Archive for category Travel
A £10,000 Advance!
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Authors, Books, Travel on May 13, 2025
No! Stop the applause and put the champagne away. It’s not me!
£10,000 is the amount Benjamin Disraeli received as an advance on his novel ‘Endymion’ published in 1880. I had no idea that Disraeli, one of our most famous prime ministers, had had a literary career. Endymion is described as a ‘romance’ by Wikipedia and is set against a political backdrop during the years 1819 to 1859.
Members of GoodReads have awarded it an average of 3.52 stars.
This wasn’t Disraeli’s first novel, that was ‘Vivian Grey’, which was heavily criticised but didn’t stop him writing. His output only slowed when he became an MP.
A thought to take away with you, according to Wikipedia, £10,000 in 1880 was equivalent to £1,257,376 in 2023! I can’t say whether this huge sum was because of his literary prowess or because he was an ex-prime minister.
(The plaque illustrating this post can be found at Hughenden Manor, a National Trust property in Buckinghamshire).
I Missed My Publication Day
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Lifestyle, Promotion, Successes, Travel on March 18, 2025
Tuesday March 11th was a big day in the literary world: My third novel for ChocLit/Joffe Books hit the Amazon shelves!
But I was away from my laptop and most of social media. I was in Athens on a trip booked long before the publication date for Out of Control was announced. Being on holiday was a happy, lovely experience which I’m grateful for but it did mean I missed my chance to do much proud shouting about my brand new book. So I’m going to make up for it now! (Close your eyes or look away if you’re averse to a bit of book publicity).
Out of Control was inspired by my (winning!) entry for the 2023 RNA Elizabeth Goudge Award. The brief had been to write the opening chapter of a novel with the theme, Absence Makes the Heart grow fonder. I created the character of Fiona. She’s sixty years old and enjoys seeing Joe, her man friend, just once a week. She doesn’t have to do his washing, put up with his snoring or tolerate any of the other annoying things that run alongside living with a partner. His absence for six days a week makes her grow more fond of him. Then he turns up on her doorstep with his suitcases – his house is flooded and he needs somewhere to live. Soon after, Joe’s daughter turns up eight months pregnant with nowhere to go. Fiona has no choice but to let them both stay. Suddenly Fiona has a full house and is way out of her comfort zone. But just as she starts to regain control, an unexpected revelation shakes everything she thought she knew about life and love.
Now Fiona must decide: does she stay in control, or surrender to the chaos of love?
Out of Control is billed as a later-in-life, feel-good, friends-to-lovers romance. And it’s currently only 99p on Kindle (it will go up but I have no control over when) or free if you have Kindle Unlimited.
P.S. There are also book group discussion questions in the back of the book if that helps to persuade you that its worth downloading!
And here I am on publication day!
What I Did on my Holiday plus some Hysteria
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Competitions, Lifestyle, Travel on July 27, 2023
Other people’s holidays are boring but I’m writing this anyway to show you that I am a real person and not just a continuous, automatic loop playing ‘buy my book‘!
So here’s a bullet point gallop through my seven days in Suffolk last week:
- We stayed at the aptly named (for me) Old Library in Wickham Market, almost directly opposite the current library – which is actually open on a Sunday!
- The best cup of tea of the week came from the Tea Shed in Walberswick. They serve loose leaf tea in a proper teapot with a jug of hot water on the side plus a timing device to indicate how long the tea should be brewed for.
- Full marks to senior National Trust ranger, Andrew, at Orford Ness for his talk about the rare breed sheep on the site. And even better than Andrew, was his trainee sheepdog, Sweep. Sweep did a great job of rounding up the herd and keeping them together during the talk.
- An unexpected highlight was watching the shipping containers move around the Port of Felixstowe.
They were ferried from giant ships to railway line in perfect synchronicity. I was in awe at the size of everything and at the behind the scenes computer system that must be ensuring that everything is in the right place at the right time. - The weather gods were smiling on us and overturned a dismal forecast to provide lots of sunshine. We went walking everyday and only got wet once.
As a reward for politely reading through all of the above, here’s a reminder about the Hysteria Writing Competition.
The categories are: Short story – maximum 1,000 words, Flash fiction – maximum 250 words and Poetry – maximum 12 lines.
The theme is MAGIC and the prizes are: Overall category winner for each category – £300 plus publication in the Hysteria 10 anthology and the 9 runners up in each category will also be published in Hysteria 10.
Entry is a modest £3 and if you sign up to the competition newsletter, you’ll receive a free copy of Hysteria 3 so you can check out earlier winning entries!
Closing date is August 31st 2023. As always, make sure that you read the full rules before submitting.
What I Did on My Holidays
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Competitions, Lifestyle, Non-writing, Travel on September 8, 2022
You don’t have the slightest interest in what I, or anyone else, did on their holidays but please bear with me – there is a literary slant to what I have to say, plus it saves me having to write a book, which I did in 2013 and 2021.
Big Water of Fleet Viaduct
This year we drove from the Midlands to Kirkcudbright in Dumfries and Galloway. En route we stopped for coffee in Sedbergh: England’s Official Book Town. Sedbergh is a small place where many of the independent shops have added the sale of secondhand books to their wares. The big attraction for me was Westwood Books which has a stock of over 70,000 titles – antiquarian, secondhand, and some new books. I was tempted by a copy of The Seven Sisters by Lucinda Riley which has been strongly recommended by my sister-in-law. But it’s a very thick book and I have a long TBR list, so I resisted the urge.
On arrival in Kirkcudbright we discovered that Dumfries and Galloway has its own literary connections. It was the setting for The 39 Steps by John Buchan and the viaduct in the photo was used in one of the film versions of the story. And Five Red Herrings, a murder mystery by Dorothy L Sayers, is set in Kirkcudbright itself and the 4-part serial is available on YouTube.
What did we actually do on holiday? Walking, a guided tour plus afternoon tea at Buittle Castle (both were excellent), walking, Raymond Briggs retrospective exhibition at Kirkcudbright Art Galleries, walking, Kirkcudbright Annual Tattoo (marching bands and a stunt motor cyclist!), walking and Kirkcudbright Art Tour.
Kirkcudbright Tattoo
Well done – you made it to the end of my holiday essay!
Finally, you might be interested in this crime writing short story competition. It closes 23rd January 2023 but there’s a reduced early bird entrance fee of only £3 if you enter before 1st December 2022.
The Poetry Pharmacy, Bishop’s Castle
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Books, Competitions, Lifestyle, Poetry, Travel on May 19, 2022
On holiday in Bishop’s Castle, Shropshire, I discovered the Poetry Pharmacy run by Deborah Alma. It’s part cafe, part poetry bookshop, part events space and part therapy; the latter via an appointment with the Poetry Pharmacist.
We’d been walking as part of the Bishop’s Castle Walking Festival and needed coffee and cake when we found the Pharmacy. It doesn’t do the usual lattes, cappuccinos etc. Instead the waitress recommended one of the different coffee blends and then delivered a glass flask of black coffee plus a jug of warm, frothy milk on the side. Similarly, she recommended a tea blend for my husband. We sat for a long time in the quiet, peaceful space, leafing through poetry books and magazines which centred around the calmer side of life. Afterwards, I treated myself to a copy of The Emergency Poet edited by Deborah – and, unusually, the book was cheaper in the Pharmacy than on Amazon. It’s a volume full of poems designed to destress and improve the reader’s state of mind. I will be sharing some of the poems with my Shared Reading Group soon.
Still on the subject of poetry, I’ve come across three competitions open for entries:
The Winchester Poetry Prize for poems on any subject and in any form or style. First prize is £1,000. Entry fee is £5. Closing date is 31 July 2022. The judge is Jo Bell, whom I recently had the pleasure of interviewing about her role in compiling the book On this Day She: Putting Women Back into History One Day at a Time for an article in The People’s Friend magazine.
The Writers Bureau Platinum Jubilee Poetry Competition. This is FREE to enter but you need to be quick: closing date is 31st May 2022. The prize is publication on The Writers Bureau’s website and a course or place on a Zoom workshop of the winner’s choice.
Ironbridge Poetry Competition 2022. This competition welcomes poems on any and every subject. First prize is £300 and the closing date is 31 July 2022. The judge is Simon Fletcher, who is widely-published as a poet and lives in Shropshire. He’s also the manager of Offa’s Press.
A Grand Tour of Scotland in a Freedom Caravan by Susie Kearley
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Authors, Books, Non-fiction, Travel on June 15, 2020
Susie Kearley is a freelance journalist who writes regularly for Practical Poultry, Weekly News, and Caravan magazine. 
She’s taken advantage of the extra time gifted by lockdown to publish A Grand Tour of Scotland in a Freedom Caravan on Kindle. The e-book is full of detail and illustrated with colour pictures of the sights, people and animals she met along the way.
I was pleased when Susie agreed to answer my questions about how she put the book together and about the tour itself. Here’s what she told me:
The level of detail in the book must have necessitated keeping a holiday journal. What form did this take?
I took an A4 lined pad and wrote about my day every evening in the caravan. I’d hoped to sell it as a series of articles to Caravan magazine, but hadn’t got a commission at that time. I persuaded the editor to take the series when I got back, but it took him six years to publish them all, which is why I wasn’t in a position to publish the collection as an e-book until 2020. And then some updating had to be done!
When I returned from our Grand Tour of Scotland in 2014, with a bulging notepad, it took two days to get it typed up on my desktop computer. I had a bit of help from Dragon Naturally Speaking (dictation software), and resolved to getting a laptop, so going forward, I could type drafts straight onto a computer while travelling.
I was pleased to see you’ve included photos in the book. I’ve never formatted an e-book containing pictures. What are the main points to be aware of when doing this?
If the images are too big, KDP will throw up error messages about the file size. You’ll need to use low-resolution images to avoid this. If you post the original image files onto Facebook, a small image is created, which you can then download and use in a Kindle e-book without getting error messages.
The photos are a mix of those taken by you and some sourced from organisations such as English Heritage. How do you go about securing photos from such bodies?
I emailed the press office at English Heritage to ask if they had photos of Carlisle Castle, and got the rest from the Scottish Tourist Board and from www.visitbritainimages.com. Visit Britain has a great range of photos available for editorial use, for promoting Britain, free of charge.
Were you able to get multiple benefit from the holiday by writing magazine articles as well as producing this book?
Yes, writing about the experience means you have to pay attention, so you take in more information and remember more details! The holiday and my detailed drafts written as we travelled, obviously led to a series of articles in Caravan magazine, and some of the experiences were used in other travel pieces too. Publishing as an e-book seemed like a natural progression, especially as I have more time on my hands during lockdown.
The caravan looks very small! Was there any friction with two of you living so closely together?
Not much. We get on very well and we have an understanding that if one of us is standing up, the other must sit down, because there isn’t room for two people to stand up and move around at the same time! The only problem is that my husband has lively nightmares, which usually involve him being chased by monsters. Sometimes he lashes out. This isn’t great when you’re sharing a small double bed in a tiny caravan!
Do you have a top tip for caravan holidays?
I’m not sure I do. Everyone has their own likes and dislikes. We prefer quiet sites with nice views and a natural feel, perhaps a lake, but some people like big sites with lots of entertainment. We tend to avoid those!
Do you have a top travel writing tip?
You don’t need to travel to far flung places write travel articles. I’ve written articles about my home town, local heroes, and local National Trust properties, without having to leave my home county.
A Grand Tour of Scotland in a Freedom Caravan is available on Kindle for the bargain price of £1.99. Essential reading for caravanners, would-be travel writers, lovers of Scotland and the generally curious!
Keep up with Susie, her travels and her writing on Twitter: www.twitter.com/susiekearley and on Facebook: www.facebook.com/susie.kearley.writer
The Diary of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Books, Lifestyle, Non-fiction, Travel on December 18, 2019
When I was young one of my ambitions was to own a secondhand bookshop. It was an ambition that was never fulfilled but I do still love to wander around shelves full of pre-loved books.
Shaun Bythell owns Scotland’s biggest secondhand bookshop and for a year he kept a diary of life in that shop. The diary was published in book form, The Diary of a Bookseller, a couple of years ago and it makes interesting reading for anyone who’s ever wondered what goes on behind the mountains of paperbacks and collectables.
There are comments on the customers (especially those who spend hours reading by the bookshop fire and then don’t buy anything), the staff (who have a tendency to the eccentric), the people who are selling their lifelong book collections and the way online ordering works in the secondhand industry. Sunny summer days are busy but in winter the takings are meagre.
Two particularly interesting points from the book are worth highlighting. Why not join the shop’s Random Book Club? For £59 a year you will be sent a surprise book every month. Might make a great present for someone who loves to try different genres?
And, if like me, you’ve ever wanted to run your own secondhand bookshop, here is the holiday for you:
Stay in the apartment above another secondhand bookshop, The Open Book, and you get to manage the bookshop (with help from volunteers) during your stay. But you need to plan ahead – the holiday is very popular and booked a couple of years into the future. Get on the waiting list via the Open Book Facebook page or book the apartment via AirBnb.
On a Writing Retreat
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Lifestyle, Travel, Writing on December 5, 2019
I’ve been on a writing retreat!
Unfortunately it wasn’t a week in a glamorous, sunny location but two nights in a Premier Inn on an industrial estate near Warwick. It was an experiment with a writer friend to see if 48 hours away from domestic distractions would enhance our productivity and propel us into the heart of our plots.
We worked in two and a half hour chunks before meeting up for tea and homemade cake or a 30 minute walk round the block or breakfast or dinner. This method kept us well fed and there was always a break to look forward to. I found that after two hours my concentration was waning and I was ready for some company and chat (and cake!)
Did it work?
My companion was doing NaNoWriMo. On arrival she was behind on her daily word count, when we left she was ahead, as well as having done some character sketches.
I was trying to pull together a very wobbly first draft. Prolonged writing time on the retreat enabled me to see the plot as a whole and get some editing done. In our breaks we did a lot of writing talk and my writer friend gave me a new idea to increase the tension within my story. I spent time working out how to weave this into my existing chapters.
Yes, the retreat worked and was worthwhile. But we both agreed that we couldn’t maintain that level of work/concentration beyond a weekend. So a whole week writing in the sun would probably be wasted on me (if it’s sunny I’d rather be in the pool or sightseeing!) but another weekend on an industrial estate is something I’d consider …
If Goethe had had to prepare supper
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Authors, Travel, Writing Handicaps on June 20, 2019
I’m just back from a cycling holiday along the banks of the Danube from Passau, near the German/Austrian border, to Vienna, in Austria. The weather was excellent. I didn’t get saddle-sore, thanks to several pairs of padded shorts. And although my leg muscles were exhausted by the end of day two, I got a second-wind and finished the trip without too many aches.
However, the point of this blog post is to highlight a memorial to the authoress, Emerenz Meier, on the river bank in Passau. The written work of this lady suffered due to the pressures on her to earn a living and keep house. She laments this in a poem reproduced on the memorial. It reads:
If Goethe had had to prepare supper, salt the dumplings;
If Schiller had had to wash the dishes;
If Heine had had to mend what he had torn, to clean the rooms, kill the bugs –
Oh, the menfolk, none of them would have become great poets.
Most of us have moaned, at some time or another, about the way chores and working for a living take up too much time. Time which could otherwise be used for productive writing. Today, equality of the sexes means fitting in the housework is no longer a uniquely female problem. But Emerenz Meier was born in 1874, died in 1928 and was married twice, so I’m guessing neither husband was particularly domesticated.
So next time domestic drudgery is getting in the way of creativity, be glad that we have washing machines, vacuum cleaners and many other labour saving devices: Emerenz would have been doing everything the hard way. And we don’t usually have to kill too many bugs!
The memorial was erected by Soroptimist International Club Passau, an organisation of professional women.
The Museum of Brands
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Lifestyle, Travel, Writing on February 7, 2019
A few days ago I visited The Museum of Brands in London. The museum takes the visitor on a colourful stroll through the branding, advertising and consumerism of the last two hundred or so years. It’s a wonderful microcosm of British social history. 
The visit left me with two thoughts. Firstly, it made me feel ancient. A large part of my childhood and the years beyond were in those glass cases. Surely I’m not old enough for my lifetime to become museum worthy! Who else out there remembers Spangles sweets, Jackie magazine, Philadelphia cheese wrapped in silver paper rather than in a plastic tub, Caramac bars (just discovered you can still buy those) and renting instead of buying a TV?
Secondly, it brought home to me how the long-lived brands had evolved over time in order to survive. Much of this evolution was done in baby steps – a change of font for the logo, moving from a metal to plastic packaging or updating the slogan. Companies like Sony have constantly innovated to ensure their products always offer the consumer something new and attractive. Unfortunately Kodak didn’t and was lost in the great tsunami of digital photography.
What has this got to with writing?
It’s a reminder that we should always be looking where we are going with our writing careers. For example the market for womag stories is rapidly shrinking meaning those of us who used to target women’s magazines with our short stories need to find new outlets or try a different form of writing. Attracting an agent for a novel is as difficult as ever – is it time to set a limit on the number of rejections and then start investigating other routes such as the growing number of new independent digital publishers like Hera who accept unagented submissions? Or maybe it’s time to try non-fiction or a different genre?
The important thing is to stay current with what’s going on in the writing world and be proactive to avoid being left behind. Be a Sony not a Kodak! Simon Whaley has been talking about a similar topic on his blog this week.
Incidentally, whilst going through my kitchen cupboards to take the photo accompanying this post, I discovered that most of my tins and packets were supermarket own brands. I wonder what that says for branding in the future?
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