Author Archives: MRJones

Ready, Set, Publish

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I am going on a new adventure. The formatting is done. Soon, I will publish my novel, Slant Well, on Smashwords. I am as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a roomful of rocking chairs. The adrenaline is exquisite. I haven’t felt this since the days of running bed races to get patients to the ICU to save their lives.

Slant Well is the result of my taking some Geology classes, having a wicked streak, and seeing the sign pointing out Big Hill Federal Oil Reserve while I traveled the roads on my Hospice rounds. The story started in my mind and grew to the point I had to write it or have my head explode. A long time and a lot of work later it is going to press, e press as it it now.

This is the blurb for the back of the book… P.I. and occasional hit man, Allyn Jones takes a job in Texas oil country. There, he faces the greatest challenge of his life…a woman. He must survive the deadly forces she commands to form a bond with her. Together, they unleash ancient magic against the murderous would-be oil thieves who sent him to kill her. Shapes shift, an oil well explodes, and a dragon is unleashed.

My friends who put up with me writing this Texas Tall Tale are cheering me on. My fellow authors are also supportive of this endeavor. Two of them are hands on. Ruth de Jauregui is coaching me on the publication process. Rose M. Brate read and reviewed. Here is the return email she sent:

SlantWell Review

First, let me say thank you so much MR for allowing me the pleasure of reading, “Slant Well”.  It was intriguing, spellbinding, well-written, and impossible to put down.  It has been a very long time since I’ve found a book that’s held my interest like this book did.  I loved it and I look forward to a “Slant Well 2”!  Winkie face….

From the first page, you are riveted.  You’re drawn into a “magical” world of  murder, mystery, and a very special touch of “magical” love.   MR brings each character to life in such a way that their various personalities will enchant you, instantly.  A few of the characters you’re going to love from the moment you open the book but there are a few, you’re going to love to hate as each character plays their role perfectly throughout the story.

Who knew oil rigging could be so troublesome?  Who knew one little woman could cause so much trouble and turn a hardcore PI so soft, and  hard, almost simultaneously?  This book will captivate you with Texas oilmen, PI’s, Russian mobsters, eagles, hawks, dragons, magic and love.  I can’t recommend this book enough.  My review couldn’t possibly do it justice.  You have to read it to believe that all the above-mentioned things work so exceptionally well together.

Look for this book online soon, read it, and you can thank me later!

Rose M. Brate

Another shout out to amazing cover artist, Dawne Dominique of DusktillDawn Productions for this cover that covers the story so well.

SlantWell_200x300_dpi72

 

Indignant Indian

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Some of my ancestors were here before the Europeans arrived. I’m one of those Americans who say, “I’m part Indian.” If I’m being horribly politically correct, I’m part Native American. Three tribes that I know of. As such, I found it particularly offensive when, this morning, I opened the newspaper. Yes, I still get a print copy. On the page with the puzzles I found the Word Sleuth puzzle with a list of Native American Treaties to be found in the scrambled letters. This is offensive to me because none of the treaties were of the Native Peoples making. All were penned by White Men. All were broken by White Men.

My Cherokee Choctaw great-grandmother hated Oklahoma and taught her children to hate it also. Why? Because her people were forced from the lands they peacefully inhabited for thousands of years into the wasteland that whites didn’t want, Oklahoma. The treaty said the Natives could live there in peace.Then, when white men decided they wanted the wasteland, they broke the treaty and forced the Natives onto reservations and starved them. In a twist of irony, she married a white man to escape that hell. Another woman made a similar choice more than a hundred years before. She married a Frenchman and left her people in Illinois to move to Louisiana. I know much less about her.

Broken treaties are the legacy of my European ancestors. Here is the list that was presented for my amusement this morning: Albany, Arakira, Chicago, Cusseta, Detroit, Fort Adams, Fort Clark, Fort Pitt, Hopewell, Lapwai, Mandan, New York, Saginaw, St. Mary’s, and Tellico. This is a short list of the broken treaties. There are many more. My kinfolk are still treated like outsiders in this land. They never claimed ownership, only stewardship during their time on the land. I am indignant that their lands were taken. I am indignant that they were slaughtered because they were in the way of the invading horde of white skinned devils. I am indignant that the treaties were broken. I am indignant that that list of treaties was used for amusement.

I am Walks Alone. My skin is white because she made a choice to leave the horrors of broken treaties and starvation. I am Walks Alone and I remember the women who made that choice.

Juneteenth

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June 19,1865, Galveston, Texas. News of the Emancipation Proclamation was delivered by General Gordon Granger. “All slaves are free,” he declared more than two years after the law was passed. From there the news spread as fast (or as slow) as humans and horses could carry it. One hundred fifty-one years have passed since that day. As a small child, I remember my father telling me about Juneteenth, the day black people celebrated their freedom. This was before the civil rights movement, before it was safe for people of color to throw big celebrations. They celebrated anyway and the celebrations grew to be known nationwide. Now we all celebrate the ending of the lawful holding of a human as property. Let us continue to grow in tolerance and love for all humans. Happy Juneteenth!!!!

The Pink Mylar Balloon

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On Valentine’s Day, I went to one of the lovely parks in my city with friends. I watched the children play on the unseasonably warm windy day, keeping a sharp eye on the two children with us. As the afternoon progressed, I spotted a pink heart-shaped Mylar balloon as it got away from the child playing with it. It rose in the sky, a pale pink heart against the white clouds and blue sky, triggering something within me: the need to write about it. At that time, I could not find the words but the thought stayed in the background of my mind. A challenge to write a story sixteen words long also stayed with me.

Last night, long past the deadline for the story, it came to me as I lay trying to shut down the day’s thoughts and go to sleep. I got up and wrote it down, because I knew it would be gone in the morning. Satisfied that I took care of two things in one short story, I went back to bed and slept, happy with the knowledge that I could again write a story.

Here it is, inspired by that sight:

The Pink Mylar Balloon

The pale pink heart-shaped balloon escaped my hand. It floated away, disappearing like my love.

pastel-pink-heart-foil-balloon-2628-p

Disaster and Recovery

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The world is still turning and spring is here again. Last year I found myself swept into a maelstrom that sucked me down and tried to drown my soul. It started at the end of May with the death of my sister-in-law, Cheryl, and culminated with the death of my brother, Morris, in early October.

With her sudden passing, I stepped up as his sister and his nurse and helped him with the horrors of health care for a Vietnam Veteran afflicted with a particularly virulent form of Parkinson’s Disease that resulted from exposure to dioxins (Agent Orange) while he was in Vietnam. I planned to do articles on the procedure that would stop the tremors. He had the surgery to implant electrodes to counter the effects of Parkinson’s. I took photos and posted them on Facebook for family and friends to see.

The irony of life is overwhelming. The mere placement of the electrodes stilled most of the tremors without the unit being turned on. Then, he grew weaker by the day, as though the gods were displeased at the effort to repair him. Another trip to the hospital and the rehab culminated in the call that I wish had never come. In the ultimate disaster, he had a brain stem bleed and was on an anticoagulant that has no antidote. He died and I collapsed from exhaustion and grief.

Six months have passed and I am finally able to write a coherent sentence again. The world is beautiful and life continues. I will defy the witch in the mirror. I will go on.

Morris and Cheryl now rest together for all time.

 

 

 

 

 

the Death and Resurrection of Toy Boy Roy

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One morning I walked into the living room and was treated to a horrifying sight. A headless body in my path brought me to a full stop. Twisted as if still in those final moments before his head tore free, the body lay in a pool of crumbled excelsior. I recognized Toy Boy Roy, the former Christmas elf, his suit of sturdy brown cloth, crumpled, with stuffing spilling from the open neck. I looked around. His head, nowhere in sight.
“You fiend!” I said to the one I knew committed the crime.

Morgan bright eyes in window
Morgan le Fey stared at me as if to say, “Give me my breakfast and you won’t suffer the same fate.”
“What did you do with his head?”
The tiny tiger looked away. She wasn’t going to make this easy.
I knew how she played with her victims. The elf’s head could be anywhere. I started looking. Nothing. I moved the body to the morgue.

Roy body
That’s when I saw Pink Monkey hanging from the sun catcher. “I saw it happen!” she shrieked in my mind. “Morgan tore his head off and used it as a ball. She chased it all over the house. It was horrible!”
“Do you know where Roy’s head is? Did you see where she put his head?”
“No. I passed out. The horror of it!” Pink wasn’t going to be of much use in this investigation. I left her hanging out with the Cardinal.

Pink monkey on cardinal
I asked the gang of miscreants waiting in the kitchen, “Did you see what happened?” They scratched their heads.
“Something happened? Breakfast isn’t served, so nothing’s happened,” grouched Biggie G. The fluffy gray thug had a point.

Biggie G
Breakfast served, I returned to my search for the gristly remains. I swept up the excelsior and dusted high and low. This murder left my house cleaner than before. It left me wondering when I would find the elf’s head. Had Morgan le Fey used her powers to transport it to another dimension as she had with other things? Only time would tell. I made another pass. Eureka! Under the dining table, Roy’s face smiled at me. I took it to the morgue.

Roy's head
Grubby with cat spit and dust, his jaunty cap needed to be glued back on where the tiger’s teeth tore it loose. Those impish eyes begged to have his face wiped clean. I washed his face and stuck his cap down. While the glue set, I assessed the damage to his body.
Other than needing more stuffing, it remained intact, a salute to the tough fabric of his suit. When he retired from his first gig and started playing with the cats, I made him a new suit, one that would withstand the fury of the felines. It did. It just lost the head. I stuffed the body with red plastic newspaper wrappers.
Next, I had to reattach the head. The powers that let Victor Frankenstein bring life to his creation sparkled through the steel needle as I stitched around the neck. Getting his head in place, I drew out the slack and secured the body to the head with several knots.
It worked. Roy could sit up on his own, once again ready to enter the ring with the cats.

Roy together again

Pink Monkey dropped to the table and hugged the resurrected elf.

Roy and Pink Monkey
Morgan never admitted to being the decapitator.

Morgan in window

Her brother, Merlin the Gray, denies any involvement in the episode.

Merlin in sink crop

The rest of them aren’t talking.

MRJones

Slant Well Cover Reflects Magical Realism

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This is what I’ve been dreaming of for as long as the characters have been demanding their story be told. The cover for Slant Well is here. Award winning cover artist, Dawne’ Dominique produced this story-in-a-picture cover. Working from my descriptions, she captured the essence of the tale, a mixture of harsh reality and magic. She tweaked the type and shattered drill stem spells the title. It’s a pleasure to work with her again.

SlantWell_150dpi_eBook

Edits, Magic, and Mayhem

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It seems an age of the Earth ago that I started writing Slant Well. It is the first novel I finished writing. I started several others, on my journey to become a writer and be published, but chalked them up to the learning experience and put them in the proverbial file drawer unfinished. Slant Well is a tribute to my persistence. I wrote until I got the story told, then cut out a large book’s worth of excess.

In order to get the story told, the characters in Slant Well took over my imagination and made their adventures happen. They taught me a lot. Now, the time draws near when they will go public with their story of murder, mayhem, magic, and vengeance. The first round edits are done. The manuscript is in the works to be typeset. One more round of proofreading and it will be formatted for the various e-book formats as well as for the print edition.

I went to the bayou in the book and took pictures of the beautiful and magical world there.

cypress in Taylor's bayou      Cypress across from Pine Tree Lodge     cypress knees in water.

How I Became a Romance Writer

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I have to confess something. I never intended to write a romance novel of any sort. I wanted to write contemporary fantasy. I wrote Ash on the Stairs as an exercise, just to see if I could write a romance. I chose erotic romance because, like angst ridden vampires, there is a market for it. If I succeeded, I could sell it. I needed to get my foot in the door as a published author. It worked. Now I market my story, my characters, and myself. I’m the short lady with frizzy red hair at the keyboard.

In preparation for writing, I read a few romances and one erotic romance. I did not read Fifty Shades of Grey until I finished the first draft of Ash on the Stairs. From the days of Georgette Heyer and Regency Romances to today the formula is pretty much the same. It is the backbone of romance novels. To over-simplify it, it is: Woman meets Man. They are attracted. There are problems. They work them out. They live happily ever after.

Take that backbone, add appendages and flesh in the form of characters to form the story. Tiers of characters, from the main characters to the one-scene one-line types, provided what I needed. They introduced themselves as I needed them. I started with the Woman because she tells the story.

The Woman in the formula is pretty to beautiful. Avoiding the short voluptuous helpless type seen in some books, I gave literary birth to Jesse Neil Ash, a young woman six feet three inches tall. She is a salute to all the tall beautiful women I know. Tall, skinny, and small breasted, she has a genius IQ, a nice backside, a Taser in her tote, and a mysterious back story.

Conflict showed up on page one and never got a full description. Jack Offiel turned into more conflict than I first imagined. Lucky me, he ran the full length of the story. I put every disgusting, leering, groping, greedy jerk I ever met into Jack. You know what they say about writers. Don’t piss them off, they’ll put you in a book and do evil things to you.

The Man in the formula has to be handsome, because honestly, look what happened to Quasimoto. So, Travis Daniel is handsome and wealthy, but certainly no suave lady’s man. His friends say he gets laid more often when he keeps his mouth shut.  Virtually devoid of social graces, he takes a chance and speaks to Jesse. Somewhere along the way, I became a romance writer and the story of Jesse meets Travis got told.

cover card

http://www.amazon.com/Ash-Stairs-MR-Jones-ebook/dp/B00SVE1MIQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1422997621&sr=8-1&keywords=ash+on+the+stairs&pebp=1422997635574&peasin=B00SVE1MIQ

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ash-Stairs-MR-Jones-ebook/dp/B00SVE1MIQ/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1431315464&sr=1-1&keywords=ash+on+the+stairs

Author Interview of MRJones

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This is from the site, Rock Stars Among Us Book Club

Hi, I’m Maggy Jones, I write as MRJones.

*How long have you been writing?

I’ve been telling stories for as long as I can remember. I’m dyslexic so writing was difficult until I got a computer and Word. That made all the difference in my ability to write. My first novel, Ash on the Stairs, an erotic thriller, came out February 1, 2015.

*What inspired you to write in the first place?

A wild imagination and a voracious reading habit. Yes, I can read. Writing comes out scrambled.

*How would you describe your style?

Imaginative and eclectic in every aspect. I’m an artist and an RN who had a low entertainment threshold as a child.

*What authors inspired you when you were younger?

J.R.R. Tolkien, Ray Bradbury, Kurt Vonnegut, Ursula K. le Guin, Mikhail Bulgakov.

*How would you describe the part of the world that you live in and does it inspire you?

Southern swamp, on the Texas/Louisiana border. It’s a heavily forested sub-tropical jungle with bayous, canals, rivers, and creeks. There are alligators, nutria rats, armadillos, snakes, cows, and horses. All this and oil fields, pipelines, refineries, and rice fields. Yes, this inspires me. My second book, Slant Well, is contemporary fantasy / magical realism set in this area and includes all the above mentioned items plus gods, magic, and mayhem.

*What are you working on at the moment?

Follow up adventures to both books as well as marketing and building my brand.

*What do you want from your writing? Fame, enjoyment or a regular income?

Fame isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. I already enjoy writing. A steady income would be wonderful.

*If you had a magic lamp that granted ONE wish for the future, what would it be?

A sound mind. My father had Alzheimer’s.

*If you could go back in time to meet one person who would it be and why?

Leonardo da Vinci. I’d have to have a crash course in Italian of that day, but, I have always admired his mind and would like to see it working.

*If you could be one of your characters, who would it be?

I would like to be Evelyn Eden, the female lead in Slant Well. She’s an ancient goddess living in this time with incredible power and human foibles.

Ash on the Stairs can be purchased from many booksellers including, eternalpress.biz and Amazon