fiction

First Draft. #AmWriting

/ lizziechantree / 24 Comments

Lizzie Chantree blog 6

I’m currently working on the first draft of my new novel, which is about two women who are both completely misunderstood by their families. It’s great fun to write, but I as I have now signed a publishing deal, which could possibly include a sequel to the book they are publishing, I need to make my workflow easier.

I’m not very good at writing lists, as I often forget where they are. This is what should be on my list during the time my publisher is editing my upcoming novel.

Marketing schedule for new book.

Complete 20,000 words for current manuscript.

Edit/proof current work.

Cover design ideas.

Book blurb.

Keep up with social media commitments, including hosting #CreativeBizHour on Twitter.

Start sequel for soon to be published book.

Write 2 blog posts a week.

Newsletters.

Obviously this includes family commitments and household chores. But by this time I’m scared of my list and have hidden it somewhere I will never look again. A good idea today seemed to be under the dog’s bed!

As with most jobs, we all have to multi-task and the kitchen timer on my writing desk does beep and tell me to get on with it, but as a bit of a dreamer (which helps with my job), it means better planning needs to creep into my day and the usual ‘make it up as I go along’ vibe might have to take a back seat for a while.

I’ll let you know how I get on:)

Pepper

 

Monday marketing. #3QuickTips

/ lizziechantree / 5 Comments

Here are today’s 3 quick marketing tips for authors.

 

Babe Driven Twitter Ad

 

Most authors struggle to find high numbers of reviews for their work, but things always seemed a little easier to me when you can gift a book to a reviewer in America, but this is not yet available in the UK via Amazon. This is what I’ve discovered about gifting books:

1. When you gift someone a book, they might not download it. They can use the price of the book to buy something else.

2. Most authors drop the price of their book before gifting it, so that the gifting process costs them less.

3. You can’t gift a book during a freebie run. There would be no point anyway, as the reviewer could download it for nothing as long as you had the book free in every country. Free book promotions are often planned months ahead so you would have to plan both events together.

 

Guest post by E. Rachel Hardcastle.

/ lizziechantree / 1 Comment

I have started inviting guest posts to my blog and it’s my pleasure to introduce you to author E. Rachel Hardcastle. Here she shares details of her latest work and I hope that if you live nearby, that you manage to visit her book signing event to find out more about her writing.

MEET THE AUTHOR!(1)

Book Signing Event with Bradford Author E. Rachael Hardcastle.

Date – July 1st 2017

Time – 1100-1430 hours

Location – Wrose Library, Wrose Road, Shipley, West Yorkshire, UK, BD181HX

 

In November 2016, local Bradford author E. Rachael Hardcastle visited Low Ash Primary School in Wrose, Shipley to deliver a creative writing workshop to their Year 6 pupils. At no charge to the school, E. Rachael Hardcastle ran several hours of idea-generating activities tailored to their topic of study, which resulted in the children writing short stories of their own.

Later that month having received and compiled the children’s finished work, two independently published books titled ‘Children of War’ were published and delivered for the school’s library, creating over 50 young authors in less than eight weeks.

At the end of January 2017, E. Rachael Hardcastle returned to the school with further copies of ‘Children Of War’ for the children to take home. It wasn’t long before their story was picked up by a local television station, Made In Leeds, who interviewed E. Rachael Hardcastle and the children on The Lowdown Leeds show in February 2017.

To meet her local readers and aspiring writers, E. Rachael Hardcastle recently contacted Wrose Library, Wrose, Shipley to arrange a book signing event. She hopes to encourage the community to visit the library more often and to meet the hard-working volunteers there.

The event will take place on July 1st 2017 between 1100-1430 hours to celebrate both Wrose Carnival and Bradford Literary Festival. E. Rachael Hardcastle will be taking along copies of her brand new high fantasy release ‘Finding Pandora’ and her post-apocalyptic novel ‘Aeon Infinitum: Run For Your Life’ to personalise and sign for her guests.

Entry to this events will be free of charge. For more information about E. Rachael Hardcastle, her books and her workshops, please visit www.erachaelhardcastle.com.

Social Media:

www.facebook.com/ERHInspired

www.twitter.com/ERHardcastle

Library Website:

www.wroseparishcouncil.gov.uk/wrose-library.html

Author Branding

/ lizziechantree / 20 Comments

Branding

I’ve been reading quite a bit about author branding lately and the topic really fascinates me. I have run my own businesses for years, which is why my romance novels are focused around entrepreneurs, but I remember back to my first business logo and how awful it was! I was 17 and my first business was called Juniper Berry. The logo was quite unimaginative with a tree in a brown square box with some text underneath.

When I invented my first product, I was attending The School of Communication Arts in London and had begun to learn about product design and branding. We were set tasks to design new branding and packaging for some big companies as a project and the results were anything from funny shaped boxes to business cards made from a jigsaw! It did make me realise how important the identity is to a product and as authors, our books are our product and we are brand ambassadors.

When someone looks for your book or product, can they easily identify that they are from you? Can they read the label clearly, even from a phone screen or iPad? Does your branding follow through across all of your novels, or does it confuse your readers? This might sound obvious, but when you look at a selection of work from some authors, its not always easy to see which ones belong together.

I often identify my favourite author’s books online by their book covers. I know their style and expect their latest covers, merchandise or social media to be uniform. My books are all romances about various businesses and their quirky owners, but they are still very different. One is a sizzling beach read, one a romantic mystery novel and one is full of magic. Here are my covers:

 

Even though they are different, I always use similar colour palettes and type faces. My author picture and social media branding is the same on all platforms:

Vector illustration of a portable modern tablet pc e-book reader.

I understand that it might seem strange to think of writing books as a business, but we are making a product that we really hope others will love and packaging it in a way that appeals to those people is vitally important.

I’m in the process of designing bookmarks and have asked some of my readers what they would like to see on them. Most would like the cover design work followed through, as they enjoy bookmarks that match the books they are currently reading. Again, this is all branding and a wonderful way to connect with our amazing readers. I’ll let you see the finished design when they are done, but I will be listening to my readers and carrying through my brand design.

Jump into a FREE book!

/ lizziechantree / 2 Comments

If you love a fun filled romance read, then today is your lucky day!

Update: Babe Driven is ranked #1 on Amazon.co.uk for free books and #3 on Amazon.com! This is down to the amount of support everyone has shown in giving this book a try and sharing it with their friends on social media and by word of mouth. Thank you so much! #YouRock 

My first novel, Babe Driven is free to download from   24/03/2017- 28/03/2017  

Grab your own copy today.

untitled

Free book links:   Amazon.co.uk   Amazon.com

Description: Babe Driven.

Driving straight out of trouble and into paradise! A laugh out loud, contemporary romance read full of humour and exotic locations.

Harriet’s crazily successful business idea is under serious threat, and the danger seems to be coming from inside her own family. She whisks her sister and her friends away to an exotic location to try and work out whose side they are on. It’s time to start damage limitation.

When the girls arrive at the glorious villa owned by Harriet’s maverick business partner Nikki, they find a gorgeous band and their sexy lead singer Max staying next door, out to entice their new neighbours into all kinds of trouble.

This isn’t a holiday for Harriet and she can’t afford to be distracted. She has to sell her business idea to the powerful resort owner, the elusive Mr Grant, while she is there, or she may not have a business to go back to. Harriet will have to choose between family and friends, business or pleasure. For someone who stays out of the limelight, even though her new company is the hottest ticket in town, she’s going to have to avoid the front pages of every newspaper if she wants to survive the ride!

What reviewers are saying about Babe Driven:

1. ‘A great read! The story gripped me from the start and I couldn’t put the book down. The plot was intriguing as the relationships develop and some people aren’t who they appear to be! A great holiday read or indeed curled up cosy in front of the fire!

’

2. ‘A real hoot all the way through and very entertaining. Love the authors style of writing and the characters she creates, read it over two days and would have read another one. Really rather good!’

3. ‘Light, entertaining fun read which would make the perfect companion on a summer holiday. I liked the characters, and thought the plot was quite original, hoping to see more from the author in the near future.’

4. ‘This was a fun light read. There is romance involved but it’s more than that. It’s mostly the story of a strong independent businesswoman who’s trying to save her business. She happens to be beautiful, and so everyone underestimates her. I really like this character and enjoyed the plot. You keep getting little surprises along the way that keep you guessing. I would call this a great book when you want to be distracted from all of the real worries you have in life. I’m a sucker for happy endings, so this book left me with a big smile!

’

Books by author Lizzie Chantree

How to use keywords for authors.

/ lizziechantree / 14 Comments

I have been reading new ways to use meta tags or keywords as a powerful marketing tool. I have been blogging for a little while now and have finally started adding tags to my posts!  There are pages and pages of advice on how best to implement keywords in your book marketing strategy, so I tried a few of them this week.

What is not advisable, is the use of other authors names in keywords, in the hope of enticing the fans of this genre to your own work. I haven’t tried this, but have heard it’s not the way forward. Some other advice I read was to add the word kindle to your keywords as Kindle ebook is a popular search term. Again, this is not advisable as it is too broad a search term, with millions of variations which confuses everyone and probably won’t help your book’s rankings. A good idea is to use keywords in your actual work if you can. Putting these words into your book title, subtitle, and naming photos what they actually are, all helps. My book cover for Babe Driven uses the keywords: Babe Driven by Lizzie Chantree. Romantic Fiction. Only use tags that are relevant to your work, or you have wasted a keyword and your book may end up in a category that is unrelated to your work.

My subtitle is: Driving straight out of trouble and into paradise! A laugh out loud, contemporary romance read.

My first book, Babe Driven, is a funny, romantic romp, but is also about a woman in business and how someone is determined to destroy all her hard work.

babe-driven-twitterad-quote

I started out using keywords like Romance, Comedy, Beach (It’s set in a sexy beach resort), Funny, Women’s Literature, Cars!!! (What was I thinking). You get the idea! All of these categories are flooded with so many books, it’s tricky to be seen. This book often ranges in the #16-#500 top books in Women’s Literature and Romance, which is wonderful, but I want to try and make my keywords work even harder for me. I recently tried a few other keywords and the book slightly dropped in the rankings straight away. I rapidly swopped them back!

Portable e-book reader with two clipping path for book and scree

Click to buy a fun filled beach read, Babe Driven!

I have just changed the keywords again to see if I can make them work harder for me and my genre. I’ve used, Love, sex & marriage, Humour & Satire and a few more like this. I now know you can use more than one keyword at a time and the fact that you can could help your book too.

The top tips I found, were to search your category genre on Amazon and see what keywords come up in the drop down search list, as there are usually about ten other suggestions here. Next, click on one of these links and find a book with a similar audience. Look at the bottom of that books landing page and see the keywords they are using. The first on the list is a collection of the most popular keywords for that book. It may be that you have a romance book, but romance is a very popular keyword, therefore you could try humour, love, sex & marriage, or families and marriage, if these words apply to your work. They might not be the first word that comes to mind when you think of your work, but with thousands of searches being made for books every day, your book might have a helping hand if you use a search term that isn’t as widely used. Obviously if your keyword is too obscure, you may have a #1 ranking in that category, but no-one may find you anyway, so use your choices wisely.

Reviews of Babe Driven:

5 stars! I was recommended this book by a friend… Initially I was a little unsure as I am very loyal to Freya North & Lisa Jewell… I’m a bit of chick lit fan!!!
By the end of the first chapter I was completely gripped…
This is a really compulsive read and not easy to put down; but quite light hearted.
The characters are really fun, engaging and believable.
I am really looking forward to the authors next Novel… Give it a go!!!!

5 stars!  Not something I would usually read but intrigued by the title and thought I would give it a go. A real hoot all the way through and very entertaining. Love the authors style of writing and the characters she creates, read it over two days and would have read another one. Really rather good!

Here are some great resources on the topic of keywords for authors:

Complete guide to keyword selection: Click here. 

Keyword search software: Click here.

Article about keywords: Click here.

Meet author Joy Nwosu Lo-Bamijoko

/ lizziechantree / 22 Comments

I am delighted to introduce you to author Joy Nwosu Lo-Bamijoko. Joy has a wonderful new book out and I hope you all rush home and buy a copy today!

joy-nwosu-lo-bamijoko-new-book

Pregnant Future

(No One Knows What Tomorrow Will Bring)

A True-Life Memoir

 

 Living with the Nuns my first year in Rome did not prepare me for life in Rome. I was sheltered, protected, and constantly watched by the Nuns. I wanted to fly, to be my own person, and to explore Rome to the fullest. I did not even have a television, and could only listen to the news, with the Nuns in attendance, in their common room. I wanted out, and yet I was afraid to venture out.

The scene between the Madre Superior and Justina solved the problem for Justina and for me. I moved out and it was not pretty. I was now open to all sorts of challenges.

By this time, the line was drawn between me and those other Nigerian snubs. I had no contact with them. They lived in their gilded, and well protected world, and I lived in my own rather confused and disorganized world. It was a very stressful time for me, but for the grace of God… I use this expression a lot because I believe that without God watching over me, and my guardian angels making sure that I did not fall off the cliff, I don’t know where I would have been today. I know how those who tangoed and rhumbaed with me ended.

 

Pregnant Future Trailer

Click here: https://youtu.be/86vP8_9Ri20

 

joy-nwosu-lo-bamijoko


ABOUT THE AUTHOR:


Joy has written and published extensively on national and international scholarly journals, magazines, and newspapers. 

Her first short story I Come from Utopia was published in African Voices, Spring/Summer, 2007, pg. 18. Since then, she has published numerous others in RAVE SOUP FOR THE WRITER’S SOUL Anthology, Bks 1-3.

Mirror of Our Lives: Voices of Four Igbo Women was published in 2011, and was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Book Contest in 2012. She has also two books published in the Italian language.

The Legend of the Walking Dead: Igbo Mythologies, is a journey into the mysteries of life and death of the Igbos of Nigeria was published in 2014

In Pregnant Future, her new Novel, Justina is the story of every young woman who found herself alone in the world to fend for herself. It is the story of the pitfalls that await such a woman. It is the story of   survival

 

Author of:

Legend of The Walking Dead: Igbo Mythologies

Mirror of Our Lives: Voices of Four Igbo Women

Pregnant Future

 

Contact details:

Website:         https://thelookingglassjnlb.wordpress.com

Bog:                 www.Jinlobify.Com

Twitter:           @Jinlobify

Facebook:       Facebook

Pay It Forward.

/ lizziechantree / 2 Comments

Todays RRBC author: Nancy Bell.

Microsoft Word - Document10

Biography: 

Nancy Marie Bell is a proud Albertan and lives near Balzac, Alberta with her husband and various critters. She is a member of The Writers Union of Canada and the Writers Guild of Alberta. Nancy has numerous writing credits to her name, having three novels published and her work has been published in various magazines. She has also had her work recognized and honoured with various awards, and most recently, a silver medal in the Creative Writing category of the Alberta 55 Plus Summer Games in 2013. Nancy has presented at the Surrey International Writers Conference in 2012 and 2013, and at the Writers Guild of Alberta Conference in 2014. She has publishing credits in poetry, fiction and non-fiction.

Microsoft Word - Document9

Christmas Storm by Nancy Bell:

This humourous romance is set in the real life town of Longview, Alberta. All the characters, with the exception of The Travelling Mabels, are figments of my imagination. The Travelling Mabels are a trio of singer songwriters who are releasing their second CD on June 12, 2011. The Mabels have graciously agreed to allow me to include them in Christmas Storm in the scene where Michelle and Cale go to a Christmas concert at East Longview Hall. Mary, an older mother figure in Michelles life, is a consumate matchmaker. Mary decides it would suit her purposes if Michelle’s truck disappeared during the concert. Cale, the new vet who Michelle dislikes on sight, is also duped by Mary and finds himself seated next to Michelle instead of Doc, Mary’s husband and Cale’s new partner. Needless to say, Cale drives Michelle home, he only lives across the coulee from her ranch so it’s not even out of his way. There are lots of ups and downs on the road to true happiness, Michelle just isn’t sure she can keep the truck on the road with the shiny side up.

See Nancy’s work here:

Website: http://www.nancymbell.ca

Twitter: @emilypikkasso

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NancyMBell