my-blog

Kindle Fire Department Giveaway! 2nd March - 13th!

Sat, 25 Feb 2012 08:21:09 +0100

The fab Kindle Fire Department have got together with six authors (yes, little old moi is one of them!) to organize a giveaway of a Kindle Fire (I want one!). The giveaway runs from 2nd March - 13th so stay tuned for more details on my blog! I'm featuring my romantic comedy Fourteen Days Later and I'll also be giving away an ebook copy here at the end of the contest.

You can find The Kindle Fire Department on Facebook and Twitter to get the latest giveaway info and book features.

Happy Reading!

Sibel XX

Featured Indie Chick - Sibel Hodge

Sat, 25 Feb 2012 07:25:51 +0100

It's my turn this week to share my story from the Indie Chicks Anthology...

From 200 rejections to Amazon top 200!

Sibel Hodge

Ever since I was old enough to scrawl my first word, which was Halibaaaaa, I knew I wanted to write books. OK, so the word didn’t actually make sense, and it might take a little longer for me to actually string a whole sentence together, but that didn’t put me off. I was going to write books and no one would stop me…

From when I was really young, my mum encouraged me to read. “If you can read books, you’ll never be bored,” I remember her telling me. I secretly think it was a ploy to keep me out of her hair and quiet for a while. I was always a loud kid with lots of energy, and always getting into some sort of trouble with the boys down our street. (Yep, even then I was a sucker for boys!). After discovering the wonderful world of books, I thought I’d have a go myself, and remember scribbling down stories whenever I had a spare moment. Shame I was only six, and there was no way anyone would publish a book with I Want Big Girls’ Knickers in the title.

When I was in secondary school my favourite subject was English language. I’d lose myself for hours. And even though I hadn’t thought about my forthcoming career before I left (apart from being Wonder Woman or an astronaut), I knew, even then, I had a love of creating. I also loved to make people laugh from an early age. In the beginning, it wasn’t intentional. I was always saying ridiculous things that I thought were quite serious. Like the time I went to the butchers shop with my nan, and the lady behind the counter asked where I was from. “South America,” I said. (I know, where the hell did that come from? I must’ve had an overactive imagination from the start.) So when people started laughing at me, I thought, hey, this is pretty fun! We live in such a hectic world and laughter is a perfect way to de-stress. Because my personality is quirky, fun-loving, and slightly nuts, it was probably a given that I would eventually write chick lit, although I have recently delved into the dark side of my brain (which is a pretty scary place to be sometimes!) and written a psychological thriller.

But when I left school no one mentioned writing as a career. It was all boring things like secretarial jobs, travel agents, office work. I didn’t even know about creative writing courses until about ten years ago! I think they considered that writing wasn’t a “proper career.” No one suggested journalism or further education in writing. So what was a girl to do? Although my mum wanted me to go to University and study to be something like a doctor or lawyer (eeek!), I didn’t have a clue what I wanted to do for a career, so I flitted from one job to the next, trying to find something that interested me, and eventually ended up working for the police for ten years. So there I was, too busy paying the mortgage, working shifts, and living in the rat race of life to have the proper time or opportunity to write a novel. It didn’t stop me trying, though.

It was drastic things like splitting up with a boyfriend that made me start my first novel when I was about seventeen. I never got further than the first three chapters, though, because I didn’t have a clue what I was doing, other than using a typewriter! Then I started another one (I got dumped again – can you see a pattern here?) when I was about twenty-three, and ditto (I’d hate for those to ever see the light of day). I just knew that I loved writing and therefore it stood to reason that one day I’d do it, didn’t it? And although I look back now and think I wish I’d started writing earlier, actually, I have to say, that it would’ve been bad timing. Back then I wouldn’t have had anything to really write about. A lot of the things that go into my books now are based on my experience of life. People I’ve met, places I’ve been, books I’ve read, things I’ve done, struggles I’ve achieved. At twenty-three, what did I really know about any of that?

And then five years ago, hubby and I had had enough of the UK. We got fed up with the constant grey weather, bills that seemed to increase as you looked at them, working constantly to pay them, and never having quality time for ourselves or our family. Right, it was time to make my childhood dream come true and move somewhere exotic, where the cost of living was lower, and we would actually have time to enjoy each other and life again. Then I would finally have the time and opportunity to dedicate to writing. Yes, we’d have to sacrifice a lot of things to achieve it, but it would be worth it in the end. So we moved to North Cyprus, and it was like my brain suddenly said, Hallellujah! Now we divide our time between Cyprus and the UK.

I didn’t actively think about what I was going to write, but a year after we’d moved there I had an exciting idea for a story, using my unique Turkish Cypriot/British cultural heritage, and my debut romantic comedy Fourteen Days Later was born. Then I actually became the guinea pig for the sequel, My Perfect Wedding! But it was all very well completing my dream of writing a book, but until it was published, no one would get to read it.

So I started querying hundreds of agents and publishers. I got too many rejections to even count! OK, small white lie, a while ago I did count them out of morbid curiosity, and it was a whopping two hundred!

I did come close a couple of times to being traditionally published, but it never quite worked out. It was either, “one group of editors liked it but another didn’t”, or “the chick lit market is saturated”, or “we love it but…”

When I first looked into publishing independently, platforms like Amazon Kindle didn’t support international authors. So the way I saw it, I had two choices. Either I could write another book, hone my writing skills and learn all I could about my craft, and wait for an opportunity to come up, or I could let all the rejection letters get me down, think my writing career was over before it had begun, and stick my head in the oven! Since heat tends to turn my curls into a ball of frizz, it was no contest, really. I wrote my next novel, a chick lit mystery called The Fashion Police, and waited. Because I knew, I just knew, that I COULD do this. I could write novels that people wanted to read. If only I could get the chance.

In the meantime, I also entered several writing competitions. And while I was still getting the dreaded rejections, Fourteen Days Later was shortlisted for the Harry Bowling Prize 2008 and received a Highly Commended by The Yeovil Literary Prize 2009. And The Fashion Police was a runner up in the Chapter One Promotions Novel Competition 2010 (and later nominated for the Best Novel with Romantic Elements 2010 by The Romance Reviews). Surely I was doing something right, wasn’t I? But I STILL couldn’t get a publisher!

Then last year, when Amazon opened up their doors to non-US authors, I uploaded Fourteen Days Later and The Fashion Police onto their Kindle store. I couldn’t believe it when I finally saw my books on sale. It was scary, rewarding, exciting, amazing – so many experiences rolled into one.

But what if no one liked my novels? What if I had all bad reviews? What if all the two hundred rejections were right? What if, what if…?

Time for a deep breath, Sibel. If you want to be an author, you have to repeat this mantra everyday… “I can do this. I can do this. I CAN do this.”

So I did.

And boy am I glad I did! The first month with Fourteen Days Later and The Fashion Police, I sold 44 books (another eeek!). Then I released my third novel, a romantic comedy called My Perfect Wedding, and later released my second chick lit mystery Be Careful What You Wish For. In the last 6 months alone I’ve sold over 40,000 ebooks, and all my novels are consistently in the Amazon top 100 genre categories for humor, contemporary romance, comedy, and romantic suspense. My highest overall sales ranking to date is 136, just missing out on the Amazon top 100 bestseller charts. Considering there are over 900,000 Kindle books on Amazon, that’s not bad!

And this is one lesson I’ve learned in the last couple of years…You can do anything you want to in life. It may mean you have to go a different route than you originally planned, but if you’re determined enough and believe in yourself, you can overcome any obstacles.

So I’m toasting all you women out there with my glass of wine. Cheers to dreams and making them come true! Looks like I got my big girls’ knickers after all!

You can find my books in paperback and all ebook formats. For more info, please check out my books page

This is one story from Indie Chicks: 25 Women 25 Personal Stories available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. To read all of the stories, buy your copy today.

Happy Reading!

Sibel XX

Featured Indie Chick - Christine DeMaio-Rice

Sun, 19 Feb 2012 07:23:50 +0100

This week's fab Indie Chick is Christine DeMaio-Rice...

HOW A BIG YELLOW TRUCK CHANGED MY LIFE

(for the better)

An orange peel grapple is a big machine. Excavator on the bottom. Long arm in the middle. And a metal grapple on the end that looks like a horror movie claw. The base spins. The arm moves up and down. The grapple grabs stuff like SUVs and big piles of metal.
You may come across one while driving, and if you have a little boy in the car, you may have to pull over to watch the thing move cars into a tractor trailer. Otherwise, nothing about this machine will rock your world.
But an orange peel grapple changed my life.
My life was a complete disaster at the time. Though I had a beautiful baby boy and a good husband, I had a job in an industry I swore I would never return to, at a company that wanted nothing more than to suck the blood directly from my heart with a curly straw. This, after I had already sold all the blood in my heart to the film industry, which after a few meetings and screenwriting awards, looked like it might want to take a sip from that straw.
A sip, because as good as things were looking, I saw a long road in front of me. My work was not “commercial enough,” and my manager had made it clear that years would pass before I would be able to convince anyone that this lack of commerciality was a quality that was, well, commercial.
But no. My husband lost his job, and I found work in the fashion industry soon after. What I rapidly discovered was that, though out-of-towners could schedule meetings back-to-back all over town, Angelenos were expected to take a meeting at the last minute, or blithely accept a rescheduling. My boss, on the other hand, had no interest in moving around my personal days, and my sick days dwindled in my first three months on the job. It took only a few months for the meetings to dry up and for me to start writing a Santa Claus script out of desperation.
So, the blood-sucking fashion job with the inflexible hours was right next to a scrap yard, which apparently opened at the crack of dawn because when I got there at seven thirty every morning, the orange peel grapple was already grabbing away. If I had a minute, I watched it go up and down as I clutched my coffee, and I thought, one day I should get a video camera and film this because my son would love it. Really love it.
My son was about eighteen months old and just learning to talk. I missed him while I was at work, adored him when he was awake and with me, and the rest of the time, I found room to resent him for taking me away from writing. He was then, and has remained, a fireball of energy. His teacher alternated between calling him a Jack Russell terrier and a buzz saw. He is also obsessive. Right now, he has a room full of Legos. Before that, it was Thomas the Tank Engine, and before that, it was trucks. Big yellow trucks. He wouldn’t fall asleep unless he gripped a toy truck in each fist. When he received a Tonka loader for Christmas, it was love at first sight. He called it “lolo.”
One morning, with the vision of that big ‘lolo’ that I would later know as an orange peel grapple dancing in my head, I dialed a friend’s number. I’d known this man from Brooklyn, and he’d come to Los Angeles a few years earlier to attend the American Film Institute. Most importantly, he had a camera. When I got his answering machine, instead of asking him for the camera, I said something else entirely, something like, “Hey, wanna produce a kid’s video together? Here’s the pitch. Trucks. Okay, bye.”
That moment may not seem pivotal, but most turning points don’t when they happen. That moment, I took control of my creative life. My friend called me back the minute he got up, and we began the journey toward becoming business owners. We did not pitch the idea around town, and we did not ask permission to bring the work to the public. We put the DVDs on Createspace, and eventually had to hold inventory to meet the demand.
Lolo Productions and the Totally Trucks series have had ups and downs, but the process taught me two things. One, my concepts need to be simple. If I can’t pitch it in five words, it’s not a concept I should develop. My second lesson is that I can be in control of my product and my creative life. If I think something is worthwhile, I can bring it to my customers. Becoming the producer and publisher of my work means I understand now what agents and studio executives meant when they said “commercial.”
Without my son, I never would have taken the life-sucking job. And without that job, there would have been no orange peel grapple. And without that scrapyard, there would have been no Totally Trucks. No eye for the commercial and no control of self-publishing. Who knows what I would have made without all the things that pissed me off for interrupting my work.

website: http://fashionismurder.com

amazon link: Dead Is the New Black (Fashion Avenue Mysteries)

Nook:

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/dead-is-the-new-black-christine-demaio-rice/1105858865

Christine's story is just one of 25 that can be found in Indie Chicks Anthology which is raising money for charity.

Happy Reading!

Sibel XX

Gerry McCullough talks about Belfast Girls!

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 10:19:29 +0100

I've got the fab Gerry McCullough on my blog today talking about the fab success she's had with Belfast Girls...

Belfast Girls One Year On: Bestselling Online.

As a very little girl, I loved writing stories. And I had every intention of becoming a writer in the tradition of Charles Dickens or Jane Austen – a bestseller who also had literary status. But I grew up, married, had four children and a full time job, and still hadn’t managed it.

Until, just over a year ago, my first full-length work of fiction, Belfast Girls, was published. I’d already had around fifty short stories published, including Primroses, which won the Cuirt International Award for New Writing (Galway Arts Festival) in 2005, and other serious stories; and also including a series of much lighter work for Ireland’s Own, the all Ireland magazine, Tales of Old Seamus. But there’s something very special about having an actual novel accepted by a real publisher, and I can tell you I was pretty pleased.

Because of the current situation in the publishing world, with constant amalgamations and takeovers leaving us with around six huge publishing companies instead of lots of smaller ones, anyone will tell you that it’s been getting harder and harder for a first time writer to get a book accepted. Publishers, more and more, are looking for writers with an established best selling track record; or books written by celebrities.

Belfast Girls in its first incarnation was a book about the Northern Ireland Troubles called Dangerous Games. When I’d got really fed-up being told by publisher after publisher, ‘No one’s interested in the Troubles any more,’ I put the book away for a while. Then I got it out and re-wrote it, setting it in the post troubles era, replacing the bombs and bullets with drugs and crime, which unfortunately have surged in to fill the vacuum left by the para-militeries, and renaming it Belfast Girls. I was taken on by a local Literary Agent, Bill Jeffrey, who suggested putting the book up on the HarperCollins online slushpile, Authonomy. Six months later, at the end of April 2010, Belfast Girls had been voted into the Top Five out of more than eight thousand, and was reviewed by HarperCollins. But although they said many nice things, they wanted me to turn the book into either a romance or a thriller, to suit their genre categories – with no guarantee that they’d take the revised version. I wasn’t willing to do that. Belfast Girls is a book about life, and that includes romance, thriller-type action, comedy and more serious themes. So it seemed like another dead end.

But no. A number of small publishers have now sprung up to fill the gap in the market left by the amalgamations which established the Big Six. Several of these had noticed my book on Authonomy, and approached me, wanting to see the full manuscript. One of them was Night Publishing, run by Bruce Esler and Tim Roux. Bruce (who later dropped out of the company) was particularly enthusiastic. Tim liked the book, but doubted if it would sell many copies. But, as he said, Night Publishing wasn’t looking for best sellers, just for books which they admired and felt ought to be published. (I didn’t tell him that I was still certainly hoping to be a bestseller.) So on 1 July 2010, it was the offer from Night Publishing which I decided to accept.

Night Publishing, like many of the new companies, sells through the Internet rather than through the traditional route of bookshops. It produces paperbacks, and also electronic versions for Kindle, etc. At first I was dubious about this. I’d turned down another publisher for that very reason a few years earlier. But I’d begun to realise that things had changed. In that current year, more books had been sold online than through bookshops, and the trend was growing. I decided to give it a go; and Belfast Girls was published by the end of 2010.

For the first three months, things moved slowly. Belfast Girls was selling at the rate of about fifty copies a month. Disappointing. I went on various local radio programmes; sent copies around for review; and held a book launch which was photographed by our local magazine, the Ulster Tatler, although the article didn’t appear until February. I also worked the Internet for all I was worth. I had a FaceBook presence, and I posted about Belfast Girls there regularly. I was interviewed for about twenty blogs, and I contributed guest posts to others. It was a full time job.

Then, in March 2010, things began to take off. On 17 March, St Patrick’s Day, my publisher managed to get Belfast Girls included on a site called Daily Cheap Reads, which lists books which it recommends, and is read avidly by Internet users. Belfast Girls immediately experienced a rush of sales. Not long afterwards, it appeared for the first time on one of the Amazon genre best selling lists, in the top 100.

Since then, the book has gone from success to success. In April it was voted Night Publishing Book of the Year. In May it was among the Night Publishing Top Sellers; and was voted second in Sinclair Books’ Book of the Month. It’s been in the Top Ten in Women’s Literary Fiction regularly, and there consistently since last December. It’s stayed in the top hundred for Literary Fiction and for Contemporary Romance. And by the summer I’d sold my first thousand books. By now, the number’s heading towards three thousand – which for a first book by an unknown writer isn’t bad going, I’m told.

I need to keep up the publicity, I’ve found. Interest can fade quickly. And yes, it’s hard work. At the end of May 2011 I set up my own blog htpp://www.gerrysbooks.blogspot.com – about books I’ve enjoyed reading, with occasional mentions of my own – which has nearly 4000 views by now. I also set up a Twitter account, @Gerry1098, with what results I’m not really sure. You just need to keep trying everything. If no one knows your book exists, they can’t buy it, right?

I’d also been advised that it was good policy to bring out another book quickly, so a couple of months ago my second romance suspense, Danger Danger, was published, this time by my husband’s Publishing House, Precious Oil Publications. I, who had always shrunk from the idea of anything which smacked of ‘vanity publishing’, now felt confident enough to agree to this. Times have changed – the Internet has made self-publishing not only easy but respectable. (And you make more money by it.) Tim Roux was very kind when I broke it to him that I wouldn’t be giving him my new book, and assured me that if ever I changed my mind, he’d be very happy to publish anything I sent him – which built my confidence further.

Danger Danger, like Belfast Girls, doesn’t fit into just one category. It’s the love stories of twin sisters separated at birth, whose lives take strangely parallel courses. But it’s also a thriller, with fast moving action based on the danger each twin finds herself in. It has a tighter plot than Belfast Girls, which covers a lot of ground, mainly romance and action, but with some comedy and some more serious themes. That’s not to say that there are no serious themes in Danger Danger!

More recently, POP have brought out a short collection of twelve of my Ireland’s Own stories under the title The Seanachie: Tales of Old Seamus; light, amusing works in the tradition of Somerville &Ross (who wrote The Irish RM) or Lynn Doyle (who wrote Ballygullion). Romance, comedy, and if not exactly suspense, then certainly a twist in the plot. A short book, easy to read. I feel great satisfaction in producing these Old Seamus stories which thousands have enjoyed reading, and which I enjoy writing.

Just before Christmas 2011 Belfast Girls rose to #2 in Women’s Literary Fiction. The ranking goes up and down as sales vary from day to day. I’m still hoping to see it in the #1 spot – who knows?

It’s great to be a best seller (of sorts!) who is also considered to be a writer of literature. And with no one telling me to confine myself to only one genre! A year ago, who’d have thunk it?

Links for Belfast Girls:

Paperback:http://www.amazon.co.uk/Belfast-Girls-Gerry-McCullough/dp/1456387103

Ebook: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Belfast-Girls/dp/B004DNWS3W

and http://www.amazon.com/Belfast-Girls-ebook/dp/B004DNWS3W

For Danger Danger:

Paperback: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Danger-Gerry-McCullough/dp/0952578530

Ebook: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Danger-ebook/dp/B005W7TUQQ

And http://www.amazon.com/Danger-ebook/dp/B005W7TUQQ

And for The Seanachie (not yet out in paperback at the time of writing):

Ebook http://www.amazon.co.uk/Seanachie-Tales-Old-Seamus-ebook/dp/B006WVI37S

And http://www.amazon.com/Seanachie-Tales-Old-Seamus-ebook/dp/B006WVI37S

Super congrats on your success, Gerry!

Happy Reading!

Sibel XX

Featured Indie Chick - Cheryl Bradshaw

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 08:33:01 +0100

This week's fab Indie Chick is Cheryl Bradshaw...

Just me and James Dean

When I was a little girl I used to make up stories at bedtime for my younger sister, Michelle. The most vivid centered on a boy and a girl who received a piece of gum for Halloween in their trick-or-treat bag, and when they chewed it, they were transported to a magical land where they were granted unlimited wishes. Even at such a young age, the process of concocting stories was effortless. My mind revolved like the reel of a movie spinning inside my head.

I spent many hours daydreaming as a child. Back then everything was as beautiful and white as a freshly painted fence. I fantasized about the day I would get married, the children I would have, the house I would own, and the life I would live when I was all grown up.

When I was a teenager, my mind still swirled with girlish hopes and dreams. I remember lying on my bed in my room staring at a poster on my wall of James Dean. He was hunkered down on the seat of a motorcycle, and Marilyn Monroe was perched behind him with her arms wrapped around his waist, and her head resting on his shoulder. I wanted to jump into the poster like the girl in A-Ha’s Take on Me video and ride off into life’s highway, just me and James. Together, forever.

When I became an adult and moved out on my own to attend college at the tender age of eighteen, I thought I had my whole world figured out. I’d developed a slight obsession with Agatha Christie and knew mysteries and thrillers were the perfect genre for me as a writer. All kinds of ideas flowed for the first novel, and I thought I was on my way. There was just one problem: I never started writing.

Why?

I wasn’t prepared for the events that were about to take place in my life or how they would affect my journey. Life didn’t turn out to be the dream I thought it would be, and I struggled—a lot, and faced challenges and trials that at times seemed more than I could bear. My relationships didn’t always work out, and all the babies I hoped to have didn’t come like I’d planned. There were times when I felt like my life was like a shattered mirror, and I was on my hands and knees desperately searching for all the pieces of myself so I could glue them back together and feel whole again. During those times I wondered how many other women out there in the world felt the same exact way.

Time went on and I struggled, but eventually I picked myself back up and I healed. With a new lease on life and a positive attitude about what I’d overcome, I thought about writing again. In 2009 I wrote Black Diamond Death, the first novel in my Sloane Monroe series. Sinnerman followed six months later and now I’m hard at work on the third, I Have a Secret.

As I sit here and write this, I’m shocked that I am being so candid. Normally, I safeguard my feelings. To say I’m a private person is an understatement, but I feel compelled to get this out. My message in all of this is to never lose sight of your hopes and dreams. Never forget who you are, where you came from, and what you are capable of accomplishing in your life. And if you have a passion, foster it with everything you have inside you. Let it shine. Let it breathe. Let it be.

When I pondered about the dedication I would use for Sinnerman, my direction was clear and I wrote the following:

This book is dedicated to anyone who’s ever had a dream. We have but one life, and one opportunity to live it. Make it last, make it count, and make it the best it can be. Live your dreams, I know I am.

Today, I’m no longer waiting for James Dean to ride up on his shiny black motorcycle. I’ve fallen for a different kind of boy now, one who dreams of wide open spaces and a simple life. One who wants to be a cowboy when he grows up. Now the poster I see in my visions is one of man hoisting me up on the back of his trusty steed while we ride away together into the Wyoming sunset.

If you asked me ten years ago if this was the life I thought I wanted, my answer might have been no, but if you asked me today I would say I’m right where I’m supposed to be. My life isn’t perfect, the challenges are still there, and I still have a lot to learn about myself. But no matter what the future holds for me, I know one thing for sure: I’ll never stop writing.

Cheryl’s book’s on Amazon:

Black Diamond Death (Sloane Monroe Series—Book One)

Sinnerman (Sloane Monroe Series—Book Two)

Whispers of Murder (A Novella)

To learn more about Cheryl, visit her here:

Blog for Readers

Website

Twitter

Facebook

This is one story from Indie Chicks: 25 Women 25 Personal Stories available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble . To read all of the stories, buy your copy today.

Happy Reading!

Sibel XX

Featured Indie Chick - Dani Amore

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 09:45:10 +0100

This week's inspirational story from the Indie Chicks Anthology is Dani Amore...

WRITING FROM A FLOUR SACK

Dani Amore

Fact: I was born on a bathroom floor. Literally. My arrival into this world was followed seconds later by an unceremonious drop onto the cold tile of St. John’sHospital in Detroit, Michigan.

You see, I was the fifth out of six children. My mother knew my delivery would be fast, but the nurse at the hospital insisted she go to the bathroom before the doctor arrived.

Later, after the drama and I was pronounced healthy, my mother told the doctor that the nurse should have listened to her, that she had warned the nurse that the baby (me) was going to arrive any second. That, having already delivered four children, she knew her body pretty well.

The doctor said, “Five kids, huh? Maybe you should tell your husband to keep it in his pants.”

True story.

***

Both of my parents were born in Italy. They emigrated to the U.S. in the 1950s. My father always said the biggest difference between Italy and America at that time was that you could work your ass off in Italy and have nothing to show for it. If you worked hard in America, you could eventually become wealthy. He started a construction company and worked 6 days a week, from dawn to dusk. Eventually, he was successful.

My mother raised six children.

She is a strong woman.

Both she and my father share a love of aphorisms.

The one I remember most? “A well-made flour sack stands on its own.”

It was almost like a mantra with her.

At a key point in my writing life, that phrase came in handy.

***

So there I am. I’ve got a full-time job in advertising. I’m writing about products that suck, working for people I can’t stand, and with two good friends, drinking every night after work. At a little bar not far from the office. I’m averaging about five or six drinks a night. Every weeknight. More on the weekends.

But on those weekend mornings, I’m writing fiction. Just short stories that I try to picture in The Paris Review.

Everything gets rejected with remarkable efficiency.

One night, probably half in the bag, I come across THE DAY OF THE JACKAL on television. The original movie is pretty campy and the remake with Bruce Willis is a pure load of crap. But the book. The novel by Frederick Forsyth is one of my all-time favorites.

The scene on television is the best part of the movie: It’s where the Jackal is sighting in his rifle. He paints a little face on a small melon, then blows it apart from 500 yards away.

There’s no epiphany. I go to bed. But as I toss and turn, vodka fumes in a cloud around my pillow, I think about the narrative structure of the story. I’ve read the book several times. Even have a collector’s edition. The chase. The tension. The violence.

When I wake up the next morning, I make an especially strong pot of coffee. I push aside my short literary fiction, and start a new story.

It’s about a hitman and a female escort.

Later that day, during some interminable meeting where everyone is throwing out insidious phrases like “let’s get on the same page,” and “think outside the box,” I realized what I was doing.

I was writing to please others, instead of focusing on the kind of stories and books I like.

Crime fiction. Thrillers. Suspense.

I had forgotten one of my mother’s cardinal rules.

A well-made flour sack stands on its own.

***

I know it sounds melodramatic. But the truth is, everything changed after that night. I still despised the advertising industry, but I no longer let it bother me so much. I begged off going to the bar with my friends, instead choosing to work out and then get some writing done in the evenings.

Eventually, I finished several crime novels. Even landed a big New York literary agent.

But a funny thing happened. My agent, and publishers, seemed to have endless debates about how to market me. Should I be a hardboiled crime novelist? A thriller writer? A traditional mystery author?

There were suggestions to change this book and change that one. Then change it back. Then change it to something else.

But now I had learned. I was smarter.

I told them thanks, but no thanks.

It was time to stand up and be the writer I wanted to be.

So I became an indie author.

And when my first book became a Top 10 Mystery on Amazon, I knew I had made the right decision.

Never underestimate the power of an Italian mother armed with an aphorism.

Dani’s Books on Amazon:

To learn more about Dani, visit her at http://www.daniamore.com

Happy Reading!

Sibel XX

I won the Liebster Blog Award!

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 05:35:45 +0100

I'm honoured this week to receive the Liebster Blog Award! Yay!

The lovely Aris Whittier kindly passed on this award to me by choosing my blog as one of five that she loves. A big thanks, Aris!

For those of you who don't know, 'Liebster' means 'favourite' or 'dearest' in German, and the Liebster Blog Award is given to bloggers who have under 200 followers to try to help increase traffic to their blog. The recipient, then inturn gives it to five other bloggers who have under 200 followers.

So, I pass the award to... (big drum roll here!)

Mel Comley

Barbara Silkstone

Cheryl Shireman

WistfulKimmie's Book Reviews

Quickie Book Review

Head on over to their great blogs for more info.

Happy Reading!

Sibel XX

Trafficked by Sophie Hayes

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 08:57:12 +0100

As some of you know, Trafficking is a subject that's very close to my heart. Last year, I wrote Trafficked: The Diary of a Sex Slave to try and raise awareness into a global problem that is going on right under your nose but hardly ever gets any media attention.

Recently, I read Trafficked by the British woman Sophie Hayes, which is her true story of being forced into the trafficking industry, and it really is a must read. Sophie has also started The Sophie Hayes Foundation to raise awareness about Human Trafficking, and is working closely with Stop The Traffik who fight to end Trafficking.

About Trafficked by Sophie Hayes

He’d been her friend for years. He said he loved her. Then she realised she didn’t know him at all…When everything seemed to be falling apart in Sophie’s life, she was thankful for her friend Kas, who was always at the end of a phone, ready to listen and to offer comfort and advice.Her father’s cold dislike of her and then her parents’ divorce had left her with a deep distrust of men. But, gradually, Kas made her believe there was at least one man who truly cared about her.But she was wrong.At first when Sophie went to stay for a few days with Kas in Italy, he was kind and caring, as he’d always been. But three days after she arrived, everything changed.His eyes were cold as he described the things he expected her to do ‘for love’. But soon Sophie’s bewilderment turned to fear as he punched and shouted at her and threatened to kill her adored younger brothers if she didn’t do exactly as she was told…to sell her body on the streets to pay off Kas’s debts.Terrified of Kas, the police and the men whose pleasures she was forced to satisfy, Sophie worked seven nights a week for the next six months on the dark and lonely streets of a town in northern Italy.Subjected regularly to Kas’s verbal, mental and physical abuse, she knew she would never escape.And then, one day, after she’d been admitted to hospital with stomach pains – and knowing that Kas would kill her if he found out – she dared to phone her mother.But who would reach her first?

My Review

Last year I wrote Trafficked: The Diary of a Sex Slave to try and raise awareness about trafficking, so after my research for it I was expecting a lot of the horrific ordeal that Sophie describes in her book, but many others will not be. The truly scary thing is that trafficking is a huge global problem, and yet many people aren't aware of it, or they often assume that it happens just to people from poor countries. Sophie's story shows this isn't the case. She is an educated British woman who, like a lot of us, had emotional baggage that made her more vulnerable. She put her trust in the wrong person. A mistake that was a tragedy for her and could've cost her life. It proves that a normal person who accidentally slips up could be in the same situation. It could happen to you, or your daughter, or your sister, or your wife. In fact, it's going on under your nose right now. That woman working on a street corner or in a sauna or massage parlour that you see every day could be trafficked. That's why Sophie's story is so important, and together, we can all do something to raise awareness.

This subject is hardly ever in the media so I applaud Sophie for having the strength and courage to share her story, and break the common misconceptions that surround trafficking. Victims hardly ever speak out because they're threatened that their families will be killed. Often they cannot escape because they are brainwashed into believing their captors and they don't know who to trust. Their lives are a living hell.

You will cry while reading Sophie's heart-breaking story, and you will feel disgusted, sick, and angry, but it's a story that needs to be read. No one should have to go through this, and I hope this book and the work she's doing with Stop the Traffik will aid her healing process. She's a truly courageous and inspiring woman.

Sophie's book is available from Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk.

We all need to work together the stop modern-day slavery going on in the 21st Century!

Sibel XX

Featured Indie Chick - Anne R Allen

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 07:06:47 +0100

This week's Indie Chick is Anne R Allen with another inspiring story for you. Take it away Anne...

A KINKY ADVENTURE IN ANGLOPHILIA

By Anne R. Allen

When I started writing funny women’s fiction fifteen years ago, if anybody had given me a realistic idea of my chances for publication, I’d have chosen a less stressful hobby, like do-it-yourself brain surgery, professional frog herding, or maybe staging an all-Ayatollah drag revue in downtown Tehran.

As a California actress with years of experience of cattle-drive auditions, greenroom catfights and vitriolic reviewers, I thought I had built up enough soul-calluses to go the distance. But nothing had prepared me for the glacial waiting periods; the bogus, indifferent and/or suddenly-out-of-business agents; and the heartbreaking, close-but-no-cigar reads from big-time editors—all the rejection horrors that make the American publishing industry the impenetrable fortress it has become.

But some of us are too writing-crazed to stop ourselves. I was then, as now, sick in love with the English language.

I had three novels completed. A fourth had run as a serial in a California entertainment weekly. One of my stories had been short-listed for an international prize, and a play had been produced to good reviews. I was bringing in a few bucks—mostly with short pieces for local magazines and freelance editing.

But meantime, my savings had evaporated along with my abandoned acting career; my boyfriend had ridden his Harley into the Big Sur sunset; my agent was hammering me to write formula romance; and I was contemplating a move to one of the less fashionable neighborhoods of the rust belt.

Even acceptances turned into rejections: a UK zine that had accepted one of my stories folded. But when the editor sent the bad news, he mentioned he’d taken a job with a small UK book publisher—and did I have any novels?

I sent him one my agent had rejected as “too over the top.” Within weeks, I was offered a contract by my new editor—a former BBC comedy writer—for FOOD OF LOVE. Included was an invitation to come over the pond to do some promotion.

So I rented out my beach house, packed my bags and bought a ticket to Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, where my new publishers had recently moved into a 19th century former textile mill on the banks of the river Trent—the river George Eliot fictionalized as “the Floss.”

George Eliot. I was going to be working and living only a few hundred yards from the ruins of the house where she wrote her classic novel about the 19th century folk who lived and died by the power of Lincolnshire’s great tidal river. Maybe some of that greatness would rub off on me.

At the age of… well, I’m not telling…I was about to have the adventure of my life.

I knew the company published mostly erotica, but was branching into mainstream and literary fiction. They had already published the first novel of a distinguished poet, and a famous Chicago newspaper columnist was in residence, awaiting the launch of his new book.

But when I arrived, I found the great Chicagoan had left in a mysterious fit of pique, the “erotica” was seriously hard core kink, and the old building on the Trent was more of the William Blake Dark Satanic variety than George Elliot’s bucolic “Mill on the Floss.”

Some of my fears subsided when I was greeted by a friendly group of unwashed, fiercely intellectual young men who presented me with generous quantities of warm beer, cold meat pies and galleys to proof. After a beer or two, I found myself almost comprehending their northern accents.

I held it together until I saw my new digs: a grimy futon and an old metal desk, hidden behind stacks of book pallets in the corner of an unheated warehouse, about a half a block from the nearest loo. My only modern convenience was an ancient radio abandoned by a long-ago factory girl.

I have to admit to admit to some tears of despair.

Until, from the radio, Big Ben chimed six o’clock.

That’s six pm, GMT.

Greenwich Mean Time. The words hit me with all the sonorous power of Big Ben itself. I had arrived at the mean, the middle, the center that still holds—no matter what rough beasts might slouch through the cultural deserts of the former empire. This was where my language, my instrument, was born.

I clutched my galley-proof to my heart. I might still be a rejected nobody in the land of my birth—but I’d landed on the home planet: England. And there, I was a published novelist. Just like George Eliot.

Three years later, I returned to California, older, fatter (the English may not have the best food, but their BEER is another story) and a lot wiser. That Chicagoan’s fit of pique turned out to be more than justified. The company was swamped in debt. They never managed to get me US distribution. Shortly before my second book THE BEST REVENGE was to launch, the managing partner withdrew his capital, sailed away and mysteriously disappeared off his yacht—his body never found. The company sputtered and died.

And I was back in the slush pile again.

But I had a great plot for my next novel.

Unfortunately, nobody wanted it. I was now tainted with the “published-to-low-sales-numbers label and my chances were even worse than before.

So I wrote two more novels. Nobody wanted them either.

Then I started a blog. I figured I could at least let other writers benefit from my mistakes. My blog followers grew. And grew. The blog won some awards. My Alexa and Klout ratings got better and better. Finally, publishers started approaching ME. (There’s a moral for writers here—social networking works.)

And finally, six years later, another publisher, Popcorn Press, fell in love with FOOD OF LOVE and sent me a contract. Soon after, they contracted to publish THE BEST REVENGE, too.

And this September, a brand new indie ebook publisher called Mark Williams International Digital Publishing asked if I had anything else ready to publish.

Just happen to have a few unpubbed titles handy, said I.

He liked them.

So in October and November of 2011, those three new comic mysteries will appear as ebooks: THE GATSBY GAME, GHOSTWRITERS IN THE SKY, and SHERWOOD, LTD (that’s the novel inspired by my English adventures.) Popcorn Press will publish paper versions in 2012. THE BEST REVENGE debuted as an ebook in December, with the paper book to follow in February.

A fifteen-year journey finally seems to be paying off.

Did I make some mistakes? Oh yeah—a full set of them. But would I wish away my English adventures?

Not a chance.

*******

Links:

Blog http://annerallen.blogspot.com

Twitter @annerallen

Authorpages: At Amazon.com , at amazon.co.uk , on Facebook

SHERWOOD, LTD

(Romantic comedy/mystery: MWiDP) A penniless socialite becomes a 21^st century Maid Marian, but is “Robin” planning to kill her? Buy at amazon.co.uk , amazon.com, or Barnes and Noble

THE BEST REVENGE

(Romantic comedy/mystery: Popcorn Press) A suddenly-broke 1980s celebutante runs off to California with nothing but her Delorean and her designer furs, looking for her long-lost gay best friend—and finds herself accused of murder. Buy at amazon.co.uk or amazon.com and in paper at Popcorn Press or in paper at Amazon.com .

Happy Reading!

Sibel XX

Valentine Blog Hop! Win some fab prizes!

Sat, 28 Jan 2012 11:23:50 +0100

I'm part of the Valentine Blog Hop that runs from 1st Feb until 14th 2012!

There are some fantastic prizes up for grabs until February 14th in the Valentine Blog Hop organized by Book Luvin Babes. To play along, all you need to do is enter one or more of the contests on the participating blogs. Each blog has their own fab giveaway going on, and the winners from each of those blogs will be entered to win the Grand Prize! Woot!

First Grand Prize:

An Amazon Gift Voucher worth $75

Second Grand Prize:

This highly customer rated Sterling Silver Black and White Round Diamond Heart Pendant

My Contest

The winner of my contest will receive an ebook copy of The Baby Trap in the format of their choice.

How To Enter

1) Follow my blog

2) Leave a comment to the following question:

If you were stuck on a desert island this Valentine's Day...

a) Who would you most like to be with you?

b) What essential item would you take?

To Enter the 28 other author contests and be in with a chance to win the Grand Prizes, head on over to Book Luvin Babes and click on the links for all the participants.

Have a fabulicious Valentine's Day and good luck!

Sibel XX