Category Archives: My Books

March, maggots, mussels and miles of walking…

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We’re 11 days into March and so far, there have been at least six dry days. In the UK, we slogged our way through the wettest February since records began—and that’s quite something when you live on this little island.

It’s a strange time too… the weirdness of living in a world where we’re terrified of a virus and how that translates. Cancellation of events. People changing their holiday plans. Signs everywhere telling you to wash your hands. The threats to the economy as the stock market quakes in its boots…

Wherever you are in the world, I hope you and your loved ones are okay. Stay safe.

Mussels for lunch

After my father died, my mum established a tradition where she, my sisters and I (without our families) meet up, which is always something I look forward to. The heady responsibility to book somewhere for lunch fell to me. Three hours (felt like) of TripAdvisor paralysis later, I decided on the Mussel Inn, somewhere I’ve always meant to visit and not got round to.

And very nice it was too…

Otherwise, I’m busy writing the fourth in my Highland Books series. I’ve finished it but it needs major tidying up. Think of it as a big house where a group of students decided to party hard all weekend. There’s spilt alcohol all over the floors, a mass of dirty glasses and plates everywhere and as for what those dodgy stains are upstairs, I dread to think…

Anyway, here is a short, spoiler-free extract. Enjoy!

Highland Chances

Ashley’s appearance took me aback. He seemed to have shrunk drastically, the head and shoulders sticking out the top of the blanket and sheets much smaller than I remembered. At the bottom of the bed, a frame held the blanket above a heavily bandaged foot, the skin there an inflamed, mottled purple colour.

“Have you bought food,” he whispered, one eye on the nurses pulling the curtains around the bed opposite. “They gave me porridge this morning that could hae doubled up as wallpaper paste. Nae sugar because of the diabetes, nae salt because of the stroke risk and nae cream as my cholesterol levels are sky-high. Made with water. Water! I’ve never tasted anything so flavourless in ma whole life!”

“Er… we’ve got tangerines?” I said, holding up the bag. Caroline had warned us beforehand that Ashley would beg for food. “And he’s got tae change his diet,” she warned. “Otherwise, the diabetes will kill him in five years!”

He let out a huge sigh, holding out a hand to take them. “Better than nothing, I s’pose. Have a seat.”

Jack pulled me up a chair and got himself one so we could sit either side of Ashley.

“How are you feeling?” I asked. “Must be a relief to have a diagnosis.”

Ashley sighed. “Aye, I guess so. But Caroline’s already read me the riot act—nae sugar, nae salt, low-carb this and that, lots o’ exercise and sleep and she wants me to start meditating. Meditating! I’m no’ sitting on the floor cross-legged saying ‘um’ all day.”

Quite. I’d been given the meditating line too. I made Jack try it with me, the two of us sitting opposite each other on the floor cross-legged and concentrating on our breath. We lasted 30 seconds before I flicked my eyes open only to discover him doing his best not to snort with laughter. When I read that mindlessness was the new mindfulness, I cheered. See? Justification for watching too much of The Real Housewives of New York and/or Love Island.

“And as for that yin,” Ashley gestured towards a harassed-looking doctor walking past us in the corridor outside trailed by two students. “He came in this morning, took one look at my right foot and started muttering things about maggots. Maggots! This hospital is trying out a new treatment where they put wee beasties on ulcers to eat away aw’ the dead tissue. Have ye ever heard the like? Wee white things wrigglin’ all ower ye, and—”

The details were far too graphic for me. I heaved myself up and bolted for the bathroom, a shout of “Hey, that’s patients only!” ringing out after me. Up came that morning’s breakfast and last night’s supper.

“Are you okay?” Jack tapped lightly on the door. “The nurse has gone to fetch you some water.”

I unpeeled myself and attempted standing. Oh, this was ridiculous. Surely, I should be able to pick myself up? A further minute of undignified lurching and unbalancing convinced me I couldn’t.

“Er—can you give me a hand?” Thankfully, in my haste to escape Ashley and his far-too-graphic maggots description, I hadn’t locked the door. Jack tried and failed to hide a grin as he took in the sight of me sprawled on the floor.

Like what you’ve read? The Highland Books—Highland Fling, Highland Heart, Highland Wedding and the box set of the three books—are available on Amazon, Kobo, Apple Books, Google Play, etc. Click on the links above, which will take you to the store front of your choice.

©Emma Baird 2020

 

 

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Highland Fling – out now #amwriting romcoms

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cake and coffee

You get a cup of tea with your cake too!

If I knew you were coming, I’d have baked a cake…

Hello and welcome to the launch party—yes, Highland Fling is out there in the Amazon world. I had put it on Kobo, Apple Books etc., way back in April/May and much as I’d love to make the bulk of my sales off the Amazon platform, only an idiot author doesn’t use mighty book behemoth. .

You can find the book at: https://books2read.com/Highland-Fling

Here’s the short ad I ran for the book:

Love Jill Mansell & Katie Fforde? Gaby flees to Scotland to escape a failed relationship. When fate puts the red-headed Jack in her way, sparks fly…

I had to make the book sound exciting in 150 characters (including spaces) which is not a lot at all. And hence the ampersand above. I’d also originally put Jill Mansell and Sophie Kinsella, but Katie Fforde’s name was shorter. As she has also written a book called Highland Fling, maybe she’s the better choice.

Anyway, here’s the cake I baked to launch the book. Sorry you can’t eat it in person. Perhaps that’s okay with you if you’re avoiding sugary stuff as this cake is loaded with it. I decorated it with fudge icing made from 500g icing sugar. Dental decay in one mouthful.

versions of Highland FlingWhy a chocolate cake? In Highland Fling, I featured a chocolate cake—one created for a special occasion. Mine is nowhere near as fancy as the one I’d described. The people in my books are much better cooks than I am. They also have the patience for sugar work so can create cakes that not only taste nice but look fabulous too. As you can see from picture two, I am a hopeless food stylist.

The Highland Fling cake had pink frosting and silver stars, and more tiers. Four women shared a slice of it and the taste silenced them—quite an achievement as one of the characters is the world’s nosiest woman who doesn’t usually let a full mouth stop her questions. Here’s what I wrote:

Ashley places two plates of the Chocolate Decadence dessert in front of us, cutting Mhari off. Pink icing, the exact colour of the Blissful Beauty branding, holds together five layers of dark sponge, the lot covered in a ganache that sparkles with edible silver glitter. The chef has studded the top of the cake with stars made from white chocolate and piped a perfect BB in whipped cream on the top. We pick up the cake forks in unison, waiting for someone to fire the starter pistol.

And that leads me to a question for you:

If you would like to make the cake (and I am sure your efforts will be prettier than mine), it’s a Mary Berry recipe and you can find it here.

And finally, I’ve posted rather more blogs than I like to do this last week or so (three in one week; an all-time record) so I’m sorry if I have tried your patience. I’m going to take a blog break for two weeks. See you later this month and thanks for sticking around.

#amwriting Thrillers

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I’m toying with the idea of writing crime fiction or a thriller next year, and this is my first attempt at a prologue. See  what you think…

Ailsa wishes they would just piss off and leave her alone.

They have pushed past the broken-down door into the living room—very solemn policeman one, very earnest policewoman two.

“Are ye on your own, missus?” says copper one and she bats back the obvious, “What dae ye think, Sherlock?”

He’s got that wee look to him. She’s seen it too often before. A guy who’s been telt he’s got to say this stuff and has no idea what to do.

She sits, her feet out on the coffee table, drink in hand. Am ah meant to be apologetic here big guy? She supposes she is.

Female copper sits down. Ah, this is supposed to be the one who works out your feelings for ye, apologises and says shite anyway.

And no’ be the one who feels the shite tickety tac its way up to your very lungs.

No one liked her, Ailsa, she knew. It is a rare moment of prescience. But now, aye? She has all the power in the world. They shift around in front of her, waiting for her to say something.

“What d’ye want?” she asks. They take that as permission to sit down.

“It’s Ailsa, isn’t it,” the woman says. A statement, not a question. “We need to tell you something.”

She knows what is coming. It was never going to be good news, was it—two cops, acting all serious and sad.

It’s about Ross.

Two weeks ago, she’d turned up at his door. “I’m pregnant. I don’t want it.”

The good thing about Ross was that he didn’t bother with the whole feelings crap. When she said she didn’t want it, he nodded slowly and asked her if she’d been to the doctor to ask for an abortion.

“Aye. It’s all sorted, one o’ thae medical abortions,” she said. “I take a pill. It comes out. Can you take me to the hospital?”

“Aye, fine,” he said. “When?”

And that was that. Her ex-boyfriend picked her up on the Thursday, drove her to the Vale, came in with her and waited while they gave her the pill.

All the staff thought he was the father. They were kind to him. He was, well he was like Ross was. Maybe the nurses thought to themselves, “No wonder she doesnae want his wean!”

They were wrong about a lot of things.

Trisha had never liked her. It wasn’t one of those ‘no-one’s ever gonnae be good enough for my son’ things. Trisha just sided with everyone else. Ailsa could count her friends and allies on the one hand; a hand that had lost fingers to frostbite, mebbe.

Ailsa picks up her phone. The whisky is doing funny things to her. Trisha, she decides, shouldn’t have tae deal with eejit copper one and two turning up at her house, so solemn, so can we come in, missus?

She dials the number, waits a beat, two, three until the phone is answered. Trisha’s an oldie. She doesn’t have a mobile phone, so she’s no idea who is calling her on the landline.

“Trisha,” Ailsa says, smiling to herself as she watches copper one and two cotton on to what she’s doing and move towards her, clearly intending to snatch the phone from her. She rushes her words from now on. “Ah’ve got the police here. Ross’s dead. Your son’s no more.”

©Emma Baird 2017

Pic thanks to George Hodon.

 

 

 

Advertising on Amazon

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Katie and the DeelansHave you advertised your book on Amazon? Last night, I listened to an Amazon ads for authors webinar and decided to put the advice into practice for my book, Katie and the Deelans.

The webinar was run by Mark Dawson and Joanna Penn, both self-published success stories and users of Amazon’s Marketing Services.

Amazon Marketing Services are relatively cheap. It uses a cost-per-click, auction-based pricing model. You set the maximum cost per click. I chose the sponsored keywords option, and I chose 13 keywords:

  • Adventure fiction
  • Divergent
  • Harry Potter
  • JK Rowling
  • Juvenile fiction
  • Rick Riordan
  • Stephanie Meyer
  • Suzanne Collins
  • The Hobbit
  • The Lightning Thief
  • Twilight
  • Veronica Roth
  • Young adult

What then happens is your book appears on the related options when Amazon customers search for a particular product – in this case, JK Rowling, Twilight et al.

One of my more ‘out there’ keyword choices was cat food. As my book features people who can change into cats, I thought those searching for cat food are cat lovers. Maybe they want to read cat-related tales too?!

The maximum I’m willing to spend per day is $10, but you can go lower than that. And you only spend money if people click on your ad and never more than your budget.

The custom text for an ad should not be the same as your blurb. It can’t be anyway, as the custom text is a Twitter-like 150 characters. I went for – We all want magic powers, right? What would you do with yours? Teenager Katie Harper is about to find out in this fun-filled action adventure.

Amazon advertising is all about experimentation. My campaign will run for the next week or so. If it works and I make enough money to recoup the cost of my investment, great. If I don’t sell books, the lessons could be that I need to look at a better cover for my book. The keywords could be too competitive or perhaps the custom text needs re-doing.

I’ll report back…

 

E-Book Promotion – Starts Today

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Katie and the DeelansSmashwords Read an Ebook Week promotion starts on Sunday 5 March and ends on 11 March.

For one week, tens of thousands of ebooks are available for free or heavily discounted – and this year, those e-books include one Katie and the Deelans by Emma Baird. Me, if that’s not clear.

Katie And The Deelans is the story of Katie Harper and her friends, ordinary teenagers who go to the worst school in the country. Life, however, takes a turn for the extraordinary when Katie and her friends take up magic lessons.

Taught by the fabulous Miss D’Azzler and the enigmatic Jazz, Katie and her friends find out that they are deelans – humans who can change into cats and who have magical powers. Katie and her friends enjoy the first few months of being deelans by practising their magical skills and trying to improve the school and life for those living in the sink housing estates nearby.

Katie, who has struggled with parental alcoholism, neglect and abandonment by her mum and dad, wants to use her magical abilities mainly to improve her life AND start a relationship with the school’s best-looking boy, Danny Finch.

But just who is Danny Finch? And what about the super-powerful deelans determined to do harm? Katie has a lot to learn, and her adventures take her from experiments with apples that turn into chocolate to mind-reading (it’s not all it’s cracked up to be), battles with wicked women and unexpected family revelations.

You can get the book from Smashwords here – and if you enjoy it, please leave me a review. For access to other discounted or free books, visit the Smashwords promotional pages. 

 

If You Love It, Review It

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No doubt about it, we live in a review-driven world nowadays. Any small business owner will tell you how crucial reviews are. Once upon a time, they used to be about the testimonials you got customers to write for you. These were then displayed on your walls (pre-internet, kids!) or in your annual report.

Now? Who buys anything before reading the reviews first? From TripAdvisor to Yelp, Amazon to eBay, reviews help customers decide what they will spend their precious pennies on.

Recently, I wrote a piece we hope to include in a new Comely Bank Publishing (CBP) book. As there might be a spare page or two, CBP’s founder Gordon Lawrie and I thought, “waste not, want not. Let’s use the space to beg for reviews”. Here’s the piece…

Did you like this book? Why not review it?

Reviews are important for books, especially books published by small, independent publishers such as Comely Bank Publishing. Why? They help our books get found.

How do you choose a book to read? You might choose it because it’s prominently displayed, you’ve seen an advertisement for it, you know the author’s work or you’ve read a good review.

Small, independent publishers do not have the same market for budgeting as traditional publishing houses do. We can’t afford posters in railway stations or pages in magazines and we don’t get access to the same number of book stores.

However, sites such as Amazon, Kobo and GoodReads can level the playing field for independently-published novels. Book reviews act as “word of mouth” for shoppers online. They provide social proof that something is good – well, at least if your reviews are positive!

The more reviews a book has, the further up the rankings it moves. A book with a lot of reviews will come up quickly if a reader types in ‘Scottish novels’ or whatever genre to the search engine.

You don’t need to write a long or detailed review – just a couple of sentences will do.

Thank you!

 

National Chocolate Week – and Out-of-Control Chocolate Binges

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sweet wrappersThis week’s it’s National Chocolate Week – no doubt the web will be awash with chocolate facts and famous name brands pushing their products on us…

I thought I’d mark the occasion by publishing an excerpt from book number two, Two Slices of Carrot Cake. My 16-year-old heroine Savvy struggles with an eating disorder. In this excerpt, she talks about walking into an office to find an open box of chocolates in front of her…

EXCERPT FROM TWO SLICES OF CARROT CAKE

And now there is a huge box of chocolates twinkling evilly at me.

According to the gospel of Moll, opened boxes of chocolates are fair game for cleaners. I worked with her once and she helped herself to two or three handfuls of them. (Thornton’s, if you are interested.)

“I’ve seen the skinny bitches who work in here,” she said to me at the time, “So I’m doing them a favour eating their choccies so they don’t get fat.”

Moll’s at least a size 24, I reckon. And she doesn’t seem to give a shit.

I glare at the box – it’s one of those ginormous ones of Miniature Heroes – my favourite chocolates in the whole, wide world. Hard to know which ones I would eat first. I put down my spray cleaner and duster, and take a handful out of the box as an experiment. I line them up before me on the desk in order of preference, from the ones I’d eat first to the ones I’d eat last (I always eat my favourite thing last):

  1. Crème Eggs
  2. Cadbury Caramels
  3. Dairy Milk
  4. Chocolate éclairs
  5. Twirls
  6. Fudge

A voice starts up in my head, “Go on, just one just one won’t hurt, lovely, sweet, vanilla chocolate, smooth caramel, chewy toffee yum yum yum,” and then I look them up quickly on myfitnesspal.

Miniature Heroes (each):

  • Calories – 53
  • Fat content – 3g
  • Sugar content – 6g

Which really isn’t all that bad after all. Less calories than a lousy apple, I think to myself and my hand hovers over those beautiful wrappers, the purples, the yellows and purple, the shiny foils of the crème eggs and the orange glint of the fudge…

I hit the side of my head with the flat of my hand, hard. It won’t be one, I’ll keep going back to the box again and again until the whole lot are finished and then I’ll have to go out to the bloody supermarket to buy another box to replace it, remembering to take out just enough chocolates so it doesn’t look brand new.

Again.

I’m just putting the chocolates back in the box when I hear a sound – the sound of footsteps and a door opening. I put the lid back on the box of chocolates and start furiously polishing a table.

“Savvy – is that you?”

I spin round. It’s Sandy – Jan’s nephew.

“What are you doing here?” I snap at him. I’m kind of embarrassed he’s caught me cleaning, but he could have caught me stuffing my face with Miniature Heroes.

And that would have been much worse.