Everyone has a book inside them

These are exciting times for me. I’ve just had my first novel published as an eBook. Death Knocks and Deadlines tells the story of a young newspaper reporter and is loosely based on my experiences during my early years as a journalist. It also charts the seismic changes in the newspaper industry and provides an insight into the challenges faced by those who now work on local papers. They now operate in an era when advertising revenues and copy sales are dropping alarmingly, staff resources are depleted and there is a demand for 24/7 news across multiple news platforms. My aim was to primarily bring out the humour you experience in some of the situations you find yourself in as a cub reporter. There is also a spot of romance although I would like to point out that this aspect of the book is pure fiction!

I started writing my novel three years ago and much of it has been written in the early hours of the morning or late at night. There was a period of 15 months where I wrote nothing because of other demands on my time but I’ve always thought my story was worth telling, albeit in a fictional sense. I’ve lost count of the number of people who’ve told me over the years that they should write a book about this or that. And I believe the saying that ‘everyone has a book inside them’ is true. It’s just that the vast majority never get written for one reason or another.

Early on I ruled out approaching a publisher or a literary agent because the chances of getting your work into print as an unpublished author are incredibly slim. EBooks offer you a gateway to getting your book out there and it is amazingly simple to publish it to the Amazon website. If you can attract enough digital readers to download it on to their Kindle, Kobo or iPad there is a chance that a print publisher might eventually be interested in taking you on.

So how do you go about writing your novel? Writing that first page can be the catalyst to months, and maybe years, of hard work but ultimately you might produce something you are immensely proud of. I have put together some tips that will help any would-be fiction authors get started:

1 Map out your plot beforehand and decide how the book will end

2 Concentrate on creating three-dimensional characters with back stories – a renowned author once advised me that a book containing a good plot with poor characters would never work but a book with an average plot and good characters would always work

3 Write about what you know – this is an old adage but it makes sense since you will have the insight and knowledge to make your book authentic to the reader if you have experienced what your characters are experiencing

4 Do your research – if you are writing about incidents which happened in the 1960s, for example, make sure your characters are wearing clothes and driving cars from that era and don’t portray them talking on mobile phones!

5 Check your work thoroughly for grammatical errors – spelling mistakes and poor grammar attract the most negative comments when readers review your book on Amazon

I hope I have motivated some people to take the plunge and finally write the novel they have been planning.

If you want to take a look at my book, you can read some sample chapters by clicking this link  http://www.amazon.co.uk/Death-Knocks-and-Deadlines-ebook/dp/B0098QWSWU/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1347706204&sr=1-1        or please feel free to download it your Kindle, Kobo or iPad from the Amazon website.