Old Friends – 13 Coffee Break Stories
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Books, Promotion, Self-publishing, Successes on February 24, 2013
Coffee, cake and a chance to unwind for a few minutes with an absorbing story – who can say no?
So choose your favourite caffeine fix – latte, cappuccino, mocha ….
And which cake do you fancy? Lemon drizzle, chocolate fudge or fruit cake?
If you’re sitting comfortably, then I’ll begin.
Or I would if this was a ‘real’ instead of a virtual book launch. Then I could have the pleasure of meeting you all in the flesh and thanking you for all the support and positive comments about my first e-anthology. Plus I could read you one or two stories from the newly released Old Friends.
Instead I’ll just tell you about my second book and then you can visit Amazon and ‘Look Inside’ or download the sample to get a real flavour of it…
Old Friends contains 13 short stories that have previously appeared in My Weekly, People’s Friend and The Weekly News. I’ve included tales with a twist, stories about the ups and downs of family life plus, of course, a little romance.
I hope this collection will bring a little escapism to your coffee break!
It’s available from Amazon.UK and Amazon.COM at the introductory price of 77p/$1.19.
Or find it on all other Amazon sites by searching for ASIN B00BJIKIBI.
I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed putting it together.
And the winner is …
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Competitions on February 18, 2013
There were 20 entries for the See Jane Write prize draw.
I asked this random number generator to pick a random number between 1 and 20.
It chose 20.
So the winner of the paperback copy of See Jane Write is Susannah Harrison!
Susannah says that her most notable achievement to date is winning the Reader’s Digest 100 word story competition last year – and that’s quite an achievement, I would say!
Congratulations to Susannah, and thanks to all of you who entered.
Two Competitions
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Competitions, Poetry, Short Story on February 14, 2013
Brian David has been in touch and asked me to tell you about the latest CheerReader short story competition.
First prize is 100 Euros. The winning story plus runners-up will be published on the CheerReader website.
1500 words maximum and the theme is ‘anything you like so long as it makes us laugh’.
Closing date is 31st March 2013 and there is an entry fee of 5 Euros.
The full rules are here and previous winning entries can be read here – and I’ve just noticed that Julia Thorley, who follows this blog, was ‘commended’ in the last CheerReader competition. Well done, Julia!
So, if you can write humour, pick up your pens now!
And here is a free competition for poets. The Jane Martin Poetry Prize is organised by Girton College, Cambridge.
First prize is £1000 plus ‘the opportunity to give a reading at a high-profile poetry event at which the prize will be awarded’.
Closing date is 15th March 2013. Entrants must be over 18 and live in the UK. Full details are here.
Also – don’t forget you’ve got until Sunday to enter my prize draw to win a copy of See Jane Write.
Book Giveaway – See Jane Write
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Competitions, Resources on February 10, 2013
I have a paperback copy of See Jane Write : A Girl’s Guide to Writing Chick Lit by Sarah Mlynowski and Farrin Jacobs, to give away.
Cover via Amazon
This is a very easy to read book from the US, and ideal if Chick Lit is your genre, or a genre you’d like to know more about. If you’d like to win this wonderful prize, all you have to do is leave a comment on this post indicating that you want to be put in the draw. You have until midnight on Saturday 16th February 2013. One comment will be chosen at random (so you don’t have to be witty or clever – but if you can be, all the more entertaining for the rest of us!). When I have made contact with the winner, I will announce her/his name on this blog.
BUT this is a competition for my email subscribers only. So, if you don’t already receive my blog posts via email, just stick your email address in the box on the right and follow the activation instructions in the email that you receive – then you can take part in the competition.
Sorry – prize can be sent to UK postal addresses only.
Good Luck!
Morning Pages
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Books, Resources, Writing, Writing Exercises on February 6, 2013
Do any of you do morning pages? By this I mean: write longhand immediately on waking each morning.
The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity (Photo: Wikipedia)
Julia Cameron advocates this in her book The Artists’s Way. I haven’t read the book but heard about it from someone who has done morning pages for many years. This lady scribbles down everything that is going on in her head, things she has to do that day, negative thoughts about whatever is going on in her life etc. She finds it clears her brain and enables her to start the day in a better frame of mind. Sometimes it produces something that can be used in a story or elsewhere.
I know that other people get up early to work on their novel or another project, either because it’s the only way they can make time in their day to write or because they just enjoy the quiet at dawn before the rest of the family erupts into activity.
Up until now I’ve lacked the willpower to set the alarm any earlier than absolutely necessary, just to write. But my husband has changed his job and needs to be at work by 7:30 am – forcing us to set the alarm for 6:00 am, and therefore giving me the opportunity to try morning pages.
So I’ve been writing for 25 minutes each day before getting up (with a cup of tea brought to me!).
I decided that I wanted something positive to show for this time so I’m drafting a longer piece than I normally write. I never read back more than a sentence of what I wrote the previous day and I don’t edit anything. I don’t pause to think of the right words, I’m just trying to get the flow of the story down on paper.
It’s a positive experience because I get up knowing that I’ve already ‘achieved’ something and the number of completed A4 pages is growing.
Does anyone else do this – or, as Julia Cameron envisaged, do you write about whatever is on your mind?
There’s no right or wrong in this. Different things work for different people.
“This is not love …”
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Competitions, Short Story, Successes on January 30, 2013
I hope no-one else had a bad head after the launch party. I knew I shouldn’t have finished that last bottle of Champagne after every one had gone. And I feel like celebrating all over again now because someone’s given me a really nice review on Amazon.
Anyway, basking in past glories won’t get the next book done. So how about a tight deadline to get the creative juices flowing?
Litro are running a free flash fiction competition. They want up to 1000 words from the prompt, “This is not love …”.
Entries should not have been previously published anywhere and the closing date is 7th Feb 2013 (entry is on-line). The winner will be announced on 14th February.
The winner and the two runners-up will have their stories published on the Litro website and the overall winner will receive three beautiful Clothbound Classics editions of Alice in Wonderland, Hard Times and Bleak House, supplied by Penguin.
Full details are here.
You’ve got 7 days – go for it!
One Day For Me – Book Launch Party
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Books, Events, Promotion, Self-publishing, Successes on January 27, 2013
Welcome!
Please grab a glass of Champagne and a smoked salmon canape from the waiter. You’re just in time for my launch speech.
It’s great to see so many of you here today – thank you for sparing the time to come along. There will be chocolate profiteroles and cream when I’ve finished speaking – so I’ll keep it short!
One Day For Me contains some of my writing successes from recent years – eight stories that have either won or been shortlisted in UK national writing competitions. The subject matter and characters are varied and include Wallis Simpson, an abused wife, a young girl making money from lost property and a pro-athlete struggling with the demands of her career.
I’m proud of these stories and I’d like to share them with you.
Of course, I didn’t work in isolation. I want to say a big thank you to my writing buddy, Helen Yendall , who read many of these stories when they were still a work in progress.
I also want to thank Marilyn Rodwell of the Birmingham RNA and our anonymous erotic writer member, who between them organised an inspiring workshop on e-publishing – without which I would never have got this project off the ground.
Finally, I would like to say a huge thank you to all the followers of this blog who took the time to comment on my original cover design. I learned a lot from you all (which I will summarise in another post) – and I hope you agree with me that the finished cover is a vast improvement!
I now declare One Day For Me launched!
It is available on Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com. Look out for it on Smashwords and other platforms later in the year.
Now the waiters will circulate with the profiteroles – enjoy!
Getting to Grips with E-Publishing 2
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Computers & Technical, Self-publishing on January 20, 2013
I’m making progress on my e-publishing project – it’s an anthology of 8 short stories that have either won or been shortlisted in UK writing competitions.
The text has been formatted, uploaded to Amazon and checked in their ‘Preview’ function.
But producing the cover has been a battle (see the image on the right – I’m not sure the font is clear enough – what do you think?).
In the end I’ve created the simplest of images by taking a free photo from Stock Free Images (in return for this credit at the front of the book – © Vojsek | Stock Free Images & Dreamstime Stock Photos) and used GIMP software (free to download) to add the book title and my name. If anyone else is thinking of doing this, be warned that GIMP is not easy to use – I spent much time searching for help elsewhere on the internet. But it’s probably like anything else, the more you do it, the easier it gets. I’ve listed some of the links I used at the end of this post.
Now I need to decide on the pricing structure. Do I sell it cheap or dear?
If I price the book between 75p and £1.49 then I get 35% royalties, if I price higher than £1.49 then I get 70% royalties. So, by my calculations, pricing at £1.50 would earn me £1.05 per book and pricing at 75p would earn me around 27p per book.
Do you think if I go cheap I will sell four times as many books – or am I merely devaluing the writing?
Links to Gimp Tutorials
Re-sizing and stretching the image
A Blogging Competition to win £1,000
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Competitions, Non-fiction on January 15, 2013
Apologies to those of you who, like me, have your blogs registered with the Mumsnet Bloggers Network – because you’ve probably already seen this competition, but for those of you not in the know:
Moneysupermarket.com is running a blogging competition with a prize of £1,000. All you have to do is create a blog post about your dream holiday and include costings (excluding flights) – but keep the total cost under £1,000. Include a picture of your destination too. Mention the competition in your post and then email your entry to competitions@moneysupermarket.com. Closing date is 28th January 2013. Before you start have a look at the full details here.
And if you’re interested in registering your blog with Mumsnet have a look here. Basically, it’s a way of telling more people that your blog exists – and you don’t have to be a mum to join.
Sally Jenkins 