First Sentence Fridays week 6… free book promotion

Hello everyone. In December, I came up with a new idea… hoorah! It’s free promotion for all of you with books for sale (or free); eBooks, paperbacks, it doesn’t matter which. And it can be for an individual short story / poem, story / poetry collection, novel or even non-fiction or script / comic book… any book that is available online, free or otherwise.

It runs every Friday (before the 100-word competition results on the second Friday of the month and 6-word FFFs on the last Friday of the month), and somewhere where you can put the first sentence of your book (no more than 20 words) and one sale link in the comments section. As an example, one of mine would be…

Karen felt has if she’d been living in a bubble all these years… myBook.to/FiftyFictionsVol3
(which leads to the book pictured right)

So put yours in the comments section of this post (below). Don’t put anything else. No title, no comments. Don’t worry if it doesn’t appear straight away. If you’ve not commented on this site before, I will have to approve it. I’ll be as quick as I can. And I’ll be editing ones that are more than one sentence / link.

The whole point of this exercise is to intrigue my visitors. It doesn’t matter which link you put in as long as it goes directly to somewhere where the reader can buy / download your book, i.e. not to your website’s home page where they then have to go looking for how to find out more / buy your book. If you want to contact me then you can certainly email me if you have any questions.

This will be a weekly feature so if you have more than one book, choose a different one each week. So one sentence (even if it’s one word!) / one link per author per post (and please don’t repeat the same book more than once per month). If the Friday’s been and gone, don’t worry… you can still add the details as a comment until the next post goes up the following Friday and becomes the lead post. When it’s gone, you can still find the link on the First Sentence Fridays page. OK, off you go.

READERS: to find the books listed here when viewing this post on the main blog page, click on the ‘Comments’ bottom right of the post. And you can find the previous links on the First Sentence Fridays page.

First Sentence Fridays week 5… free book promotion

Hello everyone. In December, I came up with a new idea… hoorah! It’s free promotion for all of you with books for sale (or free); eBooks, paperbacks, it doesn’t matter which. And it can be for an individual short story / poem, story / poetry collection, novel or even non-fiction or script / comic book… any book that is available online, free or otherwise.

It runs every Friday (before the 100-word competition results on the second Friday of the month and 6-word FFFs on the last Friday of the month), and somewhere where you can put the first sentence of your book (no more than 20 words) and one sale link in the comments section. As an example, one of mine would be…

They had a plan: stagger their arrival so it wouldn’t look suspicious. myBook.to/FiftyFictionsVol2
(which leads to the book pictured right)

So put yours in the comments section of this post (below). Don’t put anything else. No title, no comments. Don’t worry if it doesn’t appear straight away. If you’ve not commented on this site before, I will have to approve it. I’ll be as quick as I can. And I’ll be editing ones that are more than one sentence / link.

The whole point of this exercise is to intrigue my visitors. It doesn’t matter which link you put in as long as it goes directly to somewhere where the reader can buy / download your book, i.e. not to your website’s home page where they then have to go looking for how to find out more / buy your book. If you want to contact me then you can certainly email me if you have any questions.

This will be a weekly feature so if you have more than one book, choose a different one each week. So one sentence (even if it’s one word!) / one link per author per post (and please don’t repeat the same book more than once per month). If the Friday’s been and gone, don’t worry… you can still add the details as a comment until the next post goes up the following Friday and becomes the lead post. When it’s gone, you can still find the link on the First Sentence Fridays page. OK, off you go.

READERS: to find the books listed here when viewing this post on the main blog page, click on the ‘Comments’ bottom right of the post. And you can find the previous links on the First Sentence Fridays page.

NEW!!! ‘First Sentence Fridays’ week 4… free advertising for your book!

Hello everyone. Last month, I came up with a new idea… hoorah! It’s free promotion for all of you with books for sale (or free); eBooks, paperbacks, it doesn’t matter which. And it can be for an individual short story / poem, story / poetry collection, novel or even non-fiction or script / comic book… any book that is available online, free or otherwise.

It runs every Friday (before the 100-word competition results on the second Friday of the month) and 6-word FFFs on the last Friday of the month), and somewhere where you can put the first sentence of your book (no more than 20 words) and one sale link in the comments section. As an example, one of mine would be…

Condoms. myBook.to/FiftyFictionsVol1
(which leads to the book pictured right)

So put yours in the comments section of this post (below). Don’t put anything else. No title, no comments. Don’t worry if it doesn’t appear straight away. If you’ve not commented on this site before, I will have to approve it. I’ll be as quick as I can. And I’ll be editing ones that are more than one sentence / link.

The whole point of this exercise is to intrigue my visitors. It doesn’t matter which link you put in as long as it goes directly to somewhere where the reader can buy / download your book, i.e. not to your website’s home page where they then have to go looking for how to find out more / buy your book. If you want to contact me then you can certainly email me if you have any questions.

This will be a weekly feature so if you have more than one book, choose a different one each week. So one sentence (even if it’s one word!) / one link per author per post (and please don’t repeat the same book more than once per month). If the Friday’s been and gone, don’t worry… you can still add the details as a comment until the next post goes up the following Friday and becomes the lead post. When it’s gone, you can still find the link on the First Sentence Fridays page. OK, off you go.

READERS: to find the books listed here when viewing this post on the main blog page, click on the ‘Comments’ bottom right of the post. And you can find the previous links on the First Sentence Fridays page.

NEW!!! ‘First Sentence Fridays’ week 3… free advertising for your book!

Hello everyone. Earlier this month, I came up with a new idea… hoorah! It’s free promotion for all of you with books for sale (or free); eBooks, paperbacks, it doesn’t matter which. And it can be for an individual short story / poem, story / poetry collection, novel or even non-fiction or script / comic book!

It runs every Friday (before the 100-word competition results on the second Friday of the month) and 6-word FFFs on the last Friday of the month), and somewhere where you can put the first sentence of your book (no more than 20 words) and one sale link in the comments section. As an example, one of mine would be…

Click, click, click. http://mybook.to/HitmanSam
(which leads to the book pictured right)

So put yours in the comments section of this post (below). Don’t put anything else. No title, no comments. Don’t worry if it doesn’t appear straight away. If you’ve not commented on this site before, I will have to approve it. I’ll be as quick as I can. And I’ll be editing ones that are more than one sentence / link.

The whole point of this exercise is to intrigue my visitors. It doesn’t matter which link you put in as long as it goes directly to somewhere where the reader can buy / download your book, i.e. not to your website’s home page where they then have to go looking for how to find out more / buy your book. If you want to contact me then you can certainly email me if you have any questions.

This will be a weekly feature so if you have more than one book, choose a different one each week. So one sentence (even if it’s one word!) / one link per author per post (and please don’t repeat the same book more than once per month). If the Friday’s been and gone, don’t worry… you can still add the details as a comment until the next post goes up the following Friday and becomes the lead post. When it’s gone, you can still find the link on the First Sentence Fridays page. OK, off you go.

READERS: to find the books listed here when viewing this post on the main blog page, click on the ‘Comments’ bottom right of the post. And you can find the previous links on the First Sentence Fridays page.

NEW!!! ‘First Sentence Fridays’ week 2… free advertising for your book!

Hello everyone. Last week I came up with a new idea… hoorah! It’s free promotion for all of you with books for sale (or free); eBooks, paperbacks, it doesn’t matter which. And it can be for an individual short story / poem, story / poetry collection, novel or even non-fiction or script / comic book! You can read last week’s links here.

It runs every Friday (before the 100-word competition results on the second Friday of the month) and 6-word FFFs on the last Friday of the month), and somewhere where you can put the first sentence of your book (no more than 20 words) and one sale link in the comments section. As an example, one of mine would be…

Andy slammed both hands on the emergency brake and the train jolted, slowing nowhere near as quickly as he was pleading it to do. http://mybook.to/AfterJessica
(which leads to the book pictured right)

So put yours in the comments section of this post (below). Don’t put anything else. No title, no comments. Don’t worry if it doesn’t appear straight away. If you’ve not commented on this site before, I will have to approve it. I’ll be as quick as I can. And I’ll be editing ones that are more than one sentence / link.

The whole point of this exercise is to intrigue my visitors. It doesn’t matter which link you put in as long as it goes directly to somewhere where the reader can buy / download your book, i.e. not to your website’s home page where they then have to go looking for how to find out more / buy your book. If you want to contact me then you can certainly email me if you have any questions.

This will be a weekly feature so if you have more than one book, choose a different one each week. So one sentence (even if it’s one word!) / one link per author per post (and please don’t repeat the same book more than once per month). If the Friday’s been and gone, don’t worry… you can still add the details as a comment until the next post goes up the following Friday and becomes the lead post. When it’s gone, you can still find the link on the First Sentence Fridays page. OK, off you go.

READERS: to find the books listed here when viewing this post on the main blog page, click on the ‘Comments’ bottom right of the post. And you can find the previous links on the First Sentence Fridays page.

NEW!!! ‘First Sentence Fridays’ week 1… free advertising for your book!

Hello everyone. I’ve come up with a new idea… hoorah! It’s a little free promotion for all of you with books for sale (or free); eBooks, paperbacks, it doesn’t matter which. And it can be for an individual short story / poem, story / poetry collection, novel or even non-fiction or script / comic book!

It’ll run every Friday (before the 100-word competition results on the second Friday of the month and 6-word FFFs on the last Friday of the month), and somewhere where you can put the first sentence of your book (no more than 20 words) and one sale link in the comments section. As an example, one of mine would be…

They say it takes less than ten seconds to make a first impression. http://mybook.to/SerialDater
(which leads to the book pictured right)

So put yours in the comments section of this post (below). Don’t put anything else. No title, no comments. Don’t worry if it doesn’t appear straight away. If you’ve not commented on this site before, I will have to approve it. I’ll be as quick as I can. And I’ll be editing ones that are more than one sentence / link.

The whole point of this exercise is to intrigue my visitors. It doesn’t matter which link you put in as long as it goes directly to somewhere where the reader can buy / download your book, i.e. not to your website’s home page where they then have to go looking for how to find out more / buy your book. If you want to contact me then you can certainly email me if you have any questions.

This will be a weekly feature so if you have more than one book, choose a different one each week. So one sentence (even if it’s one word!) and yes, a full stop (period) means that’s it, no more.* / one link per author per post (and please don’t repeat the same book more than once per month). If the Friday’s been and gone, don’t worry… you can still add the details as a comment until the next post goes up the following Friday and becomes the lead post. When it’s gone, you can still find the link on the First Sentence Fridays page. *I’ve already had to trim some of the entries. OK, off you go.

READERS: to find the books listed here when viewing this post on the main blog page, click on the ‘Comments’ bottom right of the post. And you can find the previous links on the First Sentence Fridays page.

The Parcel Project (a free collaborative novella!)

‘The Parcel’ is an eighteen-chapter 26,000-word collaborative novella (free) eBook written by attendees of the 2015 winter-term ‘Creative Writing – Intermediate’ ten-week class hosted by co-contributor Morgen Bailey.

The authors wrote their chapters while knowing only the size, weight and destination address of the parcel, together with the chapters’ starting and ending locations – chosen by the authors themselves (some of whom have other books available on Smashwords). They could choose their own characters – the lead of which entitle each chapter – and plot.

Morgen then collated the stories and made minor edits to turn each chapter into a cohesive novella before designing the cover and upload the finished package today, Monday 30th November, hours ahead of the tenth and final session of the course so all the contributing attendees left the course as published authors!

It is available (free!) on Smashwords and will soon be available on iTunes, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Scribd, Oyster, OverDrive (which Smashwords describes as the world’s largest library ebook platform serving 20,000+ libraries), Baker & Taylor, Gardners Books, and Inktera (formerly called Page Foundry).

It is available for free, and all the authors hope that you enjoy reading this novella and that it feels seamless to you.

We would love to know what you think and invite you to email Morgen at morgen@morgenbailey.com who will pass your comments on to the relevant authors. We would also be very grateful if you left a review as an encouragement for others to read the novella. Further details (inc. a list of the contributing authors) on this blog’s The Parcel Project 2015 page.

Please do leave a comment (below or on the PP2015 page), especially after you’ve read the novella and hopefully before too long you’ll be able to read those left by other visitors. Thank you for those of you who will go off and download this eBook – your support is much appreciated. Oh, I did I mention that it’s free? 🙂

Author Spotlight no.369 – novelist Jane Davis

Complementing my interviews, today’s Author Spotlight, the three hundred and sixty-ninth, is of novelist Jane Davis. If you would like to take part in an author spotlight, take a look at author-spotlights.

Jane Davis lives in Carshalton, Surrey with her Formula 1 obsessed, star-gazing, beer-brewing partner, surrounded by growing piles of paperbacks, CDs and general chaos. She spent her twenties and the first part of her thirties chasing promotions, but when Jane achieved what he had set out to do, although the money was nice, she discovered that it was not what she had wanted after all. Seeking a creative outlet, she turned to writing fiction, but cites the disciplines learnt in the business world as what helps her finish a 120,000-word novel.

Her first, Half-truths and White Lies, won the Daily Mail First Novel Award and was described by Joanne Harris as ‘A story of secrets, lies, grief and, ultimately, redemption, charmingly handled by this very promising new writer.’ She was hailed by The Bookseller as ‘One to Watch.’ Four self-published novels followed: I Stopped Time, These Fragile Things, A Funeral for an Owl and An Unchoreographed Life. Of her writing, Compulsion Reads wrote, ‘Davis is a phenomenal writer, whose ability to create well rounded characters that are easy to relate to feels effortless.’ Jane’s favourite description of fiction is that it is ‘made-up truth.’

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Jane describes her journey in self-publishing…

Author Spotlight no.337 – Jim Sellers

Complementing my interviews, today’s Author Spotlight, the three hundred and thirty-seventh, is of multi-genre author and interviewee Jim Sellers. If you would like to take part in an author spotlight, take a look at author-spotlights.

Jim Sellers is the author of the newly released YA book “Jacky the Brave”. Although he had written works in most genres, he was surprised and happy to see his first publishing success was in YA. His writing in that genre is based mostly on events in his own life with some inspiration from friends and other family members. “Jacky the Brave” is just such a collection of his experiences.

Born in Edmonton in north-west Canada, Jim spent a lot of time reading and imagining exciting adventures as a kid. That was the favourite pastime of boys who didn’t play hockey and lived before the age of video games. Like most writers, he has been creating stories since his teen years and found the pen and paper to be a regular companion on long trips and quiet days. He also doubted that any of his work would be published – it seemed unlikely after watching other writers he knew trying so hard. So he set his sights on film and TV. During his 20 years in that business he learned the process of writing screenplays for drama and documentaries as well as advertising and corporate communications before retiring from that industry. For the last 10 years he has been working in communications management for non-profits groups and universities.

He continued to write screenplays as show pilots or spec film scripts, most ending up in the rejection files. It was after he decided to get his Bachelor’s degree (at 50) that he learned to appreciate the sheer joy and freedom of writing fiction. It was this appreciation for fictional writing that caused him to re-evaluate all the abandoned stories he had filed away and all the adventures he had logged in his notes. In 2004, he made a project of writing a series of YA stories based on his previous writing. Each of these stories (4 in all) received different levels of interest from publishers and agents, with results ranging from boilerplate rejections to requests for full manuscripts (followed eventually by rejections). During this time he established a variety of websites about writing, posted his short stories and wrote a serial novel.

After repeated rewrites and editing, his first Young Adult novel was accepted for publication in 2013. He is working on a sequel for the book, a short story collection and a novel.

*

And now from the author himself:

5PM Fiction 285: The photo that no-one else can get

Welcome to the two hundred and eighty-fifth in this series that is ‘5pm Fiction’.

Late April 2011 I discovered StoryADay.org and the project that is to write 31 stories in 31 days. Anyone who knows me or follows this blog, knows how passionate I am about short stories so my clichéd eyes lit up at this new marvel. And just a few days later there I was, breathing life into new characters. This went on to become (with some editing of course) my 31-story collection eBook Story A Day May 2011. I have since published (as eBooks) the 2012 and 2013 collections, detailed on https://morgenbailey.wordpress.com/books-mine/short-stories/story-a-day-may.

I was nearing completion of the 2012 project when I decided that I didn’t want to stop at the end of May so 5PM Fiction was born. I put a load of prompts on the 5PM Fiction page and today’s was to write a story in second person-viewpoint from the keyword prompt of ‘chase’. Here is my 356-worder.

The photo that no-one else can get

You’ve been chasing her for days, to get the photo that no-one else can get. She knows you’re there. There’s always someone there.

It’s a lifestyle she’s had to become accustomed to, only you don’t think she ever will. It’s not one you’d want, except she’s become your job, your life.

When she emerges out of the building, you reach over to your camera, on its dashboard tripod, and set it to continuous.

You follow her car through narrow streets, wide streets – her executive to your jalopy, the only thing you could get at short notice. You’re used to this place, she’s been here a lot.

Most of the shots are of the back of her head but you know she could look round. She has before.

As her car gathers speed so does yours. It complains but it’s not yours so you’re not bothered.

As she heads into the tunnel, she edges forward and you floor the accelerator, a little too close for comfort but you decide to go alongside, get level, no other cars in sight, so you swivel round your camera in anticipation, a momentary lapse in concentration.