Cakes you jump out of (yes, really)

Hopefully the person jumping out of your cake won't look as bored as these two!

For a major scene in my book, How Kirsty Gets Her Kicks, I wanted my main character Kirsty to try and get close enough to someone who would immediately have her killed if he saw her.

I racked my brains about how to do this without her being found out and when it emerged he was having a birthday party, I thought it would be awesome if she could hide in a cake.

I don’t know about you, but I have never seen anyone jump out of a cake before, so I didn’t know where to start.  That’s when the good old Internet came to the rescue.   

Here are some fun facts I discovered -

It's actually quite straightforward to hire a pop out cake, as cakes designed for jumping out of are called.

Pop out cake are usually three tier cakes that resemble wedding cakes, you can even make your own. They can also be square.

Note, I said make and not bake your own because the only similarity between these cakes and real ones is the edible frosting they may have on the outside.

Quite often, a table cloth is placed over the bottom the cake to hide the fact there is no bottom and that’s how the person inside gets inside. Other cakes sit on a platter or stand and have wheels so that the cake can be wheeled in with the person inside. 

A section of the cake can open like a door to allow the person to get inside with ease.

The top comes off and that’s how the person inside jumps out.

A pop out cake even featured in Xena Warrior Princess. 

To hire a cake, it’s best to approach a prop hire company like this one. 

Book description

A tale of skullduggery that plays out on the mean streets of Glasgow… 

One-legged barmaid Kirsty is in a shit-load of trouble after she kills one of gangster Jimmy McPhee’s enforcers with a stiletto heel to the head after he gets a bit too handsie. 

Now she’s on the run from the gang boss who loves to torture his victims before he kills them, with a safe-load of cash she stole from him and a hot gun. And she has company—a choirboy barman Jamie who just happens to be the only witness. 

She needs to survive long enough to spend the cash. 

~~~

Out now in paperback and Kindle at all good book stores and on Amazon 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Kirsty-Gets-Her-Kicks/dp/1643960059

https://www.amazon.com/How-Kirsty-Gets-Her-Kicks/dp/1643960059

https://www.amazon.ca/How-Kirsty-Gets-Her-Kicks/dp/1643960059

Note - This post was first published in 2011 which shows what a long road publishing can be. I'm reposting it to celebrate How Kirsty Gets Her Kicks being published 8 years after it was first due to be published by Pulp Press. 
Thanks go to Shotgun Honey for publishing it. 

The wacky world of the pop out cake

Hopefully, the person jumping out of your cake
 won't look as bored as these two!

For a major scene in my book, How Kirsty Gets Her Kicks, I wanted my main character Kirsty to try and get close enough to someone who would immediately have her killed if he saw her.

I racked my brains about how to do this without her being found out and when it emerged he was having a birthday party, I thought it would be awesome if she could hide in a cake.

I don’t know about you, but I have never seen anyone jump out of a cake before, so I didn’t know where to start.  That’s when the good old Internet came to the rescue.   

Here are some fun facts I discovered -

It's actually quite straightforward to hire a pop out cake, as cakes designed for jumping out of are called.

Pop out cake are usually three tier cakes that resemble wedding cakes, you can even make your own. They can also be square.

Note, I said make and not bake your own because the only similarity between these cakes and real ones is the edible frosting they may have on the outside.

Quite often, a table cloth is placed over the bottom the cake to hide the fact there is no bottom and that’s how the person inside gets inside. Other cakes sit on a kind of platter like this one - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-xtjrR5Dc8  and have wheels so that the cake can be wheeled in with the person inside. A section of the cake can be like a door to allow the person to get inside with ease.

The top comes off and that’s how the person inside jumps out.

A pop out cake even featured in Xena Warrior Princess. 

To hire a cake, it’s best to approach a prop hire company who hire them out for parties and other events. 

Footnote - 

I'm delighted to announce that How Kirsty Gets Her Kicks about a one-legged Glasgow barmaid who goes on the run from with a gangster's cash and gun, will be published in June 2019 by Shotgun Honey. Exact date tbd.

Stay tuned for details. Here's  the cover reveal, as you finally get to find out why Kirsty jumps out of a cake and how she gets on:)

Tips for writing a successful novella

I stumbled onto writing novellas by accident. I saw a snippet of news in Writers' News magazine. It said that a publisher was looking for revenge novellas and was struggling to find women to write them. It was one sentence, but it caught my eye.

Three years later, I have a contract for two novellas in my *Die Hard for Girls series and a publisher interested in the first novella I ever wrote. At last, I had found my niche.

*Note - the Die Hard for Girls books  will be relaunched and re-released by my new publisher, Limitless Publishing as the Crime Files in April and May 2015. 

Here's my top 5 tips on writing novella -

1. You need to be able to pitch your novella in one sentence. Any more than that and it's probably a novel you're writing.

2. Short chapters are ideal for novellas. They keep readers interested. 

3. Your main character's goal should be the main theme of the novella. For instance, the theme for Hell To Pay (the book will be relaunched and re-released by my new publisher soon) is revenge and how Nancy Kerr avenges her parents' murder and her rape.

4. End every chapter with a revelation, a question or a shock that will have readers racing to the next chapter.

5. Your main character should be someone readers will want to go on a journey with, usually a heroine or a hero. If he or she is a villain, make some part of them sympathetic. If you don't, it will put readers off.

For more tips on writing a novella, check out the piece I wrote for Words With Jam. To read it click here

Happy writing:)

Whatever you do, don't start your novella like Snoopy.


Book 1 in the Crime Files
Available April 28th

Coming soon from Limitless Publishing - the Crime Files

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...

Watch the trailer for Hell To Pay...Glasgow's about to get meaner

Hell To Pay's official release date is Friday July 26th, 2013 when it will be available on paperback and on Kindle...




Disclaimer: The Die Hard for Girls books are pure, escapist fiction and do not in any way advocate violence.
 

Writers, it's time to get out of Twitter jail

I realised I was getting too caught up in tweeting, Facebooking, blogging, messageboards, google plus...and the list goes on and on and on...when I wanted to throw my computer out the window in a fit of all consuming incredible Hulk rage.

Well, I couldn’t get the book trailer for Dead Bastards on Kindleboards.

With a second book in what I hope will be a popular Die Hard for girls series to write, my blood pressure bubbling and the lack of sleep, I decided enough was enough.

Here are the commandments I will now live by -

1. No social networking through dinner. No tweeting, Facebooking or writing a blog post.

2. Have one day a week when I don't use social networking at all.

3. When I'm watching a film or a TV show, I also have to go cold turkey.

4. Enjoy the social networking experience. Have fun with people. Stop saying "Please, pretty please buy my book/s" all the bloody time. Folk are sick of hearing it. You're sick of hearing it.

5. Write more without a computer because unless you do you’ll be dragged back to Twitter. Write in long hand. Scribble. By all means take a break, go on Twitter, but only for twenty minutes at the most. Then go back to writing. I'll set an alarm if I need to.

And those are the rules I hope to live by. Well, once I've posted, tweet, FB, Google + this blog post.

6 Things every writer should know

I was first published when I was 15 and wrote a piece on superstitions for Jackie magazine. Over the years, though my writing, this is what I’ve learned -

 

1. Write as much as you can in as many different genres as you can. That way when opportunities present themselves you'll be ready. I know this from experience. In March 2011, I signed a contract to have my first work of fiction published, my novella How Kirsty Gets Her Kicks. For various reason it didn't happen. I also started a follow up book I called Die Hard for Girls. When I saw on Twitter that Sassy Books were looking for submissions, I tweeted the editor. Would she be interested in Die Hard for Girls that I'd since renamed Hell to Pay. She said yes and I submitted it and was offered a good royalty contract just days later.

2. That brings me to my second point - make sure you're on social networking sites so you'll see these opportunities. Without Twitter I'd have two books sitting in my unpublished file. Join great forums like Writer's News Talkback. Network with other writers. See an opportunity for another writer, let them know. They'll alert you to an opportunity you might have missed.

3. That brings me nicely to my third point - help other writers. Don't see them as competitors; see them as comrades in the trenches of writing. Help one another. Commiserate when things go wrong; celebrate their successes. Unless you do it can get lonely.

4.Learn to promote your books. You can't expect your publisher to place ads in the big newspapers. They only do that for the big names. As for you, a listing in their online catalogue is the best you can hope for. The plus side is that because you know your book so well you're the best person to promote it. I have Twitter, Facebook pages and dedicated blogs for Dead Bastards and Living Cruelty Free. The only cost to me was my time. I know doing this has sold books.

5.Don't ever tell yourself "I can't write in that." If a story comes alive in your head, go with it. I never thought I'd write a horror novel. Then this image came into my head of a man turning up at his friend's door looking like he'd been mugged. Only when he comes inside it becomes clear that his guts are spilling out and this is no ordinary mugging. When he dies and then comes back and tries to eat them, they realize that the zombies are here.

I just couldn't get this image out of my head of this guy's guts spilling out onto the floor and this Glasgow couple trying to scoop them up and shove them back in again, so I started scribbling away. And so, Dead Bastards was born.

6.Just because a publisher says no the first time doesn't mean you should give up. TWB Press who published my Glasgow zombie novel originally turned it down when I submitted it as a serial. I really admired the ethos of the company (no non-sense entertainment), so I worked on it some more and what was intended to be a 30k novella ended up a 70k novel (although over 10, 000 words were cut). The publisher Terry Wright liked it and wanted to publish it.