Massive Springtime Book Giveaway!

Thought you might like to know that Author Elle Casey is 
having a huge indie book giveaway over on her blog.

There are 190 different books with a total of 1554 copies to be won 
including 10 copies of HIDDEN (Marchwood Vampire Series #1)

Most of the novels are either Young Adult or New Adult titles. 
So what are you waiting for? Click here to jump to Elle's blog.

Check out the awesome books you can win below:

Cake Nazi (a true story)

Imagine, if you will, that it’s your birthday, the kids are at school and your husband has the day off. He asks you what you’d like to do. Well, it’s cold outside but the sun is shining and so you decide that it would be lovely to have a walk on the beach, followed by tea and cakes at a beachside café.

   Now imagine that you’ve had the long walk and have arrived at said café. There are a handful of people inside sipping lattes. A waitress guides you across to a table by the window with a perfect, uninterrupted view of the ocean. You shed your coats and hats and gloves and you sit.

   ‘What can I get you?’ the waitress asks. 

   ‘Two teas, please,’ your husband says. ‘And what cakes do you have?’

  

   ‘The cakes don’t come out until three o’clock,’ the waitress replies. 

   You look at the waitress, wondering if you’ve misheard. And then you look at your husband.

   ‘Three o’clock?’ your husband says to the waitress. 

   ‘Yes,’ replies the waitress. ‘And it’s only . . .’ She consults her watch, ‘. . . half past two.’

   You continue to stare at the waitress, waiting for her to crack a smile and tell you she’s joking. But after five long seconds you realise, no, she’s serious. Sorry, what? The cakes don’t come out until three o’clock? Is this some kind of new EU initiative? Do the chocolate éclairs have this stipulated somewhere in a special pastries contract? Does the lemon drizzle cake think it’s Mariah Carey perhaps? 

   ‘You can have your tea now,’ the waitress says. ‘And I can bring you some cake at three.’

   ‘Where are the cakes?’ your husband asks, looking around. You too begin to scan the room, hoping to spot a rogue piece of pecan pie and then you’d be able to say, ‘Aha! There! A cake has been spotted next to the coffee machine. I’ll have that one.’ But alas, there is not a slice to be seen. 

   ‘The cakes are in the fridge,’ she replies.

   Your husband smiles at her. A nice smile. Not patronising or forced. A genuine, lovely smile. One that you would never be able to pull off in such a time of stress and anxiety. ‘The thing is,’ he says, ‘it’s my wife’s birthday and we’ve come to your café for tea and cakes, but we have to leave quite soon to pick up the kids from school. So would it be at all possible for you to sneak us a slice from the fridge a little bit early. No one need know.’ He grins a cheeky grin to seal the deal. 

   She frowns. ‘No,’ she says. ‘Not until three.’

   ‘So would you like tea for two now?’ she says, ‘And I’ll bring you the cake later, at three?’

   You check the time on your phone. It’s 2.38pm. You want to swear at the waitress, but instead you say, ‘Thank you, but I’d like the tea at the same time as the cake if that’s okay. Can we wait until three and have them both together?’ 

   She thinks for a moment before arriving at her decision. ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘That should be okay.’

   The waitress walks off, presumably to check on the cakes and see if they’re happy in the fridge. You smile at your husband and you both spend the next fifteen minutes gazing out at the beautiful sapphire sea and pondering on the peculiarities of cake timetables. You know you’ll have to wolf down the cake and knock back the tea in super-quick time if you’re to get to school on time to pick up the kids, but that’s okay;  this is England where 'customer service' has a myriad of definitions.

   At 2.55pm the waitress returns. Oh good she’s early, you think; now you’ll have a little extra time. She leans forward with a conspiratorial smile and says:

   ‘The cakes will be coming out in five minutes.’

Coming soon: Bread Nazi (another true story).

Win a Free Edit worth $60/£40

 

This week I have something very special

for all you writers out there -

 

 Andrea Harding from Express Editing Solutions

is offering a free 10k word edit to one lucky person for their manuscript or short story worth $60/£40!!

 

Below, Andrea has written a wonderful guest post about how she came to be

an editor. Beneath the post you can find out how to enter the competition.

 

 

My mother, affectionately nicknamed Mammacat (we’re a cat kind of family), retired last year, after 38 years of teaching. She taught children aged 5-11 and was head of Literacy for many years. Recently, we were discussing my editing. She asked me why writers don’t just learn how spell and use grammar correctly. I tried to explain it to her in terms that she’d understand.

You see, when those tiny little budding minds that she’s so used to teaching sit down to take tests and exams at the tender age of seven, they do something called ‘the long write’. The long write is usually a story composition of some kind; it is marked on different criteria, and the resulting piece of work is given a ‘Level’, usually between 1 and 3 (with 3 being awarded to the highest achievers). Children who attain a Level 2 might have simply wonderful stories, but they might not have yet mastered the art of using a sentence, correct spellings or punctuation. The children who attain Level 3 can do all of these things and more, but sometimes their imaginations are somewhat lacking, and their stories are dull as dishwater.

This is how I explained the relationship between authors and editors: authors are your Level 2 children, their minds overflowing with wonderful characters and stories that are just aching to spill out onto the page; sometimes so much so that things like spelling, grammar, punctuation are forgotten, unimportant, barriers that their stories have to hurdle to be indelibly set onto a page. Editors, however, are Level 3 children, sometimes lacking in their own ideas, but with a great attention to detail, a phenomenal capacity for rules and their application.

Anyway, I told Mammacat not to question it; my skills would be surplus to requirements if all authors were Level 3s.

If you asked me how I came to start editing, I don’t think I’d be able to actually tell you. Before I started busying myself with trying to help people improve on them, I read an extraordinary amount of books. I believe last year I actually read somewhere in the region of 180 of the things. I just can’t get enough. But with the dawn of a new technological age and the birth of the Kindle and other e-readers, I discovered more and more books with more and more errors in them. 

Mammacat and I have a history of needing to be separated at functions such as weddings and funerals, because we would end up pointing out and giggling at typos in the programs; we photographed and shared badly sign-written vans we have been sat behind at traffic lights and plaques that beggar belief; it was hardly surprising that I became one of those annoying/helpful (delete as applicable) people who started emailing authors with lists of errors I had found in their books.

One such author was Griffin Hayes, who has not just become one of my favourite authors, but also a valued friend; he was the one that pushed me to push myself, recommending that I set up on a freelance basis.

 

I love working with a variety of authors who write within a range of different genres. Some people have commented that my low pricings are unprofessional, but at the end of the day, I already have a day job: I can pay my bills. I edit for the love of a good book; it’s my hobby, my passion and where my real talent lies. If I can pass all of that on to authors who might not necessarily be able to afford the expense of an editor who charges prices that make people cringe or by the hour, then why shouldn’t I do so? I certainly can’t think of a reason.

 

 

To find out more, visit Andrea's website: Express Editing Solutions

 

 

***THIS GIVEAWAY IS NOW CLOSED***

Winner to be announced May 15th 2013

 If you'd like win an amazing 10,000 word edit from Express Editing Solutions, all you have to do is leave a comment below stating why you would like the prize.

 

(Closing date May 8th 2013. Winner to be announced here on 15th May. The winner must respond within 7 days or the prize will be offered to someone else)