Follow fest

Today, I am taking part in the Follow Fest. Hosted by Melissa Maygrove, it's a chance for us lovely bloggers, who love to write, to meet and get to know each other a little better. The idea is quite simple. Jump blog to blog via a linky link that you can see if you go here and read each author's post, then connect up to them by as many forms as you want; be it facebook, twitter, or whatever. 

So, let me tell you about me :) 

Name: Jossie Marie Solheim

Fiction or non-fiction?  Fiction, always fiction; my imagination couldn't cope with me putting it aside, in order to do a non-fiction novel, lol. 

What genres do you write?  I'm a bit of a mixed bag. My published novel, Insane Reno, is a thriller / mystery, but I am currently working on a prequel to that, as well as a fantasy/scifi, and another book that could be classed as Christian fiction. Really, when it comes to my writing, anything goes, and it's really just a case of what is inspiring me at the time. 

Are you published? Yes, my first book Insane Reno is published and available in both Kindle and paperback from Amazon. I was published by the lovely Dave at Raven Crest books. There are some amazing authors at Raven Crest, take a look here. I also have a story in the overcoming adversity anthology; an amazing book that was created to raise money for an amazing guy. Please check it out. 

Do you do anything in addition to writing?  I like playing around with photo art and because of this, I actually did my own cover for Insane Reno. I am also a mum and wife, which are, of course, full-time jobs, lol. 

Where can people connect with you?

 

Facebook personal page: By far the best way to connect with me and keep up to date with my day to day life. 
Facebook author page: specifically for information about my books. 

Goodreads: I'm an avid reader and use Goodreads to record all my latest reads; so, if you want to see what I am reading, then be sure to check it out.  

Amazon: Check out my books and reviews on Amazon and maybe buy a copy of Insane Reno if it tickles your fancy. 

Blogger: My lovely blog, There is always something going on here, at my blog, so why not follow me and get chatting here, too. 

Twitter: I have a twitter account but I must confess, I don't really use it. I know I should, but twitter just goes over my head. You can follow, if you like, and who knows, maybe one day I will get the hang of it. No promises, though. 

email: jossie.marie@gmail.com. Email is a great way to get hold of me quickly, as my messages go right to my phone and get checked regularly; so, feel free to contact me in this way, also. 

Is there anything else you’d like us to know?

 

Writing is my life. I started writing as a child, when I was dealing with abuse, and it became a form of escape from my pain. Through words, I could write myself all kinds of happy endings and it just grew and grew until it was all I wanted to do. 
 

There were a few speed bumps along the way; my biggest coming in the form of my Dyslexia, but I was determined and have worked really hard to overcome this, still am, in fact. I have a wonderful editor, who clears up any mistakes and through working with him, I am constantly improving in the areas that my Dyslexia still effects; primarily my Grammar, now. 

In the last Ten years, since meeting and marrying my husband, my life has slowly changed for the better. We started out living with my mother in a small flat, then moved to a beautiful farm conversion that we were renting, before being hit by a difficult period, where money was very tight; the result of which was that we ended up in a field with a very basic camp site in a tiny, leaky caravan for several years. Now; however, we own our own home, which we are slowly renovating and have more security than either of us have ever known, as well as our beautiful son, Kye, who turns seven this Friday. 

 We live in Cornwall, in a beautiful little village, with our three dogs, two cats, guinea pig, and two goldfish. My husband Dan is 32 years old and I am 29. Dan works for a local window fitting firm and you already know what I do. Our dream is to one day have our own small holding and for Dan to be able to retire from work early. Throughout our marriage, he has worked like crazy to keep us afloat, determined as he was to ensure that the  only work I should do was following my dreams to become a writer, at least till our beautiful son arrived, at which point I had the even more important task of caring for him. We are a small, but very happy little family of three; more, if you count our pets, and we've learned to take each day as it comes.

I recently became a Christian, but Dan sees himself as more eclectic, when it comes to faith; choosing to agree with and accept whatever he feels makes sense, regardless of the religion, and I respect him for that. 

The only other area of my life you should probably know about is my disability. I have very limited mobility after an epidural, when I had my son, left my back badly damaged. I now use a wheelchair, when in the kitchen, and a mobility scooter or wheelchair, when out of the home, as I can only walk very short distances, sometimes no further than our bathroom, and can stand for only a short while, also. If I try to stand or walk for too long, I get agonising lower back pain and my legs turn to jelly. It's not fun, but I have learned to cope with it and adapt. 

My son also has a less than pleasant health related condition, in the form of Asthma. He is my inspiration for staying strong, because, even at his most poorly, he always has a smile on his face. He is such a brave little boy and has a way of making everyone fall in love with him. When in hospital, he wraps the nurses round his little finger in an instant and loves to follow them around the ward, helping them with their work. He is truly amazing. 

So, this is me, my life, my family. I'd really love to get to know you, so please add me on facebook, follow my blog, email me, whatever you fancy, and lets get to know each other. 

Love and hugs, 
Joss xx

brain fug and ditzy-itus

Hi all,

Well it’s been a little while since I last posted, there is two reasons for that really, the first being that for quite a few days I was plugging away at Insane Reno like crazy, so much so that I am now at the 59,291 word count mark, so I’m close to my goal length of at least 60,000. And also close to the completion.

I’ve been working through the editing with my editor, the magnificent, sexy, and only slightly pushy Chuck-A-roo, as we go. So all that’s left is to edit 5 chapters, I think, but I’ll have to double check that.

It pays to remember that I have the memory of a goldfish.

Second reason is I went at it so hard with the writing / editing that my brain kinda went into mount down. For several days I was getting up to go get something then completely forgetting what I’d got up for, by the time I reached the kitchen.

On top of that, the impossible happened, I’m pretty well known for my ditzy moments, but in my brain fuggled period, my ditzy-ness reached a whole new high, some examples of this are as followed.

Plugged toaster in, couldn’t get toaster to work, yelled at toaster, sad face because I really wanted toast and the grill is evil. Seriously it is. Decided against toast because of aforementioned evilness of grill, had sandwich instead, sulkily cause really really wanted toast, complained to Dan on his return from work that toaster was broke, begged he fixed toaster, because I really love toast, and hate the grill from hell. So he goes to look at toaster although he didn’t seem very worried about impending risk of toast-less house, fiddles for a few minutes, and then I hear the dreaded words.

“Oh my god, this one is so going on facebook”

Turns out toaster wasn’t broke it just wasn’t plugged in. I’d plugged the blender in instead.

Now that’s just one example the second involves chuckie, the man of my dreams who irradicates all of my bad grammar, that sexy American that I cant get enough of, the one who has to put up with me for hours n hours each day, no wonder he’s lost all his hair, although in my defence he did lose it before I met him, but if he hadn’t I’m sure it would be grey by now.

So, here’s what happens.

We decided to go onto web cam to chat for a bit, so we log on and we start a call, only I can’t hear him, we both do that whole log in and out thing a few times but still I can’t hear him, but he can hear me fine.

So we decide in the end that I will just talk and he’ll type and do dodgy hand signals to get across what he is trying to say.

It was quite fun for me, for a while, because he was there mouth moving no sound coming out, normally he is saying, be serious Jossie, come on we need to get this done, can you be serious for even five seconds, that sort of thing.

So before he started typing it was quite nice to watch his mouth move and nothing come up, however, when I went to get music up on you tube, I realised I couldn’t actually hear that either.

Then it dawned on me, I didn’t have my earphones in, hence why everything was silent. Oppsie.

Now, I do ditzy well at the best of times but those are highs even on my list of duh moments.

Oh and I put my phone in the fridge, no idea why, luckily no damage done.

So that is why I haven’t really posted lately, if I had there’s no telling what you could have ended up with.

So what else is new, well I have started playing around to the sequel to Insane Reno, nicknamed Annie, although that name may change latter, or it may not depends.

Just been thinking over ideas, and started jotting down a rough of the first chapter last night.

Also I tried to quit smoking, and I really did try, for a couple of hours, but it was too much, however someone is clearly determined that I do, because the whole no smoking thing keeps popping up in some of my fav programs.

For instance in Eastie’s whitney has a fag, and a guy says to her, “you know I don’t want you smoking, you’ve got lovely skin, don’t ruin it.” That’s not exact but it’s the gist of it.

And then in my name is earl, one of my all time favs, (this was a repeat of one of the first episodes I believe) earl is trying to quit smoking with a grandma. Well, actually it was his friend’s mother, as he had to give her two years of her life back, so she could get back the two years with her son, that she lost, because Earl when he was bad, let the son go to prison for a crime that Earl had actually commited.

Anywho, I am less than impressed with God constantly plying me with quit smoking messages through my fav television programmes, because I can’t avoid them as I would like too, because I love those shows to much to miss.

All I can say is I get it, I need to quit, but I can’t right now, maybe later.

So there you have it, a brief or not so brief run through of what I have been up to since my last post, and I will try to post more regularly in future, love and hugs Joss. xxx

creeping steadily closer to the 60,000 mark

I have been working on Insane Reno, like crazy since last night, and have managed to edit several chapters as well as increase the word count by two and a half thousand. So as you can imagine I’m feeling pretty proud of myself right now lol.
There is still a ways to go yet, to hit my target of over 60,000 word count, as currently I am at 54,167, but it seems more and more attainable everyday.
And the fact that I am doing some serious restructuring of the story at the moment is really giving me a boost, it just makes a nice change from the earlier chapters were it was really just grammar that needed fixing.
Well I have lots of work to do, so I’m going to get back to writing but take care all and have an awesome day. Xxx

Playing around

I was playing around yesterday trying to come up with a cover for Insane Reno, it probably won't be the official cover, but I wanted to put up a the first chapter for people to read in my online writers cafe Jumpin' jitter's writing cafe on secondlife.

So in order to do that I had to come up with a cover for display purposes.

this is what I came up with ....

I was quite please with my handy work as I lost a lot of my pictures of bodmin moor when my old laptop died on me, and so didnt have many left which i had taken myself so picking were pretty slim and the best I had really wasn't great.

So here is what I started with....

Not great really but by playing around with colour, contrast and brightness, I think I achieved quite a nice effect, what do you think?