nate and Ruby: Technically, they're not an official couple yet. But they're soulmates, so they will be and it totally countsXD 2. How did they first meet? Gwen and Sammy: Gwen showed up at the house of a possible murder victim's family. She was impersonating a Federal agent. She shows up at the house and the woman tells her that the "other agent" was already there. It turns out to be private investigator Sammy, who is also impersonating a Fed. Sammy gets extremely nervous because he thinks he's busted. When they leave the house Gwen tells him she knows he's not a Fed and he figures out that she's not either. He suggests they investigate together and Gwen shoots him downXD Nate and Ruby: Well, Nate is a detective with the London PD and was working a case with his supervisor, Remy. They go to a possible hideout and find Ruby who had been kidnapped. Let me rephrase that: Nate finds Ruby while Rem is chasing he bad guy. Nate and Ruby both realize that their countdowns stopped. 3. What were their first thoughts of each other? (Love at first sight or "you're freakishly annoying"?) Gwen and Sammy: Sammy thought she was cute and wanted to get to know her better. Gwen thought he was annoying and didn't want anything to do with him. Nate and Ruby: Ruby thought it was too good to be true. Nate thought she was adorable because she kept blushing and getting a little embarrassed. He also thought she was gorgeous. 4. What do they do that most annoys each other? Gwen and Sammy: I'm not sure Gwen does anything that really annoys Sammy. I mean, he gets upset when she's being hard on herself, but I don't know that that really annoys him. Sammy likes to tease and cut up and that sometimes annoys Gwen, depending on her mood that day. Nate and Ruby: I haven't decided this yet. 5. Are their personalities opposite or similar? Gwen and Sammy: They're not total opposites, but they're pretty different. Gwen blames herself for every bad thing that happens to herself and the people around her where Sammy is more like, "If there wasn't anything I/you could do then there was nothing I/you could do." Sammy's is also really outgoing and likes to joke around and everything. Gwen likes to joke, but only with people she knows. She's a bit more reserved. Nate and Ruby: Nate and Ruby are considerably more different (starting out) than Gwen and Sammy. Nate is more of a confident (dare I say, borderline arrogant) guy who wouldn't have any problems with the ladies if it wasn't for the whole soulmate countdown thing. Ruby is a blusher who is really shy until she gets to know you. Unless you're, you know, her soulmate. Then she'll do that a little, but not over every little thing. She's not as shy with Nate as she is with most people, but she still is a little. 6. How would their lives be different without each other? Gwen and Sammy: As sad as it is, Gwen would probably be dead without Sammy. She'll never admit it, but if he wasn't around to save her life, she would be dead. Sammy would probably be fine if he never met Gwen because he's not the type that needs somebody. Gwen likes to think she's not either, but if she were to go through all the events of BL without Sammy, she would have died during one of the small climaxes. Nate and Ruby: This is a hard one to answer with the whole soulmate thing. So, I'm going to answer ti as if the questions is talking about if one of them died before they met. So, say Ruby died before Nate met her: his countdown would have stopped on a number instead of zero. he would have asked Rem about it and he would haven told him that that means his soulmate has died and he would be forced to live out the rest of his life without ever getting married or falling in love or anything. A few days later Ruby's body would have turned up. They would have found out that her and Nate's countdowns ended on the same number and Rem would have let Nate go see her. *insert sad scene here*. If Nat had died before they met: her countdown would have stopped, she would have found out why. When she got kidnapped, Rem would have found her. Maybe she would have asked Rem if a man had died at that exact moment. He would have looked into it and realized that was when Nate died. He would have told her and told her all about him. Maybe they would have remained friends or something after that. She would never fall in love or anything. 7. Are they embarrassed of each other? Gwen and Sammy: Definitely not. Sammy loves letting everybody know who his girl is and Gwen feels the same. Nate and Ruby: Not in the slightest. They were matched perfectlyXD 8. Does anyone disapprove of their relationship? Gwen and Sammy: Not a first, but after a certain part in the sequel to BL, a ton of people hate Sammy. She and Sammy split up, but after everything is cleared up they get back together. Several of Gwen's friends disapprove of this. They keep it quiet around Gwen, but one of them confronts Sammy and tells him that if he ever hurts Gwen like that again he'll regret ever meeting her to begin with. Nate and Ruby: Not a single person. But, with the whole soulmate hing, who could? I mean, it's kind of set in stone that those two are going to be together. 9. Do they see their relationship as long-term/leading to marriage? Gwen and Sammy: Definitely. They may have had the extremely rough patch, but, in the end, they love each other and they know they want to get married one day. Nate and Ruby: Do I even need to answer this question? 10. If they could plan the "perfect outing" together, where would they go? Gwen and Sammy: Um..Gwen really likes to travel, so they'd probably go out of the country. Not really an "outing", but Gwen's hard to pleaseXD She'd be happy with a trip to the beach. She's never been to the beach before. She also really loves hiking. Sammy is basically happy as long as he's with Gwen. Gwen and Sammy would probably agree on either a trip to the beach or a hiking trip. Nate and Ruby: Well, for one, Ruby would just be happy if they could get through one date without Nate having to run out and go to work for something. The perfect outing for them would probably be walking along the beach by the Thames in London barefoot and having a picnic. Then riding the Eye of London. Then they'd go back to Ruby's flat and she would coerce Nate into watching a Disney movie with her and singing all the songs with her. Nate would never admit it, but the movies were always his favorite part. Mainly because he loved watching her get all excited and he loved how every time she watched the movie it was like she'd never see it before. That was fun!:D Well, except for the question about what they'd do without each other.   So, who likes writing relationships? What kinds of relationships do you like writing?

January Closure

Exciting things happened in my life last month. January is usually the month known for "new beginnings." This year January was the month of new stuff in general for me.

I started my first session of online college classes this month! I'm almost done with week two. They're paralegal classes and I'm actually enjoying myself quite a bit! Funny story, though: At the beginning of week one I made my reading schedule for that week. I divided all the reading up evenly between Monday-Friday and planned to take my test and do the other couple of assignments on Saturday. I told my mom about my plan and she helpfully reminded me that we were going to laser tag with our youth group that Saturday. Each week starts on Monday and that weeks assignments are due on the following Sunday by midnight. We didn't have church Sunday night, so I decided to do it then in between Sunday morning service and praise team practice. I worked from 2:00-3:50 pm and then from 6:00-11:00 pm. I barely got it sent in on time. Mom said if I could do that much that fast I could do anything this course threw at meXD

I STARTED POSTING ON WATTPAD! You can find me by searching my username, AWriterWrites or by searching my first story, Emphasize on Real! I'll be posting, at the very least, monthly, but I'm trying to post weekly with a week off every now and then.

Mom and I redecorated my room!! We've still got the finishing touches to add, so no pictures yet, but they're coming soon!

Mom and I are starting a business! We're going to be representatives for Premiere Jewelry. We signed up and ordered all of our stuff! We had our training show and did pretty good! We already have a couple show booked for this month. Exciting stuff here, people!

We got me signed up for the homeschool graduation that I want to participate in and ordered all my invitations, cap and gown, and a few other things:) I designed my cap and just have to get the stuff to decorate it!:D It's finally setting in that I'm graduating in 5 months!

I don't think I forgot anything. January was one exciting month for me! I can't wait to see what the rest of the year will bring!

17 Things I Don't Think You Know About Me

Let me start by saying Cait over at Paper Fury gets full credit for the idea for this post. She posted a 21 things you probably don't know about me post and asked for her readers to share things. I figured it would be easier to make a blog post than to post 17 things in the commentsXD

I chose 17 because I'm 17. If you know these things about me it's probably because you're either a creepy stalker or you know me (whether in real life or we're online friends);P

So, without further ado:

17 Things I Don't Think You Know About Me

1. I like hats. I own 3 fedoras, like 10 beanies, 5 saggy beanies, 2 baseball cap style hats, and four nicer hats with bills like a baseball cap. Fedoras are my favorite. 

2. I sing. And play piano. And guitar. I'm basically just a musical person. I play piano and sing (occasionally) in our church praise team and I sing in the church choir. I dabble in guitar. I know like 10 chords, 3 strumming patterns, and 1 picking patternXD 

3. I've owned a lot of animals in my life time. At least 5 fish, 10 different dogs, and at one point I had 6 hamsters. I have to tell that storyXD Me and my brother did a very amazing job at convincing my parents to let us each get a hamster. Seriously, we had it worked out where they only had to pay for the hamster itself, not the food or wood chips or toys or treats or environment or anything! We had graphs and I even made it a school project with charts and research and I was rather proud of myself.So we convinced them. My brother and I bought all the stuff and then we went to the local pet store to get our hamsters. Just a little background, this isn't a nice store. It looks like  dump from the outside and stinks horribly on the inside and it's all disorganized and everything, but the people are really nice and helpful so we like giving them our business. I told the lady I wanted a female, but made sure to stress that I DID NOT want a pregnant one. What happens? A couple weeks after we get it we figure out that it's pregnant. It had 5 babies. We sold 4 babies and the mother and I kept a baby. I also (right after the hamster died) got a pink beta fish and named it Calypso after the girl in Pirates of the Caribbean. We currently own a female mini poodle named Mitzie and a male Yorkie named Chesterfield, but we call him Chester. We love them:) Mitzie get her name because her she's got black fur, but her paws are white. My brother suggested Mittens, but I refused because Mittens sounded too much like a cats name to 3rd grader meXD So, dad came up with a name that was a compromise: Mitzie. I wanted to name Chester Jesse insteadXD We were deliberating on names the night before we went to get him and I suggested Jesse, but everyone else didn't like it. Dad came up with Chesterfield. I guess he's the dog namer of the familyXD I still say Chester looks like a Jesse.

4. I'm a bit of a fashionista. Now, don't take that as I like to keep up with the latest trends. Some trends I like, but some I hate. I'm big into leather and canvas jackets and combat boots. And plaid button downs. I basically dress like I'm gonna see someone important even if we're just running to walmartXD

5. I love thrift store shopping/antique store shopping/yard saleing. There's a town about an hour away with a ton of antique/thrift stores and we go there all the time! Even if I don't get anything it's fun to just go and look.

6. One of my ultimate (realistic) career goals is to work for the FBI in the White Collar division. Seriously, my dream is the chase some big name conman or heister or something and finally put them behind bars!

7. One of my ultimate (unrealistic) career goals is to be an actress. I know, I know, every girl dream of being an actress. I've held on to that dream for like 10 yearsXD

8. I don't want to go off to college. Call me crazy, but the idea doesn't really appeal to me.

9. I want to learn how to play the cello. I LOVE the cello and want to learn so bad! But I have no one to teach me.

10. I wrote a small book (like 7 pages) before I even knew how to write. I dictated it to my mom and she type it up. I even drew my own illustrationsXD I think I was in preschool or something. So I barely knew how to read.

11. I think I was born in the wrong decade. I should have been born in the 50s. That or medieval times. But only if I lived in the castle (whether as a cook, maid, or princessXD).

12. I have this weird fascination with England. Seriously, I've been obsessed since I was like in 2nd grade. I think it started after I watched Harry Potter for the first time when I heard them talk. I didn't do what most little kids would do and said they talked funny. Instead I tried mimicking it because I though it was cool and over the years I've perfected it.

13. I've never been to the beach. And I have no problems with that. Honestly, I don't think I would even get in the water. I don't get in the lake when we go, so I doubt I would get in the ocean.

14. I am not a sporty person. At all. I can't even hardly throw a freaking ball! Seriously! Definitely not a football. And when I try running I usually always hurt my ankle unless I
m wearing a certain type of shoes. I avoid sports at all costs.

15. When I was little (like around 7 all the way up to now) I was more interested in doing well in school and going to an ivy league college than being rich and famous. Yes, I did say I've wanted to be an actress for a long time, but I always said that if I seriously wanted to do that I would go to college first and get a degree to fall back on in case acting didn't work out. I still think that way.

16. I don't like surprises. At all. Like, not even surprise parties or when dad goes to the store and come back and surprises us with candy or something. I just don't like it.

17. I'm actually a pretty shy person. I don't really start conversations unless I have a question to ask or I know the person really well. That's only in person, though. Online I'm not really shy at all. And when I'm with my mom I'm not really that shy, When I'm with my mom we're kind of the life of the partyXD

Well, hopefully that was at least a little interestingXD If not, oh wellXD It was hard coming up with 17 facts about me, though. I always feel like I'm boring when I talk about myself.

I'd love to hear somethings about you guys!

Things To Come In 2015

I put up six posts in December. SIX POSTS!!!!! For most of 2014 I did good to blog once every month. True, two of the posts were agonizingly short with my burst of excitement at finishing my book, then my Christmas post was maybe 20 words and several pictures, but still. SIX TIMES!!!! I know I have a problem blogging regularly. But, the first step to solving a problem is admitting you have one. So, again,

I try to make excuses and tell myself (and other people) that I'm too busy and don't have time to put a post up every week. 

I published 33 posts last year. That averages to roughly 2 posts a month. It actually comes out to 2.75, so I guess it would be properly rounded to 3 posts a month. but they were extremely sporadic. Here's my 2014 monthly post count:

January: 4 posts

February: 2 posts

March: 1 posts

April: 2 posts

May: 2 posts

June: 1 posts

July: 1 post

August: 3 posts

September: 4 posts

October: 5 posts

November: 2 posts

December: 6 posts

In the Summer, when I have the most time to blog, I blogged the least. The two months before and after NaNoWriMo I blogged the most, but I hardly blogged during NaNo (because I'm busy trying to write 50,000 words in a monthXD). I was actually surprised to find I blogged at least once a month. This year I want to vow to post at least twice a month! But I need your help!

I have a couple things you can do me for:D Because I know you guys love me and want to help any way you can;P

1. Comment. This is a given. Every Blogger feeds off their comments. Even if it's a simple, "Loved the post, Jordan!" (is it just me or it is weird to type your own name?XD)

2. If it's getting towards the end of the month and I haven't gotten two posts up, say something! Kick me into gear (virtually;P)! 

3.  Umm...yeah, I have nothing to put here.

I will do this! Two posts a month! That's not too hard! I can do that! And I am appalled at the lack of Supernatural pics I can find for various parts of this post. Am I doing something wrong, seasoned Bloggers?

My question for you: What do you want to see more of on the blog? What kind of posts do you like seeing? What posts do you want me to try out for the first time? Anything you think I need to cut from the blog (post subject-wise)?