Archive for category Resources
A Free Writing Course and Other Things
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Books, Events, Non-fiction, Promotion, Resources, Self-publishing on January 26, 2014
I’ve got a few bits and pieces to share this week.
Do you fancy a free ‘Start Writing Fiction’ course?
The Open University are running an eight week course, three hours per week starting on the 28th April. It’s all on-line and the blurb says, “This practical, hands-on course aims to help you to get started with your own fiction writing, focusing on the central skill of creating characters.”
The full details are here. The course is part of the FutureLearn programme which offers lots more free on-line courses in all sorts of subjects.
And talking of courses, a fellow member of Lichfield and District Writers, David Gough, is running a ‘Photography for Writers’ course at Weetwood Hall in Leeds from April 11th to 13th, as part of the ‘Relax and Write’ 2014 programme. We all know how important it is to offer photographs as part of an article submission package and this is the course to help you take those photographs and thus, hopefully, sell more articles (by the way, I stayed at Weetwood Hall last October and the accommodation is lovely).
If you like filling your Kindle with free and discounted e-books, take a look at Debbie Young‘s Facebook group, Debbie Young’s Kindle-loving Friends. If you like what you see, drop her a message to join the group and be notified of the latest offers – or maybe even promote your own Free Days or Countdown Deals.
Finally, has anybody else read ‘The Little Coffee Shop of Kabul’ by Deborah Rodriguez?
Kirkus Reviews said, “As if Maeve Binchy had written The Kite Runner.” I totally agree with that description. The book is about Sunny, an American woman, who runs a coffee shop in Kabul and the women who come into her life. The story touches on the difficulties and atrocities facing Afghan women today but I felt it glossed over them, rather than allowing the reader to fully appreciate how terrible life can be for females in that country today.
The book is very readable but definitely more Maeve Binchy than The Kite Runner.
The Library of Birmingham
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Resources, Travel on September 29, 2013
Prince Charles once said that the Central Library in Birmingham looked like ‘a place where books are incinerated, not kept’.
The Library of Birmingham at Centenary Square with Birmingham Rep in foreground (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
That 40-year-old concrete building will now be demolished. It has been replaced by The Library of Birmingham, which opened its doors for the first time a few weeks ago, at the beginning of September.
I’ve been to see it and was very impressed by the modern, light, hi-tech interior. There are also outdoor spaces for reading, chatting or relaxing – the Discovery Terrace is an elevated garden and includes herbs, fruit and vegetables and the Secret Garden Terrace on the seventh floor gives a quiet place to sit and admire the view over the city.
The ninth floor houses the famous Shakespeare Memorial Room. This was first designed and built in 1882 for the city’s Victorian Library. In the early 1970s it was moved to the, then new, Central Library and it has now been re-located again to sit atop The Library of Birmingham. It must have been quite a feat to carefully remove and then rebuild all the wood panelling along with glass printed shelves and metalwork. The ceiling has some very ornate plasterwork and stained glass windows.
Also on the ninth floor is the glass-enclosed Skyline Viewpoint giving stunning views across the city from 51 metres above street level.
There are two cafes – selling wine, champagne and expensive paper cups of tea.
The Library of Birmingham was a £189 million project. There has been a lot of controversy in the city about whether that money should have been spent, when smaller, community libraries across the region have had their opening hours drastically cut.
This new library has a lot to offer as a tourist attraction but I’m not sure whether it will get more people reading. However, it is open seven days a week and was very busy on the Sunday afternoon that I went – but most people were just there to have a look around it rather than to read or borrow books.
Personally, I’ll go again when the novelty has worn off and the place is quieter. Then, maybe, I’ll find a quiet corner and do some writing – if I’m not distracted by the thought of roof terraces and a glass of champagne!
Related articles
- Library of Birmingham Opened! (lucybirdbooks.wordpress.com)
- Bold and beautiful: the new Library of Birmingham (newstatesman.com)
Fiction Addiction – Two Years On
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Resources, Short Story on July 23, 2013
I told you about the online writing group, Fiction Addiction, sometime ago.
Sharon Boothroyd
Over the last couple of years it’s turned into a useful support group for Womag writers. The founder, Sharon Boothroyd, has brought me up-to-date on its progress and I wanted to share with you what she had to say:
I set up Fiction Addiction in Feb 2011 because it was proving difficult for me to find honest opinions from other writers, and I couldn’t afford to pay for professional critiques all the time. My local writing group didn’t focus on short stories and on a recent creative writing course, the tutor didn’t know anything about the Womag market.
The idea behind my online writer’s circle is to ‘test’ your work on other Fiction Addiction members before subbing your work out to the magazines. We offer each other support, feedback, encouragement and motivation.
When I began Fiction Addiction in Feb 2011, I decided the first thing I needed to do was recruit members. Membership would be free.
I wrote an appeal and asked Kath if she would upload it on to her popular womagwriter’s blog. She did do, and Sally Jenkins very kindly featured me in her blog here in March 2011.
I was expecting one or two requests – but I was immensely pleased to be overwhelmed with people wanting to join! Some members were writers with lots of Womag sales, some were beginners and some were in-between. It’s still the same balance now, with 11 members.
My husband designed a website, and we put all the info there, including guidelines and a FAQ page. I wrote the website myself. To keep costs down, we decided to pick a free website.
As time passed, we’ve had a members leave and new members joining. Two years on, it is still lovely to read work and receive emails.
I do expect members to contribute, even if it’s once a month. Members can also drop out and join again.
We also look at competition entries and first chapters of novels.
Feedback has also been a problem for some. My advice is to be kind but honest, which I admit can be tricky! Of course, it’s entirely up to the writer what they do with feedback – they don’t have to use it.
We’ve had lots of successes when the writer has tweaked a story after receiving FA feedback, including me.
One of the first stories I sent round was an office girls story called The Game. After re-drafting, I sent it to PRIMA magazine earlier this year. It won their short story competition and was published in the May 2013 edition.
And very recently, (July 2013) a FA member has had a story accepted by Woman’s Weekly! She read our comments on her work and then adjusted her story before subbing.
We all feel very proud!
The Fiction Addiction website can be found at Http://fictionaddiction.biz.ly and Sharon has recently started a blog, click here to take a look.
So if you fancy a little bit of support with your writing, contact Sharon via the Fiction Addiction website and become part of the group’s success story!
Amazon’s Kindle Cover Creator
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Computers & Technical, Resources, Self-publishing on June 25, 2013
In preparation for my next e-book release, I’ve been playing with Amazon’s Cover Creator.
This can be found within the Kindle Direct Publishing process, at the point where you would normally upload a cover that you’ve created elsewhere.
Designing with Cover Creator is far, far easier than trying to do it with GIMP or any other such design software (unless you happen to be an expert – which I am definitely not!).
There are only three steps:
- Choose Design – select an image from those available within Cover Creator or upload an image of your own.
There is a reasonable selection of images available and they are split into sections such as Animals, People, Architecture, Food and Drink etc. I found a picture which I felt was a reasonable likeness to the heroine in my tale. - Style and Edit – select the layout, colour scheme and font.
There are a limited number of each of these. The layout dictates whereabouts on the cover the title, subtitle and author name will appear. Colour scheme and font are self-explanatory. - Preview – see how your design will look in the Amazon store.
This is the only part of the process that caused me problems. When I tried to Preview I kept getting the message, ‘Cover Creator has encountered an error. We recommend you refresh your browser.’ So I contacted Amazon. They suggested that I use Firefox as my browser instead of Internet Explorer. This worked but first I had to delete everything I’d already done in Internet Explorer and start again.
At any point in the Cover Creator design process you can save the cover and come back to finish it later. And you can design in Cover Creator before your book is ready to be uploaded.
Inevitably there are some disadvantages to Cover Creator, the principle two being:
- The limited number of variables available (i.e. images, layouts, colour schemes etc.) However, I would guess that Cover Creator would become much more difficult to use were there to be an infinite choice. Just be prepared for someone to have a similar cover to yours!
- Covers created within Cover Creator cannot be used outside of Amazon. So if you intend selling on other platforms, source your cover elsewhere. Initially, my next book will be exclusive to Amazon so I’m not going to worry about this at the moment.
Here is a sneak preview of my proposed cover design. Any comments gratefully received!
To put my design in context – this book is intended to be the first in a series of stories (each around 8,000 words long), all of which will be set in The Museum of Fractured Lives. Each e-book will feature a different donor to the museum and tell the story of the object they are donating. Maxine is the heroine of the first book.
It was loosely inspired by The Museum of Broken Relationships in Zagreb which I told you about here. However, I should emphasise that everything in the book is totally fictional. I have never visited the museum.
‘A Writer on Writing’ – Free E-book and a Call for Submissions
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Markets, Promotion, Resources, Short Story on June 18, 2013
My non-fiction Kindle e-book ‘A Writer on Writing – Advice to Make You a Success’ is free on Amazon for the next five days (18th to 22nd June 2013).
Using my feature articles that have appeared in the UK writing press, I look at topics such as:
The self-discipline needed to write and stay focussed
A method of getting ideas
Tips on writing flash fiction
How to choose an educational course to help with your writing
Tips on writing anniversary articles
Tips on creating a backup of your work
How to decide on pseudonym
How to create a good first impression with an editor
Tips on starting a blog
The benefits of a writing buddy
How to write a novel in a month!
And remember, you don’t need a Kindle to read Kindle books. Amazon supply free software for your PC, laptop or other device here.
To get the book, click here for Amazon UK and here for Amazon.com. On other Amazon sites search for ASIN: B00C0GBRS6
Enjoy! (and if you do please leave a review on Amazon!)
Ride – Short Fiction About Bicycles is looking for submissions for its next short story anthology.
RIDE 3 will be published in print, as well as digital format.
The only requirement is that a bicycle or bicycle subculture must feature prominently in the story. Any genre, any gender, any length up to about 12,000 words, any setting, any country, any time period, any kind of cycling. The more diversity—of locations, cycling cultures, story genres—the better.
Payment ranges from $20 to $75 depending on the length of the story. Deadline is 31st August 2013.
The full details are here.
With thanks to Nick Daws for bringing this market to my attention via his newsletter.
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?
Getting to Grips with E-Publishing 3
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Computers & Technical, Resources, Self-publishing on April 2, 2013
After all the wonderful advice I got on my previous post about cover design, I thought I’d got things
under control in that department. But my attempt at a cover for my third book was so abysmal that I daren’t even show it to you here. Compared with similar books already on Amazon it looked very basic and most definitely amateurish.
I think this is because the book is non-fiction and therefore requires a very business-like cover to get anywhere near competing with the hundreds of other books on the same subject.
So I decided to call in the professionals. I used the website Fiverr. This site features hundreds (or maybe thousands even) of sellers offering their services for just $5. The range of services is vast from personalised greetings cards, translations and bespoke bedtime stories. But there are also lots of e-book cover designers on there too.
I picked one of the top-rated designers (like on EBay, buyers have to leave feedback on the service they received) and told her the title of the book, what it was about and a brief suggestion about the type of image that might be suitable (it is also possible to send the designer a specific photo if you have one that you want to include on the cover).
Two days later my cover design was delivered and you can see it on this post. It’s much better than I could produce. I’ve borrowed the title from a ‘column’ on the Open Writing website which runs an extract from this blog each week (the site includes lots of other writing from around the world, too).
A Writer on Writing is a compilation of 14 of my articles that have appeared in the UK writing press, such as Writing Magazine & Writers News, The New Writer, Writers’ Forum and Freelance Market News. They cover subjects as diverse as generating ideas, writing articles with an anniversary ‘hook’ and flash fiction.
As I did with my other books, I have set an introductory price of 77p – with a view to increasing it when I see how sales go. Setting the perfect price point to encourage buyers without devaluing the work involved in producing a book is very difficult. 77p is the lowest price point available to independent authors.
Click here to see the book on Amazon UK and here to see the book on Amazon COM. It’s also available on all other Amazon sites by searching for ASIN: B00C0GBRS6 or by title and author.
I’ll keep you posted on how my e-publishing empire is growing (or not as the case may be!).
Writing the Mystery Novel
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Resources, Self-publishing on March 28, 2013
Has anyone ever been on one of Lois Maddox’s ‘Relax and Write’ weekends?
Mystery (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I’m feeling excited because I’ve just booked ‘Writing the Mystery Novel’ with Eileen Robertson, in Leeds. It’s a birthday present from my mum (I had a big birthday a couple of weeks ago) and I’m really looking forward to it – even though it’s not until October.
A fellow Midlands writer, David Gough, has just been on a ‘Discover Travel Writing’ course with Lois’ organisation and gave me a glowing report about it.
So why did I choose mystery novel-writing? Two reasons:
- I enjoy crime/thriller/mystery novels and most of my TV viewing is in the same genre – anything from the ‘cosy’ crime of Midsomer Murders through New Tricks to the grittier Scandinavian dramas of The Killing and Wallander.
- I saw some interesting statistics on BookBub (a site which advertises special offer e-books to thousands of email subscribers). These showed that many more of their readers are interested in buying mysteries and thrillers than any other genre. At the time of writing they have 410,000 subscribers interested in these types of books compared to Romance, which is the next largest genre at 310,000 subscribers. If you’re interested in how other genres fare, have a look here.
I know that I won’t come back from Leeds a fully fledged mystery novelist but I hope to be inspired both by the course itself and the chance to mix with other writers (as well as having the chance to stay in what is described as 4-star venue).
Roll on October!
-
You are currently browsing the archives for the Resources category.
Sally Jenkins 