Jennifer Thomson's Blog, page 24

Would you like a starring role in a novel? Have a character named after you.

Some fanfare please –





Would you love to have a starring role in a novel?





Well, your dreams are about to come true.





The next person to write a review of Hell To Pay on Amazon -
available now on Amazon in paperback - gets a character in my next book named
after them or someone of their choosing (but no obscene, made up names please) and
a signed copy.





Here’s the links people -

 

Amazon UK

Amazon.com


Happy reading and good luck:)

Check out an extract from Hell To Pay - It's Die Hard for Girls

I'm sure I'm not the only one sick of hearing about people especially women being the victims of crime. Too often the perpetrators get away with it leaving their victim's life in tatters. That what's inspired me to come up with the Die Hard for Girls series.




These books come with a guarantee - in the Die Hard for Girls series the bad guys (and gals) will always get their comeuppance and the good guys their revenge.




I hope you will agree with me that it's time that us gals had books that are kick lit rather than chick lit.




Why not order Hell To Pay today?



Hell to Pay is is available from all good bookshops, including Amazon. Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk



On July 26th, 2013, the book will be released on Kindle




Check out this excerpt... on the excellent Wattpad site.

Hell To Pay is out now in paperback

I'd so many things planned to launch Hell To Pay. Fun things like a virtual book launch with balloons and party food and a plane to write the title across the sky (that may be a lie).



Then Amazon went and ruined it all by bringing out the book a month early. So, here it is with less fanfare than I would have liked.



For now, Hell To Pay is available on Amazon UK and Amazon.com and in all good book stores (both online and in the real world), as a paperback. It will be available soon on Kindle at Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com



Stay tuned for details...




So, why should you part with your hard-earned cash to buy Hell To Pay?


Because it's the first ever Die Hard for Girls book


The bad guys get what's coming to them



When Nancy gets revenge she goes for it big style



And ladies, if you're having a bad day, this is the book for you.



 

Tips for writing a successful novella

 

I stumbled onto writing novellas by
accident. I saw a snippet of news in Writers' News magazine. It said that a
publisher was looking for revenge novellas and was struggling to find women to
write them. It was one sentence, but it caught my eye.





Three years later, I have a contract for
two novellas in my Die Hard for Girls series and a publisher interested in the
first novella I ever wrote. At last, I had found my niche.





Here's my top 5 tips on writing novella -





1. You need to be able to pitch your
novella in one sentence. Any more than that and it's probably a novel you're
writing.





2. Short chapters are ideal for novellas.





3. Your main character's goal should be the
main theme of the novella. For instance, the theme for Hell To Pay is revenge
and how Nancy Kerr avenges her parents' murder and her rape.





4. End every chapter with a revelation, a
question or a shock that will have readers racing to the next chapter.





5. Your main character should be someone
readers will want to go on a journey with, usually a heroine or a hero. If he
or she is a villain, make some part of them sympathetic. If you don't, it will
put readers off.





For more tips on writing a novella, check
out the piece I wrote for Words With Jam. To read it click here





Happy writing:)

 


Whatever you do, don't start your novella like Snoopy.


 

What to do when Amazon spells your name wrong (or gets other book details wrong)

I was really excited to see Hell To Pay
going on up on the various sites including Amazon, but that excitement was
diluted ended when I saw that they’d spelt my surname wrong. Firstly, on the
Amazon.com site and then on Amazon.ca





It’s important that the details are correct
so that your Amazon author central* page will be linked to your book. Your
author central page has tweets from you, details of blog posts and a list of
your other books. It’s a great promotion tool, but only if the details are
correct.





If this happens to you, this is what you do
to get Amazon to change it.



*To get an Amazon author central page click here to register. For Amazon.com, click here





STEP ONE

Go to the book page on Amazon









Tip – Ignore the message for publishers and authors where the publisher is told to update the feed sent to Amazon and the author is told to contact their publisher. I know for a fact, that my publisher sent the correct details to Amazon who keyed it in wrongly.

 



TWO

Scroll down to where it says Would you like to update product info and
click on that.





 
















THREE

You will be taken to your Amazon sign in
page. Sign in.





FOUR

From there you will be taken to Update Product Info

 









 





FIVE

Put in as much info as you have. For
instance, if you have a pictures of your book cover complete with ISBN number
(you need this) then submit that.





Tip – You can also submit a change of
details through your Amazon Author Central account. It's just as easy to use.

5 Common novel writing mistakes

This is how I am when I write a novel:)



 



Writing a novel is hard enough. Writing one that will not only get published,
but also sell is harder still.



But, what if you're writing your novel and you think something's missing? Could
you be making one of these common mistakes?



1. Writing what you think will sell and not what you want to write - We all
want to have a bestseller; to write the book everybody is talking about. But we
won't do that if we don't write from the heart, because if we don't enjoy
writing our books; if we don't put our heart and soul into our writing, who on
earth is going to enjoy reading them?



2. Writing too much back story - Writers need to think like the readers they are
and what can be worse than wading through heaps of backstory to get to the real
story? You've read 30 pages of a novel and you know every intimate detail of
the main character's life but guess what - the story hasn't started yet or its
been dragged down by all that mind numbing backstory.



Tip - A little back story is fine, but generally back story should come out in
dribs and drabs in the course of telling your story. Not as an avalanche.



3. Using the wrong point of view - Are you telling your story from the right
POV? Is first person too restrictive (you can only tell the story through your
narrator's eyes) or is third person not intimate enough?



Changing POV can work wonders.



4. Starting the story too late or too early - Every story should begin when
something has actually happened or is about to happen. You need to hook the
reader from the start, not expect them to skim read through a third of the book
before they get to the good part. They won't. They'll put your book down. They
won't buy the next.







One of the best books for writing tips.



5. Being too predictable - Have you ever read a book and thought "I feel
like I've read this before" when you know you haven't? Why not follow a
tip from Stephen King's On Writing and think "what's the most logical
thing that should happen next?" then write the opposite.



 

Check out an excerpt from Hell To Pay - It's Die Hard for Girls

 



I'm sure I'm not the only one sick of
hearing about people especially women being the victims of crime. Too often the
perpetrators get away with it leaving their victim's life in tatters. That
what's inspired me to come up with the Die Hard for Girls series.





These books come with a guarantee - in the
Die Hard for Girls series the bad guys (and gals) will always get their
comeuppance and the good guys their revenge.





I hope you will agree with me that it's
time that us gals had books that are kick lit rather than chick lit.





Why not order Hell To Pay today?





Check out this excerpt...



 

1st 2 Chapters of Hell to Pay (Die Hard for Girls) by JennyThomson






Hell to Pay will be published on July 26th, 2013 and is available from all good bookshops. It can also be bought on pre-order from Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk with Free delivery and 10 percent off the cover price.

YAY...the 1st Die Hard for Girls book is available to pre-order from today

Nancy Kerr refuses to be a victim - even when she walks in on her parents’ killers and is raped and left for dead.

Fourteen months later, she wakes up in a psychiatric hospital with no knowledge of how she got there.

Slowly her memory starts to return. Released from the institution, she has just one thing on her mind – two men brought hell to her family home. Now they’re in for some hell of their own....






 








The good news is that you can pre-order the book now on Amazon.



Amazon.co.uk

Amazon.com



If you order now from Amazon.co.uk you will get 10 percent OFF and Free super saver delivery.



Hell To Pay will also be available in all good book stores and will also be published as a Kindle book.




Why Die Hard for Girls?


I don't know about you, but I'm sick of reading about appalling things happening to women, whether one of our sisters is being attacked on a bus in India or having acid thrown in their face by a jealous ex, and far too often the perpetrators are not brought to justice.



That's what inspired me to write Die Hard for Girls. The first book in the series is Hell To Pay.



These books come with a guarantee: The bad guys will always get their comeuppance and their victims justice.



Why not join the Die Hard for Girls revolution today?

Writers, what to do if you get a stinker of a review

My filing cabinet for bad reviews.





It happens to every writer eventually. You
get a review that has you wanting to scream one minute and curl up in a ball
sobbing until the stars fall out of the sky. How do you deal with that?





Here's a few tips.





1. Remember it's only one person's point of
view. One person. Not hundreds of people - just one. Does everybody everywhere
like the same things? Nope, so you have to accept that there will be people who
may not like your book.





2. Print out the review and roll it up into
a ball and throw it in the bin, or use it to play a game of ping pong. The
review doesn't have much power over you now, eh?





3. Talk to other writers. Ask them about the
worst review they've ever had. Moan about it. Laugh about it. Then forget about
it.





4. Look at all your good reviews and all the
good things that anyone has ever said about your writing. Does one or two bad
reviews mean you are suddenly a bad writer? Of course not. Push away all that
negativity by submerging yourself in positivity.





5. Tell yourself that at least they bought
your book. The money from someone who leaves you a bad review is the same as
someone who leaves you a good review.





6. And, if you really get upset by reviews,
step away from the computer and STOP reading them. I know it's hard, but a
writer needs to keep writing. Any time spent being all maudlin over a review,
one person wrote, is eating into your writing time.

Hell To Pay...out July 26th, 2013

I'm so excited to announce - drum roll please - that Hell To Pay will be published both in paperback and in Kindle format on July 26th, 2013.



Here's a look at the full cover.











Hell to Pay is the first in a series of books I've dubbed Die Hard for Girls. The books will all feature Nancy Kerr and Tommy McIntyre, who are first introduced in Hell To Pay.



These books will come with a guarantee: the bad guys will always get their comeuppance and the victims their revenge.




Here's the blurb -

Nancy Kerr refuses to be a victim. She walks in on her parents’ killers and is
violently raped and left for dead. Fourteen months later, she wakes up in a
psychiatric hospital with no knowledge of how she got there. Slowly her memory
starts to return.

Released from the institution, she has just one thing on her mind – revenge.

Two men brought hell to her family home. Now they’re in for some hell of their
own.


Why did I write Hell To Pay?

I was sick to the back teeth of reading about women being the victims of awful crimes and not getting the justice they deserved. I thought it was about time there were uplifting books for women where they did see justice done.



Secondly, I thought that there was a complete lack of books featuring modern women who are more likely to punch a mugger in the face than to be punched in the face by a mugger.



How would I describe the books?

They're not chick lit; they're kick lit. They're violent, but the violence isn't over the top and it's not glorified.



Hell To Pay will be published by Sassy Books and will be available on Amazon and in all good bookstores.



Connect with Die Hard for Girls










Facebook