Daisy Jordan's Blog

My latest book, Mirrors and Blue Smoke, which was released as a paperback in June, is now also available as an ebook!

You can find it on Smashwords, Nook, and several other sites. If you buy through Smashwords, there are various file types available for download. Whether you plan to read on your phone, tablet, or computer, the PDF download should work for anyone! If you want to read on Google Play Books, download the .epub file to your device, and it will work in Play Books. If you have Kindle, download the .mobi version. If you have any questions about which file type is best, feel free to comment here or DM me on Twitter (daisyjordan06) or Insta (authordaisyjordan).

And, if you haven’t read the first two books in the Not Like Paradise trilogy, you can also get those as ebooks:

Urban Legends

Pandora’s Box

Below is a description of the series. ENJOY!!!

My trilogy Not Like Paradise takes place in my favorite city in the world, New York! While the characters and events of the books are fictional, I wanted to share some of the real-life locations featured in the series so you can imagine Jansen, Jason, Hersh, and Clint’s life a little more clearly! Hope you enjoy! Be sure to scroll all the way to the end…I saved the best for last.

My latest book, Mirrors and Blue Smoke, the conclusion to the Not Like Paradise trilogy, is officially released and available to order on Amazon!

The Mirrors and Blue Smoke website is officially launched! Visit it for teasers and hints, but don’t worry, NO spoilers! And if you haven’t read the first two books in Not Like Paradise, you can visit the Urban Legends website instead (that’s the first book in the trilogy).

One of my favorite parts of making my website for each book is always the character pages. I love sharing fun facts about the characters that readers may or may not know from the books (such as where everyone’s summer house is, because what’s more important on the Upper East Side?! [eye roll emoji…haha]), and giving some insight into each character’s life in his/her own words! Below are some screenshots from parts of a few characters’ pages…you can read the rest on the site! Note: If you haven’t read Urban Legends and Pandora’s Box, the pictures below may give some spoilers for those two books.

I had a blast creating these, so I hope you enjoy looking at them and learning more about the characters from Mirrors and Blue Smoke!

The front and back covers for Mirrors and Blue Smoke look AWESOME, thanks to my incredible cover designer j bentz photography!

The final book in the Not Like Paradise trilogy, Mirrors and Blue Smoke, will be available in just a couple of weeks!!

Imagine sharing a piece of your soul with the person you’re in love with…something that’s so important to you, so quintessential to who you are, so inspirational that you wouldn’t be that person he loves without it…and having him not get it.

“This movie is so boring,” he says to me 7/8 of the way through, after I’ve already paused it because he was on his phone and called him out for falling asleep (which he swears he wasn’t).

All he knows is this is my favorite movie, and it’s the one I’ve picked for him to watch. We made a deal to each pick a movie for the other…something that maybe wouldn’t be the other person’s typical genre, but I would pick something I thought he might like, and he would pick something he thought I might like. I got the idea from the Bobby Bones Show. We would each watch the movie the other chose for us, then give our honest opinion and rating/review. At first, I said we should watch the movies separately, so we couldn’t influence the other’s opinion. But then he wanted to rewatch the one he picked for me, and I wanted to rewatch the one I picked for him. So we decided to watch them together, still while trying not to influence the other’s opinion. We sat on separate couches and didn’t say much during either movie.

He picked Memento for me, and we watched it last night. I really liked it. At first I was disappointed by the ending, but then I realized it had to be that way. It was poetic in that the viewers experienced the same emotions as the main character. I can’t say too much else; I don’t want to give it away for anyone who hasn’t watched it. I would recommend it. 4 out of 5 stars. He said he picked it for me because he didn’t think it’s like what I normally watch. That’s where he was wrong. It’s exactly the kind of thing I love to watch, which I would think he’d know from all the movies and shows we watch together. But it was different from any “typical” movie…I’ll give him that. And it was awesome.

I picked for him my all-time favorite movie, one I stumbled upon one night a few years ago and became entranced by. I am doing this 30-day song challenge right now, and one of the days is, “A song that makes you want to fall in love.” This movie made me want to fall in love. It also epitomized what to me would be the ultimate love story, and it inspired my future writing. It also related to things I’d already written in a way that blew my mind.

The movie: Before Sunrise.

I didn’t know at the time I originally watched it there was a sequel, and a 3rd one in the works, and when I found out, I was ecstatic. I watched Before Sunset right away and Before Midnight the day it came out, by myself in a movie theater on the Upper West Side, because I happened to be on a solo trip to NYC at the time. It was this incredible experience for me, because I wasn’t someone who did a lot of things like that by myself. But I should have learned from that experience…those things that mean so much to you are sometimes best experienced…alone.

I have always been someone who loves my alone time…I’m a writer, after all. When I’m alone, late at night, the rest of the world asleep (or at least in my time zone), the ideas flow. I’m at my best creatively. But I’ve also always been someone who loves to share things I’m passionate about, things that give me the feels. I have made my mom watch countless movies and/or shows and/or read scenes from books because I love them so much and want to share them with someone who might love them too…someone who might be able to see the meaning I do, or take his or her own meaning from it…someone who will be moved by it like I was.

Usually, my mom is a great person for this, because we have similar tastes in books, movies, and shows. No matter how much she might roll her eyes at me for making her watch something, we have awesome discussions about it afterward. Like the time a couple years ago I made her watch the last 5 episodes of The Americans (she had never seen the show). But she got it, and we still talk about it to this day.

So, in picking a movie for my boyfriend to watch, part of me was thinking, This is my favorite movie, so he should see it; it’ll help him to know me better. And that’s where I should have stopped. But there was another part of me thinking, Maybe he’ll like it. It’s not his normal genre; it’s way too romantic for him, but maybe he’ll appreciate some of the parts that appeal to me…the travel, the idea of falling in love on a train and walking around a European city and having only one night together, of going to all these random bars and having sex in the park.

And it was literally during one of my favorite parts that he says, “This movie is so boring.”

Was this a total surprise to me? Not at all. If I would’ve had to guess ahead of time what he would rate it on a scale of 1 to 10, I probably would’ve said a 3. But I guess there was just this part of me that hoped.

And I was fine with him not liking it; I laughed and knew this was what I had expected.

And then, I just started crying.

Because I had just learned how crushingly disappointing it is to share something you love with someone you love and have that person feel no connection to it whatsoever.

I think I knew it, but I had never felt it quite like this, so close to the heart. It made me decide I will hold back those shows and movies and books that are most important to me in the future, keep them to myself. Because watching it with him and seeing his face for that hour and 40 minutes…it just kind of killed the magic in me.

Not fully, of course, don’t get me wrong…I would never let another person’s reaction ruin something I love so much and take so much from. Before Sunrise means just as much to me now as it did the first night I saw it…maybe even more. But I would rather keep it to myself, go through all the emotions in my mind, sit up for hours thinking about it, than share it with someone who isn’t going to appreciate it.

So now, with those other shows and movies I love so much, that have influenced me, inspired me…I’ll keep them to myself. Friends, Nashville, Before Sunset, Before Midnight, many others. I will treasure them…alone.

Because no one else can ever find quite the same meaning, and to realize that, especially when it’s someone you love, someone you want to share every piece of yourself with, breaks your heart a little.

And then, afterward, when I’m telling him how much it means to me, he says, “I feel like this was a setup.”

Was it? I definitely didn’t intend for it to be, but maybe it was. Did I know he probably wouldn’t like it? Yeah. But I wasn’t mad at him for not liking it, which I made sure he knew. So was the setup subconscious, a way for me to disappoint myself, prove to myself that no one will ever truly, fully know me, understand me? No one will get every single piece of me?

Maybe it was. But…I guess I’m really not disappointed by that concept…that no one will ever fully understand me. Even someone I love. Because we can never truly know anyone else, right?

And if he did completely know me, how could I be a writer? I would have no element of mystery, surprise. And I would name the number-one quality of a great writer or a great story as unpredictability.

So, there you have it. He and I will continue as we were…with many shows and movies we both love and can share…and then him with his sci-fi and superhero stuff I hate and me with my stuff he hates…those artistic influences that have made me who I am. And he doesn’t need to know about all of those, because he loves who I am. Regardless of what made me that person. And that’s what matters.

One of the questions I get asked most as an author is about my name, Daisy Jordan. It comes from one of my all-time favorite books, The Great Gatsby, in which the 2 main female characters are named Daisy and Jordan. However, sometimes people ask, “You want to be named after 2 characters who weren’t likable, or good people?!” Well…of course! And there are so many reasons why…here are a few!

1) The name Daisy Jordan doesn’t just represent these characters, it represents one of my favorite authors, F. Scott Fitzgerald. It also represents what I think is the most fascinating decade in history and a book that, along with its characters, has inspired so much of my own writing. I am captivated by the 1920s…that exhilarating ride building up to the devastating crash (a theme I often bring into my own books), and the lifestyle of writers and artists during that time.

2) While I don’t admire Daisy Buchanan or Jordan Baker or want to be like them, I like living vicariously through them in a way…experiencing that decade and the thrill ride to the crash I am so intrigued by but would never want as my own life.

3) While many people dislike Jordan Baker, she is my favorite character in the book. Like Nick, I forgive her dishonesty and am not in the least bothered by it. She is shamelessly, unapologetically herself, and yet she can be secretive or put up a front, and many of my own characters share some of these qualities.

So, I have always felt Daisy Jordan is the perfect name for me!

I have submitted a few of my books for reviews at Readers’ Favorite, and I have always had a good experience with this website and their reviewers! I was so excited to find out that the most recent book I submitted for review, Urban Legends, the first in the Not Like Paradise trilogy and the one that comes right before my most recent release, Pandora’s Box, received 5 stars! Here is an excerpt from the review:

“Urban Legends by Daisy Jordan was far more intense and dramatic than I had anticipated. Jansen and Jason were my favorites out of the four main characters. They were smart, they took their time, they paced themselves and allowed themselves to evaluate the situation before delving into it. I enjoyed how shrewd and calculating they were because this is what helped everyone in the end. The story itself is strong enough to make me want to know more, crave more, and just hope that the author has more in store for us to enjoy. The element of mystery was very well handled. Daisy Jordan masterfully allowed it to bloom and become almost an entity in the story. Entertaining and action-packed. Needless to say, I loved it!”

If you haven’t checked out Urban Legends yet, you can get it on Amazon at the link below, or look for me at the Brooklyn Book Festival on September 22 to buy a signed copy!

Pandora’s Box will be available on Amazon in a matter of DAYS!!! In the meantime, check out the cover and the website! On the website you can meet the characters, remind yourself what happened in Urban Legends, the first book in the Not Like Paradise trilogy, and get a few small clues about Pandora’s Box (no spoilers, though, promise)! If you read the individual character webpages, that is where you will find the best review of what happened in Urban Legends, because each page is told from that character’s own perspective. Have fun exploring, and check back, because I’ll update both the blog and the website when the book is available!!

Pandora’s Box website

Pandora’s box cover

Pandora’s box back cover

So you don’t have to try zooming in on the text, here is what the back cover says about the book:

Jansen has long resented her conceited parents, their money-and-social-standing-mean-everything attitudes, and the pretentious tennis-club and Hamptons-parties lifestyle they push on her. But after learning her mom, Scarlett, tried to murder Clint’s mom, Cindy, Jansen’s resentment turns to a hatred she has no idea how she’ll conceal.

As she, Clint, Jason, and Hersh reel in the wake of their discovery, everything feels surreal to Jansen. The inane love lives of her school friends, nights out at Red Sulfur, the dangerous need for a high that continuously requires more and more stimulation to attain, and even the sordid past of the Circles of Eight. It is only with the boys she feels like her true self, especially in the world she and Jason have created when it’s just the two of them, a mystical yet very real Paradise, their “best ever.”

But when a long-awaited revelation hits Jansen out of the blue, she snaps out of her foggy reverie and, along with Jason, throws herself deeper into uncovering the mysteries of the Circles of Eight. The trail leads away from her mom’s murder attempt fifteen years ago and takes Jansen and Jason back ten years earlier, to the childhood of Jason’s mom, Corinne.

Despite warnings they are opening a treacherous Pandora’s box, Jansen and Jason set out to connect the clues littered across Corinne’s and the Circles’ intertwining pasts. An old diary hidden in a bookshelf, a boy named Robert, a letter that can’t be found, an unknown object of dire importance, a forgotten summer house in Vermont. And, ultimately, questions Corinne seems determined to leave unanswered.

Pandora’s box author pic

The above picture is me on the 1 train at South Ferry Terminal in NYC (along with the awesome @gypsythetravelingcatpurse). Watch for the scene in the book where Jansen and Jason ride the subway to this stop…it’s a good one.