I love books. I collect them. What's wrong with that, huh? Nothing. But Hubby doesn’t agree. He’s “sick” of having to tiptoe through tottering towers of paperbacks to get from one side of the room to the other.

Let me explain. I'm like cat woman. I don't mean the Cat Woman, I mean the elderly neighbour who takes in abandoned cats when nobody wants them. I'm like that with books. People who don't want them bring them to me. And I can't say no.

I’ve read some fascinating stories which I wouldn’t normally have chosen. For instance, this one by Auberon Waugh (Haven't heard of him? Neither had I.) The back section was mouldy, so I had to tear it off. Then I got into the story - it's really funny - but because I'd removed the back pages, I now won’t know the ending.

I've discovered Elizabeth Taylor (the author not the actress), South Riding by Winifred Holtby, Red Dust Road by Jackie Kay, Mr and Mrs Bridge by Evan S. Connell, and The Liars' Club by Mary Karr, etcetera, etcetera ...

My books are breeding like rabbits. And I'm having to hide them from Hubby. I stack them behind curtains and in the bottom of cupboards.

Last Saturday, my Hubby finally went berserk (his voice went up an octave) so I promised I would donate my books back to Emmaus.

Problem is, it's not easy donating to Emmaus - it's such a rigmarole of parking, queueing, then handing your stuff to the right person. So, instead, I sidled into the book section and secretly put the books back on the shelves. (Imagine yourself going into your high street bookshop, buying up twenty books, going home, reading them and then tiptoeing back into the shop to surreptiously put them back on the shelves).

I have to go. Hubby has found a cache behind the boiler and he doesn’t sound too happy...

Right, I’ve just got back from “having a word”.

Hubby told me the books are no joke. He said: "It’s intellectual clutter. It’s stultifying, suffocating." He said I’m like one of these eccentric old men in tartan slippers who hoard and don’t answer the door. Then, when Social Services do break in, they find him dead on the floor with his flat filled to the ceiling with piles of newspapers.

Hubby’s description gave me a cold chill. Is that how he thinks of me? Is that how I'm going to end up? But I don’t want to be that old man in tartan slippers!

Does anybody want a book?

Hello darlinks,

I am Zenka, the fabulous star of ZENKA.

Linda of Linda's Book Bag told Alison to write about me. Vy? Vy should Alison do this? It is ME who must write about ME. And this is vat I do now.

I tell you. From beginning Alison make big mistakes. She has me as tiny voman in background, but I don’t like that and I tell her.

So she make me a little bigger. But still it is not enough! How can she be so stupid? I am first class character vith sexy body. I drill and drill into her head until she groans, sits heavily on chair in front of computer, opens up Flesh and Blood (that vas the title then) and re-writes book.

After she has done that, I tell her Flesh and Blood is bad title. She must call it ZENKA!!! She changes title to ZENKA (although she does not put in exclamation marks - vich is a pity).

Then she must design cover. She vants me walking down London street with my BACK to camera. And the colour is sepia (that means colour of old tea-bag)). I am not sepia person. I vant orange! I vant black! I vant a gun in my hand. And I vant the vorld to see Zenka Valentina Varga’s beautiful face!

Alison thought that vas the end of me. Ha!

She goes on holiday to Barcelona. She is lying on beach, vanting to empty brain, thankful to have finished book. Then POW I pop into her head. I tell her to change the final chapter of the story. She doesn't want to. She wants me to go away. But then she starts thinking about my idea, and knows it is brilliant idea. She needs to write urgently and not finding pen in bag, grabs the vaiter by his ankle as he hurries by vith tray of mojitos and takes his pen. Her husband, Barry, says to forget that bloody book.

Forget that bloody book! He is imbecile. And he vers yellow socks. What sort of REAL man vers yellow socks, huh?

So, Alison gets home after holiday and changes final chapter. Now I am happy. Alison is not happy. She has to write to 40 book blaggers to tell them to delete last book she sent and replace vith new one.

Alison, I leave you in peace ... for now. And remember, you think you know me, but you will never know me.

Zenka

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

This article first appeared on Linda's Book Bagin 2017.

My latest book, Zenka, has just been published on Amazon Kindle.

Here is the Goodreads link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36423193-zenka

Let me tell you a little about it (remember, I am useless at writing a synopsis. I can write an 80K-word book, but four paragraphs? Hmm...) Okay, I'm about to give it a go:

ZENKA is a black-comedy thriller set in gangland London at Christmas.

"Do not vorry, Jack. Ven I am finished vith Nicholas, he vill be dogs bollocks just like his daddy" -Zenka

Jack "Blowtorch" Murray discovers he has a son, Nicholas. The bad news is, Nicholas is a community nurse whose patients call him an "angel"

How does Jack tell an "angel" that Dad is a thieving mob boss? And can he use his wealth, wiles and tough-guy contacts to make a man out of this mouse - before his enemies turn him into mincemeat?

Zenka takes charge. She has plans to bring out the gorilla in Nicholas, some farcical, most of them illegal, and all destined to spin completely out of control ...

This is a tale of loyalty, revenge, and finding family at Christmas.

(Tomorrow I will be doing a blog that will introduce you to Zenka. That's another thing I am useless at: writing a blog on a regular basis. But don't give up on me. I'm trying).

I found this antique pamphlet "A Short Guide to Great Britain" published by the War and Navy Departments, Washington, D.C. This guide was issued to American servicemen during the Second World War. Read what it has to say about British women!

"British Women At War. A British woman officer or non-commissioned officer can - and often does - give orders to a man private. The men obey smartly and know it is no shame. For British women have proven themselves in this war. They have stuck to their posts near burning ammunition dumps, delivered messages afoot after their motorcyles have been blasted from under them. They have died at the gun posts and as they fell another girl has steppd directly into position and "carried on". There is not a single record in this war of any British woman in uniformed service quitting her post or failing in her duty under fire.

Now you understand why British soliders respect the women in uniform. They have won the right to the utmost respect. When you see a girl in khaki or air-force blue with a bit of ribbon on her tunic - remember she didn't get it for knitting more socks than anyone else in Ipswich."

This is my thought:

American women have never had to fight a war in their own country, but if they had to, I bet they would be as brave as the British women.

It’s been scientifically proven that reading reduces stress by 68%. But how much MORE stress is reduced if you read COMEDY?

I write comedy, I read comedy, I watch comedy. Give me The Lucy Show over They Shoot Horses Don't They? anyday.

My forté is writing humor – I’m not so much a stand-up but a sit-down comedian. I love reading it, too, so when Time magazine plopped into my mailbox at the New Year, I was eager to see their

“10 Best Novels” of the year.

So I started with the review of The Underground Railroad:

“After Cora is beaten and raped … grounded in the harsh reality of Africa-American history, toiling ever harder for survival.”

No-siree, too depressing. So I check out the next book, Another Brooklyn:

“Four young women … deal with racism, sexual assault, poverty, grief and other traumas.”

I’ll give that one a miss, too. Let’s try the next one, Homegoing:

“shines and equally harsh light on the social inequity … it documents the horrors…”

Okeydoke, the next one has to be more light-hearted, surely, Imagine Me Gone:

“After a son inherits his father’s severe depression and anxiety…”

No thank you! But this one sounds promising, My Name is Lucy Barton

“marked by loneliness. In spare prose with pain pushing through the seams…”

Pain pushing through the seams? I want shrieks of laughter bursting my corset! I want to chuckle, chortle and snort. I give up. These books won't have me cracking a smile. They'll just depress my already depressing life.

So my question to you, dear reader, is this: What is wrong with HUMOR?? What is wrong with making a reader SMILE??

Charles Dickens totally agrees with me. Take a look:

“People mutht be amuthed. They can’t alwayth a learning, nor yet they can’t alwayth a working. They ain’t made for it.” – Charles Dickens, Hard Times

Too true, Charlie.

Here’s another quote, which is a little more modern:

“Make the reader laugh and he’ll think you a trivial fellow but bore him and your reputation is assured” –Somerset Maugham

I guess that means I’m not going to be famous anytime soon.

Pity. After all, as my grannie says: “Laughter is the best medicine”. And she’s alive and kicking –with a boyfriend in tiger-print slippers - at the age of 96.

This New Year’s will be pretty uneventful for most of us, apart from drunken Uncle Billy reversing into the mailbox, or grandma getting cheeky with the hot new neighbour.

But sweep your mind back sixteen years. Can you do that? If you can, you will remember the Y2K bug. When the US government was spending $150 billion preparing for Armageddon. When Hong Kong was stockpiling food. When English ladies were hoarding tins of Gentleman’s relish and turning their koi carp ponds into trout farms.

I am a Scot and I was living in Shawnee Mission, Kansas, during Y2K. My Kansas friends were pretty relaxed about it, although they did follow official advice to prepare for the unknown. TV warnings ranged from “prepare as if for a six-day blizzard” to “run for the hills!”

I didn’t know what was going to happen. The whole world didn’t know what was going to happen. Virgin Airlines cancelled all flights on that night. Would every computer on the planet think the date had gone back one hundred years when those numbers switched to zeroes?

Thankfully, there was no Armageddon but there were still glitches; as The Kansas City Star reported on January 2: “Trouble still looms”

“If you think the only time to worry about the Y2K bug is on January 1, then you’re underestimating the problem” said Bruce McConnell, director of the International Y2K Cooperation Center.

Six American nuclear power plants had problems. The doors in a federal building would not lock. A US spy satellite was knocked off line. In France the Syracus II military satellite system was running on a software patch while technicians desperately worked to fix it.

But some people got lucky. One glitch caused Microsoft’s MoneyCentralWeb site to vastly overestimate the worth of some customers’ portfolios. And the online mailbox had emails dated 2099.

But we all survived.

The only folks who’d been relishing the prospect of Armageddon was a group of Survivalists I met. They had been prepping for years for this eventuality. They felt vindicated; they’d been right all along. But they were about to be disappointed.

One second after midnight of the new Millennium, the whole world had a stockpile of water purifying tablets, gasoline and non-perishable food on their hands. And me? I had a year’s supply of Petal Soft toilet paper (my partner refused to even think of using a dock leaf in an emergency).

Sixteen years on, everyone has forgotten Y2K. Although, funnily enough, I recently met a Canadian banker in Barcelona one drunken evening, who told me of the panic he and his work colleagues had gone through protecting their money in the run up to 2000.

He assured me he would buy my romcom novel (which is set in the months leading up to Y2K in Kansas), but I know he won’t. You know how I know? Cos he left my contact details under an empty bottle of Rioja before he staggered off into the night.

“Brake Failure” is releasing on Amazon on January 9, 2017

5 TOP LIPS

Where would romance be without lips? Lips are where the first spark flies, when the first thrill enters the nervous system.

I’m pretty sure all my books have got lips in them; if not mentioned overtly then certainly they assume pole position on the faces of my characters. I was just thinking it was about time somebody took a closer look at lips, their role not just on a face but in the heart of romance.

BTW: I’m not talking about just the TOP lip as my title may imply; I’m talking about both lips: top and bottom.

“Giving lip”. This is not as rude as it might sound. In English-English it means talking back in an offensive manner, like my heroine in BRAKE FAILURE when she refuses to be arrested.

If your heroine is from the English upper-crust and is about to do something she doesn’t want to do – like, say, get into a police cruiser just after she’s had an argument with the handsome-hunk of a Sheriff - she will have a “stiff upper lip.”

“She pouted her lips.” Your heroine could be having a tantrum and/or urging the hero to do naughty things to her.

"She licked her lips." In Romance, this doesn't mean she's salivating, vulture-like, over a fresh cream cup-cake. It means she's giving the "come-on" to the guy. And he would be pretty dense to miss this universal expression of intent.

It’s not just the heroine who has lips. So does the hero. “He brushed his lips down over her neck.” Animal-esque, but, boy! does it send a tingle down your reader’s spine.

“Their lips touched.” Sometimes this is all you need to tell your reader. You don’t need to put in the whole sex scenario. Leave it to your reader’s imagination. Trust me: it’s dirtier than yours.

“As his lips pressed down on hers, she felt a flame shoot up from between her legs.” Of course, this is not a real flame. Hopefully not, anyway. Of course your character could be a fire-eater. Here is an observation from Harry Houdini which few can refute and which I suspect is the origin of the phrase “hot lips”:

“Flames from the lips may be produced by holding in the mouth a sponge saturated with the purest gasoline.”

Generally, though, lips in romance should avoid flammable liquids.

Let’s crit. some lit. Charles Dickens was an intense writer. Listen to what he had to say:

“To conceal anything from those to whom I am attached, is not in my nature. I can never close my lips where I have opened my heart.”

(To be honest he must have been doing it wrong; it’s actually pretty easy).

Lips can say a lot about us. Take a look at this picture. Look at the lips. They tell you immediately that this is Penelope Cruz, the famous Spanish person. If she didn’t have those lips she would not be Penelope Cruz. So lips say who you are. They also often say a whole lot more about you that the hugely over-rated heart.

In summary

Lips in Romance are best used:

1. as a complete pair

2. pliably

3. to show inner turmoil on the face of your heroine

4. used in a non-flammable environment

5. to kiss the hero

…and as hot, red, and moist as they need to be for the task in hand.

#

BTW: If you want to read about hot lips in action, grab an e-book copy of BRAKE FAILURE publishing on 9 Januay, 2017.

Walls tumble down. They start off by keeping things in, or out – depending on where you stand, or who you are – north/south, rich/poor, East/West, royal/peasant and so on. They end up, when they come tumbling down, letting everything in, or out, depending on whether they sequestered or excluded. When walls fall, things always get better; from Jericho to Hadrian’s Wall, to the walls of the Bastille in Paris to the Berlin Wall; old walls protect old orders.

In the world of writing and publishing these walls have long been manned by the Protectors of the Book…agents. They have safeguarded us from all the piffle they believe we should not read. They have been the iron-clad censors of the written word, the gatekeepers, the king-makers, the keepers of the keys.

Agatha Christie spent five years beyond the walls; continuously rejected. Stephen King was told “We are not interested in science fiction which deals with negative utopias - they do not sell.” This was an agent’s comment on "Carrie", which then sold one million in its first year. Harry Potter was kicked into touch by 12 publishers who, had any of them had the final say, could have denied the world the HP phenomenon.

The dark days have passed

Writing, creativity, communication have been democratised.

I find great encouragement at www.literaryrejections.com which will open any rejectee’s eyes to the possibility of success and the potential of simply ignoring old walls to get a view of new horizons.

I know that everybody reading this has visited agents’ sites to be confronted by messages suggesting they are not accepting submissions right now/ they get 5 billion a day so why bother?/ we will take at least 3 months to deign to let you know that we don’t give a flying…you get the idea. It seemed to me for a long time that agents are not so much a conduit or a connection between writers and readers but more a barrier; a totally rock solid, Keep Out wall.

The advent of indie publishing, and the unguarded territory that stretches out before us all where writers and readers can meet, commune, chat, read what they what rather than what somebody else believes they should read, has unleashed creativity on a epoch-making scale. It’s a great time to be writing. Even if you sell just one copy, you’ve touched somebody which, under the ancient regime, you might never have been able to do. Now, we’re all making history.

###

Do you have to stumble over discarded crap to get to your desk? Do you have to side-step the Step Master, skirt your pile of laundry and tip-toe through a maze of teetering books just to get to your laptop?

Here are my 12 Top Tips that will shape you up and settle you down to a year of inspired good fortune. That’s right: I’ve scoured the wisdom of the ancients, the mysteries of the East and the ungoogled frontiers of science to bring you focus, energy, relaxation and good luck

1. Qi

Make a clean path all the way from the front door to your desk. Let the qi (energy) flow! Remove obstacles. Many great novels have gone unwritten because the writer stopped to vacuum the hall.

2. Clear your desk

Clutter is low, stagnant energy that drains you. Pens, files and staplers belong in the drawer, not on the battlefield of creativity. Mugs with fascinating fungus-life go in the dishwasher. Choc wrappers go in the bin (don’t check inside the silver foil - do you really want to eat shards of mouldy confectionary?) Ahhh, a clear desk top. Doesn’t that feel better?

3. Get stones

Amplify your self-esteem and release the intangible ingredient associated with good fortune. Amber, carnelian, citrine, lapis lazuli or clear quartz crystal are particularly potent.

4. Feng Shui it up

Create a wealth vase to attract money. Fill a vase with those things that have personal wealth meaning to you: soil from a wealthy friend, coins, a small Buddha, jewellery, a winning lottery ticket. Then place the vase by your feet. Also install a money tree plant to attract prosperity, such as Pachira Aquatica and Crassula Ovata.

5. Plants

Plants don’t just bring wealth, they purify the air and remove toxins. They exude oxygen, making you think more clearly. I recommend Aveca Palm and Lady Palm, while the Bamboo Palm adds a peaceful tropical feeling, and a rubber plant can survive a room that is cool and dimly lit.

6. Ear Plugs

A MUST for concentration. You never again need to hang your head out of the window to give the evil eye to the workmen drilling up the road. Buy silicon and the world will go silent.

7. Create a winning vibe

Choose a lucky charm: a pendant, an old school badge, a stuffed armadillo – something you associate with success and happy days. When you wear the charm it releases psychologically the stored good feelings to top up your confidence and help you emit a winning vibe.

8. Hydrate

If you lack water, you will feel sluggish. Have one-litre bottles of natural spring water within reach. If it is winter and you have the central heating on full, you will want to hydrate your skin too, so install a humidifier with an essential oil diffuser.

9. Essential Oils

The aroma of orange oil is great for energy. You will feel more focused and dynamic.

10. Goldfish

All over the world goldfish are considered to be harbingers of wealth and success. In ancient Egypt and ancient Greece they domesticated goldfish to enhance good luck. It has also been scientifically proven that watching fish relaxes the brain.

11. Bananas

Sitting all day can pile on the pounds. To combat this tendency hang a bunch of bananas over your head. A study conducted at Smell & Taste Treatment and Research Foundation showed that people who smelled bananas lost more weight than those who didn’t.

12. Ego system

Frame and hang up something that boosts your moral: an article you’ve written for "Knitting for Today", or a good review from a Book Blogger.

Conclusion

Choose just a few ideas ideas, not ALL of them, otherwise your room will look like a steamy Cambodian jungle. Now I’m off to buy a goldfish and a yukka. Good luck!

###

If I had any fingernails left, I’d be chomping on them. If I hadn’t sworn off all my vices for the New Year, I’d be swimming in them. If I hadn’t set January 26 as the launch date of my new romance, THE DOUBLE, I’d be baking a cake, walking a dog, or at least taking a breather now and then.

But this is it. This is the witching hour. The words are on the page. The years are in between the lines. The story is crouched in the birth canal. The midwives are hovering. At least with Kindle I can go Caesarean. I don’t have to lie there screamin’ and kickin’, pantin’ and writhin’. I can hit the button, and out it will pop: THE DOUBLE, bless its little cotton socks.

Congratulations honey…it’s a book. In the immortalised words of Big Chris (Vinnie Jones) in the 1998 classic, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, “it’s been emotional”. It has taken years. Books do. You live with them, you live in them, and you live for them.

It’s hard to believe that in the short space of what actually seems like a lifetime ago I have ambled my way round a sizeable proportion of the 1,025,109.8 words that make up the English language and picked out those that seem to coincide with exactly what needed to be said about my characters, their struggles, their journey and the message they have to deliver.

How personal a process this is.

Now, before its even had time to cut its teeth I’m about to kick it out and leave it to find its own way in this cruel world. The poor little thing will be bumped from pillar to post, tousled and jostled, occasionally scan-read by passing nomads, sometimes harshly judged for wrong reasons, praised for right reasons, embraced, ignored, hated, loved and – my one hope for the little mite in this rash impetuous world – downloaded.

I hope you enjoy THE DOUBLE.

I write romance. To write romance you need to be in “the zone”; to be steeped in a world of pounding hearts and trembling limbs. You need silence, order and isolation. The only visitor you want is your muse.

Let me explain by taking you back twelve months …

*

I was just coming to the climatic love scene THE DOUBLE. Aleksandr (a Ukrainian smuggler) and Beth (the beautiful stand-in for a rock-star-in-hiding) know they can never be together but they have ten minutes – only ten minutes – to throw honour and duty to the wind and make love ... one passionate memory that will last them a lifetime …

RING! RING!

The doorbell.

Easy to ignore, of course, but something is inching into the hotbed of lust in my fevered brain. Christmas ...?

Fuck! It’s Christmas!

I run down stairs and throw open the door. I love my family, I really do. But not NOW, please! I’m coming to the most hauntingly romantic scene I have ever written – I cannot, I must not, lose the moment.

No problem, I tell myself calmly. I’ll just get everyone inside and settled, then slip back upstairs.

There’s quite a crowd on the doorstep: mum, dad, aunts, uncle, nephew, nieces and step-nieces. All wanting Christmas dinner. Good cheer. And yuletide bonding.

Mum kisses me on the cheek, her eyes like laser-guided missiles as they target on the untidy sitting room and the even more untidy kitchen. ‘You were expecting us, weren’t you, Alison?’

‘Of course!’ I exclaim.

Oh, God. I didn’t want to do Christmas dinner but Mum and Dad are having their kitchen re-modelled, Auntie Doris lives alone, and Uncle John mistakenly believes his Ukrainian mail-order wife, Ivana, will be better behaved if she’s on someone else’s territory. And since Timothy left me a month ago (“It’s either ME or those damn books,” he threatened, jealous of my teeming bunch of sweating hunks who swill around in my brain) I’ve been on my own. Blissfully on my own. But Mum sees it as loneliness. And this whole we’ll-invite-ourselves-to-your-house is to cheer me up, put a glass in my hand and a smile on my face.

‘Merry Christmas, sweetheart.’ Dad gives me a hug. He smells of Old Holborn and bonfires. ‘You still have that drip?’

‘He left a month ago.’

Dad laughs. ‘I meant round the back of the house. I’ll go take a look.’ And he’s off before Mum orders him to peel the sprouts.

My Uncle John gives me a friendly wink as he carries in an armful of wrapped gifts. His wife, Ivana, is wearing something tight and carries a bottle of vodka and a dish covered in tin foil. ‘They fuck yet?’ she asks. (She’s been helping me with the Ukrainian side of THE DOUBLE). ‘Almost,’ I say with a sigh.

Next is Tommy, who is 9. He doesn’t want to be kissed and sidles past as if I’ve got leprosy, while Aunt Doris flaps sheets of paper above her head. “I’ve brought song-sheets,’ she bubbles. ‘Nothing like Christmas Carols to work up an appetite!”

The twins, Natasha and Florica, give me the vacuous smile that only a thirteen-year-old can give. They are totally pampered - Paris Hilton without the charm. They drift past, anticipating HOURS of EXCRUCIATING boredom.

Wendy is six. She’s struggling to hold a fat puppy that doesn’t want to be held. ‘This is Bobbo,’ she introduces solemnly. I shake Bobbo’s paw, ‘Hello, Bobbo.’ Wendy stares beyond me. ‘But there’s no decorations on the tree!’ she wails.

Damn. I forgot to dress the tree. In fact, I’ve neglected to do most everything I intended to do. (The muse arrived just as I was dropping the turkey into the roasting tin).

‘It’s OK, Wendy, I especially left it for you to do,’ I lie.

Grandma and Grandpa are the last to arrive. They totter up the garden path, holding on to each other as their shoes slide on the ice. I hadn’t noticed the snow. It looks magical.

‘Where’s the turkey?’ Mum yells from the kitchen.

‘In the oven,’ I call back.

‘But the oven’s not ON!’ Mum is wearing my apron. My Mum doesn’t care for salacious humour so I’m guessing she didn’t see the suspender belt and sagging boobs on the apron when she snatched it from the hook in the cupboard.

Ivana, knocking back a hefty vodka tonic, turns ABBA up to full volume and heads towards the kitchen declaring she will make the mulled wine. Uncle John turns off the music, ‘For God’s sake, Ivana. Ease up. Someone give her a sandwich to soak up the booze.’

‘I wanna sandwich, too!’ Tommy demands.

Everyone – realising that the E.T.A .of the turkey will be three hours late - start snacking. I’m just tip-toeing up the stairs, back to Aleksandr and Beth, when a little voice pipes up from behind me. ‘Where are the decorations for the tree?’

Wendy is standing at the foot of the stairs. I fetch the cardboard box, tear off the packing tape and throw it open. ‘There you go, Wendy. Decorations! Knock yourself out.’

‘But I don’t know what to DO.’

I hurl a handful of tinsel at the tree. ‘Just throw it all on.’ Even to my own ears, my voice sounds shrill.

‘OK…’ She seems unsure. She’s such a serious child and always looks at me as if I’m frivolous to the core.

The twins are on the sofa hooked up to theirs ipods while texting their friends. I bend down and raise my voice to get their attention. ‘Can you both help Wendy decorate the Christmas tree, please?’

‘What?’ They screw up their faces in either incredulity or deafness.

‘Help. Wendy. Decorate. Tree.’ I say in text speech. With a sigh, they drag themselves up from the sofa.

I’m half-way up the stairs and already I can feel the heat burning between Aleksandr and Beth, their lips-

‘Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle All The Way…’ Aunt Doris sings lustily as she hurls the Hoover over the carpet.

‘Alison!’ Grandad calls up. ‘Have you got salt?’

‘It’s next to the pepper.’

‘I meant salt for the path. Someone’s going to break their neck.’

Dad appears. ‘Your guttering is totally blocked,’ he informs me.

‘Bobbo is hurt!’ Wendy screams. ‘We have to take him to the vet.’

Vet? Guttering? Break their neck?

Bobo is limping. I hurry down, inspect his paw and dislodge a tiny plastic angel. ‘There! All better. No need for the vet.’ The muse is leaving, I can feel it.

Mum stands over me eyeing my Snoopy slippers, Jamaican rasta trousers and black sweater. ‘Alison, are you not going to change into something more … Christmassy?’

‘Yes, Mum.’ I dive across the room. ‘Of course, Mum.’ My feet thunder up the stairs. ‘But I may be a little while.’

*

See how the two complementary colours - green and red - work? The cat's eye is green, making it stand out against the red.

*

Following on from last two blog posts about e-Book Cover design, I am now going to give examples of eye-stimulating book covers and ideas for outsourcing the cover design.

A great book cover is the thing that's going to get your book noticed. Remember, as an ebook, your cover will be shown thumb-print size. Will your cover grab attention on the internet? Will it grab attention as a tiny image on a handheld device?

My advice is to hire a designer (unless you are a Photoshop expert). But you still need to guide the designer as to how you want your cover to look.

1. Get a cover from Fiverr for $5.

2. Hire a designer fom Upwork to do the cover. $20 to $50

3. Set up a competitition on 99designs to crowource your eBook cover. Prices can range from $50 to $500. Or hire a professional, experienced designer. See: AuthorSupport or Damonza.

*

Keeping the same font and style each time will get you recognised immediately, for example, take a look at Jojo Moyes' book covers:

"After the Fire a Still Small Voice." I think this is a beautiful book cover, but maybe too intricate as a thumb-print.

At a glance, you can tell that "Big Girl" is a light, fun read:

This is the cover I designed for my next book, which I then handed over to a top designer to finish off, giving it that professional look:

Top 10 eBook Cover Design Sites:

From the 12 December I am going to start posting a gallery of e-book covers. If you would like to have a cover added please e-mail it to me!

For premades go to Go on Write

How to design your ebook cover

Following on my from my last blog - Colours for your Book Cover - I am now going to talk about design tips.

Remember, your cover needs to jump off the screen and sum up your story at a glance!

Person or object?

Amazon advises that having a person on your cover is more appealing to buyers. I agree, yet I have a problem...

When my debut, ‘Face to Face’ was published by Hodder & Stoughton, I was dismayed. My heroine, Peri, was meant to be one of the most beautiful women in the world, yet the girl on the cover was quite ordinary. From that moment on, I decided I wanted my readers to IMAGINE the heroine for themselves.

So, when I published my first indie novel, ‘Wild Life’, all you could see of my heroine was her feet! This was a difficult cover to create and I left it to a designer to come up with the cover art work. He did a great job, but does it work effectively as a thumb-print?

Each cover is a learning process for me. My forthcoming novel, ‘The Double’, I designed myself. It simply shows two women, faces obscured by sunglasses. No background. No detail. Vibrant colours.

Do you leave your cover solely in the hands of a professional designer?

Yes and no. Most book designers don’t have time to read a whole book before creating a cover. You can give him/her a rough idea, sure, but the bottom line is: YOU know what image is going to capture your story. I suggest you do a little homework for yourself before handing your ideas over to a professional designer.

Trawl through sites to get ideas: Shutterstock, istock, Getty Images. They provide images that are affordable. Do you want a retro, pin-up look? Modern? Grainy? Cartoon? Photo?

Take your time. Throw together some rough images. Play with colour combinations. Do you want an exact shade of yellow? Then go to www.paletton.com.

When you have a rough image, put it up on Facebook for your friends to give their opinion.

Don’t leave your cover design totally to a designer. It’s fun to do some of it yourself. And then let the designer make it look professional.

"The Poughkeepsie Begins" is a wonderfully strong image. It would make a great poster.

The Big Picture

You are going to write more than one book (I hope!) so think about your next four or five books all lined up on a web page. Pre-plan your colours. Will all your book covers complement one another?

Trademark

Keep the same font on each book. So, at a glance, a reader will immediately identify it’s you. Or put the same coloured banner across the cover each time.

Blurb

Good blurb sells books but, as an ebook author, you don’t really have that luxury because when it's shown in a thumb-print size, the words lose visibility.

Reviews

A fantastic review is way more important that blurb. If, for instance, you get a review from San Francisco Reviews saying: ‘This is the best book I have ever read.’ Then you MUST have the review on your cover. You not only have it on the cover, you have it in capital letters, in flashing neon yellow!

Million Seller!

I hope you sell a million copies. That way, you can have your name way bigger than your title!

Go Bold: Your cover is your first, and often, your only chance to catch the eye of your audience. Your cover must look good and be readable at 120 pixels wide.

And remember, your reader must know at a glance what she is buying. A man with a naked torso promises hot sex. Don't get too carried away, though: if you have him naked, Amazon will pull the plug.

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For my blog next week, I am going to show all the indie book-covers that have that oomph! I would be interested to read your opinions.

You’ve written your novel, now it's time to create an ebook cover that will grab attention, jump off the screen and sum up your story at a glance.

As an indie author your cover is a priority. Vibrant, eye-catching, intriguing. Easy to do? Well …

We would all like a cover like Joanne Harris’s “Five Quarters of the Orange” with all its intricate detail that is a pleasure to study (it was only on my third look that I noticed the hand-grenade!).

But, sorry, my fellow independent authors, we can't have intricate designs. We are not selling in a shop, we are selling on the web, where most of the time, our cover will be thumb size. But how do we Wow! a prospective reader with a picture that’s as big as a postage stamp?

Keep it simple

Don’t clutter. One image against a plain background is very effective. Of course, there are historical romance covers that need background - a castle, for instance - which informs a prospective reader when the story was set, but for the most of us, it's best to keep it simple.

Colour is the key

Remember: The human brain will reject bland, under-stimulating information. At the other extreme, is a visual experience that is so overdone, so chaotic that the viewer can’t stand to look at it. Therefore, you need to create colour harmony, which delivers visual interest and a sense of harmony.

As an artist I know something about colour. Did you know that certain colour duos when put together make each other more vibrant? Look at a basic colour wheel then pair up the colours opposite each other - for example, violet + yellow. See how one colour makes the other colour more intense and bright?

A tip to help you remember basic complementary colours: blue/orange, violet/yellow, green/red.

Take a look at ‘The Dinner’ by Herman Koch. No background clutter. One image. Complementary colours of Blue + Orange. White lettering against blue. It works, don’t you think?

Take a look at ‘The Help’. No background clutter. With complementary colours of Violet + Yellow. It works, too.

Black + white is effective. This combo gives a sophisticated feel. (See ‘Noah, Noah’ by Paul Wilson).

How will your reader react?

Blue: This is the colour of clear communication. Also, it is a known fact that people generally like this colour. There are so many shades: turquoise, cornflower, and teal. White lettering on teal really does the job! See my forthcoming novel: ‘The Double’. See how the letters jump out?

Red: Physical. Energy. Strength. Masculinity. Pure red is stimulating and lively but at the same time it can be perceived as demanding and aggressive.

Yellow: Emotional. Optimism.Friendly. The right yellow will lift our spirits, but too much of it, or the wrong tone in relation to the other tones, can cause anxiety.

Green: Balance. Harmony. Restful. Environmental awareness. Being in the centre of the colour spectrum, it is the colour of balance. It can also be bland if used in excess. Choose a light pastel green and team it up with red.

Pink: Femininity. Love. Sexuality. Too much pink is physically draining to the eye.

White: Clarity. Purity. Sophistication. Visually, white gives a heightened perception of space.

Orange: Sensuality Passion. Fun. Too much orange gives a suggestion of frivolity.

Grey: Dampness. Lack of Energy. Pure grey has a virtual absence of colour, which is depressing.

Black: Glamor. Sophistication. Works well with white. Too much portrays a sense of menace.

Brown: Warmth. Nature. Earthiness. It is a solid reliable colour that most people find quietly supportive.

Remember: Colours are fun to play with! There are so many exciting shades to discover. See: www.paletton.com.

Now, go back and look at The Five Quarters of the Orange. Don't you think the orange jumps out at you? That's because it's against a background of its complementary colour, blue.

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My next blog will be about How to Choose the Right Image, Designing Tips, and When do you use a professional designer?

When your job’s up in your head, you take it with you everywhere. How lovely and super is that, to have a commitment and dedication to your craft so intense that it accompanies you every waking hour?

It is with you every second of every minute of every day, sitting in your brain screaming for attention like a toddler on a sugar high, like an attack of tinnitus, like a buzzy blue-bottle that refuses to fly out of the window.

Writing is intensely rewarding yet spitefully unforgiving. It demands peak perfomance from you all the time and haunts and taunts you if you don’t give it. It expects nothng less than constant undiluted orginality, perpicacious wit, dazzling insight, profound observation, pathos, bathos, irony, piquancy, laughter and joy. Give it a rest huh?

GET OFF MY BACK

Please, let me just kick back and think of nothing for just one day.

This is where the No-No Day comes in.

Let me explain for those who don’t know. A No-No Day is when you do nada, zilch, nothing.

Why?

Because it recharges your batteries

But here’s the catch: It’s not as easy as it sounds.

Here are five tips for achieving a day’s calm in the incessant storm of writing…five ways to stay one step ahead of the demons in your head and the nagging neurosis in your noddle:

Cast caution to the wind: don’t worry that the day following a day on which you do nothing you will be plagued by guilt and self-doubt; damn the carp, as the opportunists say.Eat peanuts: as Hamlet says: “I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space were it not that I have bad dreams”. They’re full of protein and ideal for fiddly slightly hyperactive snacking given that you tend to be jittery when you’re doing nothing becaue IT’S THE LAST THING YOU SHOULD BE DOING.Free the devil inside: as Beelzebub states: “The mind is its own place and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven”. So rustle up a heavenly chocolate drink, put on your Snoopy slippers and watch a really really rubbish movie. And leave the dishes in the sink.Turn the computer off: it will only sit there making you feel like a sloth. So make sure you have some DVDs in because you won’t be able to stream. In fact, cover it with a cloth. Or better still, carry it out to the garden shed.Focus on feeling relaxed: you’ll bring so much back to the task the next day, if you can only ignore how irresponsible you are going to feel, how much time you lost on your well-deserved No-No Day, who the hell do you think you are anyway everybody else has to go to work whether they like it or not what makes you so special just because you’re a writer…aaargh.

Take tomorrow off too.

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Ten daily dilemmas before breakfast

Every day every writer hears the voices. You chomp your toast and the voices chomp away at your brain making sure that the last hour contemplating your first positive action on your novel today goes swirling into the black hole of indecision. This is the role of the nagging voice.

Welcome to daily self-doubt that comes with every word you write. There’s an easy way and a hard way to do this. The easy way is to look to the advice of successful writers; see how they handle things because, after all, they’ve made it. The hard way is to realise that nobody knows a thing. Every single jot of advice ever passed down the line to us humble upstarts by the pros is contradicted by every other single jot of advice.

You’ve got to make it up yourself. So, here are ten nuggets of advice that come with their own contradiction already affixed. You’ve no need to choose between the two in each case. This advice is designed merely to knot you up a little bit more. Every morning.

How to conquer word count and master time

Who isn’t paranoid about the whole time thing? Take Shakespeare for example. There’s a guy who didn’t seem to have too many problems bashing out a pacey plot and peppering it with twists and turns, witches, nutcases, murderers, adulterers and wise-cracking grave diggers.

Even so, he felt the pressure: “When I do count the clock that tells the time, and see the brave day sunk in hideous night”, he said, “…nothing ‘gainst time’s scythe can make defence”.

This is a bit of a moan from a guy who only had to find ten syllables for each line he wrote. The rest of us have it a little harder. Andrew Marvel always felt himself to be a bit up against it: “At my back I always hear time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near”, he complained. It is possible he lived a bit too near the road; traffic distraction can derail the best of us.

Writers today have the benefit of the little word count gizmo in the bottom left corner of their screens. Every word you write, every move you make, it’s watching you. So I have a great tip on how to use it to write a novel in little over one week and thus free up lots of time to do all those other fun non-novel writing things we’re all itching to do instead of squandering hours at the keyboard.

First of all calculate how fast you type. Let’s be generous and allow for an average of 20 words per minute. Now set your target length, say 80,000 words. Now just divide one into the other and time will never get the best of you again. 80,000 words at 20 per minute means I have to plan on 4000 minutes which is a meagre 66 hours. If I start at 8 and stop at 5 with just an hour for lunch, I can bang out a novel in 8.25 days.

Here’s where writing gets really easy. If you take out 21 days a year (including Christmas and other mandatory frivolities) you can write 41.7 novels a year (rounded up). Call it 41 (round it down). I am working on improving my average. I have so far spent 3 years on the same novel. Time to recalibrate my creativity.

Every relationship is different. The only fact that counters this observation is that every relationship is the same. Are we all so boring? The stats speak for themselves.

There are a squillion billion people on the planet (approximately) so you can’t generally generalise. You can’t say, for example: “Everyone who lives” – point a finger – “there, has no sense of humour.” Or, “Everyone who lives over there” – wave an arm towards another part of the globe “is too frivolous”.

You cannot say everyone is different ‘cos they’re just not. They are the same. They do the same things. Think of the weirdest, crankiest thing someone might do (collect tummy-button fluff) and sixty million other people (these figures have not yet been verified) do the same sort of thing; they collect airline barf bags, or they’re into competitive dog grooming, or yodelling.

Bottle all that weirdness into your romantic novel and you’ll make an engaging plot and a fascinating story.

Sadly, however, most ordinary people do things that nobody wants to read about.

Even TV series about ordinary lives aren’t about ordinary lives: everyone steals everyone else’s partners, every house gets burgled, entire streets get sucked up into alien space craft. On TV, nobody just goes to the store, comes back, cooks and goes to bed … unless there’s a rare tropical and poisonous thing already waiting in their bed.

So, in your efforts to make your main characters different but the same, avoid these five danger zones and you should be OK...

Absolutely NO:

Dead puppies: Killing off cute little animals to bring people together is just schmaltz. Buy a puppy together but don’t grieve over one.

PTSD: Screwed-upness due to a minor upset might get a sympathy kiss from the heroine (and move the story closer to luurve) but unless the guy has just returned, scarred and emotionally frazzled from a major war, don’t go there.

Violeence: You have two choices: Go for your Pulitzer, or don’t. If you choose ‘don’t’ then nobody needs get hurt. If you go for ‘do’, then you’ve pretty much got to smash 25% of your cast around a little.

Terminal illness: Really? The cancer/AIDS/ebola thing is so out-dated. The lingering last words and final kisses? Let ‘em live. Life’s too short without us finishing them off.

Terminal dullness: Life does tend to skewer towards the dull end of the interest spectrum so you have to spice up your relationships a little. It’s not enough that the guy does an interesting job and the girl is a celeb incognito.

Consider instead: a slightly sick pet, a hero who’s fought the Abyssinian war single-handedly, a heroine with hay fever and brittle nails, coupled with a marginally lingering emotional upset from a very small disagreement witnessed first-hand on a sunny Caribbean island.

That should do it.

5 easy ways for Indie writers to avoid exploding-head syndrome

Do you know that feeling of having a head so full of story, plot, doubt, fear, trepidation and total ingrained conviction that you’re writing your way into a dead end?

Tell me about it!

From page two of my current novel I’ve been thinking I’ll have to start again; now on page 102 I have the same feeling. At the end of the book I know I will be absolutely convinced that the best way for this book to see the light of day is to toss it on the barbecue.

Dickens. Now there’s a guy who didn’t have a barbecue. He used to just lounge around in his garden and let his characters romp around unfettered, unrestrained, and nonchalantly ignored while he took his evening repose at his outside desk with a bottle of Jack Daniels. His head is evidently not in melt-down, implode or explode mode.

How in control is THAT?

So, in case you find yourself surrounded by all those people you have created suddenly doubting you and blaming it all on you; if you find your head spinning when all about you seem grounded and content; here’s what to do:

Keep a notebook – just deal with the issues as they arise. Make notes as they come up. Accept that writing is 24/7/365. Your parallel worlds and their entire populations will go with you everywhere. Live with ‘em.Keep control – don’t obsess about this universe of hyper-activity in your head. Be grateful for it. Recognise it for what it is: the creative urge. You might not have asked for it but you’ve got it.Keep a perspective – if you weren’t writing what would you be doing? Well, you’d be obsessing about not writing. Embrace the horror; it’s a world of your making.Keep real – make plenty of space for a life. You need one.Keep on – it gets better. The more you exercise your talent, the more it builds its own muscles and its own inner strength.

If all else fails, hit the barbecue. ###

Chinese philosophers always take the easy view of life. They shrink challenges that freak out the rest of us down into pithy one-liners. Take Confucius. Forget the legendary ‘Go To Work On An Egg’ and consider:

‘Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.’‘Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.’and the perennially useful:‘Never give a sword to a man who can't dance.’

The other guy, Laozi (c604-c531 BC) said: ‘A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.’ One of his first steps should have been to get the line copyrighted since pretty much the day after poor old Laozi said it, the line got wrongly accredited to Confucius (he say: ‘Why invent own line when somebody else can do it and you take the credit for the next two and half thousand years’).

So, inanities like… ‘Before you can awake you must sleep.’ (I think I said that) Notwithstanding, how did that ‘First step’ slice of tosh stand the test of time? Like, which way do you step first Laozi? Left, right, straight on?

When you set on the romance writing journey do you head straight for the conflict, the anticipation, the drab lives being lived before the moment of magic or do you sculpt your protagonists painstakingly well, so that they can talk for themselves, make their own decisions, commit their own mistakes, and listen to useless advice from people they choose to get it from?

A journey of fifty thousand words, or more, or less, starts with a thousand steps. Every step will be in the wrong direction but every step has to be taken. You’ll create characters you find don’t resonate, plots that skew off into backwaters and drown, locations you can’t quite make come to life. You will have false starts and more personal upsets and frustrations than would ever gain credibility in a novel. But you need to carry on.

The most important step isn’t the first one, it’s the thousandth one. That’s when things take shape. Good luck on the journey and take my advice: don’t take any advice. It’s your bed, you’re gonna have to lie in it; hopefully accompanied by the man of your dreams, but that’s another matter.

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romance means finding a way to keep 2 people apart for at leastten chapters.

Thank you Grace Kahlo!

Inspiration

Tip 1. Never tell anyone you are going to write a book. Not even yourself.

Tip 2. Never sit at a blank computer screen waiting for inspiration. It won't happen.

The glimmer of a story will come to you when you are - usually - doing something monotonous; when you're least expecting it.

You will feel a tingle. Make notes. Then forget about it.

If the story wants to be told, it will keep coming back. Take more notes. Forget about it.

Carry on doing this until your characters are walking about in your head. They've come alive.

Suddenly, you can't hold back. Sit down with a pad and pencil and write, write, write without stopping, or correcting. When you've got down all you have at that moment, put the pad away and forget about it.

If the story is "right" you will find yourself, more and more, living with your characters, getting to know them, chuckling at something they do.

When each new scene comes to you, write it down, until you have notepads full of scribbles.

I promise you, your characters will write the story for you.

Tip: lie on your bed and look at the ceiling and "see" your characters moving about inside your head: their hair colour, their mannerisms, their quirks, how they interact with each other.

If they are real to you, they will be real to your reader.

Stephen King said:

"My basic belief about the making of stories is that they pretty much make themselves."

I want to add that a story is delicate, ephemeral. You force it, you lose it.

Tip 3. You are writing for yourself. Enjoy!

Tip 4. Current advice suggests that a new writer should start building a social networking platform before starting to write their first novel.

Please don't do this.

Work in a vacuum. Work in isolation.

Turn off the internet. Check your emails AFTER you've written for the day.

To write, you need to be in your head, alone, with your characters without outside distractions.

After you've written that first book, then you can blog, tweet and facebook.