Submitting Short Stories

Hi all! 

This week I'm going to talk about submitting short stories to writing magazines and anthologies. There are a lot of places out there that are willing to accept work from authors, no matter if they're published or not. Like querying, I thought I would list some dos and don'ts. 

Do. 

Be polite. 

Make sure your cover letter is polite and pleasant. Anything offensive or arrogant will end up rejected. 

Read the submission guidelines. 

Make sure your story is within the specified word count and is a genre they are looking for. If it's not, find somewhere else to submit it. There are a few places that will accept writing that is a bit on the longer side.

Edit your work. 

Don't send a first draft, unless it's immaculate. Like with everything you write, make sure you edit it for simple mistakes. For a short piece places will expect minimal errors so keep that in mind. 

Be aware of fees. 

A few places will require you to pay a small fee to submit. First, check it's within your budget and be sure that you want to spend it. Second, research the place you're submitting to. Is the price worth it in your eyes? 

Be prepared to wait. 

Like querying agents, these places get a lot of submissions. While some might get back to you if you've been accepted or rejected, others won't. Submit to a few at a time and wait a few weeks before submitting to a few more. 

Read the fine print. 

Some places will ask for first publication rights and ask you not to publish elsewhere for a certain amount of time. Make sure you're okay with this before submitting. 

Don't. 

Send nasty emails. 

If you don't get accepted, don't send them nasty or rude emails. You will be blacklisted and they will not accept another submission from you again. Don't burn bridges just because you're upset. 

Trash talk them on social media.

Not only will it make you look bad, but it's also a sure-fire way to burn bridges in the publishing world. Magazines and anthologies talk to each other, and you will find yourself unable to submit to many places after your outburst. Think before you post anything. 

Steal work. 

Don't steal someone else's work and pass it off as your own. Even if they don't catch it straight away, someone will find out eventually and expose you. Use your own merit to get your achievements. 

Pay too much. 

If the cost is exceptionally high for a short piece, don't submit. Chances are you won't get your money's worth and you'll be out of pocket. 

Chase them constantly. 

An email asking for an update after a few weeks is fine, but don't bombard them. It's a quick way to get your submission rejected. 

Ignore submission guidelines. 

Your story will not be the 'one-off' they accept. Not adhering to the genre will get you rejected almost instantly. Going above the word count won't work either, as especially in magazines they only have a set amount of space to fit stories in. 

Give up your rights. 

Don't sign over the rights to your story without thinking. They should only ask for publication rights for a few weeks to months. Don't sign over the whole thing and let them use it as they please. 

Let rejection get you down. 

Rejection is rife in the publishing world and its inevitable that you will receive one at some point. Don't let that put you off however, keep trying and you'll get there eventually! 

That's it for this week, I hope you enjoyed reading. See you next week! 

PS: do you like book bundles? Check these out:

Escape Into Fantasy This June

Joyful June Books

Summer and Sci-Fi Fantasy KU

Why Authors Need Reader Magnets

Hi all! 

This week I'm going to be talking about reader magnets, and why authors need them if they have an email list. 

For those who don't know, a reader magnet is a free gift you give to people when they sign up to your email list. They can be as follows:

Ebook.

Enovella.

Writing/Marketing Tips.

Online book merch.

Character profiles. 

Poster. 

For subscribers to my email list, I offer a free enovella that can't be downloaded anywhere else! It follows the stories of four dragons in the Elemental Dragons universe, you may even see some familiar faces! Link here: https://www.subscribepage.com/jessicaturnbull

I will also be writing reader magnets for other series, such as Celestial Plague, Damaged Goods and Curse of Anubis.

The cover for my reader magnet, the prequel to Elemental Dragons

So, why do you need a reader magnet? 

It entices readers to sign up. 

Readers are not likely to sign up for your email list unless they get something in return. Only hardcore fans will sign up for nothing. If you don't offer anything, you're not likely to get many subscribers to build a substantial list. 

It can be anything you want. 

You can decide what to give away. It doesn't have to be a full ebook, it can be a short prequel to your book or a collection of short stories. It's up to you to decide what you think readers will be interested in and how big a gift you want it to be. 

You'll get more subscribers.

Although some will only sign up for the freebies and then unsubscribe, you'll have a few who will stick around. 

Your email list can be used as promotion. 

The more subscribers you have, the more people you can promote to when you have a book coming out or on sale. The problem with using social media is that when you first start out it can be like screaming into the void. So many people are promoting their work that you will struggle to stand out. With an email list, you have a group of people who are waiting for news on your next release! 

You can offer more than one magnet. 

If you like to write across multiple genres, you can create a reader magnet for each one. For example, a Sci-Fi enovella and a horror ebook. 

More to add to your writing portfolio. 

It's another piece of work to add to your collection, and knowing that people are downloading it can be a real confidence boost. 

That's it for this week, I hope you enjoyed reading. See you next week! 

Why You Should Download Free Ebooks

Hi all! 

This week I'm going to talk about something that I only really started using once the lockdown started - free ebooks in the kindle store. I never really took much notice of it before as I like to read authors I have already read before. 

But then I had to isolate due to possible COVID-19 symptoms. 

At first I just bought a load of ebooks that I had intended on reading for a while but never got around to them. Once I finished them I decided to browse what free books were on offer. 

I downloaded quite a few, and two books in particular I liked so much I bought the rest in the series. I never even thought that I could find books that I would love from authors I've never read before. Because of this, I've also been able to bump up my Goodreads challenge to 100 books read this year as I'm finding so many new things to read. Before downloading free ebooks finding 20 books to read was a challenge!

It was worth it. 

Now I browse it once a week looking for new titles I might like. I usually tend to choose books that are the first in a series and if I like them I'll purchase the rest.

Drug by Lynda O’Rourke - by far my favourite of all the free ebooks I’ve downloaded.

So, onto the reasons why you should download free ebooks:

They're free.

This might seem like an obvious one but it's true. You can try an unknown author without costing you a penny. You might find your next favourite book! 

No risk, high reward. 

Although there are some bad books in the free category, there are also bad ones in the paid one. Downloading free ebooks is no risk to you, as if you don't like the book, then you can at least try it at no cost to you. 

Reviews.

Permafree ebooks tend to have a few more reviews as usual. This is because as they are free people are more likely to read them, and more eyes on them increases the likelihood of a review. As a reader you can take advantage of this and read what other people liked/didin't like before downloading.

It supports authors.

A lot of authors struggle to get readers so they'll put their book in the free category for a few days or permanently. By downloading, you're showing them support while also getting a new book. You might even find your next favourite author!

If you find one you like, you can download the rest in the series. 

By downloading the rest of a series despite them not being free you're also supporting the author. It also gives them an incentive to keep working on that series. 

There's a lot of variety.

There are so many free ebooks out there that you're sure to find one you love. I've downloaded a few books that aren't usually my genre but ended up liking, you never know what you'll find!

That's it for this week, I hope you enjoyed reading. See you next week! 

Glass and Ice Cover Design

Hi all,

As promised, here is the cover reveal for Elemental Dragons Book 3: Glass and Ice! I’ve already made a few design differences with my website and social media banners to reflect the colour scheme of Glass and Ice.

As with the previous covers, I got the Print Social package with Deranged Doctor Design.

Like with Blood and Water and Venom and Earth, I’m going to explain a few of the design choices:

The colour scheme is white and pale blue, to represent the Glass and Ice title.

Hazel, the MC, is on the cover.

The ice is not being controlled by Hazel as she is not an Ice Elemental.

The background is a frozen wasteland, which is a part of Hazel’s ‘dream’ in Draca’s memories when calling the marked Elementals to him.

Ice Elementals play a large part in this book, including Braith.

The font and colours, apart from the white ‘Ice’, is the same as the previous covers.

That’s it for this week. Do you like the cover? Let me know in the comments!

See you next week!

My Experience With NaNoProMo

Hi all!

This week I'm going to be talking about NaNoProMo, or National Novel Promotion Month. Every year in May BadRedhead Media run this free event, which is full of blog posts by guest writers and resources to help you with promoting your book. There's also the opportunity to win loads of great prizes! 

Website here: NaNoProMo.

I heard about it through joining the BookLinker Facebook page, where a post about it starting soon just happened to be put up when I joined. I looked into it and thought it was a great idea, so I kept an eye on the website for launch day. 

This year they had a launch party where experts were engaging with authors and sharing their tips and tricks with chances for prizes to be won. Due to the fact that I'm in a different timezone and I also worked that day, I missed most of the event but was still able to catch up later. There were great posts about what the experts were working on and engaging authors. Once this was over blog posts were added daily to their website.

My favourite blog post throughout the event was this one: How to Safely Choose Colours for your Author Website. I've always struggled with colours for my website and this post has given me a lot of thinking to do! I think I my colour palette sorted, I just need to adjust my website a bit so it fits.

I also won a prize during week one which I was not expecting! I can't wait for my consultation about marketing.

I will participate again next year as it was just so fun and informative. Even though it's over this year, you can still read all the blog posts and posts from the guests on launch day by going on their website. There's also the posts from 2019 and 2018 as well, so there's a lot to read!

With events such as NaNoWriMo and NaNoEdMo I'm pleased that there's a month for marketing and promotion. A lot of people, like me, struggle with promoting their book so events like this are amazing. I've learned a lot just from reading all the posts and engaging with the organisers. Everyone has been so lovely and the prizes that were available were amazing, such as free consultations on marketing tips and website colours to magazine subscriptions. It's such a great collection of resources and I would definitely recommend authors look into it and participate.

I also just wanted to say thank you to the organisers and the guest bloggers who put their time, energy and heart into making an event like this. I thoroughly enjoyed it and I'm so grateful that an event like this exists thanks to their efforts.

Before I say goodbye I wanted to announce that Elemental Dragons Book 2: Venom and Earth came third in Cover Wars, thank you to everyone who voted!

That's it for this week, next week I will be revealing the cover for Elemental Dragons Book 3: Glass and Ice. It will be posted on Facebook and Twitter first with a blog post on it a few hours later! See you next week.

How to Sign Books

Hi all,

I haven't seen many blog posts on the subject so I thought I would offer a bit of advice.

Your author signature needs to be different to your normal one.

Why?

Because, unfortunately, although most fans will keep signed books as a keepsake, others might try to forge your signature and pretend to be you. This is why your signature needs to be different, in order to protect your identity, brand and finances.

Your signature can be whatever you want it to be, as long as it's different to your usual one. You can make it as large or small as you like, add symbols or drawings. It's entirely up to you!

Make sure you practice writing it beforehand so you can get into the habit of using it. The more you practice the quicker you'll get and the less messy it will be.

You should also have a few messages that you can write in your books. For example:

I hope you enjoy my book! (Signature)

Thank you for supporting me! (Signature)

Most authors prefer to sign their books on the title page - example of Venom and Earth

I would recommend three or four messages that you cycle through when signing to keep it fresh and ensure you're not writing the same thing in every book.

If the reader wants the message addressed to them, make sure you check the spelling with them first. Even if it's a common name, it can have loads of different spellings. The last thing you want is to spell someone's name incorrectly in their own copy of your book.

If you want inspiration check out how your favourite authors. See what they write and what their signatures look like so you can get an idea of what you would like to do.

I've signed a few books and having everything ready beforehand really helped me lessen my anxiety. It still worries me when people hand me their books to sign and I find myself writing really slowly to make sure my writing is clear and free of mistakes. My regular handwriting is hard to read so it's important that I slow down so my writing is readable.

That's it for this week, hope you enjoyed! See you next week.

Rough Word Counts for Books

Hi all! 

I've seen a lot of blog posts about this already but I thought I would weigh in on the subject. So many authors are unsure of their book length, whether it's too long or too short. I like to say that it should be as long as it needs to be, but many agents do require debut authors to be within a certain word count. This is because a book that is too long of too short is usually a lot harder for them to sell. 

Disclaimer: these are rough guidelines. Make sure to do more research of books in your genre to see what words counts they fall in. Some agents may want longer books while others want shorter, so make sure to look into each one and their guidelines carefully.

First off, I thought I'd go with writing lengths:

Flash - 0-500 words. 

Short Story - 500-5,000 words. 

Novelette - 5,000-20,000 words. 

Novella - 20,000-50,000 words. 

Novel - 50,000-120,000 words. 

Epic - 120,000+ words. 

These are usually rough guidelines, some agents are usually a bit more relaxed. 

Now for genres. Again, these are quite rough guidelines but are what a lot of agents follow:

Fantasy - 80,000-120,000 words. 

Science Fiction - 80,000-120,000 words. 

Horror - 70,000-90,000 words. 

Crime - 70,000-90,000 words.

Thriller - 70,000-90,000 words.

Mystery - 70,000-90,000 words.

Romance - 50,000-90,000 words. 

Historical - 80,000-100,000 words. 

Dystopian - 80,000-100,000 words. 

Literary - 80,000-100,000 words.

All books in the Elemental Dragons series stay within the 79,000-85,000 mark

Now, for age ranges:

Picture Book - 100-1,000 words.

Middle Grade - 40,000-50,000 words. 

Young Adult - 60,000-80,000 words. 

New Adult - 70,000-100,000 words.

Adult - 80,000+ words.

When querying it's best to stay within their guidelines if you can. Although most of the time it doesn't matter if you're a little bit over or under. If you find that you are way over the word count for your genre, go back through your work and see what you can take out. If there are any subplots, characters etc. that your novel doesn't need then don't be afraid to cut it out. If you're writing a series, you can add some of that into the next book if you don't want to get rid of it completely.

If you're writing in two genres, for example; Young Adult Fantasy, it's best to stay within the age range just in case. 

I hope this can help those querying, see you next week! 

How Writing has Improved my Mental Health

Hi all, 

It's been a while since I made a blog post about mental health, so I thought I would talk about how writing has greatly improved my mental health and hopefully it can help anyone suffering too. 

I suffer from depression and anxiety, though I am nowhere near as bad as I used to be. Now that I'm medicated and out of school I'm much happier mentally. A change of scenery can do wonders for mental health. I used to have frequent panic attacks and depressive episodes, but that has decreased a lot. I feel much more human than I used to be. 

It's an outlet. 

No matter what mood I'm in, I can rely on my writing as a way to get my feelings down. I can use my life experiences in my writing and how I wanted to deal with them or how I dealt with them. For example when I was at school I was ignored most of the time, but then I could write about characters who were great friends and it would cheer me up. I could write anything I wanted. 

Your writing won't judge you. 

You are the creator of the story, you decide what happens. Your writing and your characters won't judge you. You can write freely without fear of being taunted by others. 

You can be anything. 

All authors write a little bit of themselves in their stories. This means when you're down you can write yourself as anything. A dragon rider, a cat or the leader of a faction of survivors. You can be anything you want and you can do anything you want. 

It's an escape. 

I read and write to escape from reality. I still believe that fiction is better to take my mind off things rather than talking to someone about it. 

A hobby makes you feel better. 

Getting up and doing something gives you something else to think about. When I'm writing I find that I'm thinking less about how anxious or depressed I am when I go through bad spots. 

It combats loneliness. 

Writing your characters can help with loneliness, which I used to suffer from a lot when I was at school. You can write how your characters interact and who is friends with who. They can't ignore you as they are in your head. 

You can help others. 

I write for all the depressed and anxious teenagers out there that need an escape from their lives. Your writing can not only help you, but it can help others too. I don't know what I would have done if I didn't have books to read. 

That's it for this week, see you next week! 

Venom and Earth now Available on Amazon!

Hi all!

This is just a quick post to announce that Elemental Dragons Book 2: Venom and Earth is now live on Amazon!

It’s available in ebook and paperback.

I’ve even managed to do a universal Amazon link, so I’ve updated my ‘Books’ page as well with the new links. When you click it, it will automatically redirect you to the Amazon page for Venom and Earth in your region.

Life just keeps getting harder.

Hazel and the gang are back, but after the near cataclysmic events of the last year they might not be together for long. The Wyrms are on the move and so are those that serve them, including the Cindaraans who will let no-one get in their way.

As long as they are on the hunt no dragon is safe, and if the group can’t learn to control their elements in time then they never will be again.

Just as they are starting to settle into a routine back at the camp, the group falls under the public eye mostly because of newcomer Violet who harbours a secret that quickly thrusts them all straight into the limelight.

Can they duck the paparazzi and stop the villains at the same time? Or will some of the very people they’re trying to save be the group’s undoing?

Find out in Venom and Earth, the exciting sequel to Blood and Water. An action and adventure fantasy series that will keep you glued to every page.

Next week I’m going to talk about how writing has improved my mental health, so I hope to see you then!

How I use Mythology and Folklore in my Writing

Hi all! 

This week I'm going to talk about Mythology and folklore and how I use it in my writing. A lot of my work is greatly inspired by ancient myths and folklore, so I thought I would go through some of my series that contain it. 

Elemental Dragons. 

This series, of course, has dragons of all species in it. From hydras to Wyrms. I spent a lot of time researching which dragon species I could use for this series. For example, in Elemental Dragons the hydras will regrow heads when cut off, just like in the Greek myth. I've always been fascinated by dragons and wanted to make sure I wrote them the correct way, with a little bit of wiggle room to change them as I saw fit. Even in this universe they study myths through Dragon Mythology classes. I

Years.

I'm currently writing this Young Adult Sci-Fi for Camp NaNoWriMo. The characters all pray to Mother Earth and build machines to sacrifice people to keep her alive. The machines are named after goddesses that represent Earth or are linked to it in some way. They are Sif, Terra, Pachamama, Prithvi and Gaia. I'm still writing this one so I'm sure I will add more as I go along, depending on what the story needs.

Damayanti - by Danielle English @KanizoArt on Twitter

Damaged Goods. 

I have yet to start writing this series, which will be a Young Adult Historical trilogy. The first book is set in ancient Greece, where belief in the Greek gods are rife and people mould their lives around them. Then the next two books are set in more modern times, but people still believe in the Greek gods and it shows how that has changed society. Greek Mythology has always been my favourite and I knew at some point I would write something about it.  

Curse of Anubis. 

As you can probably guess from the series name, this set of books will contain Egyptian gods. Most notably Bastet, Thoth, Anubis and Set. I haven't started writing this series either, but I can't wait to get into it. It will be a Young Adult Horror/Dystopian about a zombie apocalypse. Some Egyptian gods will descend to try to help people during the outbreak, while others are trying to prolong it. After Greek Mythology, Egyptian would come second for me and I still want to do a bit more research before starting this series. 

Mute. 

I'm planning on starting this book during July 2020 Camp NaNoWriMo. It will be my first attempt at New Adult and Horror. This book centres on university students making a video game. They accidentally summon a wendigo, a creature that feasts on human flesh. I'm in the final stages of researching wendigos now as I want to make sure I write them scary enough for people to want to continue reading. 

Elemental Dragons Book 2: Venom and Earth is out Tuesday 14th April. If you haven’t purchased a copy yet but want to - please visit my ‘Books’ page!

That's it for this week! I hope you enjoyed reading, see you next week!