Saturday 22 December 2018

How Kirsty gets her Kicks will be published in June 2019

There's nothing more exciting for an author to see the cover for their new book for the first time.

It's like waiting for your baby to be born and hoping he doesn't have your sticky out ears.

I'm delighted to introduce the cover from the awesome Shotgun Honey for How Kirsty Gets Her Kicks.


You can meet Kirsty, the one-legged barmaid on the run from a gangster with a safe load of cash and a hot gun on June 2019.





Monday 22 October 2018

6 of the Most Important Things I've learnt in 30 years of getting published

He has it all figured out - it took me years.

Thirty years ago my first piece was published in Jackie magazine about superstitions. I've learnt so many lessons along the way.

Some of them took me too long to learn and have cost me.  

There's a lot to recommend old fashioned pen and paper


1. Never edit on screen. 
You miss too much and sometimes your mind sees what it wants to see and not what's really there.

There's nothing more time consuming than forgetting what you put in each chapter and spending hours searching through your work to check something was or wasn't included.


Print out your work and edit with pencil or in red pen and then edit onscreen. I don't know why, maybe it’s the rhyme of pen or pencil on paper that concentrates the brain.

2. If you don't read books you can't write books
Reading opens your eyes not just to how others write, but to the mistakes they make.

3. Read as widely as you can. 
I write crime and devour books in that genre, but I love reading horror and anything supernatural too. At one stage, I read every Western I could get my hands on.

Read books you love. Read books you hate. That way you can see what works and what doesn't.

4. Do chapter summaries or outlines so you know what you've written in every single chapter with a quick glance. 

Trust me, I've learnt this the hard way.

Keeping track also helps with continuity. You don't want people to shriek, "How can she have a fight with her brother when he died of a drug overdose and it was mentioned in chapter five!"

5. Save copies of your work every single day. Use a free online storage company like Dropbox.

Does your Internet provider give you access to online storage free? If so, use it. 

Back up not just every single day you do any work, but any time you make substantial or important changes. As well as online storage companies, email yourself your work to every email you have that either offers unlimited or a generous amount of storage. And invest in a an external drive. One large enough to store EVERY FILE on your computer.

That way if you're computer has a nervous breakdown you won't have a melt down when you discover you've lost all of your work.

6. You can put a bit of yourself into one character or every character, but never make them you. 
Make them react in their own way to things that happen to them, not you.

We give characters life, but its theirs to live in their very own unique way.

What do you think of those tips? Are there any tips that you swear by?
I'd love to hear from you.

Drop me a comment on this blog or contact me on Twitter where I tweet as @jenthom72

I hope to tweet you:)

Monday 8 October 2018

5 ways you know you've written your characters well


Characters. Every great novel or work of writing needs them. Without good characters things fall flat regardless of how well something is written.

But, how do you know readers will find your characters interesting enough to keep on reading?



1.You find yourself yelling "there's no way he/she would do that."
You know them so well.


2.When you're writing a scene you find yourself getting into their head space and hearing, smelling and feeling what they do.

You're not there with them - you are them. At least whilst you're writing the scene. We're not talking multiple personality disorder here, but it might feel like it.

3.You find yourself talking about them in every day conversation as if they're a friend of yours or even a family member.

4.You start placing them in your favourite novels and TV shows relishing how they would react if they met your favourites in that book or TV show.

5.You can place them in any scene and you know how they will react. You don't have to overthink it.

Thursday 15 March 2018

Thanks to everyone who bought Living Cruelty Free I've donated to Network for Animals



Thanks to everyone who bought Living Cruelty Free I've donated to Network for Animals who help neglected and abused animals around the world.


You can read more about this amazing organization here https://networkforanimals.org/uk/donate/ via @network4animals

Give yourself a hand, folks.


So, give yourself a hand, folks. Together WE can help change the world by doing it one little bit at a time.



About the book
Living Cruelty Free Live a More Compassionate life is available in paperback and on Kindle. The book offers tips and advice on how we can be kinder to animals and each other and live an all round kinder life.

Paperback
Kindle 

Wednesday 14 February 2018

Cannibal City DI Waddell book 2 coming soon from Jennifer Lee Thomson





Delighted to announce that Caffeine Nights will be publishing CANNIBAL CITY book 2 in the DI WADDELL crime series.

Publication date tbd.

The series started with VILE CITY.

Here's a wee taster -
A killer's stalking male victims on Glasgow's streets. Men are being abducted, kept tied up for weeks then strangled and their livers are being removed.

Detective Inspector Duncan Waddell has enough problems not least of all that his best friend and colleague Stevie who's meant to be comatose is talking to him and only him. Now he faces his most bizarre case yet.