Two Hearts and One Braincell: Cassidy Carson & JT Hume Amateur Hour

We chat about writing about the holidays, why Hollywood keep making holiday movies, and why people keep watching them. Themes include family, winter, and love.

Minor spoilers of Love Hard, Die Hard, and others.

We're over at www.carsonhume.com if you want to leave a comment or subscribe via WordPress.

Have a listen! TIA & LYL!

(Flickr image made available from Steve McFarland via Creative Commons.)

Writing about politics can be rewarding and challenging, but it's easy to get lost in the weeds. CC and I give you ideas about how to focus on the story at hand without going too far off track.

We talk about our current works in progress, Nanowrimo, graphic design, and the upcoming holidays. Pretty good podcast this week, if I do say so myself. 

Have a listen and check us out at www.carsonhume.com TIA! LYL!

Also:

Here's the link if you want to join CC on Nano: https://nanowrimo.org/participants/cassidy-carson

Bonus picture of capybaras from CC's Instagram! https://www.instagram.com/p/CkmZmB5vuLV

Welcome to Halloween 2022, and we pick what we feel is the iconic horror film of the genre: Alien! We thoroughly spoil this 1979 classic that pushes back on all (well, most) of the clichés, and we explain why we feel this is mandatory viewing for writers dabbling in the horror and/or sci-fi genres. 

We also chat (or kvetch, if you will) about our Graphic Arts class, and we touch on Nanowrimo and our ongoing works in progress.

As always, stop by our website at www.carsonhume.com and let us know what you think. TIA! LYL! 

A short one this week on our updated marketing plan, changing of the seasons, retirement, our WIPs, and the importance of routine. 

We came to the conclusion we use podcasting as an excuse to drink coffee.

Have a listen and y'all take care of yourselves, you hear? TIA LYL

(Check us out at www.carsonhume.com when you get a sec.)

We got around to rerecording Settings Part 2, the one where we define how a setting can overwhelm the characters in your book. We're talking about an event that obliterates the routines and comfort zones of your characters. We give thoughts on this genre, starting with highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of your characters as they are changed by the setting.

Trigger Warning: we use Manzanar as an example.

We bring you up to speed on our works in progress (three!) and our prep for Nanowrimo.

Are we right? Wrong? Let us know via our Contacts page. Thanks for listening!

www.carsonhume.com

This week's podcast has us on the road to Lone Pine, California, home to many movie settings, some of which you've seen. We use a visit to the Museum of Western Film History and the Alabama Hills as background for a chat about Settings.

They can be a challenge to writers as we try to strike a balance between adding a colorful dimension versus overwhelming the reader with details and extrapolation.

We thoroughly spoil Pleasantville and Blade Runner (1982) as examples.

Next week, we talk about how a setting can become the dominant tone of a book. 

We update listeners on our manuscript at the editors, our graphic design class, and JT's retirement (also mentioned here).

Please visit us at carsonhume.com for pictures. TIA! LYL!

This week we chat about Robert Frost's "Road Not Taken" (apologies to Mr. Frost for mangling the quote in the podcast). With CC and I being of a certain age, we have a better perspective of our interests and skills. What careers would we have picked had we the chance to do things over again? And what were our childhood choices for jobs?

We go down this path because we're engaging our imaginations and "what if's," both being essential writers' tools. Are you in your chosen career path? What would you have done different "if you knew then what you know now?"

Also discussed is JT's last week with his long-time day job and our in-depth editing sessions we're having over our current work in progress.

Have a listen and let us know what you think via our contact page at www.carsonhume.com TIA! LYL!

We gave ourselves an on-air (and mutual) anxiety attack in this week's podcast as we talked out our plans for the rest of the year. We didn't know how much we have going on until we turned on the microphone!

The big part of the podcast was Content Editing. We got the draft back from our editors on our joint project, and we learned that we did indeed have plot holes that need smoothing over before we can return the draft for their next deep dive. We talk about how we created those holes and how we'll fix them.

Another major portion was a deep dive into our Nanowrimo project we'll be doing in November. We have ideas and thoughts, and we'll be hopefully organizing them in a few weeks into a coherent draft.

We talked about our ongoing Graphics Art Design class we're taking at the local college. You can see our first line-drawing exercises on our web page. We're beginners, so please be kind. The last project we touch is the Big Move where we'll be making a "partners desk" office in our house after JT retires.

Yowza. See why we had an anxiety attack? We barely skimmed over the upcoming holidays if that's a clue.

Have a listen and let us know what you think at our website at www.carsonhume.com TIA! LYL!

"May you live in interesting times."

JT's awesome aunt says this is an ancient Chinese curse. The world has been living through them here in the 21st Century, but what does that mean for the writer who engages in historical fiction?

We discuss the challenges facing authors who use real-life events in their books, including sources of information, writer's biases, and the challenge of seeing into the future. Historical fiction might be the difficult form of fiction to get right.

Have a listen. Are we right or wrong? Let us know via our website at www.carsonhume.com TIA! LYL!

We always say we have a jampacked podcast and we're usually right. Today's fun started at Oh-dark-thirty when JT photographed a hot air ballon over Carson City, only to learn later that a friend and colleague was aboard. We ended up taking pictures over each other without knowing we were taking pictures of each other. We dedicated this podcast to that brave, brave soul.

We take a dive into "Imposter Syndrome," loosely defined as someone who doubts their skills, talents, or accomplishments fearing being exposed as a fraud. We talk at length about how this affects independent writers and people in general, especially with traditional versus independent publishing. We also relate our personal experiences with the phenomenon, and we try to offer possible solutions.

Related: what are the three hardest words for a man to say?

Also discussed: our personal writing projects, retirement plans, changing our house, our Graphics Design class, Halloween decorating.

Have a listen and let us know what you think via our Contacts page at www.carsonhume.com. TIA! LYL!

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