Author: janetsm

In November 2025, I published Traveling Through History: A Collection of Historical Short Stories. In the fall of 2025, I published a devotional book: I Need The Light! 26 Weekly Devotionals to Help You Through Winter AND I Need The Light! Companion Journal and Diary. I write North Carolina local history and Southern American colonial historical fiction. I enjoy doing extensive research as well as the writing that research supports. My stories and novels-in-progress are about the common people. I'm the author of Harrisburg, Did You Know? Cabarrus History, Books 1 and 2 and a vintage postcard book titled The Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina.

Writing Plan of Action Update

My “Writing Plan of Action – Revised June 15, 2015” sort of fell through the cracks. In fact, I soon forgot all about it! In my own defense, we remodeled our kitchen last summer. If you’ve ever lived through a kitchen remodeling project, you will remember how all-consuming that is.

Refresher on June 2015 Plan

Something reminded me on Monday that I had a writing plan. I was shocked to read that my last revision to it was made more than 14 months ago. In a nutshell, here is that old plan: Schedule book signings/author events; blog every five days or so; look for writing contests to enter or magazine articles to write; edit my historical novel manuscript (The Spanish Coin) one day every week; and start in earnest to find a literary agent.

I have failed on all counts.

Progress made on novel manuscript

I recently got back to work on The Spanish Coin after a strange year with many distractions.

Sometimes I think I read too many “How To” books about writing and don’t spend enough time writing. For instance, I read a recommendation that my characters’ thoughts should be italicized. After going back through the first 15 chapters doing that, I read a more convincing recommendation that thoughts should be blended into a novel through characters’ voices. The reasoning was that italics pull the reader out of the story. I went back through chapters 1 through 15 and converted the italicized thoughts into a more blended format. Then, I converted thoughts in chapters 16 through 20 from “she thought/he thought” to a blended format. I hope I got it right!

My Writing Plan of Action – Revised August 25, 2016

Hire a professional to evaluate my The Spanish Coin manuscript;
Edit manuscript in light of that evaluation;
Continue to blog every Friday;
Get back to work on a sequel to The Spanish Coin (tentatively titled The Banjo); and
Seek representation by a literary agent or self-publish.

Let’s hope I am more successful following my new plan than I was my old one!

Janet

The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians

Writing The Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina was educational for me and I hope it is for its readers. Today my blog post is a list of 10 things I learned about The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians as I did the research for that vintage postcard book.

Mt. trip Dec.11-14,2014 037 — My book on the shelf at Battery Park Book Exchange & Champagne Bar in Asheville, NC.

The legal name for the Cherokee people in North Carolina is The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians.
Because “Native American” can refer to anyone born in America, The North American Indian Women’s Association recommends using the term American Indians.
The Great Smoky Mountains lay in the middle of the Cherokee Indians’ territory in the mid-1600s when Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto arrived.
In the 1820s, a Cherokee by the name of Sequoyah invented the Cherokee syllabary, making the Cherokee one of the first American Indian tribes to have a written language.
Cherokee women have always had much power within the tribe, owning property, and administering justice.
Descendants of the Cherokee Indians who hid out in the mountains to avoid the 1838 forced march to Oklahoma known as the Trail of Tears lived on a land trust called the Qualla Boundary.
The land the US government gives to an American Indian tribe is a reservation. The Cherokee do not live on a reservation. The Qualla Boundary is 57,000 acres of land purchased by the Cherokee Indians in the 1800s and held in trust by the US government.
A papoose is a type of bag or apparatus for carrying a child. It is offensive to the Cherokee for others to call one of their infants a papoose.
The Cherokee Indians never lived in tipis. They have always lived in houses.
Cherokee Indians have played a ball game called ani-tsagi or anetso for hundreds of years.

Want to know more? Look for my vintage postcard book, The Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina in your local bookstore or online. It was published by Arcadia Publishing in 2014.

Janet's Bk Trip to Mts. 12.14 003

You can help me get the word out about Janet’s Writing Blog by telling your friends about it and by sharing it on Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. According to WordPress, my blog has been seen by people in 10 countries!

Until my next blog post, I hope you have a good book to read. If you are a writer, I hope you have productive and rewarding writing time.

Janet

Online sites for writers

Today’s post is about a half dozen websites for writers that I discovered this week. I do not endorse any of the websites. I’m merely sharing the sites with those of you who are writers and, in some cases, commenting on my first impressions of the sites.

Online-Utility.org

Online-Utility.org is a free online tool. It measures readability and calculates the grade level at which one could read your text with ease. It also instantaneously lists every sentence in your text that “it” suggests you “rewrite to improve readability.” I was stunned at the number of sentences this tool listed that needed my attention in the first 100 pages of my novel manuscript; however, the website description admits that “In general, these tests penalize writers for polysyllabic words and long, complex sentences.” After quickly perusing the Online-Utility.org list of my sentences that needed attention, I concluded that the great majority of my words had more than one syllable and I am guilty of writing a complex sentence on occasion. I am attempting to write fiction for adults. I concluded that this free online tool better serves someone who is writing for young children or new readers of the English language.

thewritingpractice.com

I also happened upon thewritingpractice. The site has articles about the craft of writing. I will definitely visit that website again.

Writers’ Village University

Another website is that of Writer’s Village University. This site offers college-level classes for its members. I have found few reviews of this site on objective websites but many posts from people asking if anyone has used it. The Writer’s Village University website lists numerous glowing remarks from students, but I find it suspect that there is not one single mediocre or negative review. The writing groups aspect of the website might be its best member benefit. The sites lacks sufficient course descriptions for me to join with confidence. I welcome feedback from any current or former members of the website.

inkandquills.com and The Spanish Coin

As energy allows, I continue to edit my historical novel manuscript I’m calling The Spanish Coin. I was up to chapter 16 of 20 putting my characters’ thoughts in italics when a couple of days ago I read Kaitlin Hillerich’s article titled “How to Write Your Character’s Thoughts” on inkandquills.com. Ms. Hillerich says putting thoughts in italics or using speech tags creates “a barrier between the character and the reader.” She sees thoughts in italics as an interruption by the writer. Ms. Hillerich recommends that the writer lets the character convey his or his thoughts with their own voice. In other words, you can stay in third person point of view but write so it seems like the character is the narrator. This approach makes sense to me, so I will start once more on the first page of my novel’s manuscript, remove the thoughts in italics, and try to accomplish what Ms. Hillerich recommends. I hope my next step after that will be getting a professional to critique my 95,852-word manuscript. If I keep reading “how to write” articles and blogs, I’ll never get The Spanish Coin published. I think I sub-consciously procrastinate because I dread getting umpteen rejection letters from literary agents.

jamigold.com

One website leads to another when I get online. I often start out on Pinterest.com and find many websites about writing. I do not read paranormal fiction, but I recently discovered the jamigold.com website about paranormal writing. I was pleasantly surprised to find a plethora of helpful blog posts there for any writer. Some posts are about self-publishing. There is a new blog series about planning your newsletter. There are posts about how to keep readers and types of extra content you might want to consider including on your website.

Janice Hardy’s Fiction University

The Jami Gold website led me to blog.janicehardy.com — Janice Hardy’s Fiction University. The site contains more than 1,000 articles about writing. Whew! I don’t know where to begin.

No wonder I haven’t finished editing my novel. I spend too much time reading about writing and not enough time writing. And did I mention I’m a procrastinator?

Feel free to tweet about my blog, pin my posts on one of your Pinterest boards, and tell your friends to visit my blog and my website, janetmorrisonbooks.com. Until my next post, I wish you a good book to read and productive writing time for those of you who are writers.

What I read in July

As has become my custom, my first blog in a new month is about the books I read in the previous month. After not being able to read for a couple of months due to illness, I have relished every minute I have been able to read since my eye recovered.

Storm Damage

July was a busy month. We are still cleaning up the storm damage the trees in our yard experienced due to high winds on several occasions. Dead limbs are still falling out of trees when there is a breeze and sometimes bringing down healthy limbs with them. If you’ve never lived out in the country with dozens of large old trees, you can’t fully appreciate what I’m talking about. It has been exhausting. I often fall asleep when I sit down to read or to catch up on work on the computer.

July Books

All that said, I only completed two books in July — Don’t Go, by Lisa Scottoline and The Truth According to Us, by Annie Barrows. I am reading several other books and will share my thoughts about them later. As I have stated before, I enjoy reading more than one book at a time.

Don’t Go

Lisa Scottoline is becoming one of my favorite fiction writers. Her books usually tug at your heartstrings and lead you down multiple roads as a mystery is solved. Don’t Go did not disappoint. A murder takes place (or was it an accident?) and for the next 300+ pages you are trying to figure out “whodunnit.” Just when you think you have the mystery solved, Ms. Scottoline takes you down a different path.

The Truth According to Us

In The Truth According to Us, Annie Barrows gives us a glimpse of life in a small town in Appalachia during the Great Depression era. She includes the conflict that can arise when there is an effort to unionize the employees of a textile mill in The South. The overriding story line, though, is relationships and information that family members can hide from other family members. The Truth According to Us is about family secrets. The truth as we know it might not be the truth at all.

Most Wanted

As July drew to a close, I finally reached the top of the public library’s waitlist for Most Wanted, by Lisa Scottoline. I read the first half of the novel in early May before I got shingles, and I looked forward to reading the rest of the book to see how Ms. Scottoline twisted and turned the plot to ultimately solve the mystery presented in the book. I finished reading Most Wanted earlier this week, but it goes on my August list for next month’s first blog.

Until I blog again, I wish you an enjoyable book to read and productive writing if that is your calling. If you wish to share this blog on social media, please feel free to do so.

Janet

Still catching up on e-mail

After being close to home except for medial appointments and church attendance for most of the spring and summer, I had a weekend in the mountains of North Carolina and several days with family in the Atlanta area earlier this week. It was refreshing to see some different scenery. The Blue Ridge and Smoky Mountains always lift my spirits. It felt good to see my brother’s family for the first time since December.

It is now time for me to start tackling the mountain of e-mails (more than 400) that have accumulated since I got shingles in early May. A few of them are personal, but most are from writing, quilting, or author sites or are notifications about the various blogs I follow.

I would be remiss if I did not comment on the history made last night at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. I was beginning to wonder if I would live to see a woman nominated for US President by one of the two major political parties. Hillary Clinton accepted her party’s nomination last night. It was quite a moment for this old political science major! Our nation is 240 years old. It’s about time!

Until next Friday, happy reading!

Janet

10 Things I Learned about the Blue Ridge Mountains

In the course of researching and writing my vintage postcard book, The Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, the following are 10 key things I learned:

1. Construction of the Blue Ridge Parkway began in 1935.

2. The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) camps did much of the landscaping and construction cleanup along the Blue Ridge Parkway.

3. The Blue Ridge Mountains in North Carolina are divided into a number of sub-ranges including the Black Mountains, the Great Balsams, and the Plott Balsams.

4. The area in the southwestern corner of North Carolina is known as the Snowbird Mountains.

5. The Nantahala National Forest covers 500,000 acres.

6. The Joyce Kilmer-Slickrock Wilderness contains 13,000 acres in the Snowbirds area.

7. More than 100 species of trees are found in the old-growth forest in Joyce Kilmer-Slickrock Wilderness.

8. Construction of the Blue Ridge Parkway was completed in 1967 except for the “missing link” on Grandfather Mountain.

9. The Linn Cove Viaduct — a quarter-mile long engineering marvel that hugs Grandfather Mountain — completed the Blue Ridge Parkway in 1987.

10. Linville Gorge Wilderness covers nearly 12,000 acres in Burke County, North Carolina.

Want to learn more? Look for my vintage postcard book, The Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. It can be purchased from Amazon.com or perhaps at your local bookstore.

Divisiveness in the USA

I had planned to blog today about 10 things I learned while researching my vintage postcard book, The Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, but it seemed petty for me to write about my book on this day after several instances of senseless murder in our country this week.

On the heels of white police officers killing black men in Louisiana and Minnesota, last night during a peaceful protest in Dallas, Texas, one or more snipers took that opportunity to murder five police officers and injure seven other officers.

The man in Louisiana was killed by the police while he was pinned down on the ground. The man in Minnesota was killed as he reached for his wallet after being ordered by the police officer to produce his identification. In each case, the victim was black and the police officers were white. These are two in a growing number of such incidents that have led many people to believe there is a pattern of racial profiling taking place within our law enforcement agencies.

In America, we pride ourselves as being “a melting pot,” but various issues are dividing us. Race. Ethnicity. Politics. Religion. Gender. Interpretation of the 2^nd Amendment of the US Constitution. Class. The Haves and the Have-Nots. Equal pay and equal opportunities for men and women in the work place. The list could go on.

It all boils down to fear.

Too many of our citizens fear anyone who doesn’t look like they do. Too many of our citizens fear people who choose not to worship like they do. Too many of our citizens fear people who are more liberal or more conservative in their political views than they are. Too many of our citizens fear people whose sexual orientation does not fit the norm. Too many of our citizens believe that those of us who believe the 2^nd Amendment does not guarantee one’s right to own assault weapons want to take away their constitutional right “to bear arms.” When did we become a fearful people?

Too many of our citizens hate people who identify with a different political party. Part of the beauty of our system of political parties is that we have been able to differ in our views on issues but we agreed to agreeably disagree. That’s the way it was until just a few years ago. We now have political campaigns from the local to the national level in which it is acceptable to attack our opponents and their families in ways that degrade us all.

Somewhere along the way we lost our tolerance. Somewhere along the way it became acceptable to hate the people with whom we have a difference of opinion. Somewhere along the way human life lost its value. Somewhere along the way it became acceptable to shoot and kill anyone with whom one differs.

It is time – no, it is past time – for reconciliation in our country. It is time for us to celebrate our differences and respect one another. It is time for us to recognize that we have more in common than we don’t have in common. It is time for healing. It is time for honest dialogue. It is time for us to get to know one another so we can stop being afraid of each other.

Enough is enough! That’s not who we are! We are better than that!

A good “how to” book for writers by K.M. Weiland

Due to having shingles in my right eye, I read very little in May and the first half of June; therefore, I decided to wait until July to blog about what I read in May and June. It’s a short list. In fact, I only read one complete book during that time. I will write about it today and save the three novels I’m reading until my “What I read in July” blog in August.

The first week in May I read Outlining Your Novel: Map Your Way to Success, by K.M. Weiland. The book surprised me in that it went into all aspects of writing a novel all woven together as they pertain to the outline.

In the book’s introduction, Ms. Weiland states, “Craft is all about organization, and that’s where the outline — the map — becomes so important.” She points out that outlines can help a writer determine point of view. She says that each writer must discern what methods of outlining or organization work best for him or her. An outline can take various forms from the formal outline we were taught in school, to notes, to a bunch of Post-It Notes. I found this reassuring, since the very word “outline” has struck fear in my heart since the third grade.

Ms. Weiland’s book goes well beyond the outline. She devotes one chapter to “Crafting Your Premise.” She defines premise as “a single sentence that conveys the plot and the theme.” Once the premise is established, you can start putting ideas and scenes on paper. As the outline takes shape, she says a writer should keep in mind things such as “motive, desire, goal, conflict, and theme.”

She addresses character backstory in Chapter Six. She gives a wonderful example. If you give a character a scar, you must know how he got the scar and why. Although most backstory will not make it onto the pages of your novel, you — the author — must know the backstory because it influences the character’s personality and how she or he reacts to conflict. She writes in some detail how an author should write backstory, keeping in mind that the reader is not very interested in what happened before the book but is generally much more interested in what’s going to happen next. A good writer knows how to strike a balance.

Ms. Weiland says that about a fourth of the way into the story, there must be an inciting event that changes the protagonist forever. She writes, “This event shapes your character’s existence throughout your book.” This statement made me immediately look at my manuscript for The Spanish Coin. The inciting event in my manuscript occurs about 15% into the story, so that might be something I will need to adjust.

Chapter Seven of Ms. Weiland’s book is devoted to the recommendation that you interview each character. By asking your characters probing questions you will discover secrets they hold, their beliefs, and what they are passionate about. Having this information will help you write multidimensional characters. Sample questions are included. I found the sample questions helpful. Many of them, such as, “Does he like his name?” I wouldn’t have thought to ask.

Ms. Weiland also goes into detail about the importance of setting and how to make the setting come alive for the reader. In fact, she writes, “If you can bring the setting to life as a character in its own right, you’ll be that much closer to creating a story your readers will never forget.”

I don’t want to steal Ms. Weiland’s thunder or run the risk of quoting too much of the book here. Suffice it to say that I highly recommend Outlining Your Novel: Map Your Way to Success. I have only hit some of the highlights of this nuts and bolts book about how to write a novel.

Since this blog post turned into a book review of sorts, I will state that I was not asked to review the book and I am in no way being compensated for giving it a positive review. I wish I had read it before I started writing the manuscript for my hope-to-be-published historical novel, The Spanish Coin!

How’s that 2016 reading challenge working for you?

On March 11 I blogged about the 2016 Reading Challenge offered by the Mint Hill Branch of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Public Library. I had already checked off three of the 19 categories and was optimistic about meeting the challenge of reading books from at least 12 categories this calendar year. Enter bronchitis, vertigo, shingles in my right eye, and now post-herpetic neuralgia from my eyelid to the top of my head. 2016 will be half over in a few days, and I have only checked off five categories.

To refresh your memory, here are the 19 categories from the Mint Hill Library:

A book that became a movie;
A book published in 2015;
A book with a number in the title;
A nonfiction book;
A Pulitzer prize winning book;
A book more than a hundred years old;
A book that might scare you;
A book set somewhere you’ve always wanted to visit;
A book set in the future;
A book written by an author with your same initials;
A banned book;
A book from your childhood;
A book with a color in the title;
A book based on a true story;
A popular author’s first book;
A book set in a different country;
A funny book;
A mystery or thriller; and
A book with a one-word title.

I hope your reading thus far this year has far exceeded mine. With my vision returning to normal, it’s time for me to play catch-up!

Please feel free to leave a comment about the books you’ve been reading and if you find a reading challenge helpful or interesting.

Thank you for your patience while I have been ill and unable to blog on a regular basis. Look for my blog on Fridays. That’s my plan for a while.

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