Ingrid Hall's Blog, page 16

Important – Change of email address

As part of my marketing and branding��efforts, I am planning on cancelling my Granny Irene domain.�� My new email address is ingrid@luv2write.net – Please start using this email whenever you contact me.

I will keep my old email address and domain running for the next six months to ensure the transition goes smoothly, but after that I won’t receive any emails sent to my old email address.�� I will pop up regular reminders and will also start notifying people of the change via email.

I hate doing this as it is time-consuming and a pain in the bum, but the Granny Irene domain name is causing confusion and has to be addressed…

 

 

New call for submissions – Romance Anthology

Hey,

Given��the incredible response that we have had to our call for submissions for our death-themed anthology,��I have decided to push forward with a brand new Romance anthology.

Here’s the deal:

Send me your submissions no later than 30th April 2015, and I will put together, edit��and publish an anthology sometime in the Autumn of this year.�� I will also provide professional cover art.

Each participating author retains copyright of their work. The anthology will be permanently free via Smashwords, and I will also��make it available in a suitable format��to participating authors so that they can offer it as a free download via their websites if they wish. This is a great, promotional tool.

Type of Submissions that I am looking for:

Short Stories

First Chapters

Poetry

Essays

Heat level/Sub-Genres:

All heat levels from sweet romance right the way up to erotic romance.�� Depending upon how many entries we get in each sub-genre, I may decide to break them down and publish separate anthologies.

How to send your submission:

This is really important, so please read carefully. I am doing this free of charge and my time is precious to me, so please help me help you by following these instructions!

All entries must be clearly marked with your name, title of your piece, and�� you must state ROMANCE ANTHOLOGY in the subject header of your email.

They should be sent as a basic word document.

There is no need to send a bio at this stage. I will request one from successful entrants.

What happens next?

I will acknowledge receipt of your submission.

I will contact all successful entrants by the end of MAY.

Please email your entry to ingrid@grannyirene.com

Review of Apart From by Constance A Dunn

A big thank you once again to my little lifesaver Joanne Armstrong for her brilliant reviews…

Apart From by Constance A Dunn

This short novella is a reflection of life, relationships, guilt and repercussions. I���m sure that it is far more too, and I can guarantee that I was missing most of it.

The general premise is a simple one. Three people, seemingly unconnected, go about their daily lives in three different cities. The reader visits only one protagonist at a time, their stories never intertwining and always coming to a close before the next character is seen. Do they have anything in common? They are all loners, chewing on their past and on relationships which didn���t end well. They���re all living away from their homelands – out of place and running away from overbearing guilt and regret. Each comes across an enigmatic stranger who appears out of place and harbouring some hefty secrets.

The stories themselves are relatively uneventful. Their beauty lies rather in the author���s poetic turn of phrase and the many layers of meaning which the reader is able to decipher from it. I really felt that it was over to me how much I chose to read into it, so it���s possible that different readers will gain quite different messages from the same book, which is an interesting idea in itself. The version which I read still has the odd typo, but these were few and far between.

A little about Constance A Dunn:

Born on the US west coast, writing from Belgrade Serbia. Constance’s non-fiction is all over the web where she writes for magazines, sites, and think tanks about travel, being foreign, and the soul of cities. Her literary fiction dives deep into these same themes: the other, the stranger, and the foreigner. Her debut novel ApartFrom was published in October 2013 with KUBOA press.

Where to find her on the web:

http://www.constanceadunn.com/

 

7 Tips for Amazon Keywords and Best Selling Books

Author Ingrid Hall:

Food for thought…

Originally posted on How to Make, Market and Sell Ebooks:

Best selling books are more likely to happen when authors use smart Amazon keywords. When used wisely, keywords help strangers from all over the world find your books. Most authors are missing out because the whole metadata thing can be confusing. Think of it like this:

At bookstores, readers browse in sections where covers, titles and blurbs help them decide to inspect further.
Online, readers type phrases into the search bar where the most relevant books show up in the results (or the books Amazon thinks are most relevant).

Obvious question: how to choose the best ones so the search engine at Amazon leads browsers to your book? Here are 7 tips to help select the best words and phrases plus a tutorial video at YouTube at the bottom of this post.

(There���s also a video course with coupon code, Bestselling Keywords for Amazon Authors.)

1. Make a���

View original 1,025 more words

Final call for submissions for anthology.

Hi,

This is your last chance to submit your poem, essay or short story for our upcoming anthology based��on the theme of death and the afterlife.�� We already have a diverse range and will be publishing by June or July of this year.

So long as it is loosely based around this theme, then you are welcome to send your submission.�� At this stage, I am particularly interested in ghost stories. However, all entries will be considered.

We are also mulling over a suitable title at the moment – all suggestions welcomed.

Final date for sending your entry is 31st January 2015 – entries received after this date will not be considered.

Email ingrid@grannyirene.com

 

 

 

 

 

Review of Uninvited by Sophie Jordan

My reading time has been non-existent lately, but thankfully I can rely on Jo Armstrong to keep you all entertained with her reviews…

Uninvited by Sophie Jordan

H’mmm, where to fall on this one? It’s a book that follows the usual teen dystopia rhythm well. Female protagonist, trained to be tough, can change the world. She’s beautiful and desirable (we know this because there’s the usual love triangle). She’s an alpha female, perfect in every way, for the first chapter of the book, then after her fall, has to cope with the knowledge that she carries the gene which makes her a killer, and from that point on her life changes drastically. I feel the main character was sadly too annoying to like, which made the book hard to like. Davy before her fall is insufferable, and her boyfriend simply unbearable. Davy after her fall is more interesting, but certainly not likeable. I do think this is intentional though – we’re not meant to like this character, but maybe we are meant to relate to her. Perhaps the author is drawing parallels between her readers’ cossetted worlds and Davy’s before her fall. I’m not sure. Teen readers looking for a tried and true formula are sure to enjoy the story. There is comfort in knowing exactly what you are in for when you pick up a teen dystopia, and if this is what a reader is looking for s/he will not be disappointed. The most interesting thing about this book was the background; the message. If we as a society could define the part of a person’s character that makes them a murderer I have no doubt that we would. Where would that lead us? To predicting crimes of course, a la Minority Report. What would we do next? Fear would tell us to stop the identifiable risk before the crime is committed, and what you get is the world created by Sophie Jordan in Uninvited. Tell someone they are predisposed to violence, force them onto the fringes of society, put them together with other identified risks, and you will create the person you are most afraid of. Davy, the main character in this book, would have undoubtedly had a very different life if she had not been identified and whisked away, and I think that’s why she has to be so excruciating annoyingly perfect at the start. It had to be clear that she was destined for quite different things, of which she was painfully – on our part – very aware. So annoying as Davy admittedly is, there is purpose to this. I think this book has much to say about our prison systems, our juvenile programmes, and even the way we teach students at school.

January Sale – 20% off all editing plans

For ONE WEEK ONLY, I am offering 20% off all of my editing plans – Including the Pay Monthly plans.

Contact me using the contact form provided BEFORE 5pm on 23rd January (GMT)

This is a great opportunity, don’t miss out!

[contact-form]

Win some goodies…

Just wanted to ask you all to please sign up for one of my email��newsletters.�� I have two open right now with different prize options. (1 winner will be chosen at random at the end of each month from each site)

First up there is www.luv2write.net - The winner will get a choice of either a paperback copy of The Tunnel Betwixt…by Ingrid Hall, or Freedom, my erotic romance writing as Luna Ballantyne.

Or,

You can sign up at https://lunaballantyne.wordpress.com - For a chance to win ��10 worth of Ann Summers goodies. (For those who don’t know Ann Summers sells naughty goods…)

Love

Ingrid xxx

 

 

Review of The Blemished by Sarah Dalton

Thanks once again to Jo Armstrong for keeping me supplied with book reviews.

REVIEW OF THE BLEMISHED – REVIEW BY JOANNE ARMSTRONG.

I struggled with the writing style in this book, and found it very hard to overlook. I felt my reins tugged this way and that way, my eyes and ears pointed directly at events, and this got very tiring. I’m a reader who likes to make up my own mind; I like to pick up clues like breadcrumbs, and it doesn’t matter to me that the author is dropping them quite consciously. I just like to feel as though I’m doing some of it on my own. The Blemished didn’t allow me any of this independence, hence why I struggled. The dystopian setting which Dalton has created is novel and interesting. The premise here is that our society’s obsession with beauty and physical perfection has led to test tube babies, all others being classed as “lesser” and therefore not allowed to breed; only allowed to live in order to serve the GEMs. I like the premise. The rest of the story sticks to tried and true teen dystopia lines, which is not to say it’s bad, just to say it’s predictable. Readers who enjoy this genre will not be disappointed; we all love books that turn out to be just as we expect them to be. I think that maybe without Mina’s supernatural power I might have enjoyed the book more. I think that the obsession with beauty, perfection and pageants was enough; there was no need to have another level within the story. Without the powers it makes the world scarily close and frighteningly possible on some level, but then when you throw in her abilities, we are swept into the realm of fantasy and I am left saying “Wait, what?” I’m no longer afraid for our future, exploring the ways in which society will implode on itself, which I believe is the strength and morbid fascination of reading dystopian fiction.

First Annual Easychair Bookshop Competition

I�� just wanted to highlight��an amazing new competition that is being held by the Easychair Bookshop. The categories are: Romance, Historical, Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Western, Novella, Paranormal, Mystery/Crime, Erotica, GLBT and series. Rules:

All books nominated must be on the Easychair Bookshop site. (Simply contact them)

��No book by Susan Horsnell, Lacey Roberts or A.L. Cook may be nominated due to conflict of interest. Susan Horsnell will not judge competitionin any category, again, due to conflict of interest.��

��Must be willing to provide a PDF of first 3 chapters in the first instance. Entire manuscript in the second instance. ��Title only is to be displayed. All reference to author must be removed. ��This will prevent any bias. Please defile PDF by crossing on every 6th page with ‘Copyrighted’ Ensure printing is still legible. for judge.

��Judging:

��Round 1:

��The first three chapters of each book will be read and scored. The top 5 books will be progressed to Round 2.

Round 2:

��The top 5 scored books in each category will be read in it’s entirety.

��***ENTRY IS FREE***

Prizes:

��Winners of each category will receive:

��An engraved Medallion on a ribbon and a Certificate.

��They will have a total page, inserted towards the front of��the site, dedicated to their books for 1 year plus a blog post��during the month of June.�� Click here for more details or to enter.

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