Author: Eva Jordan

Blog Tour: The Museum of You

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Today I’m thrilled to say it’s my turn to host the blog tour of The Museum of You by the very talented Carys Bray. Carys’ first novel, A Song for Issy Bradley, was winner of the Authors’ Club Best First Novel award 2015, and shortlisted for the Costa First Novel award 2015 and the Desmond Elliott prize 2015. A hard act to follow some would say but, judging by recent reviews, The Museum of You looks equally amazing!

Here, Carys talks about her writing process for her new novel and, just to whet your appetite, is followed by an excerpt of The Museum of You.

Writing The Museum of You

As I started to think about writing a second novel I remember listening to a couple of radio interviews with dads who, due to tragic circumstances, were raising their children alone. These men articulated their devastation with moving eloquence. As I listened to them, I wondered how a self-effacing parent might respond in such a situation. And I began to imagine Darren Quinn: bus driver, allotment tender and single Dad of twelve-year-old Clover.

My first novel A Song for Issy Bradley was set in my hometown of Southport. I wanted to write another local novel so I climbed aboard a bus to Liverpool, notebook in tow (the poor driver probably thought I was spying on him), and I wrote a long account of the journey. Then I interviewed two friends who are bus drivers.

As I made notes for Darren, I thought about how it would feel to make plans to leave a place, only to end up circling it every day of your working life. I made notes for his daughter Clover, thinking about what it would be like to grow up in the saddest chapter of your Dad’s story, and how it would feel to hear a carefully rehearsed recitation of the story of your birth, all the time suspecting that things had been omitted, smoothed over somehow. And then I started writing.

I opened the novel at Darren’s allotment which is (conveniently) situated at the same plot Carys 3as my own allotment. I took my notebook with me and wrote about the place. It’s amazing how writing about a place can make you see it differently. I took photographs, not realising how beautiful it is there until I rediscovered this picture of the allotment behind ours, weeks later, as I played with my phone.

Clover Quinn also has a notebook. And she has an idea. Unbeknown to Darren, she intends to spend her summer curating a museum in the second bedroom; the room that is full of her absent mother’s belongings. Her exhibit, Becky Brookfield – the Untold Story, will tell the full story of her mother, her father, and who she is going to be.

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The Museum of You – Excerpt

When she got home from the museum Dad was kneeling in the hall. He’d unscrewed the radiator and his thumb was pressed over an unfastened pipe as water gushed around it. The books and clothes and newspapers that used to line the hall had been arranged in small piles on the stairs. Beside him, on the damp carpet, was a metal scraper he’d been using to scuff the paper off the wall.

‘Just in time!’ he said. ‘Fetch a bowl. A small one, so it’ll fit.’

She fetched two and spent the next fifteen minutes running back and forth to the kitchen emptying one bowl as the other filled, Dad calling, ‘Faster! Faster! Keep it up, Speedy Gonzalez!’ His trousers were soaked and his knuckles grazed, but he wasn’t bothered. ‘Occupational hazard,’ he said, as if it wasn’t his day off and plumbing and stripping walls was his actual job.

Once the pipe had emptied he stood up and hopped about for a bit while the feeling came back into his feet. ‘I helped Colin out with something this morning,’ he said. ‘The people whose house we were at had this dado rail thing – it sounds posh, but it’s just a bit of wood, really – right about here.’ He brushed his hand against the wall beside his hip. ‘Underneath it they had stripy wallpaper, but above it they had a different, plain kind. It was dead nice and I thought, we could do that.’

Dad found a scraper for her. The paint came off in flakes, followed by tufts of the thick, textured wallpaper. Underneath, was a layer of soft, brown, backing-paper which Dad sprayed with water from a squirty bottle. When the water had soaked in, they made long scrapes down the wall, top to bottom, leaving the backing paper flopped over the skirting boards like ribbons of skin. It felt like they were undressing the house.

The bare walls weren’t smooth. They were gritty, crumbly in places. As they worked, a dusty smell wafted out of them. It took more than an hour to get from the front door to the wall beside the bottom stair. That’s where Dad uncovered the heart. It was about as big as Clover’s hand, etched on the wall in black, permanent marker, in Dad’s handwriting: Darren + Becky 4ever.

‘I’d forgotten,’ he murmured. And then he pulled his everything face. The face he pulls when Uncle Jim is drunk. The face he pulls when they go shopping in March and the person at the till tries to be helpful by reminding them about Mother’s Day. The face which reminds her that a lot of the time his expression is like a plate of leftovers.

She didn’t say anything, and although she wanted to, she didn’t trace the heart with her fingertips. Instead, she went up to the bathroom and sat on the boxed, pre-lit Christmas tree dad bought in the January sales. When you grow up in the saddest chapter of someone else’s story you’re forever skating on the thin ice of their memories. That’s not to say it’s always sad – there are happy things, too. When she was a baby Dad had a tattoo of her name drawn on his arm in curly, blue writing, and underneath he had a green, four-leaf clover. She has such a brilliant name, chosen by her mother because it has the word LOVE in the middle. That’s not the sort of thing you go around telling people, but it is something you can remember if you need a little boost; an instant access, happiness top-up card – it even works when Luke Barton calls her Margey-rine. Clover thought of her name and counted to 300.

When she went downstairs Dad had recovered his empty face and she couldn’t help asking a question, just a small one.

‘Is there any more writing under the paper?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘She didn’t do a heart as well?’

‘Help me with this, will you?’

They pulled the soggy ribbons of paper away from the skirting and put them in a bin bag. The house smelled different afterwards. As if some old sadness had leaked out of the walls.

The Museum of You is available from your local bookshop and online.

A moving and surprisingly funny novel – The Independent

Author Carys Bray, photographed near her home in Southport, Lancashire.

Author Carys Bray, photographed near her home in Southport, Lancashire.

Eva Jordan in conversation with… Steven Hayward

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It is my very great pleasure to introduce the wonderful Steven Hayward as guest author on my blog today. Steven is the author of the crime thriller Mickey Take:

In this complex criminal web, Mickey doesn’t know who to protect and who to fear. But with even those closest to him seemingly involved, who can he trust? A hapless pawn in a bigger game that’s playing out between local crime lords, all he knows is whatever happens, he’s not going back into that bloody chamber…

Mickey Take is Steven’s debut novel. His latest book Jammed Up: a Debt Goes Bad is a novella that is both a prequel and an introduction to Mickey Take and if you sign up to Steven’s newsletter (see below) you can actually obtain the ebook version for free! Now, read on for a fascinating insight into the research behind Steven’s writing.

Anatomy of a Rudeboy

A few years ago, not long after leaving the security of a structured job and a regular income in banking, I almost fell into the trap faced by many debut novelists when I started writing Mickey Take: When a debt goes bad… In the opening scenes of the first draft, Michael Field introduces himself as an ex-banker looking for a new direction. Several re-writes later he was to become the impetuous but slightly vulnerable Mickey, who, having kicked out his wife for cheating on him, stormed out of his job the very next day under dubious circumstances only to be lured back into the murky world of revenge and murder he’d barely escaped in his youth. So, thankfully, no other similarities there, then!

Having decided last year to develop the original novel into the Debt Goes Bad series, I wanted my latest book, Jammed Up: a Debt Goes Bad novella to act as both a prequel and an introduction to Mickey Take. Having set it a few years before, but against the same backdrop of feuding gangsters and police corruption, I needed a new central character who, much like Mickey, was likeable with a good heart, but was easily led and, through the circumstances of a misdirected youth, almost fatally flawed.

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I only had to look a few miles west of where I live, to Croydon in South London, to discover a sub-culture emerging at the turn of the millennium that was (and likely still is) an underclass of youth, largely ignored by the media and, at best, misunderstood by most. Under-privileged teenagers, often from broken families and frequently of mixed race, perhaps in search of an identity, are drawn together by a common interest in a specific genre of music, and a love of American branded sportswear.

Enter the Croydon Rudeboy, with a cocky swagger, his back-to-front baseball cap doffed in homage to the gangster rap scene of the USA — but without the guns and the bling! Instead, a Rudeboy has to improvise to impress, wearing his flamboyant trainers (“creps”), with only the rungs of the laces visible beneath the oversized tongues thrust forwards like peacocks’ tails by the balled-up socks wedged behind them. And a Rudeboy is never without his hoodie in a brand to match his trainers: it has to be Nike.

He grew up in a deprived South London suburb — the self-styled “Jam” hails from the Thornton Heath (“Fornton Heaf”) area of Croydon. And he attended, sporadically, failing schools — Jam went to Ingram High, which years before had been a respected grammar school, but was later shut down for being one of the worst-performing state schools of the mid-1990s. For a Rudeboy, school was an unwelcome intrusion into the fun and meaning of daily life. It was “long” (boring) and “dry” (irrelevant) and engendered high levels of illiteracy and disaffection. However, don’t underestimate his intelligence. With a high IQ in street smarts, he is nobody’s fool. Likely to be the son of a white mother and an absent black father, he’s an outsider who, rather than rebel as a means of trying to fit in, effectively conspires to create an exclusive sub-culture with the primary purpose of keeping everyone else out.

The music scene is all about UK Garage (“garrij”), centring on MC rappers, like duo DJ Luck and MC Neat; DJ EZ (“easy”), N’n’G, The Artful Dodger and Craig David. On the radio, the Rudeboy listens to Kiss FM where DJs Tuff Enough Brown and Jam Lamont (aka. Tuff Jam) send out “big-ups” to the listeners’ crews: “Dis is goin’ out to ma man Jam in da Fornton Heaf Massif!” Between 1997 and 2001, the South London pirate underground radio station, Upfront FM pumps out UK garage, and when on the move, beneath his hoodie, the Rudeboy always has on his Walkman earphones.

“Grounded in the youth subculture of Lonjam, theirs was an intimidating mongrel of South London and Jamaican parentage; a patois rich with biting satire and linguistic inventiveness that continuously evolved.”

In addition to the music and the clothes, the Rudeboy is perhaps best characterised by his London Jamaican dialect. In the company of elders and non-hostile strangers, he tends to be polite and reticent, and unlikely to use excessive “LonJam”. When Jam first appears in the opening scene in Chapter 1 of Jammed Up, he’s with his new boss, a white man he would respectfully refer to as “cuz”. In contrast, he calls a fellow-Rudeboy “bruv”, or simply “rudeboy”. But even then, the older man is easily confused by some of his words and phrases as Jam describes a father-less upbringing of intimidation and violence, and the need to grow up fast and to quickly learn to defend himself. Later, when he speaks to his friend, a man-child he calls “Jabba”, the dialogue between them is unconstrained.

“Several years of living north of the river had dulled their edge and back home, they would now have been considered outsiders. But whenever the young men came together, they reverted to the Croydon Rudeboy personas of their teenage years.

‘It was mental, bruv,’ Jam said. ‘I’m meant to keep it on da d-low. Dat place is proper bait.’

‘Wh’appen, bruv?’ Although a couple of years older, Jabba spoke with the eager curiosity of a child, symptomatic of the mild cerebral palsy he’d suffered at birth. Their friendship was such that Jam no longer noticed.

‘Oh my days, blood,’ Jam said, ‘It’s a big-arse grimy house, all mash up wiv two room from breeze block.’”

Another characteristic is the casual use of drugs, particularly the smoking of marijuana. “Bunnin'” would be a regular activity. And so would “graffin” – as teenagers, Jam and Jabba would have been the scourge of the south London railway network as they left their tags emblazoned in graffiti across trains in the overnight sidings at Norwood Junction. Elsewhere, nightlife would include The Blue Orchid opposite The Fairfield Halls in central Croydon or, before the Tramlink was built in 2000, teenagers too young to make it past the bouncers there, along with the ones barred entry for wearing their creps, would frequent “the dive” that was Club Vision in Church Street.

One quality a Rudeboy nurtures on the street is the loyalty he retains towards one of his own. Unlike Mickey, when Jam is offered a questionable job by small-time gangster, Herbert Long, he jumps in with both feet. But for him, the challenge becomes almost too great when he can’t help involving his vulnerable friend…

“‘Okay… so I go dere, watch wh’appen, den what?’

‘Just do the job and I’ll be back in touch. And don’t bother saving any of the phone numbers – you won’t be able to ring or text me back. So, are you in or not?’

‘Yeah man.’

‘Good lad. One last thing.’

‘What?’

‘If you tell a living soul about this… or if you do anything stupid tomorrow, like being seen or worse still, getting caught… I’m not going to be able to guarantee your safety, understand?’

‘For real,’ Jam said slowly, his heart beginning to race. He’d chat it over with the punch bag first and look out for the text later. He pressed the red button on his Nokia 8210 and dropped it in his bag. Grabbing his Walkman on the way out of the room, he slipped quietly down the stairs and out the front door. He pulled up the hood on his new Nike top, and with N’n’G playing in his ears, jumped back on the tube to Bethnal Green, where he walked the rest of the way to the Boys’ Club on Cheshire Street.

On the phone, later that evening:

‘Jabba… ’s’Jam. Come to ma yard, now yeah.’”

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My greatest fear as an author writing Jammed Up, was that the extensive use of dialect in the main character’s speech may alienate some readers. My hope is that there is enough context in which to follow the gist of Jam’s dialogue even when his words may not be familiar. I’m glad to say, since Jammed Up was published on 26th May, readers seem to be taking to him and enjoying his cheeky patois. But for those who may be struggling, here is a Rudeboy’s thesaurus* of common words and phrases:

Vocabulary of a Rudeboy

bait committing a misdemeanour, or danger/threat
balls it to hide drugs down boxer shorts
bang/merk have sex
bang up/bus’ up beat up or beaten up
bare lots of/excessive, or really
belly up laugh uncontrollably
big up embellish or applaud
skin up/billin’ up roll/-ing a joint
blatantly obviously/definitely
blood/bredder/bredrin/bruv friend/fellow rudeboy
blow job shiner
bruck up break or broken
bunnin’/bun smoking/weed, hash, grass, skunk
buff/fine/fit/tic pretty
butters ugly
buzzed/buzzin’/lean stoned
chirps/chirpsin’ chat/-ing up
creps trainers
crusty/dry/dusty/long boring, irrelevant, of no meaning or appeal
cuz a white friend or older person
dappy daft/silly
deep (“dat’s deep, man”) bad/serious
feds police
fraff nonsense talk
for real yes exactly/that’s true
frontin’ challenging/confronting
graffin’ spraying graffiti
heavy/hectic good
hood up feeling uncomfortable on the street
jack/jacked rob/robbed
keep it on da d-low keep a secret
lau dat/lau it leave it/let it go/don’t make a fuss
liber’ies taking liberties
likkle little/small
mash up destroy/destroyed
massif crew/gang
merk/shank stab
oh my days!/gosh!/life! oh my God!
on ma jays alone/on my own
our ends our area/patch/manor
proper really/exceptionally
pull a whitey get sick from too much weed
rudeboy friend
screwin’ angry
spark/tump hit/punch
tag/taggin’ graffiti signature/spraying to mark territory
touch a stroke of luck
trus’ believe me/trust me
uh-uh you know! the cheek of it!
vexed stressed
(ma) yard (my) house/place
yes-yes pleasant greeting
yoot unknown/rival young male
yer get me precisely/exactly/I agree
you know dat tell me about it/I hear you
zoot spliff/joint

 

* With my acknowledgement and thanks to Annabel, Roxanne and Jacqueline Andrews for providing many of the linguistic and cultural references that brought Jam and Jabba to life.

If you’d like to read more, Jammed Up: a Debt Goes Bad novella is available as an e-book from Amazon, Kobo and Nook, with a paperback edition due out later in the year.

Subscribers to the Followers of Fiction newsletter can obtain the ebook for free here.

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Eva Jordan in conversation with… Lisa Hall

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Today I’m very pleased to introduce the wonderful Lisa Hall as guest author on my blog. Lisa is the author of the very successful psychological thriller Between Me and You. Lisa’s next novel Tell Me No Lies is due for release in October this year and currently available to pre-order on Amazon. Lisa loves words, reading and everything there is to love about books. She dreamed of being a writer since she was a little girl – either that or a librarian – and after years of talking about it, was finally brave enough to put pen to paper (and let people actually read it).

They say every marriage has its secrets.
But no one sees what happens behind closed doors.
And sometimes those doors should never be opened…

Sal and Charlie are married. They love each other. But they aren’t happy. Sal cannot leave, no matter what Charlie does – no matter how much it hurts.

Between Me and You

It was supposed to be a fresh start.
A chance to forget the past and embrace the future.
But can you ever really start again?
Or does the past follow you wherever you go…

Tell Me No Lies

 

THINGS I NEVER REALISED UNTIL AFTER I WAS PUBLISHED

  1. The real work starts AFTER publication.

So, you’ve finished your manuscript, edited, polished and honed it to perfection before submitting to your agent/publisher (depending on how you’re going to do this.) Then, hurrah! Somebody wants to publish it! This is excellent news – but this also signifies the beginning of the real hard work. When writing Between You and Me I never gave a thought to what would happen if someone did decide it was good enough to publish – what actually happened (after the celebratory champagne) was months and months of re-writing and editing, slashing out huge chunks of the original manuscript and replacing it with stuff that I’d never even thought of when writing the original draft. Add in to that the constant promotion, tweeting and events that need to be attended, along with the next book that needs to be written and you’ll soon find it is far less exhausting to be unpublished. I may sound like I’m moaning, but I absolutely am NOT – I’m exhausted, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

  1. Not everyone will be happy for you.

Don’t get me wrong, the majority of people have been extremely happy for me – I don’t think you can get a prouder Dad than mine right now – but there will always be some that are less pleased. There will always be one person who will respond to your, “I got a book deal!” with, “That’s great. So yeah, my life is pretty shit right now…” There will always be someone who will congratulate you on your book hitting the Top 100, Top 10, Top whatever with gritted teeth. But you know what? Don’t let them rain on your parade – you got a BOOK DEAL, and that is pretty bloody amazing.

  1. Your editor is your best friend. Ditto, your agent.

I love my agent. She is just utterly fantastic, and I really don’t know what I would do without her. She holds my hand when I’m freaking out, battles her way through the minefield that is a publishing contract while I cower in the corner, whimpering, “but I don’t understand!’  and generally fights my corner. In addition to this, she makes me laugh til my belly hurts and makes me read books that I would never normally have thought to pick up. She is a legend.

Equally, I love my editor. It’s always hard to get your manuscript back with bits telling you what works and what doesn’t, but remember, the chances are your editor knows best. And if, in your gut, you don’t agree with their changes you should always be able to tell them so. My editor is fantastic – she tells me when I’m rubbish, but equally tells me when I’ve been brilliant. Chances are you’ll want a long, working relationship with your editor and your agent, so it’s best to have the kind of relationship where the admiration is mutual. (I love you guys!)

  1. One star reviews are not the be all and end all

So, my first one-star review was like a dagger to the heart. How could they say these things about something I’d put my heart and soul into?  Then I delved a little deeper into the reviewer’s profile (we all look, anyone who says they don’t is a liar!) – and it turned out that this reviewer had only reviewed books that they hated. All their reviews had one star. I figured that said a lot more about the reviewer than it did about my work. I stopped reading ANY reviews, and I figure that if someone wants to let me know how much they loved/hated Between You and Me, then they’ll tag me in their review, or contact me directly. No more daggers to the heart and I still get to feel the love.

  1. I didn’t realise how important writing is to me.

Yes, I always loved writing. Yes, I always wanted to be a writer. But life got in the way. I got married, had a family, held down a full-time job, but until I decided to take the plunge I never realised that writing would become as important to me as the air I breathe. Those of you that have always known it – I envy you. I’ve only just discovered that a rough day can be made easier by writing, that ideas and plots that swirl around in my brain stopping me from sleeping will settle if I just write them down. If you love to write, DO IT. Make the time. I’m still a novice, still on a steep learning curve, but I’ll tell you one thing – I’ll never look back.

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Purchase Between Me and You from Amazon here or pre-order Tell Me No Lies here

Eva Jordan in conversation with… Christie Barlow

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I’m really pleased to have the lovely Christie Barlow as guest author on my blog today. Christie is the author of three novels, namely, A Year in the Life of a Playground Mother, The Misadventures of a Playground Mother and her current novel, Kitty’s Countryside Dream.

I had hoped that by the time this post went live I could proudly say I had actually met Christie in the flesh, so to speak, as I was due to meet her, along with many others, at a Blogger – Author meet up in London on Saturday. Sadly it wasn’t meant to be. With my train ticket booked I set off from home reasonably early with no reason to doubt I would reach my destination on time. How wrong was I! I won’t bore you all with the details as I know you are dying to read Christie’s post but needless to say, thanks to engineering works combined with football and rugby matches taking place in London on the said same day – my usual one hour trip to London actually took five hours and I missed the meet.

Oh well – I hope I get the opportunity to meet Christie at the next meet. In the meantime read how Christie, in a bid to prove to her children that you can achieve anything you set your mind to, became a successful published author.

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Sometimes I wake up in the morning, open my eyes and think, ‘Is this real?’ But then I hear one of the kids shout, ‘Where’s my uniform, mum? Mum, can you check my spellings? Has someone let the dog out?’

Okay, my four kids, my mad cocker-spaniel Woody, the chickens, the horses and even my husband can jolt me back to reality pretty quickly but at the end of the day, it’s these characters in my real-life that got me writing in the first place.

One day, after I’d turned 40, my children were asking me what did I want to do? I found myself answering, ‘I’ve always wanted to write a book.’ I had spent years dedicating my life to being a full-time mum, and piano teacher, but now the kids were getting older, there perhaps was something more I could do for me. After making this bold statement, I thought I better try and see it through – and show my kids that you CAN achieve anything you set your mind to.

What to write about came to me pretty easily, as I was always fascinated with the dynamics around the primary school gates with mothers and playground politics. Of course, all my writing was fiction with a huge heaping of one-liners. After self-publishing A Year in the Life of a Playground Mother, I was amazed to see it rocketing up the Amazon charts reaching no 1 in its category and no 11 for Kindle downloads. The reviews were amazing, calling it ‘witty’ and ‘laugh-out-loud funny’. Before I knew it, my wacky village characters were appearing on the page in a sequel, The Misadventures of a Playground Mother.

This is when my life really took a parallel course with reality. One morning after the school run, I came home to find an email from literary agent Madeleine Milburn – I had just finished writing Misadventures, intending to self-publish again, when Ping! I not only had an agent but within a few weeks, I had a publishing deal with the fabulous Bookouture.

My third novel, Kitty’s Countryside Dream has just been released. It introduces a new set of characters centred on love and genuine friendship, with a few chickens added into the mix. And, I’m working on a completely different novel that’s due to come out in September.

It’s been an amazing experience – especially since signing with my agent and Bookouture. I’m attending events and meeting many authors whom I’ve admired for years. Through my social media presence, I was approached by the Zuri Project, a charity that supports development and community well-being in Uganda, working with the team to make a difference.

But, I have to say, my kids keep me grounded! I had an opportunity to take my two youngest to meet David Walliams at a book signing in Birmingham recently. I joked to them that I might tell David I kept him off the top spot for a few days. Their reply, ‘Mum, you can’t steal his thunder, this is his day, let him enjoy it!’ Okay kids, you’re right – but I still took the opportunity to take a photo of my book next to his in a Waterstones’ bookshop!

Now I’m about to pop my head on the pillow after a crazy day of writing and responding to reviews on Kitty and I think to myself, ‘Is this real?’

Luckily for me, the answer is yes.

Warm wishes,

Christie xx

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You can purchase Christie’s latest novel, Kitty’s Countryside Dream here.

Christie loves to hear from her readers and you can get in touch via social media:
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Eva Jordan in conversation with… Tara Lyons

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In the shadows

I’m very pleased to have the lovely Tara Lyons as guest author on my blog today. Although we haven’t met (in the flesh so to speak) yet, I’m very pleased to call Tara a friend. Tara is the author of the crime thriller In The Shadows, and although only released in March this year, Tara’s debut novel has already received many brilliant reviews.

Detective Inspector Denis Hamilton is tasked with apprehending a brutal murderer stalking the streets of London—and leaving not a shred of DNA evidence. As the suspect list mounts, his frustration and pressure from his superiors intensify. Grace Murphy, who is dealing with the recent loss of her beloved grandfather, falls deeper into despair when her friends’ bodies are discovered. Fearing she may be the killer’s next target, she begins to question if her horrifying nightmares are the key to unravelling the murderer’s identity. How far would you go to uncover the truth? Would you venture into the shadows to unmask a killer?

Here Tara talks about her life and experiences since becoming a published author and how dreams really can come true.

Dreams can come true

It’s impossible to read that line without wanting to break out into song isn’t it – Gabrielle style, of course – so I apologise now if it’s stuck in your head for the rest of the day. I’m also sorry if it makes me sound like a cliché – but it’s true; dreams can come true. It’s happened for me, and if someone would have told me this is where I would end up, I wouldn’t have believed a word of it. So what’s not to say your dreams can’t come true too.

My whirlwind year

I won’t bore you all again with tales of my writing journey so far – I feel like that’s all I did for the first half of this year – but I will reiterate what an amazing year I’ve had.

We’re just a few weeks away from my 31st birthday (happy to receive chocolates and wine), and it’s that which has prompted the self-reflective mood. It will mark the year anniversary to when my writing career began, and it’s changed my life remarkable.

In that short space of time, I have collaborated with a fabulous author, M.A Comley – her series of books I devoured and enjoyed long before our writing partnership began. It still feels unbelievable at times. Together, we have written a novella (some parts of the story are based on true events) and are about to launch a new crime series. The Caller is the first book in the series which follows an Organised Crime Team seeking justice on the streets of London. I published my solo crime/thriller debut, In the Shadows in March and I’m pleased to say it’s doing really well. I’ve received some amazing five-star reviews on iBooks (Eek! Wow! I’m on iTunes!!) and it’s inching towards 100 reviews on Amazon UK. I’m overwhelmed.

The Caller

The network of people I connect with has blown wide open. On a daily basis, I speak to avid readers, crazy book lovers, bloggers and fellow authors. I’ve attended events such as author/blogger meet-ups, a Q&A with Jojo Moyes, book club birthday parties (which have been attended by some very fun and inspirational people) and I’ve just booked tickets to attend Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Festival in Harrogate this June. I can’t begin to tell you how excited I am about all these new opportunities.

I’ve made new friends, new contacts and have been welcomed into new social circles. It’s truly been an amazing year. I think if I tried to name all the influential people in this post you finger would ache from the constantly scrolling. But, I do thank each and every reviewer, buyer, blogger, friend, book club and fellow reader/writer who has made this past year one hell of a ride. I hope the next one is as successful.

I can do it, so can you

So, I’ll just leave you with this thought: Are you following your dreams? I’m no one special, a working-class girl who has never had much in terms of material things but am lucky to have a supportive family and dear friends. They pushed me to live my dream. If you don’t have that network, there is an amazing online community that can help you – just reach out. It’s easier to find excuses not to do the thing you love, but then, you only get one shot at this life, so live it doing something you enjoy.

Huge thank you to Eva for welcoming me onto her blog today. Eva is one of the lovely friends I’ve met online and I hope to meet her in person one day. I had the pleasure of reading her debut, 183 Times a Year – a book completely out of my usual reading genre – and I loved it. If you haven’t read it yet, get reading!

I love chatting online, so please feel free to get in touch.

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Eva Jordan in conversation with… Marissa Farrar

/ Eva Jordan / 3 Comments

Marissa Book covr

I’m very pleased to introduce the lovely Marissa Farrar as my Guest Author today.
Marissa has always been in love with being in love. But since she’s been married for numerous years and has three young daughters, she’s conducted her love affairs with multiple gorgeous men of the fictional persuasion.
The author of more than twenty novels, she has been a full time author for the last six years. She predominantly writes paranormal romance and urban fantasy, but has branched into contemporary fiction as well. You can read about her latest trilogy, Defaced: The Monster Trilogy, at the end of this article.

A prolific writer, Marissa explains how she makes her living out of writing and gives some very helpful advice along the way.

Earning Money from Ebooks

Marissa Farrar

I’ve found people don’t like talking about money—especially in the publishing business. If authors talk about wanting to earn money from their books, it’s as though that automatically makes them care less about their craft than someone who writes purely for the love of writing. In my experience, that’s total rubbish.

I’ve been earning my living from my books for the past six years now. I’m going to talk about how I earn a decent living from my work (my income is now higher than my husband’s, and I’m not even a big seller). This is how I sell books and make money. I’m sure people will argue there are other ways (which I’m sure there are), but this is just my story.

  • Self-publish.

I didn’t start off as a self-published author. Like many authors, I started with a couple of small presses, but quickly realised I could do better on my own, and so started to put my books out on my own. It wasn’t until then that I earned anything more than possibly a small meal for my family! I’m sure being with a publisher is lovely in many respects, but self-publishing allows you the control to do many of the things I’m going to suggest next.

  • Be clever with pricing.

You are never going to earn a living with books priced at $0.99. At that price you have to sell hundreds of books per day in order to make a decent living, and very few authors achieve that.

Do the maths:

$0.99 = $0/35 royalty x 100 sales = $35

$3.99 = $2.80 royalty x 10 sales = $28

It’s always going to be easier to sell ten books than one hundred.

The only time I price books at $0.99 is for a short term promotion, for short stories, or for first of series books. Full length books for me will always be priced at the $3.99 mark. Novellas will be $2.99. I do have free first-of-series books, or run free promotions, but for the books I want to earn money from, $3.99 is the sweet spot.

  • Publish regularly.

I put out a new novel every other month now. It’s easier for me because this is my full time job, so I don’t have a day job to contend with (though I do have three small children!). However, setting yourself up a regular publishing schedule is important. It doesn’t have to be every two months – it could be every four months, or even six (though I wouldn’t advise leaving it this long between books as readers will forget you!) – but the important thing is that you’re regularly publishing, and readers know when they’re going to get their hands on your next book. Plus you’re more likely to see more of those $3.99 books with a decent backlist.

  • Make use of the pre-order option.

I love pre-orders! A lot of authors offer their books at a special offer of $0.99 to entice more readers in, and this does work, but in exactly the same way pricing your already published books at $0.99 it won’t make you much money. What a pre-order does is allow you to create a call to action for readers when you’re talking about your book and promoting it before it’s even published. I now include the pre-order for my next book in the back of my most recent release, so readers can just jump straight over and one-click the hell out of it.

  • Build your newsletter.

Having a newsletter with a decent number of subscribers is like having access to your very own Bookbub that’s designed purely for you. Take time to build the number of subscribers you have – include the link in the back of every book you publish, use signing up to your newsletter as an entry in competition, or sign up to a company who offers to build your newsletter for you – such as the folks over at I Love Vampire Novels (no, you don’t have to write about vampires to take advantage of this). I used AWeber, but it’s expensive. I know many others use Mailchimp, which sounds like a good one to get started with, or I’ve also heard good things about Madmimi.

  • Spend money to make money.

I know this is easier said than done, especially when you’re scraping around trying to find money to pay the bills and feed the kids (believe me, I’ve been there!), but if you want people to spend their hard earned cash on your product, you’ve got to be prepared to invest in it yourself. The things you cannot skimp on are a good cover artist (there are some amazing pre-made covers out there if you can’t afford to commission one) and an editor. Even if it’s just an edit to make sure your grammar and spelling is correct, you’re better off publishing your book with one than without. If you really cannot spend a single penny on your book, then it might be an idea to go down the traditionally published route until you start earning some royalties, which you can then use to put out your own work.

The other area in which you need to spend money is advertising. I always suggest at least 20% of your income should be spent on advertising, though I often spend closer to 30-35%. Places to spend your advertising money are  facebook ads, and email blasts with companies such as Bookbub or the smaller versions such as Robin Reads, eBook Hounds, and Booksends.

I guess the thought I want to leave you with today is that it isn’t impossible to make a decent living from publishing ebooks. I’m not talking about the sort of huge sums which make people best-sellers, but just a modest, regular number of books sold each day which will give you a steady income. And if you have a steady income from ebooks, then you don’t have to go to the dreaded day job, and you can write even more books!

Start off by aiming to sell ten ebooks across multiple channels per day, and when you hit that number, aim to sell fifteen, and then twenty. Just imagine, one day you might even sell one hundred books per day, and $3.99 = $2.80 royalty x 100 sales = a whole heap of cash!

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Marissa Farrar

 

Defaced: The Monster Trilogy
A Dark Romance Novel
By Marissa Farrar

Monster
Hidden away from society by his criminal father, there lives a man who has never entered the outside world. Now, having taken over his father’s business, he has all the money and power he could dream of, yet still he refuses to let himself be viewed by the rest of society.
Lily
Traumatised by an event in her past, Lily Drayton has a phobia of being touched. Though she helps people externally with her skills as a laser therapist, she refuses to let anyone in, emotionally or physically. When Lily is kidnapped on the way home from work one evening, she discovers she’s not the only person who keeps themselves cut off from the rest of the world.
Defaced
A man owns her now—a man both dangerous and enigmatic. Drawn by his dual beauty and hidden pain, he awakens something inside her, something she believed was long dead. Brought to a room without windows, she’s given an impossible task: to make her owner acceptable to the outside world.
Can altering his face change who he is as a man, or is he truly a monster, both inside and out?

Buy Links:
Amazon: viewBook.at/Defaced
Barnes & Noble: http://ow.ly/VFeGL
iBooks: http://ow.ly/VFeO0
Kobo: http://ow.ly/VFeY2

Eva Jordan in conversation with… Sue Moorcroft

/ Eva Jordan / 5 Comments

Sue Moorcroft Hats

I’m very pleased to introduce the lovely Sue Moorcroft as my guest author today. A prolific writer of women’s contemporary fiction, Sue was born in Germany, the daughter of two soldiers, then lived in Cyprus, Malta and the UK. She’s worked in a bank, as a bookkeeper (probably a mistake), as a copytaker for Motor Cycle News and for a typesetter, but is pleased to have wriggled out of all ‘proper jobs’.

Here, Sue talks about the inspiration for her latest book The Christmas Promise.

What inspired The Christmas Promise?

When people ask about inspiration I feel they must anticipate tales of poignant life experiences or points I’m bursting to make to the wide world. Some of my books do have their origins in life experiences and, like most writers, I always have several points I want to make, but, fundamentally, I like to write about things I want to write about.

How The Christmas Promise came into being went something like this:

  • I was asked for a Christmas novella because they sell well and Christmas is always a promotable subject in the UK.
  • I don’t care for Christmas. I decided it would be more bearable to write about a heroine who doesn’t like Christmas, either.
  • On BBC Radio Cambridgeshire’s afternoon arts and culture programme I met a fellow guest, Abigail Crampton, who was a milliner. Making fabulous hats by hand seemed exactly the kind of occupation for one of my heroines, so I asked Abigail if she’d advise me.
  • Books have to have conflicts to drive the story so it seemed natural that Ava’s millinery business wasn’t too successful. (This changes as the book develops, partly owing to a WAG called Booby Ruby.) Not having much dosh at Christmas added to Ava’s challenges.
  • I wanted my hero to have a more serious beef with Christmas, so I put Sam’s mum, Wendy, in the elapse between surgery and chemotherapy, making him resolve to give the best Christmas he possibly could, cancer being such a life changer for the loved ones as well as the patient.
  • I began to suspect Sam and Ava’s story deserved a bigger stage and should be a novel rather than a novella.
  • My agent agreed, and so Ava needed a greater conflict than a Grinch-like dislike of the festive season. By happenstance, I read an article about ‘revenge porn’, ie an ex circulating intimate images of someone as revenge for being dumped. I was so annoyed on behalf of the victims that I immediately created Ava’s ex-boyfriend Harvey to illuminate the despicable crime.
  • A contemporary career for Sam, ways in which Ava’s goals and conflicts would impact upon Sam’s goals and conflicts, and I had assembled the elements I needed to begin planning back stories and seeing where the issues in the book would take me.

I’m not sure if the above process comes under the heading of ‘inspiration’ so much as ‘plotty idea-storming sessions with a significant dash of commercialism’, but it’s where the roots of this particular book lie.

Award-winning author Sue Moorcroft writes contemporary women’s fiction with occasionally unexpected themes. The Wedding Proposal, Dream a Little Dream and Is this Love? were all nominated for Readers’ Best Romantic Read Awards and Darcie’s Dilemma for Readers’ Best Short Romance. Love & Freedom won the Best Romantic Read Award 2011 and Dream a Little Dream was nominated for an RNA in 2013. Sue’s a Katie Fforde Bursary Award winner, a past vice chair of the RNA and editor of its two anthologies.

Sue also writes short stories, serials, articles, writing ‘how to’ and is a creative writing tutor.

Sue’s next book (available for pre-order now): The Christmas Promise 

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Sue Moorcroft

Eva Jordan in conversation with… Amanda Prowse

/ Eva Jordan / 1 Comment

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I’m very pleased and honoured to introduce the lovely Amanda Prowse as my guest author today. Although Amanda didn’t start writing full time until she was forty she is a prolific writer with many published novels and novellas to her name, including her most recent novella Miss Potterton’s Birthday Tea.

Amanda states that her ambition has always been to create stories that keep people from turning the bedside lamp off at night, great characters that ensure you take every step with them and tales that fill your head so you can’t possibly read another book until the memory fades…

Here Amanda talks about her love of reading and explains the ideas behind her new novella.

Eva. thank you so much for having me as a guest on your wonderful blog, I am very happy to be here among friends.

Books are a huge part of my life. Reading for me is akin to breathing. I simply cannot imagine a life where this is not one of my major habits. I would rather be reading than just about anything else. We have a standard joke in our house, having visited some amazing places, sites, venues, I have very often done so with my nose in a good story only half-present, I can’t help it! What was I supposed to do? NOT find out what happened? As if.

The recent celebration of World Book Night has opened my eyes to the fact that so many people don’t read, yes I know, unbelievable, but true. My immediate thoughts are, what do they DO with all that spare time, all those hours reclaimed by not sitting with your nose in a book and secondly, what do they THINK about? As my head is largely consumed with three things;

  1. The book I am currently reading.
  2. The book I am currently writing.
  3. Is it time for another coffee yet?

Throughout my life, books have been my salvation, my educators, my friends and my escape. I grew up in a loving, busy, noisy, chaotic house without books in it. My wonderful Mum and Dad were too busy working and caring for their large brood and apart from reading on holiday (I picture my dad with the latest John Le Carré and my mum with anything by VC Andrews – Flowers In The Attic etc.) they didn’t make or have the time to read. Interestingly, once we had flown the coop and the burden of life was lifted a little, they both became and continue to be voracious readers! Kindles are now on their checklist when they leave the house, whereas it used to be simply, ‘keys, wallet, phone…’

I was born in Stepney and grew up in East London and remember very clearly my first ever visit to East Ham library and being given a little cardboard library card. It changed my life. Someone trusted me with the most precious thing: a book! And not only was it completely free, but when I finished, they let me choose another and another… that was it. I was hooked!

I used to curl up among the noise of my brother’s running around the room, yelling and playing ‘He-Man Master of the Universe!’ and read. This skill now serves me very well. I can write anywhere! Planes, trains, even in the TV room with a computer game blaring and boys yelling I am able to disappear into my own little world and create…

When my boys were little, I took so much joy in reading to them. Working our way through weighty classics like Moby Dick and the whole series of Lemony Snicket A Series of Unfortunate Events (LOVE LOVE LOVE THESE BOOKS!) and I hoped they would, like me, become book worms. It hasn’t quite worked out that way, my eldest would rather be watching or kicking a football, but this makes him happy and that is the goal (every pun intended!) My youngest is dyslexic and as a scientist is happier with his head in some grisly scientific tome than anything more frivolous!

So I do understand that books are not everyone’s bag but nothing gladdens my heart quite as much, as receiving a message from someone to say that they have read one of my books and it has re-ignited their love of reading! I know that this is so much more than them enjoying my stories; it is about them discovering the alternate worlds that lay in wait! How wonderful!

I also think that with the sweeping epidemic of loneliness in this modern age, not only would books provide companionship and escape for those affected, but a trip to the library would be the best tonic!

My latest novella “Miss Potterton’s Birthday Tea” looks at the loneliness of three seemingly very different people who all have that one simple desire, to switch off the light at the end of the day with someone by their side who cares about them. I think the best comment I have had about from a critic was “It made me go Aaaaaaah!” what more could I ask for?

Well, Eva, a deadline is looming and so I must get back to my edit – thank you so much for letting me hang out with you and your lovely readers and if anyone has any questions or wants to chat – they can always contact me at; askamanda@amandaprowse.com

With love

Amanda xx
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