Archive for category Books
Mr Two Bomb by William Coles
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Books on December 31, 2016
If you read only one book in 2017 then let it be Mr Two Bomb by William Coles. I guarantee it will stay in your mind for a long time to come. 
This novel is based on the true story of one of the twelve people who survived both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs. Having survived the first bomb, the main character (the story is told in the first person and I don’t think he’s given a name) catches the last train back to his home, wife and child in Nagasaki and arrives 90 minutes before the next atomic bomb explodes.
There is much description of the terrible injuries and deaths inflicted by these bombs and there is no way this book can be described as ‘enjoyable’. However, if, like me, you were vaguely aware that America dropped these bombs on Japan but know little else about their impact, this book will be an education for you.
Running through the book is the question of whether the main character was blessed to have survived these two bombs or cursed to have been in the vicinity of both. This is a great example of a novel where the main character goes ‘on a journey’ and emerges as a slightly different person at the end.
Above all, I felt Mr Two Bomb was life-affirming – and I think there’s a case for it being required reading in secondary schools.
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?
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!
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!
Notes From A Big Country by Bill Bryson
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Authors, Books, Non-fiction, Travel on July 14, 2016
If you want to learn the art of writing humour based on everyday life, this is the book to read.
It’s also the first book by Bill Bryson that I’ve ever read. It came into my hands not through choice but because members of the library reading group that I coordinate requested something by Bill Bryson.
Notes from a Big Country is a collection of Bill’s columns about life in America that appeared in the Mail on Sunday‘s Night & Day Magazine in the late 90s. Despite being twenty years old the topics addressed are still interesting today, things such as the death penalty, Americans driving everywhere instead of walking, the devastating effect of a skunk spraying in your home, the history of diners (they came in prefabricated kits on the back of lorries) and how low key Christmas is in the US compared to here.
Bill Bryson has a wonderful turn of phrase and this quote made me smile in particular: My father, who like all dads sometimes seemed to be practising for a world’s most boring man competition.
I read the book straight through from start to finish because of our looming reading group meeting but I would advise others to dip in and out so that each column can be savoured like a favourite chocolate.
I had another American connection this week when I was congratulated on Twitter for my article in the Washington Post. Unfortunately I had to be honest and admit to never having written for the Washington Post and explain that the article was probably written by my doppelganger, the US sports writer Sally Jenkins. This is the second time I’ve been mistaken for my more famous counterpart. A couple of years ago I was contacted by someone who wanted help with their autobiography following ‘my’ success ghosting Lance Armstong’s It’s Not About the Bike. Perhaps one day the US Sally Jenkins will be mistaken for me!
The Phoenix Project: A Novel About IT, DevOps and Helping Your Business Win
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Books, Computers & Technical, Non-fiction on July 7, 2016
If (like me) you work in IT Operations for a largish organisation then you’ll find this novel interesting. If you don’t then you probably won’t.
A lot of IT Operations work is fire-fighting. Things go wrong, the users of the software that’s failed jump up and down and shout, then (hopefully) IT Operations fix the problem and everything goes back to the status quo. The things that go wrong are classified according to their impact on the business. For example a ‘P1’ might be a major failing in the software that allows customers to place orders on the internet – no orders means no profit for the business and this issue would receive the highest priority. In contrast a bug found on a little-used report would receive the lowest priority, perhaps ‘P5’.
The Phoenix Project opens with Bill (who is newly promoted) facing a ‘P1’ issue in the payroll software. He has to find a way of making sure people still get paid and thus avert a labour force walk-out. The stress that Bill is under leaps from the page and, if you’ve ever had to sort out major software problems as part of your job, your heart will increase, you will start sweating and you will empathise fervently with what Bill’s going through.
But the clever thing about The Phoenix Project is that it’s a novel-cum-textbook, so readers learn something too. It is written by three advocates of the DevOps movement (if you’re not in IT don’t worry about that term) and takes the reader on a journey with Bill as he improves the IT landscape for his organisation. It explains the thought processes and practice behind encouraging software developers to work more closely with IT operations colleagues in order to streamline the implementation and testing of new programs.
WARNING: This book should not be taken on holiday or read at bedtime because it will increase not decrease your stress levels.
To 99.9% of you this book will sound deadly boring. But it is a bestseller in its genre. At the time of writing it is #4,052 in the whole UK Paid Kindle Store, out of the four million plus Kindle e-books available. I’m not aware of any marketing for this book – it seems to be all word of mouth from colleague to colleague.
We’re always told to write what we know and to utilise our everyday experiences and working lives. But I’ve always shied away from stories set in computer departments (apart from one Christmas story published by My Weekly last year) because most people would find them tedious. However, The Phoenix Project shows that, with some clever thinking, it is possible to turn the mundane into a successful book.
I wish I’d thought of it first!
Dianne Noble – From Rejection to Success
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Authors, Books, Events on March 21, 2016
Most writers get used to rejection early in their careers. The trick is to have a little cry, eat some chocolate, take on board any constructive criticism offered and then get back to the business of writing. And it always helps to know that you are not the only one being constantly kicked in the teeth.
I first met Dianne Noble on a weekend novel writing course in 2013 and then again at Swanwick a couple of years ago. Dianne’s first novel, Outcast, 
was published last week by Tirgearr Publishing and she’s kindly agreed to share her rocky journey to publication:
It started with a journal.
I’d been doing voluntary work in India for several months, teaching English to street children in Kolkata and keeping a diary. My experiences seemed to be a good basis for a novel. Alas! Agents and publishing houses alike thought differently and 32 rejections later I stopped submitting, sat back and licked my wounds.
The painful truth was that my writing was just not good enough. After nursing my bruised ego for several months I started another book, based in India but with a different story. This time I took it in, chapter by chapter, to each of two writing groups I had joined. Their critique was merciless and I often felt like abandoning the whole idea. Why did I think I could write? What made me think I could be a published author? However, bit by painful bit, my work was pulled into shape and I felt ready to start the submission process again.
I trawled through the Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook highlighting a) agents and b) publishing houses who not only handled contemporary women’s fiction but also accepted unsolicited manuscripts. I found them to be thin on the ground!
The plan was to have three submissions out at any one time and as each rejection was received, submit one more. This didn’t always prove to be viable as response times varied dramatically.
Conville & Walsh refused me in 17 days, Curtis Brown took 5 weeks, Aitken Alexander 8 weeks. Some were many months in responding, others didn’t reply at all.
It’s hard not to take rejections personally, to feel that you are deluding yourself that you can write, but all you can do is plough on and hope. One morning I opened an email from Tirgearr Publishing with the usual sinking heart, without noticing there was an attachment. A contract. How many times I read this before I could believe that someone liked my novel!
This small, independent publishing house requests the complete manuscript and guarantees an answer within 4 weeks and this is exactly what they delivered. Once I had signed the contract I was fully prepared for them demanding radical changes to my book but they accepted it as it was, other than a small amount of editing for grammar, punctuation and the occasional anomaly i.e. he had dark hair in Chapter 1 and by Chapter 12 he’s gone bald! Art work for the cover was organised in house, a website was set up linked to Tirgearr and the book was released on March 16th 2016.
The most important thing for any author, in my view, is to join a writing group. Not a cosy one where gossip is exchanged over coffee and cake but a tough one. A group who will critique, pull your writing to pieces, maybe reduce you to tears. Then, when your novel is as good as you can possibly make it, start submitting. Again and again and again. You’ll get there.
Good advice from Dianne. Her success has been hard won and well-deserved. Outcast is already sitting on my Kindle and I’m looking forward to reading it.
Find out more about Dianne and her itinerant life on her website and why not take a look inside Outcast?
After the Crash by Michel Bussi
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Books on February 16, 2016
After the Crash is a mystery/thriller set around the events following a plane crash. 
All the passengers have been killed apart from a three-month-old baby girl. BUT there were two babies on the plane and relatives from both families step forward to claim her. It is 1980 and therefore DNA can’t be used to prove the identity of the child.
The book is the story of the private detective hired by the richer of the two families to prove the identity of the baby.
I read the book with my ‘author’ hat on and tried to judge why it was a bestseller. The following points grabbed me:
- The reader is sucked straight into the mystery. I turned the pages because I wanted to know who the baby belonged to – this is the benefit of setting up a clear dilemma at the beginning of the book to grab the reader.
- The action is fast moving. It takes place over a couple days following the baby’s 18th birthday but is interspersed with extracts from the private detective’s notebook. The present day ‘urgent’ action is mixed with slower, long term events from the past.
- It appeals to both sexes (my husband passed it on to me). It’s written from a male point of view but there’s a hint of romance in there.
The title of the book, After the Crash, is very explanatory but I did wonder why the publisher had decided not to go along with the current trend of using the word ‘Girl’ – think of Gone Girl, Girl on the Train, Girl Number One (an indie published bestseller) etc. ‘Girl with no Name’ would have been a very appropriate title.
Has anybody else read this book? What did you think?
One Writer’s Journey
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Authors, Books, Resources, Self-publishing on January 18, 2016
Every writer’s journey is different. Author Steve Wand is my guest today and he shares his path from adversity to publication, including resources he found useful. In the last paragraph he offers sensible and motivating advice – take it and you’ll immediately appear more professional.
Over to Steve:
Robert Schuller once said ‘good things are often birthed from adversity’. 
This was the case with me when recurrence of my old spectre epilepsy resulted in me losing my job and driving licence. The event placed me at one of life’s crossroads forcing me to re-evaluate my options. A love of writing led me to consider proofreading and, upon completion of nine-month’s professional training, I formed Steve Wand Editorial, allowing me to work from home, providing editorial services. I was also able to resurrect an unfinished fiction project and, in October last year, I set out to complete what I’d begun in 2004.
Along with self-doubt as a writer, one reason I’d consigned the completed first draft of my novel – a children’s fantasy adventure – to the drawer was my frustration with the story’s clumsy opening. I’d no idea how to remedy this and allowed myself to become disheartened. I now had opportunity to re-assess the work. My ‘eureka moment’ was when I chose to cull the first four chapters and start the tale at the point where things become interesting. But what of the missing backstory? How could I include this without relying on hefty paragraphs of narration? Using the ‘show rather than tell’ rule I selected elements crucial to the tale and worked them into dialogue. For example, two scrapped chapters illustrating the protagonist’s school bully problem were replaced by eight lines of verbal interaction.
Solving the tricky opening gave me confidence and motivated me to redraft The Door to Caellfyon with a view to self-publishing it on CreateSpace and Kindle. 
At this point my editorial training became invaluable, I knew the role outstanding book covers play in achieving sales so I elected to proofread the final copy myself and use my limited funds to buy professional artwork. For this I had just the chap in mind.
I emailed the remit to local graphic designer Stu Smith, along with sample text from scenes I considered would make for good cover art. Given the tight budget I think Stu did a terrific job. I received his completed artwork on Christmas day, at which point I was free to upload my novel. This proved to be a greater challenge than I anticipated. Sally helped here with her book Kindle Direct Publishing for Absolute Beginners. Rick Smith’s Createspace and Kindle Self-Publishing Masterclass was also helpful.
Having allowed self-doubt to deny me my ambition for so long I’d like to end here with a closing statement from my own recent blog-post Owning and Blowing Your Trumpet:
“ … as I begin 2016 with a sense of achievement and a feeling of excitement for the coming year I urge every aspiring writer who reads this to revisit your social media profiles and remove any trace of the word ‘wannabee’ or ‘aspiring’ and simply declare yourselves as writers. Make no mistake, this simple yet certain acknowledgement will serve as a powerful self-fulfilling prophecy and, in recognising yourselves as writers, writers you will be.”
Many thanks, Steve, for sharing your experience with us. It’s worth having a ‘look inside’ The Door to Caellfyon on Amazon and Steve’s website can be found at www.stevewandeditorial.co.uk
Birth of a Novel
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Books, Competitions, Events, Promotion, Self-publishing, Successes on October 29, 2015
My first novel has just been launched into the big, bad world and I’m sitting here fretting. Perhaps it will sink without trace or people might hate it …
So, to stop me brooding, I’m going to tell you about how it came to be.
Let’s go back two years to October 2013. I went on a weekend writing course organised by Lois Maddox of Relax and Write. The title of the course was ‘How to Write the Mystery Novel’ and it was led by Eileen Robertson. At the same time I spotted a free-to-enter novel writing competition organised by WordPlay Publishing, there was no theme or genre specified but the hero had to be named ‘Ian’ (incidentally, that competition is on-going annually until 2017 if you want to have a go). I combined these two things together for NaNoWriMo 2013 and drafted the first 50,000 words of Bedsit Three.
I spent December 2013 writing a synopsis and polishing the first three chapters. I submitted to the competition just before the 31st December deadline. Then I gave up being a novelist and went back to short stories.
In May 2014 I received a phone call out of the blue. It was Michael Barton of WordPlay Publishing to tell me I had won the competition! The prize was formatting for Createspace and Kindle plus 250 Euros marketing budget and a financial contribution towards a cover design.
After my elation subsided, I realised that I had to knuckle down, finish the manuscript and get it ready for publication. When I thought it was done, Anne Harvey acted as a beta reader and I also had a critique from Patricia Fawcett. Lots of changes followed, including getting rid of a superfluous character, an unlikely coincidence and a lottery win. The ending of the novel also changed.
Then I decided that if Bedsit Three had won one competition, perhaps it could win another. So I entered a few more and was shortlisted in the Silverwood-Kobo-Berforts Open Day Competition and the Writing Magazine/McCrit Competition. This gave me confidence and I had the manuscript professionally edited by Mark Henderson. Then off it went for formatting and I looked for cover designers. I chose John Amy. He gave me five initial designs which I showed to a handful of people and their verdict was unanimous.
The back cover blurb was put to the vote in this blog post and I am most grateful to all of you who took the time to comment.
My first novel looks and feels very professional. Here’s the Amazon blurb that goes with it:
“A word of warning to anyone who picks this book up: be prepared for a sleepless night, because you won’t want to put it down until you get to the end,” Michael Barton, WordPlay Publishing.
A stupid mistake ended Ian’s marriage. Now he’s trying to put it right.
Sandra was a teenage mum. 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…
Every mother tries to do her best for her child. But sometimes that ‘best’ creates a monster.
Bedsit Three is a tale of murder, mystery and love. It won the inaugural Wordplay Publishing/Ian Govan Award and was shortlisted for both the Silverwood-Kobo-Berforts Open Day Competition and the Writing Magazine/McCrit Competition.
Michael Barton, Founder and Managing Director of WordPlay Publishing said of Bedsit Three, “This novel is well-constructed and well-written. But it’s also far more than that. It’s a book that elicits emotional reaction, drawing the reader into the story and placing him or her in the middle of the action page after page.”
‘Bedsit Three’ is available in paperback and Kindle format on Amazon and also as an e-book for Kobo.
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