Win a Year’s Subscription to Writers’ Forum Magazine
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Competitions, Promotion, Self-publishing on September 22, 2015
Today is launch day for House Guests and Other Stories! 
This is a collection of fifteen short stories, many with a twist, some to make you smile and all of them guaranteed to entertain – and there’s an excellent ‘guest’ story by Iain Pattison.
If you pre-ordered the e-book, a copy should be whizzing its way to your Kindle at this very minute (assuming that you’re not in airplane mode). If you inadvertently forgot to pre-order, don’t panic! Amazon still have a few copies left and one can be yours if you click here – but don’t delay, House Guests is on course to become the first e-book ever to sell out on Amazon!
So, now you’ve the bought the book, we can talk about the competition to win a year’s subscription to Writers’ Forum magazine. I got very excited when I dreamed up this competition. I was going to make you all work hard by writing an honest review (good or bad) for House Guests or any of my other books and then drop you in a prize draw. HOWEVER, I then came across this blog post by Molly Greene. It talks about Amazon reviews and, amongst other things, states that Amazon, “do not permit reviews that are posted in exchange for compensation of any kind, including payment (whether in the form of money or gift certificates), bonus content, entry to a contest or sweepstakes, discounts on future purchases, extra product, or other gifts”. The competition I wanted to run would have given entry into a sweepstake in exchange for a review.
So, instead, I am giving you an easy life. Contenders for the Writers’ Forum subscription must subscribe to this blog (there’s a ‘Sign Me Up’ box towards the top right of the screen) AND must also sign up for my newsletter by clicking here. After signing up, look out for confirmation emails (check your spam) that you must click in order to activate the subscriptions.
The newsletter is a ‘work in progress’ and will be a very infrequent affair. All the e-marketing gurus advocate a mailing list, in case other forms of social media disappear as the next ‘big thing’ rolls in. If that happens I would hate to lose contact with you all.
You can earn an extra entry into the draw by sharing this post on either Twitter, Facebook or your own blog. If you do this, please let me know by adding a comment to this blog post, just in case I miss it.
The closing date for the competition is midnight on Tuesday 29th September 2015 (UK time).
Writers’ Forum is a UK monthly writing magazine. It’s full of advice on how to write, what to write and where to sell it. Every issue is packed with information and inspiration. An annual subscription is worth between £38 and £56 depending on where in the world you live. This prize subscription can be sent anywhere in the world.
Now put the kettle on, grab a biscuit and relax with House Guests and Other Stories.
Guilty as Sin by Judith Cutler
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Authors, Books, Lifestyle on September 16, 2015
I first met prolific crime writer, Judith Cutler eighteen months ago at a Disney Laureate event in
Judith Cutler
Birmingham. Since then we’ve kept in touch and I’ve been on the reviewers’ list for her new publications. A few weeks ago I read Guilty as Sin
I asked her about this huge output and how she went about achieving it. This is what she told me:
All my life I’ve worked full-time, for thirty years in the highly challenging world of further education, where there weren’t enough hours in the week to do everything. But even then I had the writing bug, and when it bit hard in my later thirties and forties I managed to scrape together little oases of writing time while still doing my day job.
I gave up full-time teaching at 50 and the only way I could survive financially was to do a variety of other jobs to support my writing addiction – even though I had contracts with two separate publishers and got commissions to write short stories. Gradually I was able to shed the non-writing jobs, but the drive to work at something was still strong.
Nearly twenty years later it still is. The truth is, I suppose that I no longer appreciate the calm of empty hours. Even – especially – in the garden, I get ideas I want to write about. Playing tennis and doing Pilates have given me themes or plots for novels. Church? Plots aplenty there! Voluntary work at the local school? Ballroom dance? Antiques fairs? I’m lucky that I don’t write books about international spies or people living the high life, because I’d have to spend years of research. I simply write about what I know with the magic question, ‘What if?’, always buzzing in my head.
My working day is very flexible, because I’ve got to the age where I must build in regular exercise and regular relaxation times. But I usually produce 1000 – 1500 words a day: much more, and my brain doesn’t work the next day. Like all the writers I know, I start by re-reading the previous day’s efforts, editing as I go. Then I push on. I don’t plan the whole book in detail – I like to explore the situation with my protagonist – but I do need to know the ending. It’s nice to have a title in my head too. The start of a series or a standalone is harder work than the sixth or seventh in a series, because I’ve not yet got to know everything about my characters. Everything? No. They still need to surprise me.
I do work at weekends, but never into the evening, because my head fizzes and I can’t sleep.
I think Judith’s words reinforce a truth that we already know – a LOT of hard work is needed to be a success and a writer is never ‘off duty’.
Guilty as Sin
This book is a gem for fans of cosy crime and those who like solving puzzles. It’s the sixth in Judith’s Lina Townend series but can also be read as a stand-alone novel. However, be warned, it may tempt you to seek out all the rest!
Kindle Direct Publishing Pre-Orders
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Promotion, Self-publishing, Short Story on September 10, 2015
When an author uploads a manuscript to Kindle Direct Publishing, he is given the choice between publishing immediately or making the book available for ‘pre-order’. Making a book available for pre-order means readers can order it up to 90 days in advance of the book’s release date. It will automatically be delivered to customers’ Kindles on the release date and they will be charged on this date.
Why use the pre-order facility?
- All pre-order sales are counted in the launch date sales figures. This gives the book an immediate push up the Amazon rankings because instead of starting at zero sales, the book already has some sales ‘in the bank’.
- Book promotion activities can start before launch date (& even before the book is completed, if you’re brave!), using a link to the Amazon product detail page.
- The Amazon product detail page is ‘live’ before launch date, giving the opportunity to tweak the description, key words etc. prior to launch.
The pre-order facility wasn’t available last time I e-published and I’m experimenting with it this time around.
So, I’m pleased to announce that House Guests and Other Stories is available for pre-order. Order today and it will arrive on your Kindle on Tuesday September 22. You can be one of the first to get your hands on it. As you can see, people are already stopping in the street to gasp in awe at the front cover – such is the book’s popularity!
House Guests and Other Stories is a collection of fifteen short stories, many with a twist and most have appeared in either The Weekly News, My Weekly or People’s Friend. There’s also a couple of competition successes in there plus a special guest story by a prize-winning author!
And that guest author is … Iain Pattison. Iain is a full-time author, creative writing tutor and competition judge. He also writes a very humorous blog. I’ve dropped Iain’s guest story right in the middle of my collection, like the delicious middle in a liqueur chocolate.
So, why not click ‘pre-order‘ and get ready to indulge!
To celebrate the launch of House Guests and Other Stories on September 22nd I will be announcing, on this blog, a competition to win a year’s subscription to Writers’ Forum magazine. So come back then, or use the box on the right to sign-up for email updates.
And I’m also interested to know how anyone else has got on with Amazon pre-orders?
Cover Reveal for ‘House Guests’
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Computers & Technical, Promotion, Resources, Self-publishing on September 5, 2015
Let’s have a drum roll … followed by a few oohs and aahs from the audience. Here it is, the moment you’ve all been waiting for, the cover reveal for my third e-collection of short stories!
Put your hands together for the cover of House Guests and Other Stories!
There are four different ways of obtaining an e-book cover:
- Design and create it yourself. Unless you’re a whizz at graphic design this can be very time-consuming. I give some advice on DIY (based on my own experience) in this guest post for the Writers’ Bureau.
- Use Amazon’s Kindle Cover Creator. This is very easy but the covers can’t be used on other e-book sales platforms and there’s a danger of them looking formulaic. I’ve written about this here.
- Use one of the cover designers on Fiverr.com. All services on Fiverr.com cost $5 plus a 50c processing fee (currently around £3.62). I’ve done this several times.
- Use a ‘proper’ bespoke cover designer. This will probably give you the best result but will also be significantly more expensive than the other options – meaning it will take longer to make a profit from e-books sales.
The cover for House Guests and Other Stories is from pro_ebookcovers, a designer on Fiverr.com. This designer worked differently to the others that I’ve used previously from the site. She asked for links to two e-books on Amazon with cover designs in a similar style to what I wanted (so I looked at short story collections that seemed to be selling well and had covers with a warm and friendly style). Then she asked me to choose a cover image from http://depositphotos.com (or I could’ve supplied my own). I chose something that I felt was vaguely applicable to the title story. The designer then downloaded the image and did the necessary fiddling to get it to the right dimensions and added the lettering.
I felt this way of working made things easier for both parties. I didn’t have to struggle to explain the type of image I wanted and the designer didn’t have to struggle to interpret my brief or spend time finding a suitable picture.
I recommend pro_ebookcovers and will use her again in the future.
So, back to House Guests and Other Stories. It’s a collection of fifteen short stories, many with a twist and most have appeared in either The Weekly News, My Weekly or People’s Friend. There’s also a couple of competition successes in there plus a special guest story by a prize-winning author!
I’ll reveal the guest author in a later post when I launch pre-orders for the book. I’ve never used pre-orders before and I’ve never had a guest author before so it’s exciting – watch this space!
Travel Writing Competition
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Competitions, Non-fiction, Travel on August 23, 2015
I’m just back from a holiday walking in the Yorkshire Dales.
We covered about 100 miles in a week and it was typically British. We saw sheep, cows, rabbits, moles (dead), enjoyed cooked breakfasts in hospitable B&Bs and made a bee-line for tea and cake in any cafes we passed. There was also some British rain.
So, it was rather appropriate that on my return I found an email from Steve Hanson of seniortravelexpert.com announcing their latest travel writing competition. The theme is ‘Travel and Water’.
Steve says, “The theme ‘Travel and Water’ is deliberately wide and we accept fictional as well as factual entries. In our last writing competition – ‘City, Town or Village’ – one of the winning entries was fictional and one of the runners-up was a poem. It is free-to-enter, has a prize of £100, maximum 750 words and closing date December 31st, 2015.”
Ten runners-up will each receive a firstwriter.com voucher worth £10, allowing them to take out a free subscription to firstwriter.com, providing access to details of hundreds of publishers, literary agents, writing competitions and magazines.
So what are you waiting for? Most holidays involve travel and water in one form another. All the competition details are here. Get writing!
Toby’s Room by Pat Barker
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Books on August 5, 2015
Toby’s Room
It generated an interesting discussion on a range of topics.
Toby’s Room
Toby was a papyrus twin. This means his twin died in the womb and as Toby continued to grow he compressed and flattened the dead foetus. So we talked about the effect on a surviving twin when his sibling dies at or before birth. One of our group surprised us by revealing that she was a twin and her sister was stillborn. Throughout her life she has always felt something was missing and she’s also felt guilty that she may have caused the death of her sister by ‘stealing all the goodness’ in the womb. She remembers in her childhood this being said aloud in her presence.
Many of the characters in Toby’s Room
We also talked about a scene in the book where Toby’s uniform is sent home in a parcel. When it is opened the smell of the battlefield fills the nostrils. It’s difficult to imagine the terrible emotions this would evoke in a family.
In our group the book got a mostly positive response. We thought the first half was particularly good and enthralling. The second half seemed to be dragged out a little and some thought the ending was too sudden. The reader does find out what happened to Toby – but I won’t spoil it by telling you!
We all agreed that we had learned something new about World War I from the book and that it had definitely been worth reading. If you’re in a book group, Toby’s Room
And if you’re thinking of writing rather than reading a novel, you might be interested in this Online Novel Writing Master Class with Bonus Manuscript Critique for £29 from Amazon Local.
Free E-Book: Pete’s Story from The Museum of Fractured Lives
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Promotion, Self-publishing on July 25, 2015
It seems like ages since I did a free offer on one of my Kindle books and I don’t think Pete’s Story has ever been free before. 
So here is a rare opportunity for you to get something for nothing from me!
Most of you will be familiar with the concept of The Museum of Fractured Lives. It displays objects donated by people who have suffered a trauma in their lives and each novella in the series tells the story behind one of the objects.
Pete donates a cassette tape to the Museum but he needs some persuading to tell its story. He hides behind dark glasses, fearful of his true identity being revealed. Eventually, he tells how he fell in love with Sarah almost thirty years ago when he was twenty-one. At the time he was singing in a band and living in a bedsit. Sarah was eighteen and had just left school. They planned their life together. Sarah would manage the band and it would become a worldwide success. But the couple’s future goes awry.
Pete’s Story is a ‘flash’ novella of approximately 9,000 words and you can get it by clicking here. It’s free for the next five days, until 29th July 2015.
Enjoy! (and if you do, I’d really appreciate a review on Amazon!)
Blurb Poll – The Results
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Books, Promotion, Self-publishing on July 16, 2015
Many thanks to all of you who took the time to vote and/or comment on the possible blurbs for my novel.
The poll winner, taking 50% of the votes, was the second blurb, ‘Single incidents shape our lives’. But Hilary Custance Green wisely pointed out that the shout-line was a little preachy. She suggested ‘The Butterfly Effect’ instead, which I think is much better too.
In second place was the final blurb, ‘Opposites attract’. This attracted 42% of the votes, including Anne Harvey who beta-read an early version of the manuscript – does that give her opinion more weight?
Last was, ‘Nature or nurture’ which gained only 8% of the vote. But one of supporters of this one was Julia Thorley, who used to write blurbs for non-fiction titles in her role as an editor – so perhaps it shouldn’t be ruled out completely?
Which blurb will I go with?
My personal favourite is the blurb that topped the poll, especially with its new ‘Butterfly Effect’ shout-line. I’m pleased it won. When I did this voting exercise with the three members of my immediate family, none of them chose it. That made me think I may be out of tune with what attracts readers, hence the reason I did the poll.
I have learnt that opinions on blurbs are very subjective. No blurb will attract every reader, so going with the poll majority may be the best thing to do.
Thanks again to everyone who voted and here’s the winner again:
The Butterfly Effect
A stupid mistake ended Ian’s marriage. Now he’s trying to put it right.
Sandra got pregnant as a teenager. Now she’s fighting to make a good life for her daughter.
Maxine made an important decision behind her boyfriend’s back. His reaction devastates all their lives…
Bedsit Three is a tale of mystery and romance. It won the inaugural Ian Govan Award and was shortlisted for both the Silverwood-Kobo-Berforts Open Day Competition and the Writing Magazine/McCrit Competition.
How to Write a Novel Blurb
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Books, Promotion, Self-publishing on July 9, 2015
I’ve been playing around trying to write a blurb for my novel. The blurb is that important paragraph or two which appears on the book’s back cover and may also form part of the Amazon product description. It has to hook, entice and leave readers with absolutely no option but to buy the book!
Searching the internet for help brings up lots of tips and information.
- The website Blurb concludes that it should introduce the main character, create intrigue and not give away the whole story.
- SilverWood Books adds some more pointers. Write in the present tense, use evocative, emotive words and have a ‘shout line’ that encapsulates the novel and could act as a subtitle for the blurb.
- Digital Book World says the blurb should be short and dramatic.
- Alison Baverstock on the Writers and Artists website says, “Stand back and hover above; try to create mood, feeling and value for what you have written, rather than describing it in endless detail.”
I’ve come up with three possible blurbs but I’m too close to the book to judge them objectively. So, I’d be most grateful for any comments and/or votes in the poll below.
Here are the blurbs, subtitled with their ‘shout line’:
Nature or nurture?
Ignatius is the product of a domineering mother. Ian hardly knew his father. Sandra is a single mum living on the poverty line. They all want a better life and someone to share it with.
But now one of them has done something very bad for the second time…
Bedsit Three is a tale of mystery and romance. It won the inaugural Ian Govan Award and was shortlisted for both the Silverwood-Kobo-Berforts Open Day Competition and the Writing Magazine/McCrit Competition.
Single incidents shape our lives.
A stupid mistake ended Ian’s marriage. Now he’s trying to put it right.
Sandra got pregnant as a teenager. Now she’s fighting to make a good life for her daughter.
Maxine made an important decision behind her boyfriend’s back. His reaction devastates all their lives…
Bedsit Three is a tale of mystery and romance. It won the inaugural Ian Govan Award and was shortlisted for both the Silverwood-Kobo-Berforts Open Day Competition and the Writing Magazine/McCrit Competition.
Opposites attract.
Divorced Ian is middleclass and educated. Single mum Sandra has no qualifications and lives on the breadline. Both will fight for the very best for their offspring. Both would like someone special back in their lives.
But the ex-tenant of bedsit three has a secret waiting to engulf all three of them…
Bedsit Three is a tale of mystery and romance. It won the inaugural Ian Govan Award and was shortlisted for both the Silverwood-Kobo-Berforts Open Day Competition and the Writing Magazine/McCrit Competition.
Sally Jenkins 