JJ Fleming's Blog

I’ve always been fascinated with remote places. When I’m procrastinating at my desk, I sometimes bring up Google Maps and zoom in on cold, distant islands, dense jungles, or vast deserts, trying to imagine the landscape and the lives of the few who live there. For a while, I wrote a social media post each day about a different remote island and its sometimes strange history. I love imagining places and researching them to understand them.

I also love a good adventure story, and for armchair adventurers like me, there are few adventure stories better than Ernest Shackleton and crew’s journey to Antarctica aboard the Endurance. Their ship got stuck in the ice in 1915, leading to hardship and heroism almost too crazy to believe. You can see a timeline of Shackleton’s journey here: https://www.swoop-antarctica.com/shackleton-endurance/

Frank Hurley/Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge/Getty Images

G. Neri went on his own adventure to Antarctica and thankfully did not get stuck in the ice. Neri is the Coretta Scott King Honor-winning author of many books for children, including Concrete Cowboy, which was made into a movie starring Idris Elba. He’s written biographies of Johnny Cash, Simon & Garfunkel, Harper Lee and Truman Capote, and the artist Cristo. He also happens to live in my neighborhood here in Florida!

Neri visited the cold continent as part of a National Science Foundation program for artists and writers. He got to hang out with scientists and researchers, not to mention penguins and seals. He got to climb down a tube to view the ocean under the ice. He took a helicopter over the endless white landscape and camped next to a glacier. He learned a lot while living out his childhood dream of being an explorer. And then he came back and wrote a book about it.

My Antarctica is written for kids but appeals to anyone with a childlike wonder of nature and adventure. It’s a gorgeous book, filled with postcard photos, two-page spreads, Neri’s words (sometimes in voice balloons), and illustrator Corban Wilkin’s drawings cleverly superimposed on the photos throughout. You’ll learn about the life and landscape of Antarctica and the research community at McMurdo Station, where Neri stayed. There’s a great section of lists of things Neri encountered during his stay, including Sports and Recreation, Toilets of Antarctica, and “Weird Things” he saw. The book is a lot of fun to read, and it’s a keeper—a beautiful coffee table book to flip through while you sip hot chocolate by the fire, proving once again that you can travel the world (and beyond) with a good book.

Check out his G. Neri’s website here: https://www.gregneri.com/. There are links to order his books. Happy exploring!

The post Book review: MY ANTARCTICA by G. Neri appeared first on JJ Fleming.

Here’s a map of Florida drawn by my friend David Hazouri for my book Fearsome Creatures of Florida.

I started this past summer working on three books. For a while, I worked on all three at once—an hour or two per day on each one. One of them is a book of “literary tours” of Florida that I’m editing for University Press of Florida. It’s not your typical tour guide. Instead of the usual descriptions of travel stops, the “tour” features original poetry, essays, stories, and comics that take place in particular locations around the state. It’s a unique approach that will offer new ways of looking at Florida through the creative minds of the state’s many talented writers. I’m drawing from works previously published in Saw Palm: Florida Literature and Art, the literary journal I founded at the University of South Florida twenty years ago. That book is expected to be published in 2027. Stay tuned.

I also worked on two novels, one for adults and one for middle graders. The adult book is a dark and mysterious novel about Elvis Presley’s time in Florida while he was filming Follow That Dream in 1961. I began this novel years ago, set it aside, rediscovered it in my files (as I talk about here), and have been working toward a final draft. Midway through the summer, though, I paused the adult novel to focus all my attention on a new middle grade novel.

Here’s Elvis at Weeki Wachee Springs. He went there to visit the mermaids.

The middle grade novel is one I actually started a long time ago. With WONDERS OF SHADOW KEY coming out next spring, I decided to return to it and get it finished.

Hmm, how much do I reveal? This is an uncomfortable decision for many writers. Some writers don’t like to talk about their work at all until it’s complete (and some don’t like to talk about it even then!). The reasons aren’t just superstitious. When you talk about your work, you inevitably reduce it to sound bites. That not only minimizes the work, it take some of the magic away. Writing for me is a process of discovery. I only have vague notions about what the characters will do and say until I actually write scenes on the page. That’s part of the joy of writing. So if you talk about a work-in-progress too much, the joy of discovery loses its effect. When someone asks me what one of my books is about, I want to tell them just to read the whole thing and see for themselves! Because what a book is “about” is really in the mind of the reader.

So what is this new middle grade novel about, you might ask, because you’re insistent like that.Well, despite what I just said, I can tell you a few things. That’s mainly because the book is very far along, and I’m hoping to finish a final draft this fall. The working title is ALEX KRAFT AND THE BUBBLEWORLD. The plot begins with a middle school guy named Alex Kraft taking a shortcut to school. He doesn’t know it yet, but the shortcut takes him through a portal into a “bubble world” that looks almost exactly like his school with one big difference: the school bully named Trevor Womple, who has been harassing Alex all year, is suddenly nice. In fact, he wants a hug.

Screenshot from the live feed of my scriptorium, where monks transcribe my words into a manuscript. Despite his name–Wilhelmus the Wild–he really has fantastic penmanship.

That freaks out Alex more than anything. And it’s only the beginning. Who made the bubble world? Why is it there? In turns out that there are secrets about his own world that he never imagined, a world that includes dreamlords, a secret laboratory of illusions on an isolated island, a Dream Council under a glacier in Labrador, and a villain trying to free himself from the Deep Earth Quarry, a prison for the “very worst.”

After many years of drafting, last week I finished what I think of as the semifinal draft. Now summer is over, and I’m back to teaching my wonderful creative writing students at the University of South Florida. I’ll take a couple of weeks off to let the draft settle, and then I’ll get back to it.

I’m so close! Wish me luck!

The post Summer is for Writing! appeared first on JJ Fleming.

I learned of The Curse on Spectacle Key just as I was finishing the manuscript of Wonders of Shadow Key. I heard about it the way I hear about a lot of good books—from my wife.

My wife is a media specialist (a.k.a. school librarian, a.k.a. Book Lady, a.k.a. Mrs. Library Teacher) at an elementary school near Tampa. Each year, she organizes the SSYRA Battle of the Books program at her school. Maybe you know of this or have participated in a Battle of the Books event. For Battle of the Books, a team of readers from each class participates in a quiz show, where students have to buzz in and identify books based on quotes from those books. To win, they’ll need to know the books on the SSYRA list almost as well as the authors do! It’s a fun celebration of reading, and the kids get very into it.

SSYRA stands for Sunshine State Young Readers Award, a Florida program for students in grades 3 through 8. Each year, a committee of school librarians selects a variety of excellent books for the program, and in 2023 one of those books was The Curse on Spectacle Key.

“I think this one is right up your alley,” my wife said as she prepared questions for Battle of the Books.

She was right, of course. I mean, The Curse on Spectacle Key takes place at a haunted lighthouse on a Florida key! There are ghosts! There are mysteries! Even a creepy doll!

Heck yeah, people.

Also, I had met Chantel Acevedo back in 2018. At the University of South Florida I founded a magazine called Saw Palm: Florida Literature and Art and serve as its advisor. In Saw Palm’s special “Florida-Cuba Connection” 10th anniversary issue, we published three of Chantel’s poems about a Cuban version of Oz (Dorothy is Dorotéa, and the Tin Man and the Scarecrow make appearances). The poems are filled with the kind of beautiful longing that Cuban-Americans have for their homeland. Later, at the 2018 Association of Writers & Writing Programs Conference in Tampa, Saw Palm held an event, and Chantel read some of her work in person.

Anyway, I was predisposed to like The Curse on Spectacle Key, and it absolutely did not disappoint. The main character, Frank, moves with his family into a lighthouse on Spectacle Key. Frank is a big fan of horror stories (he has a dog named Mary Shelley—author of Frankenstein), so at first you might think he’s imagining the supernatural happenings at the lighthouse. But he meets a ghost girl who seems real enough, and she tells him about a curse on the island. With the help of a local medium, Madame Z, Frank investigates the mystery behind the island’s curse and another ghost they call “the Snuffler.” And then, at the thrilling climax…

What, did you think I was going to spoil the plot? No chance. You’ll have to read it yourself. You’ll also learn some fascinating things about Cuban culture along the way.

If you enjoyed Wonders of Shadow Key, you will definitely enjoy The Curse on Spectacle Key. Give it a read! Then pretend you’re in Battle of the Books and buzz in for the win.

The post Book Review: THE CURSE ON SPECTACLE KEY by Chantel Acevedo appeared first on JJ Fleming.

As promised, I’m releasing another children’s story from the DREAMERS OF RAINBOW TERRACE collection. Rainbow Terrace is a fictional town where strange and magical things happen. This is the collection I wrote for my kids many years ago, and it’s inspired by Carl Sandburg’s ROOTABAGA STORIES. The stories in DREAMERS OF RAINBOW TERRACE are designed to be read by adults to children, though older children can also read them on their own. FYI, the online Hemingway Editor says “The Poodle Library” is suitable for 3rd grade readers and “The Day of the Floating Fathers” is suitable for 9th grade readers. I tried to make the language fun for all ages.

“The Poodle Library” takes places at the town’s Poodle Library, where poodles of all kinds can be checked out by kids and adults. Mrs. Bowers, unlike most librarians, prefers her library to be loud with barking and playing. When two girls named Marci show up hoping to check out a rare, bouncing Shaboozle, they struggle to locate it in the stacks, and Mrs. Bowers joins the search. It turns out that the Shaboozle is on the loose, bouncing around the library, knocking over shelves and denting the ceiling as it bounces. Mayhem ensues as they all try to chase down the Shaboozle. But that’s okay, because mayhem is just another day at the Poodle Library.

“The Poodle Library” is the one story from DREAMERS OF RAINBOW TERRACE I attempted to publish by the traditional route. I signed on with a children’s book agent, took author photos, including some with stuffed pink poodles. Do I dare reveal them?

Okay, okay, here’s a couple:

Maybe you can tell that my daughter was obsessed with pink poodles for a while.

Before the agent actually started sending “The Poodle Library” out to publishers, he quit being an agent. That happens a lot in the publishing industry, unfortunately. So “The Poodle Library” never found a publisher and sat idly in my computer files until today. I’m glad to finally get it out into the world.

Here’s a link if you’d like to purchase the story on Amazon Kindle for 99 cents:

For more on the first release from DREAMERS OF RAINBOW TERRACE, “The Day of the Floating Fathers,” see my previous blog post.

Did you know that there’s an annual Poodle Day in Carmel, California, that includes a Poodle Parade and Poodle Playtime at the Beach? You can read about it here.

Happy Poodling to All!

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Every once in a while, I’ll post a short book review here. Mostly middle grade books, but maybe some others, too. I’m going to begin with Maybe There Are Witches, a novel for middle graders by Jude Atwood.

The short review: it’s good; get it and read it—especially if you like creepy stories!

The slightly longer review:

This book hooked me with the first sentence: “When Clara woke up Saturday morning, the dolls were staring at her with their cold, lifeless eyes.”

Creepy dolls aren’t for everyone, but I happen to love old humanoid things like dolls and lifelike robot toys, especially when they’re in a state of decay. Such things open up what’s known as the “uncanny valley”—the gap between something that’s human and “almost human.” It’s as if your brain leaps back and forth across that valley, unable to decide if the thing is real or not. That dark little pit of uncertainty gives you the creeps.

Anyway, it turns out that the creepy dolls came with the creepy house that Clara and her mother just moved into, in a little village called Biskopskulla, Illinois. (Fun fact: I looked up the name of the fictional town and discovered that it means “bishop’s hill” in Swedish, even though it sounds like a “skull biscuit” in English, which is surely the worst kind of biscuit in the world.) What I really like about Maybe There Are Witches is that it’s both a horror story and a mystery, with a little adventure thrown in. It’s a page-turner.

I’m not going to summarize the whole plot, but let’s just say there are family mysteries involving a great-great-great grandmother of Clara’s who was accused of witchcraft and hanged a hundred and forty years ago. Clara finds an old diary that seems to talk to her. With the help of a couple of new friends, she starts uncovering secrets about the town, her ancestors, and herself. And hear me out, just maybe, maybe, there are witches!

The story’s climax is thrilling, dangerous, and ultimately satisfying. The supernatural elements serve up some genuine frights. The plot features two timelines—the creepy present and the mysterious past. And there’s a scholastic bowl tournament in the present that adds another fun and interesting layer. It’s all beautifully and concisely written.

If you like a creepy mystery, I really think you’ll love this book, which won the Kraken Prize for Middle Grade Fiction. And I’m honored to say that the author, Jude Atwood, gave me a wonderful blurb that appears on the cover of Wonders of Shadow Key.

Pick up Maybe There Are Witches wherever you like to get your books—the library, your local independent bookstore, or any other bookstore that works for you. Happy reading!

Here’s a link to Jude Atwood’s author page, where you’ll find more info about the book and the author: https://judeatwood.tv/

The post Book Review: MAYBE THERE ARE WITCHES by Jude Atwood appeared first on JJ Fleming.

Lots of writers have animals that keep them company while they write. Some call them Muses, after the Ancient Greek goddesses who inspire artists, writers, and scientists. Some call them Familiars, after the medieval supernatural animals who protect and assist witches. After all, writers are a kind of witch when you get right down to it. They cast spells with their words and make us see things and feel things we didn’t expect. I suppose what you call your Writing Buddy depends on the type of writer you are and the type of writing project you’re working on. It also, of course, depends on the animal.

Here’s a very dramatic muse on a monument to Frédéric Chopin in France.
She’s clearly inspiring him to write a beautiful piano piece–or vowing to swoon if he doesn’t.

Here’s a witch and her familiar. She’s working on a love potion,
and the black cat is warning you not to interrupt. Good kitty!

Cats make great writing buddies—most of the time. My own cat, Weezie, likes to sit on my lap while I type. She helps me by keeping me in my chair. It’s harder to get up and check the mail or get a snack or do laundry if a cat is purring on your lap. Is she a Familiar or a Muse? Well, sometimes she likes to lie on the keyboard or stand in front of the monitor or stick her butt in my face. On the whole, though, she prefers my lap, and her purring is both calming and inspiring, so I’m going with Muse.

Weezie will pretend to be sad if I don’t write.

I’ve had other writing buddies. I had a parakeet named Cookie who would fly around my apartment and land on my shoulder. He wasn’t particularly helpful because he’d screech in my ear and bite my hair. That screeching sounded to me like a witch casting a hex. Definitely a Familiar.

Cookie looks askance at a poorly-worded sentence.

For a while, I had a little jumping spider who lived by my desk. I’ve read that jumping spiders are among the most intelligent arachnids, and this one was definitely curious. He would crawl around the edges of the desk and up onto the top of the monitor. He’d stare at me for a while, wiggling his little pedipalps, then move on to get a better angle. His staring gave me an audience and made me feel guilty if I stopped writing, so I’d say he’s a Muse.

“Hey. Whatcha doin?”

My desk sits in front a window that looks out on my storage shed. An oak tree’s limb hangs low over the shed, almost touching it. Recently, I’ve been visited by a squirrel that climbs out on the oak limb every morning. She jumps down onto the storage shed roof and sprawls out Superman-style in the morning sunlight, eyes closed, soaking up rays. It’s her regular morning nap. Even though she draws my eyes away from my screen, she reminds me that there’s a whole world out there to inspire new writing projects. Definitely Muse.

“When I wake up, I will have wings like the flying squirrels of legend.”

How about you? Do you have a Muse or Familiar? Does your Writing Buddy inspire you? How does your writing change when your Writing Buddy’s around?

The post Writing Buddies: Muses vs. Familiars appeared first on JJ Fleming.

Every writer has rituals for writing. You can look up plenty of examples, some of them weird, like British writer Edith Sitwell’s reported habit of lying in a coffin to put herself in the writing mood. I celebrate weird things, so I love that for her.

My own habits aren’t quite so strange. On my website’s About page, I mention that I ride my e-bike to the coffee shop and think of that journey as my portal to Writing Land. Before I leave, I tear off two small squares of tape and stick them to my wallet. I order my iced coffee in advance, so it’s waiting for me when I arrive. When I snag my coffee from the counter, I cover the holes in the lid with my two squares of tape so the coffee doesn’t spill on the bike ride home.

I take the same route most days, passing the former house of Elvis Presley’s manager, “Colonel” Tom Parker, who lived in my neighborhood back when he was a lowly Tampa dog catcher before he met Elvis.

The whole journey takes about 15 minutes. By the time I return home, the concerns of the day have vanished, and I can devote myself to my writing project, settling into the chair at my desk in front of two computer monitors. The right monitor displays the draft I’m currently working on. The left monitor displays notes, an outline, a web browser for research, or a previous draft I’m retyping.

All very exciting, I know. It amuses me when I see movies about writers because the movies generally show everything in a writer’s life except the writing itself, which isn’t terribly exciting to watch. You’ll notice I just described my own rituals but not my writing, which is mostly thinking and moving my fingers (and sometimes slapping my head or pulling my hair). Writing is not a spectator sport!

As important as the ritual is, it’s just as important to mix it up, at least for me. Sometimes I order from different coffee and tea shops. Sometimes I take a new route to the same coffee shop. Sometimes I take my laptop in a backpack and write there. Even rituals need to be refreshed.

Just recently, a Yemeni coffee shop opened near my house. It’s beautiful inside, smells of Middle Eastern spices, and the coffee is excellent. Best of all, it has a special soundproof room with a waterfall flowing down one of the glass walls. I had a great writing experience that day, especially because my son joined me with his laptop. We had the room to ourselves.

Here’s the nice coffee shop with the waterfall right in front of me. No peeking at what I’m writing–at least not yet.

The post Writing Rituals: What Do Tape Squares, Interior Waterfalls, and a Coffin Have in Common? appeared first on JJ Fleming.

Over the next few months, I’m going to release a collection of stories I wrote for my kids a long time ago. The collection is called DREAMERS OF RAINBOW TERRACE. More about that in a minute.

First up is “The Day of the Floating Fathers,” about a whole neighborhood of fathers who drift up into the sky one morning, pushed by a rare wind called the Zappopi. Their families, worried the fathers are going to fall, chase them around with parachutes and trampolines. And meanwhile the fathers drift from town to town, blown by other winds like the Blewablew and the Aboofy. This is one of those stories I like to write in which nature disrupts our daily lives and creates a bit of magic. Sometimes that magic takes the form of fear, but in either case, it makes us pay attention. Paying attention is good.

Here’s a link if you’d like to purchase the story on Amazon Kindle for 99 cents:

I’m proud to say I designed the cover myself. I’m no Photoshop expert, but I can figure things out when I need to, using Google searches and YouTube videos.

About DREAMERS OF RAINBOW TERRACE: I wrote this collection of children’s stories for my kids almost 20 years ago. When my daughter was in second grade, I visited her class to read some of these stories and had the students help me with illustrations. Then I put together the text and illustrations and made a bound book that I presented to the class. That’s the only way they’ve been published until I recently rediscovered them.

By the way, the stories in DREAMERS OF RAINBOW TERRACE were influenced by Carl Sandburg’s ROOTABAGA STORIES, published in 1922. Sandburg was a famous and highly decorated Chicago poet (he won the Pulitzer Prize three times!). With ROOTABAGA STORIES, he sought to create an American counterpart to European fairy tales. The stories are wild and whimsical and written with great verve and a poet’s ear for language. I highly recommend them. And guess what? You can read them for free through Project Gutenberg right here:

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/27085/27085-h/27085-h.htm

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Hi, and welcome to JJ’s Jams! I’ll be posting fun and random things here because I enjoy fun and random things and hope you do too. I hope you’ll also sign up for the newsletter version of JJ’s Jams, which will include some best-of selections from the blog along with newsletter-only features. I hope that by making this fun for me, I’ll also make it fun for you. More soon!

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