Jennifer Thomson's Blog, page 25

Secrets to getting published - from someone who knows





You can have a love in with your book or send the damn thing out.




Okay,
you've written the best book you can. What next?





You could shove it in a drawer, gathering dust, until you’re dead and a
relative finds it, gets engrossed in the wonderful words you've created and says, "Wow, great Aunt Matilda
or Grandpa Harry could really write."



Or, you could actually send it to a publisher or agent. What have you got to
lose - your dignity, self-respect and confidence? But, hey you won't get
published without putting your work out there.



So, you will feel defeated if you get a flurry of rejection letters, but what
is defeat? It's never trying and never putting yourself in a position to fail.



Repeat after me - Defeat is never trying and never putting yourself in a
position to fail.





When it comes to sending out your work, up your odds of success by -



Sticking to the word count. They've asked for the first 2 chapters or first 5,
000 words, don't send 70, 000 words.



Sending it to the right publisher. If a publisher is looking for quality,
literary fiction, don't send them erotic fiction or horror. They don't want it.

 

Yet you'd be amazed how many writers waste their time and the publishers by
sending completely unsuitable manuscripts either because 1. They haven't done
their research, or, 2. They think their writing is so blindingly brilliant that
the publisher won't care that the book's a fictionalised account of a dog's
life when the publisher's looking for historical fiction.



Making sure your work is laid out properly. Check out the publisher's
guidelines. If it says to use Times or Arial point 12, then do that. Make it
double spaced, typed on one side of the paper only with wide margins in case
its printed out.



For more tips, read this excellent piece 

 

Make sure your work is printed out legibly so it can be easily read.
No fading print, toilet roll thin paper or words written in using felt tip pen,
because the ink's starting to fade.



Don't get fancy or wacky. No coloured paper, cut into fancy shapes or fancy
paper clips. No weird gifts for publishers, like cakes or a chapter written on
a piece of toast using jam (the submission was a crime novel).




Come up with one sentence that sums up what your book's about. For How KirstyGets Her Kicks , I had - A one-legged Glasgow
barmaid goes on the run with a gangster's cash and gun after she kills one of
his henchmen. One publisher said it was the best one line pitch they'd ever
read.




Footnote - Sometimes,
no matter how good your work is or how well presented, you will still get a ‘no’
or no reply at all. This could be for a number of reasons; none of which you
can do anything about.



Stick in there. The difference between a published writer and an unpublished one, is the former never gave up. I know that can be you:)



About me

I have 6 self-help titles published so far, including Living Cruelty Free and Bullying A Parent's Guide. My first novel, Dead Bastards was published in December of 2012 and Hell To Pay, the first book in the Die Hard for Girls series, will be published on July 26th, 2013. I'm currently writing the follow up, Throwaways.

My work has also been published in over a hundred different publications.

Coming out soon due to public demand...Dead Bastards in paperback

The full cover is done for the paperback version of Dead Bastards and I'm very pleased with it.










Stay tuned for the release date...

7 Ways to Kickstart your writing in the new year

If only it did come in a can:)





It happens to all of us. We get very little
writing done over the holidays - that's if we get any done at all. Then when we
have to get back to it, it's hard to get going again.








How do you break through that wall and get
going again?








Here's some tips -





Even time spent watching Jeremy Kyle isn't wasted.












1.Look through a real life magazine or watch a show like Jeremy Kyle or Jerry Springer. Are
there any stories that catch your eye? Don't read it. Just take the headline
say, "My husband was a bigamist and a murderer" and write your own
story based on that. Try for a new angle. Write from the husband's point of
view or from two of the wives when they get together. 








2. Write your own version of your favourite
movie or TV shows. 





Even time watching the soaps isn't wasted.









3. Soap storylines are also a good source
of inspiration. Use a current storyline, but feature your own characters.













4. No takers on that book? Try turning it
into a screenplay. The more strings a writer has to their bow the better. 








5. Pick any book off your shelf and look at
the first paragraph. Write a story that follows on from that. 













6. Cut out pictures of people from a
magazine or catalogue. Imagine their lives and what could have happened to
them. Write about them. 




7. Try an online story generator. You'll be surprised at what they come up with. 

Writers, it's time to get out of Twitter jail

I
realised I was getting too caught up in tweeting, Facebooking, blogging,
messageboards, google plus...and the list goes on and on and on...when I wanted
to throw my computer out the window in a fit of all consuming incredible Hulk
rage.



Well, I couldn’t get the book trailer for Dead Bastards on Kindleboards.



With
a second book in what I hope will be a popular Die Hard for girls series to
write, my blood pressure bubbling and the lack of sleep, I decided enough was
enough.



Here
are the commandments I will now live by -



1.
No social networking through dinner. No tweeting, Facebooking or writing a blog
post.



2.
Have one day a week when I don't use social networking at all.



3.
When I'm watching a film or a TV show, I also have to go cold turkey.



4.
Enjoy the social networking experience. Have fun with people. Stop saying
"Please, pretty please buy my book/s" all the bloody time. Folk are
sick of hearing it. You're sick of hearing it.



5.
Write more without a computer because unless you do you’ll be dragged back to
Twitter. Write in long hand. Scribble. By all means take a break, go on
Twitter, but only for twenty minutes at the most. Then go back to writing. I'll
set an alarm if I need to.



And
those are the rules I hope to live by. Well, once I've posted, tweet, FB,
Google + this blog post.

My crazy writing year

On the face of it you'd think I'd had a
successful writing year. With Living Cruelty Free out in Kindle and paperback,
my zombie novel Dead Bastards astounding me by coming out before Christmas
(thanks to the remarkable editing skills of my publisher Terry Wright) and Hell to Pay written and in the hands of my publisher (and more Die Hard for Girls
books planned), it does sound good.

 

But, sadly this year has been a complete
nightmare and one I'll be glad to see the back of, for a number of reasons -





1. Because of a Facebook page I set up for
my bullying book, I found myself being cyber stalked by a crazy person and
their family who'd send me harassing messages even when I blocked them.





2. Writing Living Cruelty Free meant
looking at horrific images of man's inhumanity to man and animals. Some of
those images and research I had to look at gave me nightmares. I sunk into a
deep depression it took me months to get out of.





3. I found myself working 15 hours a day to
promote/edit my books - yep, even on Christmas Day. I now find it difficult to
sleep and my agoraphobia's got worse.





4. Sales of the books my publisher
Need2Know decided to give away, free and unlimited (without telling me) have
fallen through the floor. Before, one in particular, was selling steadily. No
sales mean any royalties. No wonder I have to decide which room to heat. Anyone
has this illusion of writers being wealthy should think again.





5. Thanks to the sock puppet scandal, I've
had reviews from people who bought my books taken down on Amazon without
explanation. The reason - they said in their reviews they were writers too.
Like writers don't/can't read? It's hard enough to get reviews at it is without
that happening.

 

Not that top authors who’ve already made a name for themselves
will be affected; it will just be us little guys who don't have big publishing
houses and the might of their publicity budgets behind us.





And, that's just my writing life; my
personal one's even worse. Oh, and the year started with a 3 day power cut - in
an apartment with no gas or coal fire.





So, let's raise a glass to 2013, may it
bring us all better days.





 

6 Things every writer should know

I was first published when I was 15 and
wrote a piece on superstitions for Jackie magazine. Over the years, though my
writing, this is what I’ve learned -



 

1. Write as much as you can in as many
different genres as you can. That way when opportunities present themselves
you'll be ready. I know this from experience. In March 2011, I signed a
contract to have my first work of fiction published, my novella How Kirsty Gets
Her Kicks. For various reason it didn't happen. I also started a follow up book
I called Die Hard for Girls. When I saw on Twitter that Sassy Books were
looking for submissions, I tweeted the editor. Would she be interested in Die
Hard for Girls that I'd since renamed Hell to Pay. She said yes and I submitted
it and was offered a good royalty contract just days later.









2. That brings me to my second point - make
sure you're on social networking sites so you'll see these opportunities.
Without Twitter I'd have two books sitting in my unpublished file. Join great
forums like Writer's News Talkback. Network with other writers. See an
opportunity for another writer, let them know. They'll alert you to an
opportunity you might have missed.









3. That brings me nicely to my third point
- help other writers. Don't see them as competitors; see them as comrades in
the trenches of writing. Help one another. Commiserate when things go wrong;
celebrate their successes. Unless you do it can get lonely.







4.Learn to promote your books. You can't
expect your publisher to place ads in the big newspapers. They only do that for
the big names. As for you, a listing in their online catalogue is the best you
can hope for. The plus side is that because you know your book so well you're
the best person to promote it. I have Twitter, Facebook pages and dedicated
blogs for Dead Bastards and Living Cruelty Free. The only cost to me was my
time. I know doing this has sold books.









5.Don't ever tell yourself "I can't
write in that." If a story comes alive in your head, go with it. I
never thought I'd write a horror novel. Then this image came into my head of a
man turning up at his friend's door looking like he'd been mugged. Only when he
comes inside it becomes clear that his guts are spilling out and this is no
ordinary mugging. When he dies and then comes back and tries to eat them, they
realize that the zombies are here.





I just couldn't get this image out of my
head of this guy's guts spilling out onto the floor and this Glasgow couple
trying to scoop them up and shove them back in again, so I started scribbling
away. And so, Dead Bastards was born.









6.Just because a publisher says no the
first time doesn't mean you should give up. TWB Press who published my Glasgow zombie novel
originally turned it down when I submitted it as a serial. I really admired the
ethos of the company (no non-sense entertainment), so I worked on it some more
and what was intended to be a 30k novella ended up a 70k novel (although over
10, 000 words were cut). The publisher Terry Wright liked it and wanted to
publish it.



 

How to write a zombie novel - Write your own Walking Dead

Get your teeth into writing a zombie novel








I never expected to be
able to write a zombie novel. I thought horror was best left to three of my
favourite authors – Shaun Hutson, James Herbert and Graeme Masterton.





Then this image came
into my head of a couple lying in bed when there’s a knock at the door. One of
them pads down the hall, opens the door and finds his friend Archie standing
there. Archie looks like he’s been mugged. Then they notice that his insides
are dripping out…





And so Dead Bastards
was born. So called because the zombies are dead and a bastard to kill (a Glasgow phrase for
difficult).





Along the way I’ve
learnt a few things -





1. Don’t concentrate
on too many people’s stories. This is a big mistake. Too many characters and
too many stories distance the reader from the story you are trying to tell.





2. When it’s a genre
that people are well acquainted with like zombies, you need to stick to the
rules. By all means push the limits. I recently read a book by a well known
author who gave one of his zombies the gift of thought. Bad enough, but he also
gave them the cloak of invisibility. I threw that book across the room.





3. Make your
characters distinctive. People should know who’s speaking even without speech
tags.





4. Every step of the
way, your characters must have a goal. For instance, in Dead Bastards they had
to go to a shopping mall for supplies. There was no way out of it. Having goals
creates conflict and brings your characters to life.





5. Don’t do what
writers of The Walking Dead’s did and get too bogged down with one aspect of
your plot. In the case of the hit show, they dwelled too much on the Lori,
Shane and Rick love triangle. In the end, I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who
got bored with it.





Dead Bastards is
available now from the following -















 

The zombies are on the move...

I was delighted to be invited over to the amazing McDroll's blog to talk about Dead Bastards and why I wrote it.



To read the piece, click here









McDroll's latest book is called Kick It With Conviction and is a collection of short stories. It's available on Amazon UK and USA.



To find out more about McDroll, click here.

 

Hell To Pay cover preview

Today, I got a sneak peek of my book Hell To Pay, which will be published by Sassy Books an imprint of JH Publishing next year.



I am so excited. What do you think?












When Nancy Kerr walks in on her parents’ killers, she’s
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.





It's the first revenge thriller featuring Nancy Kerr and
Tommy McIntyre.





 



Dead Bastards - The Trailer

Dead Bastards is available on Amazon UK priced £1.92 and on Amazon.com priced $3.08



It's also available at Smashwords $2.99

B&N Nook $2.99

PDF (get the .mobi and epub file free) $2.99

 

Read it if you don't scare easily.




Dead Bastards now has it's own blog over at
deidbastards.blogspot.co.uk



The site will be regularly updated with all
sorts of undead like nonsense, including zombie name generator, what to get
your zombie loving relative for Christmas and zombie costumes. Why not stop by
and vote in the best zombie movie poll?



Come on. Once the waking dead turn up FB
and blogs are history.