I wanted to create a website for music, writing, and my family tree. I hope that at least 1 person looks at this page a year to justify the whole $20 I paid for this site. You can email me at kristinepjones [at] gmail [dot] com (had to be written that way to avoid spammers) 
Enjoy!
Okay, not quite, but I’m feeling festive. Christmas songs now have their own page and are back for the holiday season! Have a happy holiday and a happier new year!
So out of sheer boredom, I made a slideshow for one of my songs, River of Grass, which is about the Everglades land purchase. I posted it to YouTube. And, lo and behold, it’s linked up to World News Networks, some random news people (click the “video” tab) . They posted it on their site and a few (yes, only a few) have licked on it and watched it. But how cool is that??!
I’ve also deleted by 50/90 page and merged the songs produced there into my Songs 2008 where they belong. While I aimed for 50 in 90 days, I got to about 6. Only a wee bit short, yeah?
Also, I have updated my maternal family tree. It now goes all the way back to the 1400s!
So every year for the past three years I’ve participated in FAWM, February Album Writing Month, where I’ve at least attempted to write 14 songs in 28 days (14 in 2006, 10 in 2007, 14 in 2008). In all three years, I’ve not written a single song outside the month of February (and really didn’t even touch the guitar). So this year there’s all the buzz about some crazy thing called 50/90 and it is what what it looks like…. 50 songs in 90 days. I told people they were insane for even thinking about it, but the idea seemed somewhat alluring… actually write a song during three of the other 11 months of the year?! So here I am, attempting to write 50 songs in 90 days between July 4th and October 1st.
It’s LEAP FAWM!!! 14 and 1/2 songs in 29 days (they couldn’t give us that extra day off)! As I am moving to a new city and starting a new job in the month of February, we’ll see how I do… of course, I won’t have cable or internet at home for a bit, so it may prove to give me loads of extra time to write songs. Check out my progress at FAWM’s site or here on my dedicated FAWM webpage.
I have temporarily added a Christmas Carols page with a handful of Christmas songs I’ve recorded.
Christmas is over and done and so is the Christmas Carols webpage. But just around the corner: FAWM 2008!
I have now scanned in all the old family photos I have of my paternal grandmother’s mother’s family. You can see them by clicking on the photo of my great grandmother, Virginia Elizabeth Taylor at the age of 23 in 1911.
Unfortunatly, at this time, I do not have the names of everyone in the photos, but I am still looking and hope to get more and more information in time.
I am also going to be updating my family tree pages soon with the latest family tree information.
Here is way more information than you could ever want. But it looks so cool!
It’s nearly November, which means it’s nearly National Novel Writing Month, a.k.a. nanowrimo, a.k.a. nano. Like FAWM, where you write 14 songs in 28 days, Nanowrimo challenges its participants to write a novel. Well, a novella. Well, the first bit of a full length novel. Well, 50,000 words of something. I tried last year and failed miserably, only getting to 10,000 and some change. This year, I hope to finish with all 50,000 or maybe more.
What is my story about, you ask? Well, it is a legal mystery. The main character? A 28-year-old female attorney. Yes, yes, laugh, but I for one am quite excited as I finally get to use those things that I learned when I studied for the bar exam.
You’re dying to know the plot, aren’t you? Well, here it is:
Rainer Holland is two years into his life sentence for the murder a little boy in the tourist town of Seaside, Florida. Terrorized in prison by guards and inmates alike, Rainer’s sanity is slipping and only his sister, Katherine, cares that Rainer is, in fact, innocent. Desperate for help, Katherine finds herself at the law office of Julie Beckham, 28, a former prosecutor who just started her own small criminal defense firm, sticking primarily petty crimes after years of prosecuting murderers. Though she initially refuses the case, disgusted by the details of the child’s murder, Julie is soon convinced that Rainer’s trial truly was unjust and he may just be innocent. As she delves into the facts of the murder, Julie finds herself pitted against the police department for which her husband is an officer, straining their marriage further while they deal with the heartbreak of infertility. As Julie seeks enough evidence for a new trial, she is forced to turn to her ex-fiancé, Matthew, a private detective, to help her investigate the tenuous assertions made against Rainer at trial and follow up with more likely suspects the police appear to have ignored. The investigation leads Julie and Matthew on the path to find the true murderer and all those who had a hand in covering up the crime as they try to free an innocent man before his mind is lost to the horrors of prison.
I really wanted to have a bunch of pictures up, but, honestly, doing so would take up way too many megabites and formatting would be a nightmare. So… the easy solution was to make very dramatic and incredibly awesome slideshows…. with music… that’s right, it’s a flash back to 1997 folks, senior year in highschool, when slideshows were all the rage and a well-selected song could do no wrong.
My first slide show up is the gardens of England and Scotland from my trip there in March of this year.
There will be more to come, oh yes, there will be more.