Tag: dan brown

The one where I took a big step in building the tomorrow I’ve always dreamed of

Jessica Redland Author17 Comments

Boldwood Books posted this meme on their Facebook site yesterday and it could not have been more appropriate for me because, yesterday, I grabbed my opportunity to build the tomorrow I want. Yesterday, I resigned from my day job!

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I’ve always needed to fit writing around a full-time day job which has not been easy. Over the years, I’ve held some very demanding roles where I’ve barely written because extremely long hours and/or business travel has prevented it. And it didn’t really matter at first because, when I was writing my debut novel, it felt a more like a hobby. Could I learn how to write a book? Could I get to the end? Would it be readable? I never actually thought beyond that but, once I’d joined the Romantic Novelists’ Association (RNA) and received positive feedback from readers on the New Writers’ Scheme (NWS), I began to imagine that there could be something beyond a finished manuscript loitering on my computer.

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Image by Welcome to all and thank you for your visit ! ツ from Pixabay 

And there was.

Five years ago, I became a home-based HR Tutor.

Five years ago, my first book was published.

Five years ago, it was no longer a hobby.

Five years ago, I dreamed that I would one day be able to write full-time.

And five years later, it’s happening. Or at least it will be when I’ve served my four weeks’ notice.

And then I’m going to lie on a chaise while a scantily-clad Adonis drops grapes into my mouth while dictating my amazing new novels to a harassed secretary. Oh, wait, have I stolen a Little Britain sketch there?

What I’ll actually be doing is writing but I’ll be able to do it every day. And I’ll be able to do it during the day instead of late on evenings or across weekends like I’ve had to since I started writing. Which means I may actually have some time to spend with my immediate (household) family, extended family (post lockdown) and actually find time to exercise the lard off my rather enormous writer’s bottom!

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Image by Alexas_Fotos from Pixabay 

I am so very grateful to the brilliant Boldwood Books and particularly my editor, Nia. Without my publishing deal with them, my dream would have remained just a dream. Their passion and enthusiasm has taken me from ticking over in the charts with a small number of sales each week to being an international bestseller who has sold 30,000 books (eBook, paperback or audio) through them since my first release in September last year. Wow!

I can’t help but smile at the words ‘international bestseller’ because, in my mind, that conjures up the likes of J K Rowling, Dan Brown, Catherine Cookson, Jackie Collins and Stephen King (picking from a mix of genres here). It’s not me! However, you are officially classed as a ‘bestseller’ if you get into the Top 100 on the Amazon charts and I’ve managed that:

Screenshot 2020-05-11 at 02.20.52The Secret to Happiness – #9 in Canada

The Secret to Happiness – #20 in Australia

New Beginnings at Seaside Blooms – #20 in the UK

Eeeeeekkkkkk!!!!!!!!

Leaving my day job is scary. I’m walking away from a decent monthly income. I’m leaving behind a career choice I made when I was eighteen (a loooong time ago!) My income from writing will be a small fraction of what I earn normally but that drop in income will be worth it for the joy of being able to spend time every day ‘making stuff up’ and finally getting a work:life balance.

To anyone with a dream like mine, keep holding onto it. It might not come to fruition quickly or easily. I’ve certainly had my fair share of rejection, disappointment, self-doubt, and more disappointment along the way. About eighteen months ago, I felt so down about things that I even wondered whether to give up completely. But I couldn’t not write. It’s part of who I am and I’d be lost without it. So I took a deep breath, tried not to cry too much about the many days with zero sales and the low chart positions despite the great reviews and keep believing that, one day, it would happen to me.

And it has.

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Image by Alexas_Fotos from Pixabay 

Roll on Friday 5th June – my very last day. Each webinar run, each assignment marked, and each query answered will take me a step closer to living my dream.

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Image by Gerhard Gellinger from Pixabay 

Thank you to everyone who has supported me and believed in me along the way, especially my amazing husband, Mark, and our daughter, Ashleigh, who have always accepted that I have two full-time jobs and not a lot of time.

Thanks to my mum – my biggest supporter who tells everyone she meets about her daughter, the author.

Thanks to all those who have ever beta read my work (in alphabetical order) – Clare, Liz, Debbie, Jo, Mum, Nicola, Sharon, Sue and Susan with an extra huge shout-out to Sharon who has been my shoulder to cry on, my champion and an inspiration. Can’t wait to meet up and eat (lots of) cake when we’re through the other side. Yes, I know that defeats the bottom-reducing plan but needs must!

And, of course, a huge thanks to so many amazing bloggers and readers, some of whom have been around since the start, through my indie years, and are still with me now and others who’ve just recently discovered my work and have been so lovely and supportive.

Every single one of you have made my dream come true and I can’t thank you enough.

Big hugs

Jessica xx

If you want to read my uplifting stories of love and friendship set on the stunning North Yorkshire Coast, or find out more:

My books are available on Amazon, AppleBooks, Kobo in eBook, paperback and audio formats. You can find my Amazon page here.

You can find my Boldwood Books on Audible here.

You can sign up to my newsletter here.

 

The one where I get my first ever 1-star review on Amazon

Jessica Redland Author10 Comments

I’ve done it! After nearly 4.5 years as a published writer with ten books out there, it has finally happened. Today, I received my first ever 1-star review on Amazon for my latest novel The Secret to Happiness.

Screenshot 2019-10-10 at 13.35.14In the writing community, the first 1-star review is often joked about as being the ‘rite of passage’ or it’s said that you’re ‘not a real author’ until you’ve received one. That might all sound very flippant but it’s a way of dealing with the blow of someone telling us that they thought that the novel that we spent months or even years creating with blood, sweat and tears is, quite frankly, a turd. Ouch. It hurts. But it happens.

Every big name from classics like Austen and Dickens to multi-billion contemporary best-sellers like J K Rowling, Stephen King and Dan Brown has 1-star reviews. So that puts me in pretty good company.

I am quite astonished that I’ve ‘survived’ this long without the lowest rating but I will admit that I smarted when I received it today and not for the reason you’d expect…

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Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

One-star reviews happen and, as authors, we need to accept that not everyone is going to love our story (would be a boring world if we all loved the same things). Some readers will come from the “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything” school of thought and keep it to themselves whereas others will happily voice their negative opinions and some of those will do it with venom! Which is absolutely their right. Maybe not the venom part but it’s certainly their right to share their opinion.

No, what irked me was that Amazon have changed their rules around reviews. I obviously missed the memo about this and I still believed that it was not possible to just give a rating; words had to accompany it. Not anymore. Now a reader can simply give a rating with no explanation whatsoever and this is difficult to swallow.

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I still have a day job in Human Resources. As an HR Professional, one of my two specialisms is learning and development. I’m therefore all for a bit of (preferably constructive) feedback and I will happily learn from this in my writing career and action it where possible e.g. if a reader has spotted an error. What I can’t do is learn from a 1-star rating with no explanation. And neither can potential readers. I personally don’t make a buying decision based on reviews but there are plenty of readers out there who do and having low ratings without explanations doesn’t help them or the author.

I’ve seen 1-star reviews for other authors along these lines:

Book didn’t appear on my Kindle

Formatting seemed to go funny

Paperback didn’t arrive on time

Not read it yet so can’t rate it

It’s possible that the formatting is down to the author or publisher but not necessarily. The other scenarios above are definitely out of the author’s control and, if a prospective reader is looking at the reviews for a buying decision and the reason for the low-rating is explained as one of the above (or similar), then they can effectively discount that review as it’s not about the story itself.

I’ve also seen 1-star reviews for other authors that state something like:

Absolutely loved it. One of the best books I’ve ever read. Can’t wait for the next

In this case, the reader has clearly misunderstood and clicked on the wrong end of the rating scale. Oops. But, again, a prospective reader looking at reviews as part of their decision-making will see this and be able to discount that 1-star rating too.

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Image by Tumisu from Pixabay

But when a 1-star rating simply appears without a review, who does this help?

  • It doesn’t help the author because it brings down their ratings and gives them nothing to work with
  • It doesn’t help prospective readers because there’s no information to support the rating and factor into their buying decision
  • And, actually, it doesn’t help the person who left the rating because they haven’t had their rant!
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Image by an_photos from Pixabay

I therefore find myself mystified as to why this system would be introduced by Amazon.

Maybe there is a case for just leaving a rating on certain products. For example, if you ordered a pack of 12 x Bic biros, does that really warrant you having to write a review? They’re mass-produced pens. What more can be said? Either you can write with it or you can’t. But for books, is this really an improvement? I’d suggest not but I’d very much welcome your thoughts.

I’m concerned that it opens the system up for abuse. When someone places a review, their Amazon identifier comes up. Sometimes this is their real name but, more often than not, this is an identity they’ve created for their reviews like glitterunicorn or loves2read. Either way, we have no idea who these people are and the unspoken rule is that we don’t communicate with reviewers, even to thank them, but they do have some form of identity on the system and, if curious, we can see what else they’ve reviewed and maybe take comfort that they never give high ratings for books or they clearly don’t enjoy a certain type of book. However, when they just leave a rating, they’re completely anonymous – we just know the rating and nothing about the source – and this surely opens up the opportunity for an individual with an axe to grind to randomly give a low rating to an author they dislike or even of whom they’re jealous whilst appearing completely invisible on the system.

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On Tuesday, I shared the above tweet to say that 35 of the 36 reviews on Amazon were 5-star. Is it a coincidence that, within two days, an anonymous 1-star rating appeared (bearing in mind it usually takes a couple of days for ratings/reviews to materialise)? Yes, quite possibly. In fact, I hope it is. But I wouldn’t be an author if my mind didn’t work overtime and constantly ask ‘what if…?’ What if someone decided to take me down a peg or two after that tweet? What if someone was sitting there saying, ‘Nearly all 5-star? Well, not anymore. Ha ha ha ha ha!’ I just don’t know. I’d like to think that nobody could be so cruel but we live in a world full of hatred and unkindness exacerbated by keyboard warriors and trolls who don’t think about the impact their words might have on others. Or don’t care.

Can I just emphasise that I’m not upset at receiving a 1-star rating (she writes through the blur of tears before ripping open her second box of tissues for the day). After all, 36 readers disagree. I’m just a bit bewildered by Amazon’s change to allow ratings instead of reviews. Please do pop a comment below and let me know what you think.

Edit: I meant to say something which I put on my FB post about this earlier and that there may well be a whole pile of positives to this change that I’m simply not thinking of because I’m too blinkered by the 1-star review. Huge thanks to Shalini, a prolific reader and reviewer who has been so supportive of my writing for giving another perspective on this. It’s well worth reading her comments for an alternative take (click on the option at the top of this post to see comments).

Jessica xx

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Image by Ka Young Seo from Pixabay

Sisters are doing it for themselves

Jessica Redland Author2 Comments

My lovely writing friend and fellow Write Romantic, Sharon Booth, was recently passed the ‘Sisterhood of the World Bloggers Award!’ baton where female bloggers answer questions set by the person who nominated them, then passes a new set of questions onto another female blogger.

sister-hood-awardI promised that I would accept the baton and answer Sharon’s questions, but a couple of weeks have passed and I’ve only just got round to it because I’m still chasing my tail as highlighted in an earlier post. I’m doing a half-effort, though, because I can’t think of anyone onto whom to pass the baton. There are plenty of blogs that I follow, but they’ve all either accepted this challenge or been invited to participate. So I’m going to have to stop it with me. Sorry. I feel quite selfish saying, ‘I’ll tell you about me, but I won’t pass it on!’ Hope you’ll forgive me!

Before I answer Sharon’s questions, I thought I’d comment on sisterhood. I don’t have a sister although I have two brothers who are married, and hubby has twin sisters so I’m lucky enough to have four sisters-in-law who are all absolutely lovely. Big shout out to Linda, Ness, Clare and Susan xx

My career to date (the day job) has mainly been in Human Resources, specialising in recruitment and/or learning & development. For me, this has been mainly female-dominated although quite a few managers have been male although I’m not going to pass comment on that today. I’ve often been asked, “What’s it like just working with females? Is it bitchy?” I’m pleased to be able to say that this hasn’t been the case in most of my jobs. I’ve found supportive, caring colleagues who are excited and inspired by the success of other females in the team. Sadly, I’ve also found jealousy, back-stabbling, taking credit for other people’s work and outright bitchiness. The latter qualities disappoint me so much. Why do that to each other? Why try to reach the top by clambering over other people? I could never do that. Unfortunately, that refusal to stamp on others has meant I never progressed as far in my career as I could have. Oh well.

Fortunately, The Write Romantics do demonstrate sisterhood. We’ve blogged together for two years now and we provide support, advice, and encouragement. We actively promote each other, and we are there for each other. Long may it continue!

Enough wittering. Onto Sharon’s questions…

P1060221What is your earliest memory?

Most of my childhood memories are set what I consider to be my childhood home; the place I lived from when I was almost four-years-old. However, my earliest memory traces back to the house I lived in before we moved. I remember going for a walk round the block with my pram and my dolls. It’s just a brief flash of a memory, but it’s definitely my earliest. About 12 years ago, my older brother bought a house round the corner from there and it was strange going to visit him for the first time, passing my first house, and looking at the path I remembered walking along.

What was your favourite Christmas present?

P1060219I love presents so I’m happy with most things! I’ve had some great gifts over the year. One of the best as a child was an ice-skating Sindy which I’d longed for. As an adult, one of the most thoughtful was when my hubby bought me a silver chain with three intertwined rings with my name, his name, and our daughter’s name on them. Lovely.

Who would you like to go on a date with? (Excluding current partners/spouses)

I’d probably go for the humour value and pick Ant and Dec. I reckon a night out with them would be great fun.

Which film would you choose if you could only ever watch one again?

Oh that’s mean! I love films and there are so many I’d watch again and again and again. I absolutely couldn’t name one. One of my favourite films is ‘The Shawshank Redemption’, but I don’t think I’d choose that as the only one I could watch. ‘Ever After’ perhaps? Or ‘The Wedding Singer’? Or maybe ‘The Proposal’? Ooh, I’ve got it! ‘The Holiday’. I absolutely adore that film and find myself drawn to it any time I flick TV channels and it’s on.

What are you most proud of?

10933962_422724554553053_2755676624398073407_nAs a parent, the obvious answer would be my daughter and I am, of course. But isn’t every parent (I hope)? For me personally, the thing I’m most proud of is that I kept going with my writing and kept believing and it paid off with a publishing deal. The day I hold ‘Searching for Steven’ in my hands will be the most amazing moment ever.

Which woman in history do you most admire?

Very difficult question. I don’t really know much about history. I’d therefore turn to a writer from the fairly recent times – Catherine Cookson. She was a prolific writer with an incredible imagination and gripping voice. My mum is a massive fan and, in my twenties, I probably read the vast majority of Catherine’s books, all borrowed from my mum’s collection. I haven’t read her autobiography, but I understand she had a particularly challenging upbringing, which no doubt inspired many of her stories.

Which book do you wish you’d written?

It would be so easy to say The Harry Potter series, Dan Brown’s ‘The Da Vinci Code’, The Twilight Series, or ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ for the financial rewards – *dreams wistfully of a day without debt*. However, my answer is a book that probably still made the author very rich, but the reason I choose it is how it made me feel. Flowers in the Attic by Virginia Andrews is my most favourite book ever. I’ve mentioned this before on my blog as the first big book I read and it blew me away. I couldn’t stop reading it, dying to know where it would lead. The rest of the series equally gripped me, but I read that first one so many times that the book actually fell apart. Imagine how incredible it must feel to have created a piece of fiction that can do that to someone. Wow!

What one thing do you think would surprise other people about you?

I can be really shy sometimes. Most people would view me as confident, talkative, and not afraid to speak up in front of a group. Just as well given my day job is as a Trainer! However, certain situations and certain people can intimidate the hell out of me and I can be very shy and wish the ground would swallow me up.

You’ve had an unexpected windfall of one thousand pounds. What would you spend it on?

I’d put it towards a holiday with my family. My little girl is eight and we saved like mad to take her abroad for the first time last October (half term). This year, we’re saving like mad again and are hoping to be able to do a special trip north while she still believes in Santa. Ssshhh. It’s a secret!

Thank you, Sharon, for inviting me to participate and sorry that I’m not passing it on.

Sharon’s debut novel, ‘There Must Be An Angel’ is available now in paperback and eBook formats. Find it on Amazon and you’re in for a treat!