712 More Things To Write About
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Resources, Writing on December 4, 2016
I’m not good at Christmas shopping. The more I walk around looking for things to buy for other people, the more things I find to buy for myself. 
The latest was a book I found in Waterstones (and it’s also available on Amazon).
712 More Things to Write About is full of ideas to help when that well of inspiration is empty. It’s put together by the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto and is in a large paperback journal format with room to write beneath each prompt. There are things like, ‘You look out the window and discover a body floating face down in your pool’ and ‘Write a haiku about your underwear’. The prompts in this book will keep any writer going well past the end of 2017. And prompts are often just what I need!
So, I bought the book and gave it to my husband to wrap up for me. Roll on Christmas when I can get it back in my greedy mitts again!
BT Email versus Gmail
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Computers & Technical, Non-writing on November 25, 2016
Over the last few months my btinternet email account has become flooded with spam – up to 70 emails a day offering me Russian beauties, gambling facilities and endless opportunities to get a ‘free’ store gift card. The BT spam filter catches virtually none of these (but does catch stuff that isn’t spam!).
So I asked BT for help in stopping this deluge and they recommended setting up ‘rules’ to indicate what should be filtered out as spam. That was an impossible task given the ever changing email addresses, subject lines etc. used by the spammers. And it involved opening the emails which indicates an active email address and then you get sent even more!
Enough was enough and I decided to try Gmail which I’d heard had a stronger spam filter. I set it up so that all the mail from my btinternet account was automatically forwarded into Gmail.
Using Gmail over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been impressed by the following:
- The spam filter is much stronger and catches virtually all the spam forwarded on from btinternet
- The automatic separation of social media related emails and retailer promotions from the main inbox makes it easier to see at a glance if there’s anything important
- Emails related to the same conversation are kept together
I am not so impressed by Gmail’s use of ‘labels’ instead of ‘folders’. When I ‘label’ an email it remains visible with everything else in my Inbox – the BT folders completely separated such emails. Plus there appears to be no easy way of importing my BT folders into Gmail (unless anyone out there can help me?).
Conclusion? Overall, Gmail makes dealing with my Inbox easier so I’ll stick with it and keep forwarding from the old address until everyone’s been informed (and is using!) the new one.
50 Word Story Competition
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Competitions, Resources, Short Story on November 12, 2016
If the 50,000 word marathon of NaNoWriMo is too much for you, have a go at this 50 word story competition organised by Just Write.
It’s free to enter and an open theme but the story must be exactly 50 words – not as easy as it sounds!
There are prizes of books and ‘literary goodies’ plus the winner will be published on tyjustwrite.com.
Closing date is 30th November 2016 and entry is by email or post.
This competition could be a useful exercise in focusing the mind and creating an elevator pitch for your NaNoWriMo work-in-progress.
Also, there was a wordpress glitch when I published my last post and I don’t think notification emails were sent out. In case you missed it, it was 200 Powerful Words to Use Instead of Good .
200 Powerful Words to Use Instead of Good
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Resources on November 3, 2016
A couple of weeks ago I re-blogged a post from Kobo Writing Life giving 128 alternatives for the word ‘very’. Today, I have 200 alternatives for the word ‘good’ – so dip in and add some zing to your writing.
The infographic below is reproduced with the kind permission of http://custom-writing.org/blog.
![200 Powerful Words to Use Instead of “Good” [Infographic]](https://i0.wp.com/custom-writing.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/custom-writing.org/2016/10/words-instead-of-good.png)
Branding a Book Series
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Authors, Books, Promotion, Self-publishing on October 27, 2016
I recently came across Anne Allen‘s wonderful Guernsey series of novels, in the form of the fifth book, Echoes of Time. It was a great read with alternating chapters set in WWII and 2010.
What particularly struck me about this series of books was the cohesive, professional branding across all the book covers.
I wondered whether Anne had started off with this brand in mind or whether it developed as she went along. This is what she told me:
Authors are often encouraged to create a ‘brand’. To be distinctive. To stand out in the crowd; never more important than now when thousands of books are added to Amazon on a daily basis. I knew nothing of this when I published my first book, ‘Dangerous Waters’, a romantic mystery/family drama set in Guernsey. Then came book two, ‘Finding Mother’, also set on the island, but there was little cohesion visually between them, although they shared characters and setting. By the time I wrote the third, ‘Guernsey Retreat’, I had realised (somewhat belatedly some might say!) that I was writing a series. The covers of the books bore little resemblance to each other, except for my name, although I had chosen a strong image of Guernsey as the background for book 3.
These are the original three covers:
Then came the enlightenment, in the form of a successful American author I met at an Indie event as part of The London Book Fair. She told me I had no brand and the genre of the books wasn’t clear. But she did like the covers, particularly the third. Sooo, it was back to the drawing board.
I decided I needed a fresh approach and engaged a cover designer who came highly recommended, Jane Dixon-Smith, who also writes books. Together we worked on producing four covers, three replacing the old ones and one for my nearly finished fourth novel, ‘The Family Divided’. I knew the backgrounds had to be of Guernsey as I now had The Guernsey Novels series. The new branding was launched in 2015 to coincide with the latest book and, boy, were they well received! Even Amazon liked them, creating a little series motif on my books page, so anyone buying one of the books could see it was part of a series, even though each book is a standalone story.
If an author isn’t writing a true series, I think it’s still important to have a cohesive look for their books, unless they write in multi genres. I’ve often noticed how the books of top-selling authors frequently receive new covers to emphasise their ‘brand’ in line with current fashion. Speaking to insiders of the Big Five publishers, I learnt huge sums are spent on cover design and redesign to keep the brands fresh; something independent authors would be unable to afford.
To find out more about the Guernsey novels, visit Anne’s website. The first book in the series, Dangerous Waters, is currently only 99p on Kindle – why not give it a try?
Smashwords Coupons
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Promotion, Self-publishing on October 18, 2016
Self-publishers who have opted out of Amazon’s KDP Select are free to distribute their e-books via other platforms, as well as Amazon.
As I’ve mentioned previously on this blog, Smashwords offers an easy way to make your e-book available through many retailers such as Apple, Barnes & Noble and the library supplier, OverDrive.
Individuals can also purchase e-books directly from Smashwords, from where they can choose to receive the e-book in a variety of formats, for example .mobi for Kindle and epub for Kobo, Nook and tablets.
In order to encourage these individual purchases, Smashwords lets authors create money-off coupons to distribute directly to selected readers (such as book reviewers, competition winners etc.) or more generally via social media. The author selects the discount percentage (up to 100%, thus making the book free), the expiry date and the number of redemptions (for example only the first 100 customers using the coupon will get the discount). Smashwords then generates a discount code for the author to distribute as he chooses.
I’ve been playing around with the Smashwords Coupon Manager and have created a 50% off coupon code VZ95D for Bedsit Three. It’s valid until 31/10/2016 or for the first 50 people – whichever comes soonest.
So, if you’re fed up of Amazon’s supremacy, try buying your Kindle e-book from Smashwords and save some money too!
A Hundred Hands by Dianne Noble
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Authors, Books on October 6, 2016
We’ve all heard the old adage ‘write what you know’. Dianne Noble has taken that to heart and her second book, A Hundred Hands, set in the slums of Kolkata, will be published by Tirgearr on 2nd November 2016. Remembering the details from a time past is often a problem when writing what you know. Dianne had no difficulty recalling the sights, sounds and experiences of her time in India because she made a determined, disciplined effort to keep a journal. In the passage below Dianne grabs the reader by the neck and dumps her in the midst of Kolkata. I challenge you to read it and not be gripped:
India is an assault on the senses.
My shirt sticks to my back as I edge round a goat, swatting at flies, coughing as the smoke from pavement cooking fires catches in my throat. After four hours of threadbare sleep I’m fighting my way round Kolkata, India, trying to find the group of street children I’m here to teach English to. 
The noise makes my ears hurt – shouting, blaring of horns, backfiring buses. A cow stands in the road, munching impassively on a discarded newspaper, and traffic edges round it. This creature is holy. If a driver were to run into it he would be dragged from his car by an angry crowd and beaten up.The heat beats on my head like a hammer as I search among blackened buildings whose stonework crumbles like stale cake. I smell spices and sewage and urine evaporating in hot sun.
That must be the place. It takes me an age to cross the road, weaving between rickshaws, yellow taxis, tuk tuks festooned with dusty tinsel. The children are so tiny – malnourished – with bare feet, cropped hair and laddered ribs, but they shriek with laughter when I try to speak to them in Hindi. They stroke the pale skin of my arms and clamber on to my knees as I sit, cross-legged and crampy, on the bare earth floor. They are a joy, desperate to learn English, desperate to improve their position at the bottom of the luck ladder.
When I get back to my small room that evening my feet are gritty and blistered, my chest is raw with exhaust fumes and I’m filthy. Sweat makes white rivulets down the dirt on my face and I feel, and doubtless smell, rank.
By the end of my first week I’m overwhelmed by the magnitude of the poverty, despairing at the smallness of my contribution. How can I possibly do this for three whole months? Whatever had I been thinking of?
I start a journal and at the end of every day, no matter how tired I am, I write down every detail of my day – how the children are progressing, who made me laugh, how much their poor chests rattle, who has the worst sores. It’s a sort of de-briefing and I find it cathartic as I realise that I’m surrounded every day by happy, smiling children. I hear laughter everywhere I go in this dreadful place and the Bengali men and women get used to seeing me, wave and call out ‘Hello, Aunty’ (a term of respect for women of a certain age!) At the wayside shrine even jolly, elephant-headed Ganesh wears a broad grin.
Dianne Noble
My diary covers three months and forms the basis for A Hundred Hands, which tells the story of Polly who saw the plight of the children living on the streets and stayed to help.
A Hundred Hands is currently on Amazon pre-order for only 99p – a bargain price for what promises to be a very atmospheric book!
Womag fiction is wanted by readers …
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Events, Markets, Short Story on September 27, 2016
Much is written in the blogosphere and on social media about the diminishing market for women’s magazine stories. I haven’t submitted any womag fiction for a while but am still interested in the area and mentioned it in a talk I gave a couple of weeks ago. 
The group I was speaking to consisted mainly of retired, but very active, women. I told them how my writing career had moved through articles, short stories for women’s magazines and on to longer fiction.
At the end, several of them told me how they’d stopped buying some of the magazines when the fiction was replaced by celebrity/real life stories. One lady said that she really enjoyed the Woman’s Weekly Fiction Specials because they were ‘proper stories with a beginning, a middle and an end’ and they gave her something nice to read before she went to sleep at night. Several mentioned that they liked the mix of things in My Weekly.
It makes me wonder whether the magazines that dropped fiction had a noticeable increase in sales afterwards or whether it brought them no obvious benefit. They certainly lost readers from the group I spoke to.
(By the way, if you’re wondering about the significance of the flower photo – this beautiful array of colour was a gift following my talk.)
Win a Just Write Tote Bag and Goodies
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Competitions on September 17, 2016
Just Write, the Hodder creative writing community, are offering one lucky person a Just Write Tote Bag from the Creative Writing Competition party of the 18th August. 
It will be filled with the following goodies: a copy of The Loney by Andrew Michael Hurley, a proof copy of The Keeper of Lost Things by Ruth Hogan, Masterclass: Write a Bestseller by Jacq Burns, plus literary maps, discount cards and notebooks.
All you have to do is tell @JustWriteGroup, via Twitter, what made you start writing.
‘What made you start writing?’ was one of the questions asked in video interviews of the six shortlisted writers at the party. These videos (including me being a little too vociferous with my hands!) are now available to view on the Writing Magazine website. In the interviews each of us also offers the piece of writing advice that we’ve found the most useful – and amazingly we nearly all say the same thing!
The Just Write competition closes at 17:00 on September 23rd 2016 and the full competition rules are here.
Rosie Amber – Book Reviewer
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Books, Promotion, Self-publishing, Successes on September 7, 2016
Rosie Amber is a reader extraordinaire, in August alone she read and reviewed thirteen books, ranging from The Hundred Year Old Man Who Climbed Out Of The Window And Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson through The Honey Trap by Mary Jane Baker to Wild Boys After Dark by Melissa Cooper. Rosie also has a team of reviewers and book bloggers whose reviews appear daily on Rosie’s blog.
So last month I approached Rosie and asked if she, or her team, would like to review Bedsit Three. She agreed to offer it to her reviewers and three .mobi files (for Kindle) went off to her team. Two of those reviews have now been completed.
Both reviewers awarded four out of five stars.
If I was doing my sales pitch now I’d just quote you the good bits but I’m going to be honest and quote the constructive criticism too – criticism that I’ll be taking particular note of as I work on my second book.
On the positive, Terry Tyler said, “… the characterisation is extremely good – I loved the parts about the increasingly disturbed Ignatius, and Sandra and Ian are both real and likeable, the sort of characters you root for. The plot is perfectly paced, alternating between the three main characters, with no boring bits; I was not tempted to skip read at all, and read 80% of it in one sitting.”
On the negative, she said, “On occasion I felt the dialogue was a little unlikely, and I thought Ian’s story was too speedily and rather drearily wound up in the epilogue (I hoped for so much better for him!), but these are my only complaints, and they are but minor.”
On the positive, Judith Barrow said, “I really enjoyed this novel, it’s a good psychological thriller that steadily builds in tension until the end. Sally Jenkins’ style of writing is easy to read without being cosy. Her words take the reader steadily through the plot without revealing too much, yet there is also subtle foreshadowing. .”
On the negative, she said, “My only disappointment in the whole of this book was with the dialogue. Sometimes, with all of the characters, I thought the dialogue was stilted (perhaps a little contrived?) and didn’t fit their portrayed personalities. Every now a then a section of speech felt as though it was there, not so much for exposition, but for explanation to the reader.”
Thank you very much Terry and Judith for your comprehensive and helpful reviews (I’ll definitely be watching my dialogue next time!). And many thanks to Rosie for setting the whole thing up and tweeting tirelessly!
Sally Jenkins 