A sneak peek from Don't Come For Me

Prologue

You're in the bathroom late at night when you hear a noise coming from outside the door, and there's this tiny part of you, the product of centuries of genetic programming designed to make you fight or flee, that thinks there's someone inside your house. 

Somebody waiting for you outside that door.

Panic sucks the air out of your lungs.

Your dread of what's outside that door places an icy hand on your shoulder.

All kinds of scary thoughts are going through your mind. Different permutations of what's outside the door.

Has someone broken in and they're going through your stuff?

Is someone there determined to do you harm as they have in the past?

There's this tiny voice inside your head telling you not to be so silly. You're imagining things. After what happened before that's understandable, but you can't let fear rule your life. Be the boss of you.

When you open that door, you'll feel ridiculous when you see that nobody's there.

There is no bogeyman waiting.

You open the bathroom door, confidently to prove you don't care; that you've mastered your irrational fear. Not tentatively like you want to, so you can turn on your heels and slam the door shut. Just an inch so you can get a peek at what's out there.

In a few seconds, you're going to be laughing about this. To feel a fool.

With your heart beating in your ears, the door swings open and right away, you see that you were right to be worried.

Both chairs are upturned in the living room and the TVs been pulled out of its brackets. Your boyfriend's nowhere to be seen.

You go into the kitchen and there's a knife on the floor and a pool of blood. You're trying to take all this in as your heart thumps against your breastbone on stereo.

That's when the police turn up, threatening to break down the door if you don't open up.

Surveying the scene you know that they're gonna think you killed him...

My name is Nancy Kerr and I'm not a murderer. Since my parents were murdered I've come close a few times, but I've never done the deed.

I did tattoo the world RAPIST across the stomach of one of my parents' killers. But to me that was justified, righteous revenge because when I walked in on those monsters who’d killed my parents, they raped me and left me bleeding to death on the kitchen floor of my childhood home. What happened caused me to have a breakdown and I ended up in a psychiatric hospital where I was in the land of the zombies for fourteen months. I have no memory of most of what happened there.

But, hey, that's another story.

Accused of my boyfriend Tommy's murder, I need to prove my innocence. It won't be easy. Confronted by the same scene as the police, I would think I was guilty too. And, Tommy's still missing, presumed dead and murdered by me.

The clock's ticking. 

DON'T COME FOR ME IS COMING SOON...

HarperCollins Australia submissions - but only on a Wednesday

HarperCollins Australia are accepting submissions from all over the world and not just Australia - but only on a Wednesday.

Check out their site for details. 

There's no email address.

You need to upload your work to an online that appears - yeah, you guessed it, on a Wednesday.

They want to see - 

a synopsis of your work (it doesn't tell you until you upload, but it has to be 300 words or less) 
the first 50 pages or first three chapters of your manuscript
a short note about yourself


Happy writing and good luck. 

And, remember, follow the guidelines, folks. Don't make it easy for them to say "NO."

What do I write about? - Story Cues

In the first of a regular series, I'll help to answer the question - What do I write about?

A great way to come up with a story idea is to -

Take a familiar item and give it a twist. 

1. Your character gets a text message on their mobile - "We've got your son."

2. The washing machine is making a rattling sound. There's nothing in the drum, but when the back panel is taken off there's a bloody knife hidden inside.

3. You come out of the supermarket to find a strange woman in your car. She's holding a gun and insists she knows you.

Free Zombie story - Pick Your Brain

What would happen once the zombie apocalypse was over and people (and zombies) were forced to justify their actions?

This is a picture from UK zombie drama In The Flesh.

That's the scenario I took and then ran with it for my short story Pick Your Brain.

It's free for your enjoyment over at the wonderful Pulp Metal Magazine.

Feel free to have a read and comment. I'd love to know what you think.

What kind of writer are you? I'm a scattergun.

I'm half way through writing a novel and when I tell people how I'm writing it they think I'm crazy.

For starters, I don't sit and plan every chapter. Instead, I start with an idea. This can be the premise of the book i.e. woman is accused of murdering her boyfriend who she knows isn't even dead.

Then I just run with it, using the scattergun method of writing.

In other words, I write whatever I'm driven to write. This can be a scene from any part of the book.

Sometimes I have the ending before I have the second chapter.

The upside of this method, is two fold -
1. that I never get bored, so I don't think the reader will either
2. my writing is crispier and fresher because I'm not forcing my writing

Of course, there's a major downside -
eventually I will get to the point where I have to write a certain part; to connect up the dots. Writing those bits can be hard, but then writing is hard. You've got to bleed onto the paper.

The scattergun method might not be to everybody's taste, but it works for me. And you've got to stick with whatever works for you, because there are so many methods that don't work.

If I had a penny for every time someone said "I'm going to write a novel" who didn't, I'd be a millionaire.

So, what kind of writer are you? 

Now for something completely different...meet the love angel

Over the years, I've dabbled in so many different genres. My latest is in paranormal romance. I've written it under the of name Jennifer Sweetdance.

The Love Bureau is out in time for Valentine's Day. Here's the blurb -

What if your love life was a mess and the angel who was dispatched to find you true love was more messed up than you? This love angel's in for some love lessons of her own.
Meet Abigail, the Love Bureau angel who cannot fly.
She’s on a mission to save MandySue’s love life from cheaters and womanizers.
Problem is, back home in heaven, Abigail’s angelic husband is no saint either.
Dreams of flight and true love forge a bond between these two women that will move heaven and earth.

You can get The Love Bureau today from Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00IA1Y64C
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00IA1Y64C
http://www.amazon.ca/dp/B00IA1Y64C 

It's a hard knock writing life

2013 has been a weird writing year for me. My first book in a series of revenge novellas I've dubbed Die Hard for Girls because a kick ass woman takes centre stage, was published and I finished writing the second. And How Kirsty Gets Her Kicks finally found a new home after two years in the wilderness despite having a book contract.

Two other novels are also on the shortlist of potential books for another publisher.

But there have been lows too. I've had one book, a book I devoted the best part of a year to researching, writing and blogging like mad about, remaindered because my publisher frittered away cash on marketing gurus instead of selling books. All of this publisher's other books were also remaindered. Despite me compiling an in depth list of online stores with thousands of potential customers who would buy my book, the publisher didn't bother to contact any of them.

Here's what else I've learnt in 2013...

The "publishing" industry is full of parasites who pose as publishers but in reality they are nothing more than money grabbing leaches feeding on the hopes and dreams of writers. 
They sell services like editing, marketing and book illustration and talk like they are doing you a favour. They might even look like genuine publishers, publishing some books without payment.



A book they wanted me to pay £500 to be published.

Real life example - One publisher who I can't name (and I have the emails to prove it) turned How Kirsty Gets Her Kicks down in a form email after asking me to send in the ms, but helpfully suggested someone "we often use to produce and promote our list" who'd format my book as an ebook and "provide you with marketing/publicity plan and arrange for book to be sent out to readers to generate a couple of positive reviews."

The person named was the same person I'd submitted my first inquiry to asking if they'd consider How Kirsty Gets Her Kicks. To me, that's unethical, not to mention predatory. 

The cost was  £500.

I said "no thank you" when what I really wanted to say something mean, especially when they made it sound like making money from books was easy. 

They even had the audacity to say that they could promise the money would be recovered by sales. NO publisher can promise that.

This was a book I'd had a publishing contract for and got a contract for two months later, so I knew it was good.

Unless you're a big name publisher, most publishers do little to promote your books and often they don't capitalise on any publicity you generate.
Case in point, my book was featured in a publication with sales of 250,000 copies. I notified the publisher of this expecting one of their publicists to try and use that as a platform to sell more books by contacting Scottish bookstores (my book's a Scottish crime thriller). They didn't bother, making me wonder why I bothered.

Publishers can take years to make decisions then change their minds, again.
One minute, they love your work. They think it's great and want to publish, the next they're not too keen, then they're back to liking it again and maybe wanting to publish.

Then they change their minds again.

Yep, I learnt this in 2013 and 2012 and 2011...

Most traditional publishers set prices too high costing authors sales.
Far too high, which is fine if its authors who are already successful, but not too good if you're trying to establish yourself.

Self-published authors have one major advantage over traditionally published authors, they get to set the price and when that price applies, particularly the eBook price the format in which most self-published books are sold.

I'm strongly considering self-publishing for that reason.

Keep writing. Work on different projects. You should always have a variety of projects on the go.
If you don't, when an opportunity presents itself you won't be able to capitalise on it. For example, some publishers who are usually closed to all but agented submissions may have submissions windows that can be as short as a month, day or even a week. Be ready to take advantage.

Unless you get hundreds of reviews they don't help to sell books.
Seriously. This has surprised me. Maybe the scandal of authors paying for good reviews or getting people to pour scorn over rival authors' books has led to readers not trusting reviews. Whatever the reason, in my experience reviews don't sell books. I've heard other people say the same thing.

Most top authors only endorse books by their own publishers.
They're too busy to do that to endorse anybody else's unless it's a friend's book.

Publishing is fast becoming a rich person's game.
Agents and publishers have programmes/courses that cost a small fortune to go on that boost your chance of getting published. These courses are out with the reach of most writers, many of whom don't have a barrister wife\husband or rich parents to pay their way.

Take the Faber Academy. They do courses like this one that cost £4,000. And, this online one that costs £2800.

No I'm not endorsing them, I just want to prove a point.

That's why if you don't have the benefit of coming from a well off background - think that covers most of us - you need to make sure your writing is sharper, more energised and entertaining than those who have the benefit of completing these courses and making contacts the rest of us can only dream of.

At the end of the day, readers want good books. They don't care who writes them. The next bestseller could be written by you.