First Impressions Critique Service & The Writers’ Coffee Shop
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Markets, Resources, Successes on June 11, 2013
Firstly, I’ve had some extremely positive feedback from Dorinda Cass on her short story critique, which I supplied as a prize a week ago on this blog.
She told me, “Your critique was helpful and insightful. I have no qualms in recommending your critique service to others.”
Therefore I am pleased to announce that the First Impressions Critique Service is now open for business.
The cost is £10.00 for a critique of a story or piece of non-fiction up to 2,000 words in length. Full details of what’s included can be found on my First Impressions Critique Service page. Why not pop over and have a look?
Secondly, The Writer’s Coffee Shop is currently open for submissions. This is an independent publisher based in New South Wales in Australia and it is also the publisher that first released Fifty Shades of Grey as e-books and print-on-demand paperbacks. I thought that EL James had initially self-published the e-books but according to her website, this was not the case.
The Writer’s Coffee Shop is currently looking for stories between 20,000 and 30,000 words (a good stepping stone from short story to novel?). The stories must fall into the genres of either romance or erotica. Stories can be emailed and full details are here.
Finally, I’ve had a couple of nice surprises in the past week. I was shortlisted in the Writers’ News ‘Pride and Prejudice’ Short Story Competition – I was pleased about this since I’d gone to the trouble of reading the book (for the first time) especially so that I could enter the competition.
And today I heard that I’d won a £25 Tesco gift card for leaving a comment on Hire Bloggers Facebook page. Hire Bloggers is a new undertaking that aims to match bloggers to businesses for paid work. Wouldn’t it be nice to earn money from blogging?
Sister by Rosamund Lupton (plus critique winner!)
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Authors, Books on June 4, 2013
If you’re looking for a page-turner of a book, can I recommend Sister by Rosamund Lupton? 
It’s a psychological thriller with an unusual structure and an absolutely un-guessable ending – the sort of ending that made me want to go back to the beginning of the book and check that I hadn’t missed any obvious clues.
The story in a nutshell:
Beatrice’s younger sister, Tess, goes missing. The two of them have been incredibly close since childhood and Beatrice abandons her job in the U.S. to fly home to England to find out what has happened to her sister. The police make assumptions without proper investigation and close the case too quickly for Beatrice’s liking. But she carries on delving into her sister’s life, discovering things that she never knew and, finally, stumbling on something terrible.
There is one of those ‘Author Q and A’ sections at the end of the book and part of it deals with how Lupton developed her realistic characters. She says, “Before the last draft, I changed the central characters’ names and then read it again, as if meeting them for the first time to see if they seemed real.”
Sounds like a good tip for all of us!
And talking of tips, I hope I’m going to be able to give some to Dorinda Cass, the winner in my draw for a free critique. Dorinda lives in North Yorkshire and has a degree in Creative Writing. She is currently two-thirds of the way through a novel (well done, Dorinda!) and enjoys short story writing as well. Dorinda will be acting as a ‘guinea-pig’ for my planned critique service.
Jordanna East and Blood Read Press
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Authors, Books, Promotion, Self-publishing on May 14, 2013
Today I’d like to introduce you to psychological thriller writer, Jordanna East. 
Her first book, Blood in the Past, is scheduled for release on June 19, 2013. Blood in the Past is the prelude novella to her debut Blood for Blood Series, which follows three lives entwined by deaths and consequences, revenge and obsession.
Like so many of us, Jordanna is publishing independently and I’ve invited her to guest on my blog because I like her marketing strategy. It started way before she had a book ready for sale. I’ll let Jordanna explain in her own words:
As an Indie Author, it’s kind of hard not to want to climb to the top of the tallest building in your city and scream “Take me seriously!” until your throat is raw. Self-published works are rapidly gaining ground, don’t get me wrong, but there are still some stubbornly ignorant people out there. These same people are the ones who will turn their noses up at your books. They won’t oblige you when you approach them for a review. And they’ll damn near laugh you out on your ass when you ask them to carry your book in their little bookstore. So what’s an author to do? Obviously, you want to write the best story you can. Of course, you want to hire a professional freelancer to create your cover art. And you most definitely—and I can’t stress this enough—want to hire a PROFESSIONAL EDITOR.
But these bullet points are pretty well known now, aren’t they? What if I told you there was something else you could do? There is. You can create your own publishing label. I did. I came up with Blood Read Press (pronounced Blood Red Press) last October. And it was so simple. I registered the name of the business with my county and state. I got myself a business checking account. And now, when a reader peruses Amazon, or some other retailer, they’ll see that Blood in the Past, the prelude novella to my upcoming series, has been released by Blood Read Press. It looks worlds better than the publisher being listed as Amazon. Or CreateSpace. It looks PROFESSIONAL. When I offer the book to a reviewer, they’ll take me seriously as well. So will bookstore owners. And that’s what this is about. Appearing (and actually being) professional so that the people out there with your career in their hands take you seriously.
Take a look at Jordanna’s website (scroll down her pages to see everything) and see how she’s branding both herself and her books in the build up to the launch date. In this way she is already creating an audience curious to buy and read her books.
Her website has a facility for interested people to sign up to her mailing list, in order to receive advance notification of book release dates. I’ve just joined it so that I don’t forget to have a look at her book on Amazon on launch day.
And, just to wet your appetite, here’s Jordanna’s book blurb:
The Blood in the Past.
Jillian Atford falls for an older man, a handsome Philadelphia cop, he’s married, a reality Jillian refuses to accept.
Lyla Kyle finds her mother dead on the floor from an apparent suicide. She blames her philandering father and wastes no time taking her revenge.
Detective Jason Brighthouse Sr. is in the wrong place at the right time to attempt to save a colleague from his burning home. When neither of them make it out alive, his teenage son can only harp on their last argument. He shoots himself in the head…with his father’s gun.
Three lives. Three deaths. One story. To understand the future, you must visit the past.
The Blood in the Past.
Haiku on Mars and (Mildly) Erotic Poetry
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Competitions, Poetry on May 7, 2013
Two things caught my eye in the world of poetry this week:
Firstly, NASA is asking for Haiku to make a trip to the planet Mars. This is a real opportunity to get your poetry to a wider audience!
The spacecraft will launch in November to study the atmosphere on Mars. Three poets will have their haiku put on a DVD that will be placed in the craft. Everyone else that submits a haiku for inclusion will get their name included on the DVD.
“The Going to Mars campaign offers people worldwide a way to make a personal connection to space, space exploration and science in general, and share in our excitement about the MAVEN mission,” said Stephanie Renfrow, lead for the MAVEN Education and Public Outreach program at University of Colorado, Boulder’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics.
There is no entry fee (and no prize other than the honour of sending your work to Mars). Entrants must be 18 or over and all Haiku must be written in English. The deadline for submissions is 1st July 2013. From the 15th of July the public will vote for the three Haiku that will go off to the red planet. The winner will be announced on August 8th 2013.
Full details are available here.
Thanks to Nick Daws for bringing this opportunity to my attention.
Secondly, The Emma Press is now open to submissions for ‘The Emma Press Anthology of (Mildly) Erotic Verse’. This got my attention because I went to a workshop last week on writing erotic e-books. It was quite an eye-opener when we were told about the various different sub-genres in the market – or maybe I’ve just led a sheltered life!
But The Emma Press isn’t looking for anything explicit or hard-core. They say, “The erotic element of the poems can be as apparent or barely-there as you like, but the writing has got to tick all the boxes: metre, pace, form and language.”
It is envisaged that 15 poets will be included in the book and there will be a £25 advance for each poet.
Up to four poems can be submitted and there is no entry fee. But be quick – the deadline is 17th May 2013.
Full details are here.
Turning to Crime
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Competitions, Short Story on April 23, 2013
Recently, I’ve been turning my hand to crime-writing – inspired by some of the competitions mentioned on Helen’s blog.
I’ve sent my entry into the M.R. Hall competition (by email after the on-line form kept insisting that my entry was longer than the required 2,000 characters, but I think that glitch is fixed now).
My entry for the Cremona Hotel competition has been drafted – but will no doubt need a generous dose of spit and polish before it’s ready to go on its way.
Now I’m turning my mind to brainstorming ideas for the GKBC competition (stands for Giving Kudos to Brilliant Content) and after that there’s the ‘Win a Book’ competition in the May issue of Writing Magazine (write 250 words in which someone pulls a gun on a bank cashier).
Alongside this, and to get me into the mind-set of a crime writer, I’ve been reading Crime in the City – the Official Crime Writers’ Association Anthology 2003. I’ve just looked on Amazon and only second-hand copies are available now – so maybe I’ve got a rarity here!
Like all good stories, these tales are character-led and usually contain no great detail about the mechanics of the crime involved or the police procedures used in solving it. The latter often puts people (including me) off penning crime fiction for fear of getting the investigative procedures wrong, so short stories could be a good starting point.
The best way of finding out about police procedure is to make friends with a policeman but failing that, there are resources available on the internet. After a quick trawl I’ve found:
- Crime and Clues – the Art and Science of Criminal Investigation
- Writers Write – this page lists several websites that might interest crime writers
- Writing.ie -Really Useful Links for Crime Writers
Or if you want some advice from the professionals (and have £99 to spare) why not book a place on Creative Thursday at the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Festival.
Now, time to decide how my next victim’s going to die …
Reviewing ‘Indie’ E-books and Goodreads
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Self-publishing on April 16, 2013
Since starting my own adventures in e-publishing I’ve started reading more self-published e-books. I’ve been doing this for two reasons:
- I want to see what types of thing people are publishing
- I want to support other writers in the same way that I’ve been supported
Taking the second point – the best way to support self-published authors is to give them a review. It doesn’t have to be a full-on 5 star rave about the book – just a few words to show that the book has been read and enjoyed (if you have enjoyed it, obviously).
A while ago I read and reviewed something which I enjoyed. The book had held my attention from beginning to end and I looked forward to picking up again each night (I generally only read at bedtime). There were some formatting errors in the text but they didn’t spoil my enjoyment of the narrative. So, when I left my review I didn’t mention these errors, I concentrated on the book’s literary content.
Now a comment has been added to my review, indicating that I should have pointed out the formatting problems and downgraded my star rating accordingly.
My first reaction to this was anger that someone had dared to criticise my opinion and I had to restrain myself from commenting back and thus getting into a public argument.
Now that I’ve had chance to calm down and think about it, I realise that I was probably wrong not to mention the formatting issues. However, my review was the first one for that book and I didn’t want to give it the kiss of death – but I did want to leave a comment to say that I’d enjoyed it.
What would you have done?
I’ve recently tried another book and found it contains several punctuation mistakes. So, I’m not going to leave a review at all, regardless of the quality of the story, because I don’t want to get a reputation for dishonest reviews.
I’ve learned a lesson from all this – ‘Look Inside’ or download a sample of the book before buying to ensure that formatting, punctuation etc. is up to scratch.
Talking of books and reviews, My two short story anthologies and I are now enrolled in Goodreads. You can see us here.
Any tips on getting the most out of Goodreads, either as an author or a reader, would be gratefully received.
Lancashire Authors’ Association Flash Fiction Competition, Guest Posts & Royalties
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Competitions, Self-publishing on April 9, 2013
Firstly, the Lancashire Authors’ Association has been in touch to tell me that they are holding another Flash Fiction Competition.
The winning entry will receive £250. Stories must be exactly 100 words, excluding the title.
Entry fee is £2 (or £1 if you happen to be a member of the Lancashire Authors’ Association) and entries can be submitted by post or email up to the closing date of June 30th 2013.
Rules are available here along with last year’s winning 100 word story.
Secondly, I’ve been getting around a bit recently in conjunction with my current obsession with e-publishing. You may have noticed me:
- On Womag’s blog describing how e-publishing is easier than you might think
- On the Writers’ Bureau blog talking about e-book covers
- On Nick Daws blog where I looked at the options when an e-book isn’t selling. I won this appearance on Nick’s blog via his blogging competition which I told you about a few weeks ago and the other part of my prize was a copy of his e-course Blogging for Writers.
Thirdly, I’ve received my very first Amazon royalty payment – 31p! It covers the US site for the last few days of January after the launch of One Day for Me. I was a bit surprised because I thought nothing was paid out until the royalties amounted to $10. Consequently, I haven’t yet got my US tax exemption sorted out – so they’ve taken 13p in tax, otherwise I would’ve had 44p! Take note, e-publishing is not a get rich quick scheme!
Sally Jenkins 