L.K. Jay's Blog, page 8
April 15, 2012
The Policeman Who Was Afraid of the Dark
This week I am celebrating the release of my new novel, which is also the title of this blog post, and I’m having a cocktail to celebrate. Cheers!
Where do you get your ideas? Do they take ages to smoulder in your head until they burst into flames and your hair is on fire? Or do you get a flash of inspiration and then forget about it because you are asleep, don’t have a notebook to hand or you’re just plain drunk? Is it a mixture of all of them, and like me you get the idea and then you have...
Where do you get your ideas? Do they take ages to smoulder in your head until they burst into flames and your hair is on fire? Or do you get a flash of inspiration and then forget about it because you are asleep, don’t have a notebook to hand or you’re just plain drunk? Is it a mixture of all of them, and like me you get the idea and then you have...
April 6, 2012
Have You Ever Been Arrested?
I have.
I was talking to my friends at taekwondo the other evening and shamelessly ranting on about my new novel. It's called 'The Policeman Who Was Afraid of the Dark.' That's called self-promotion that is.
I was pestering my policeman friend because I wanted him to show me around the police station he works in. Apart from the invaluable background research that seeing a busy a police station would give me, including the cells, there would be men in uniform and let's face it, no man in uni...
I was talking to my friends at taekwondo the other evening and shamelessly ranting on about my new novel. It's called 'The Policeman Who Was Afraid of the Dark.' That's called self-promotion that is.
I was pestering my policeman friend because I wanted him to show me around the police station he works in. Apart from the invaluable background research that seeing a busy a police station would give me, including the cells, there would be men in uniform and let's face it, no man in uni...
March 21, 2012
Prison Break! by C L Raven
It's time for a guest blog. And who better to invite but my pals C L Raven, the beautiful gothic Welsh twins of terror, authors of the anthology of bloody romance stories, 'Gunning Down Romance.' Here they tell the tale of their first ghost hunting trip and why you should never, ever trust AA Route Planner.
To fit with L K Jay's novel, 'The Ghost Hunters Club' (which is next to read on our Kindles), we thought we'd share our experience of the first time we attended an overnight ghost tour.
W...
To fit with L K Jay's novel, 'The Ghost Hunters Club' (which is next to read on our Kindles), we thought we'd share our experience of the first time we attended an overnight ghost tour. W...
March 7, 2012
A Funny Thing Happened On The Way to the Dojang…
I was thinking the other day about how I started writing and in a roundabout way, it was due to my other out-of-hours activity - taekwondo. Now you may notice from my blog introduction I mention I am a martial artist but I haven't ever elucidated on that. Crikey, that's a big word for this time of day. But what has dressing up in white pyjamas, throwing myself around the room and hitting stuff got to do with writing?
I first got interested in martial arts when I was about eight, it was the...
I first got interested in martial arts when I was about eight, it was the...
February 12, 2012
A New Decade and a Bit of Navel Gazing.
I've just hit my 40th birthday and I've been doing a bit of navel gazing. Hence the title of this blog post. Enjoy.
Discovering indie music in the 80s was a revelation to me. I danced in my bedroom to The Smiths and New Order and felt like I was part of a special club. I was a teenage girl and I had my fair share of Wham and Duran Duran posters on my wall but there was something about the music that came out of the independent record labels Rough Trade and Factory Records that was just...
Discovering indie music in the 80s was a revelation to me. I danced in my bedroom to The Smiths and New Order and felt like I was part of a special club. I was a teenage girl and I had my fair share of Wham and Duran Duran posters on my wall but there was something about the music that came out of the independent record labels Rough Trade and Factory Records that was just...
January 15, 2012
Do you remember Green Shield Stamps?
I do. I have a very distinct memory of helping my dad stick reams and reams of Green Shield Stamps into their oblong orange booklets. I used a sponge to wet the glue on the back of the little green squares and we had so many stamps to stick my hands used to turn white and prune like as if I had stayed too long in the bath and when you squeezed the sponge, the foamy glue and water mixture would ooze and hiss and dribble down my arm. I wasn't very good at lining the stamps up correctly but t...
December 20, 2011
A Ghost Hunters Christmas Carol
2012 will be the bicentenary of Charles Dickens's birth, so here is my tribute to him with my Christmas episode of The Ghost Hunters Club.
"Your essay is inadequate, there's not enough detail and you can't spell. Please redo this and submit it again before the New Year."
Linda checked the boy's email address and typed it into the recipient's box. 'Robert_Cratchet@cdmail.com' and pressed send. It was Christmas Eve and Linda was sitting in her small flat marking A Level coursework. If she...
"Your essay is inadequate, there's not enough detail and you can't spell. Please redo this and submit it again before the New Year."
Linda checked the boy's email address and typed it into the recipient's box. 'Robert_Cratchet@cdmail.com' and pressed send. It was Christmas Eve and Linda was sitting in her small flat marking A Level coursework. If she...
December 6, 2011
Where Have All The Cowboys Gone?
Ah, the perils of internet dating.
I was talking with some female friends over coffee and croissants the other day, actually it was a cup of tea and a jaffa cake but I wanted to sound sophisticated, and we were exchanging bad dating stories. There were plenty of them and judging by the general thread of the tales I was hearing I came to wonder; are the men of today actually devolving?
I'm sure there are plenty of men who may read this and cry, but I've had some terrible dates with women I've m...
I was talking with some female friends over coffee and croissants the other day, actually it was a cup of tea and a jaffa cake but I wanted to sound sophisticated, and we were exchanging bad dating stories. There were plenty of them and judging by the general thread of the tales I was hearing I came to wonder; are the men of today actually devolving?
I'm sure there are plenty of men who may read this and cry, but I've had some terrible dates with women I've m...
December 4, 2011
How Do You Find the Time?
Hello Folks,
It's been a few weeks since I've put up a blog post and that is because I've been really busy at work, and also because my computer at work is from the stone age and based on an early model from The Flintstones.
I was asked a question by somebody the other day, 'you work in education so how do you find the time to write?' - which got me thinking first of all, if I worked in a different industry, you probably wouldn't be asking me that question but that aside, how do we all find the time to write?
I work full time because as much as I love writing, I need to pay the rent and I quite enjoy eating every day as well. However, I currently manage to churn out a novel and novella most years. My answer to that then is 'Manageable Goals'. I can't write 2 or 3 thousand words every day, have coffee with fellow bohemian writer friends and compare our artistic scarves but I can manage my time efficiently, and I'm massively selfish as well, which helps!
I set myself a small writing limit for each day, a minimum of 500 words in the week and a 1000 at the weekend, do that, little but often and you'll be surprised at how quickly your novel grows. When I've got into the swing of things I usually find that I can exceed my word limit for the day but the important thing is this, try not to skip any days if you can help it. Little but often is the key because when you put off writing for a day, the procrastination virus can set in and it is a virulent one.
In other news, Julia Hughes's new novel is out on Amazon
- check it out if you get a chance.
I've also got a new novel out as well:
also out on Amazon. It's a comedy about three thirty-something ghost hunters and I hope it gives you as much fun as I had writing it.
Happy Reading,
L.K. Jay
It's been a few weeks since I've put up a blog post and that is because I've been really busy at work, and also because my computer at work is from the stone age and based on an early model from The Flintstones.
I was asked a question by somebody the other day, 'you work in education so how do you find the time to write?' - which got me thinking first of all, if I worked in a different industry, you probably wouldn't be asking me that question but that aside, how do we all find the time to write?
I work full time because as much as I love writing, I need to pay the rent and I quite enjoy eating every day as well. However, I currently manage to churn out a novel and novella most years. My answer to that then is 'Manageable Goals'. I can't write 2 or 3 thousand words every day, have coffee with fellow bohemian writer friends and compare our artistic scarves but I can manage my time efficiently, and I'm massively selfish as well, which helps!
I set myself a small writing limit for each day, a minimum of 500 words in the week and a 1000 at the weekend, do that, little but often and you'll be surprised at how quickly your novel grows. When I've got into the swing of things I usually find that I can exceed my word limit for the day but the important thing is this, try not to skip any days if you can help it. Little but often is the key because when you put off writing for a day, the procrastination virus can set in and it is a virulent one.
In other news, Julia Hughes's new novel is out on Amazon
- check it out if you get a chance.I've also got a new novel out as well:
also out on Amazon. It's a comedy about three thirty-something ghost hunters and I hope it gives you as much fun as I had writing it.Happy Reading,
L.K. Jay
October 29, 2011
Have you ever seen a ghost?
I have, or at least I think Ihave.
It was about ten years ago, Iwas training for my secret job at University and I was lodging in a house inCambridge. It was a Sunday evening inNovember and I had the house to myself which was a relief as my landlady was abit of a nutter. I don't mean that in afun, eccentric sort of kooky way, I mean she was a cleaning rota, post-its onmy TV, shouting at my friends sort of mental.
Anyway, I had spent most of theday writing an essay and I went downstairs to...
It was about ten years ago, Iwas training for my secret job at University and I was lodging in a house inCambridge. It was a Sunday evening inNovember and I had the house to myself which was a relief as my landlady was abit of a nutter. I don't mean that in afun, eccentric sort of kooky way, I mean she was a cleaning rota, post-its onmy TV, shouting at my friends sort of mental.
Anyway, I had spent most of theday writing an essay and I went downstairs to...
