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Jaimie Admans

Jaimie Admans

September 25, 2013 2 Comments

jaimieadmans2About author, Jaimie Admans: Jaimie is a 28-year-old English-sounding Welsh girl with an awkward-to-spell name. She lives in South Wales and enjoys writing, gardening, drinking tea and watching horror movies. She hates spiders and cheese & onion crisps.

She has been writing for years, but has never before plucked up the courage to tell people.

She is the author of chick-lit romantic comedy Kismetology and YA romantic comedies Afterlife Academy and Not Pretty Enough, and the soon-to-be-released North Pole Reform School.

GUEST POST

The Process Of Writing Not Pretty Enough

I learned a valuable lesson while writing Not Pretty Enough. My usual process of writing is in chronological and linear order – I start at the beginning and work my way forwards, through until the end. If I’m truly stuck on a certain part then I will either cut it completely or write it quite badly with the intention of editing it later. I don’t skip bits because I don’t feel like writing them, I write the next scene no matter what I feel like.

I decided to do something different with Not Pretty Enough. I had a beginning and an end to the story – I do know that I can’t start writing a book without at least that much – but the middle was a different matter. All I had for the middle was a long list of potential scenes I’d thought of, and after writing the beginning, I decided to try a different approach to writing this book. Rather than writing from beginning to end, I decided to have a look at the list of potential scenes each morning and choose whichever one I felt like working on that day. I usually wrote them in separate Word documents, and it was definitely a change from my usual one-long-document way of writing a book. I quite enjoyed it at first, it was fun, and interesting to start work each morning without a pre-determined starting point, up until then I had always started work knowing I’d be continuing with the part I ended on the night before.

But, trouble began when I decided I felt like writing the ending. I had a very clear picture of how I wanted the book to end, I kept imagining it in my mind, and I was desperate to write it, so one day quite early on in the writing process, I wrote the final scene.

And then I struggled.

Because in my head, the end had already happened. The characters had already ended the journey they were on, Chessie already knew what she discovers at the end, so I then found it hard to write the middle because I knew what was coming. Obviously as the author you probably know what’s going to happen anyway, but there was a big difference for me between knowing how it was going to end and having already written the ending. The character’s journey had ended before it had even been written, and I found it hard to go backwards. Chessie grows a lot over the course of the book, and it was hard to carry on writing her as she used to be when I had already written her as a much more mature character.

It also led to a lot of confusion for me in terms of timeline. The book is set over the course of Chessie’s school year, so what had happened when and did that incident come before or after this incident? It actually took me days of work to get it into some sort of logical order, and I had to re-write certain parts to fit in with the timescale and change the timing or month that certain things were supposed to take place.

So I learned a valuable lesson when writing Not Pretty Enough. While everyone’s writing process is different, for me the only way is to start at the beginning and finish at the end!

npe-cover-done-400**Contact Jaimie:

Website   Facebook   Twitter

Filed Under: Jaimie Admans Tagged With: Books, Guest Post, Jaimie Admans, Not Pretty Enough

Jaimie Admans

November 6, 2012 3 Comments

Bio of Author, Jaimie Admans:  Jaimie is a 27-year-old English-sounding Welsh girl with an awkward-to-spell name. She lives in South Wales and enjoys writing, gardening, drinking tea and watching horror movies. She hates spiders and cheese & onion crisps.

She has been writing for years, but has never before plucked up the courage to tell people. Kismetology is her first novel and there are plenty more on the way! She wants you to know that the mum in this book is nothing like her own mum!

INTERVIEW

People would be surprised to know that you…:  Don’t always name characters or places until the first editing stage. I’m quite happy to write an entire first draft with characters like Friend1, NeighbourB, or Enemy3! Same with place names. If I’ve overlooked them in the planning stages, I don’t want to interrupt the writing to think up names, so I just don’t name them until later!

Have you always wanted to be a writer?  Not always always, but since I was quite young. I started writing at the age of 14 and realized I wanted to be a writer at 16. I wrote many different things then and experimented with a lot of different styles. Looking back now, I don’t think anything I wrote that early on was any good, but it was all part of the learning curve! Around seven years ago, I really fell in love with chick-lit and realized that was what I wanted to write. I’ve been writing ‘seriously’ since then.

Do you have any guilty pleasures? If so, what are they:  Reality TV! I know it’s bad, but I can’t tear myself away! I love talent shows like The X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent, and I have a bit of a soft spot for celebrity reality shows – I absolutely adore Tori and Dean: Home Sweet Hollywood!

Another guilty pleasure would be Christmas movies! I will watch any Christmas movie there is, no matter how soft, sappy or unrealistic it is!

Oh, and bad horror movies! You know the kind that are not at all scary and actually so bad they end up being funny? I can’t get enough of those!

Describe what the writing/editing/publishing process like for you?  My writing process is a lot like NaNoWriMo all the year round. I don’t write all the time, but rather I spend a couple of months plotting, planning and vaguely outlining the novel. I won’t start writing something until I’m absolutely sure my plot idea will stretch into a decent novel. When I’m sure of that and I have an idea of how the story will begin and end, and a slight idea of how it’s going to get there, then I will take a month to six weeks, and do nothing but write the novel. I can usually write 3000-4000 words a day then. There’s no more research in that time, no more fiddling around, if something doesn’t work or needs looking up then I’ll add a note to look it up later. My only concern is getting the words down on the page and finishing the first draft. When the draft is done, I put it aside and try to forget about it for as many months as possible, and I start the plotting and planning stage for the next one.

For editing, it helps to get a bit of distance from the manuscript, so once it’s been put aside for as long as I can, I come back to it and read through. No fixing this time, just reading and seeing what works and what doesn’t. Then I do a completely new second draft, which involves a lot of cutting and chopping words in and out, into a completely new document. I find it easier to cut unnecessary words and scenes if I’m putting them into an entirely new document, rather than trying to write around them. I then put it aside for another few weeks, and when I come back, I do exactly the same thing for a third draft. I then proofread on my Kindle because I find it makes mistakes more noticeable than if you were reading on the computer screen, and then I find a proper editor who will look at it with a fresh eye, and correct my atrocious grasp of grammar and point out any structural issues that I might not have noticed!

Publishing is mostly about cover design and formatting the book. Formatting is tedious work but not that difficult to do, and I love designing covers so that’s always a fun part! The hardest part is launching it into the big wide world and hoping people will like it!

Where do you get your story ideas?  So many places. The news, quirky stories on the internet, snippets of real life that I’ve overheard or been told, my imagination. Some come from ‘what if’s’ of the past – like ‘what if such-and-such had happened’ instead of what actually did happen.

Each story is rarely just one idea, they are usually a few ideas that have melded together to make something that could one day be a novel! I write down every idea I have and keep them in a big folder. You never know when they will slot in with another idea and make a decent plot!

What do you love most about the Chick Lit genre?  The characters are usually real, relatable women. They react to situations in the way I would react to situations. They do the kind of things and make the kind of mistakes that I would make! I love reading a book that makes me feel like I’m not the only person who would act like that!

Do you have any advice for writers who want to self-publish?  Do your research and look into it properly first. Don’t jump in thinking this is the easy route. You can’t write ‘The End’ on Friday night and have it on sale on Amazon by Saturday morning. It takes months of preparation to get a book ready for release, and that’s the easy part. You then have to market it, because if people don’t know it’s there, they can’t buy it. There is so much to think about, and you’ll find yourself learning things you’d never even thought of. It’s a lot of hard work, and you’re responsible for it. While that’s great when it goes right, it’s also down to you when it goes wrong. That said, I would encourage anyone who’s thinking about it to seriously look into it. I love the fact that I have the control of my work, from title to cover design to pricing, and it feels great when you get a compliment and you know that no one but you is responsible for it. It also feels pretty bad on the days when you don’t sell a single copy and no one seems interested in your book. It’s a huge rollercoaster, but it’s a great one, and I’ve loved every minute of it so far!

What is a typical day/night like for you?  I try to be on the computer by 9am. I have a bit of time to check my email, Twitter and Facebook, and think about what scenes I’m working on that day. I write until a tea break at 11am, and then I write until lunch. I try to have finished lunch and the next Twitter check by 2pm, and then carry on writing until I have hit my word count goal for the day which can be anywhere between 4pm and 2am!

If you could meet any author, who would it be and why?  Judy Blume. I devoured her books when I was younger, and still love them when I re-read them these days! I’ll always remember the excitement of getting a new Judy Blume book! She made me love reading when I was younger, and she was the first author who made me realize how important books, and stories that you connect with can be.

Who or what inspires you?  I love the musical Rent, and the message behind it which is “no day but today.” It really does inspire me to get out of bed in the mornings and stop putting off the things I want to do!

Which do you prefer, tea or coffee?  TEA! Tea, tea, tea, tea, tea! I really don’t like coffee. It is sometimes necessary for caffeine purposes, but I don’t like it. I can’t get through the day without multiple cups of tea though – I’m a bit of an addict!

Can you tell us about any your upcoming projects?  I have a children’s Christmas novel coming out on November 15th, it’s middle-grade fiction, so suitable for ages 8 and upwards. It’s called Creepy Christmas, and it’s about a girl who meets Santa and his daughter and has to help them save Christmas from an evil Santa!

Aside from that, I’m writing a novel for NaNoWriMo, attempting to finish a young adult Christmas novel, and then my next book, which is a young adult paranormal romance, will be published in March/April 2013. Phew!

**Additional comments by Jaimie:  Thank you so much for having me on your website, Isabella! I’m honoured!

**Contact Jaimie:

Be The Spark

Facebook

Twitter

**Buy Kismetology!:

Amazon U.K.

Amazon U.S.

**Click HERE to see more about Jaimie’s book, Kismetology!

Filed Under: Jaimie Admans Tagged With: Author Interview, Chick-Lit, Jaimie Admans, Kismetology

Kismetology

November 6, 2012 4 Comments

What is KISMETOLOGY about?  It’s about Mackenzie. She’s 29, and she’s totally fed up with her mum meddling in her love life. She decides the solution is to find her mum a boyfriend, so she turns the tables and meddles in her mum’s love life for a change!

BLURB

Finding the perfect man isn’t easy. Especially when it’s for your mother…

Mothers. Can’t live with them, can’t live without them, can’t live three doors down the road without them interfering in every aspect of your life.

Mackenzie Atkinson’s mother has meddled in her love life once too often and something has to be done. Mackenzie decides to turn the tables and find love for her lonely mother.
Her lonely and very fussy mother.
Surely finding an older gentleman looking for love won’t be that hard, right?
Wrong.
If you’ve ever thought that boys grow up, here’s the problem: They don’t. Ever.
And Mackenzie is about to learn that the hard way.

Faced with a useless boyfriend, dressed up dogs, men who wear welly boots on dates, men who shouldn’t be allowed out in public, and men who make reptiles seem like attractive company – will she ever find the perfect man for her neurotic mother?

Chapter 1

If I could give one piece of advice to every teenager in the world, it would be this: when you move away from home, move far, far away, and never look back. My biggest mistake? I didn’t move far enough. In fact, I only moved three houses down the road. The perfect distance for my mother to interfere in my life, even more than she did when I lived under her own roof.

“Mackenzie, your curtains aren’t even straight,” Mum complains from her place on our sofa. “I don’t know how you can put up with such a mess.”

“How can curtains not be straight, Mum?”

“There’s at least six inches more to the left than to the right, and the join in the middle is wonky.”

Dan rolls his eyes and gets up from his armchair with a groan.

I know how he feels.

“Don’t be long, Daniel, you’ll miss Eastenders,” Mum calls after him.

“Sir, yes sir,” Dan mutters, doing an army salute behind her back.

In all fairness to my mum, maybe my announcement that I was moving in with Dan came as a bit of a shock to her. After all, we’d been dating for a year, but my mum had only known him for six of those months. I was a bit reluctant to introduce them, especially after the incident with an ex-boyfriend—the first and, up to that point, only boyfriend to ever meet my mum—where she’d nearly run him over with a wheelie bin (accidentally) and then put a brick through his car window (she was killing a wasp).

“Can’t you get him to brush his hair once in a while?” Mum asks when Dan has left the room. “He makes the place look untidy. And don’t even get me started on that shirt.”

“Leave him alone, Mum,” I warn her. “And stop your bloody dog peeing in my houseplant again, it’s dying.”

“Oh, Mackenzie, you’ll never guess what happened to me today,” Mum says animatedly. “Go on, guess.”

“I have no idea, Mum.”

“I almost got a criminal record. Can you believe that? Me! With a criminal record!”

“I’m honestly scared to ask, but how on earth did you manage that?”

“I nearly got arrested in the park!” She says excitedly.

Only my mother could be excited about getting arrested. “What happened?”

“You know Baby’s crocodile outfit, right? I did a really good job of making it, didn’t I? I made it look really realistic?”

I nod.

“Baby was off his lead in the park, doing his business, you know, as dogs do. And suddenly all these police surround us. Two animal control vans pull up, there’s a helicopter overhead, there are even a couple of men with tranquilizer dart guns poised and ready to shoot.”

I rub my hand over my eyes. “Why?”

“Well, it turns out that someone had seen Baby in the park and thought he was a real crocodile. She’d called the police in case he ate the children.”

“Oh, Mum, really?” I groan.

“It was so exciting! I think I might even be on the news tonight!”

She thinks this is exciting? Embarrassing would be my preferred term. Very, very embarrassing. “So what happened?”

“The police quickly realised their mistake. But one of them did take me aside and ask if I could not bring Baby to the park in that attire again. Then he gave us a lift home in his police car. He was ever so nice about it.”

“I’m sure he was.”

“How anyone could mistake my Baby for a crocodile is beyond me. He’s hardly crocodile size, is he? The woman must have been blind as a bat.”

“Well, you do insist on dressing him up as potentially dangerous animals. And walking him. In public. It’s really quite disturbing.”

“Oh, nonsense. I like trying out the sewing patterns I find on the internet. It keeps me busy.”

Something has to, I suppose.

“Come here, Baby.” Mum pats the sofa and the Yorkshire terrier, which is practically surgically attached to her, comes running over. “Don’t listen to that big, mean lady. She loves you really.”

Baby is currently dressed as a ladybird. No, really. Mum’s hobby of making these outfits for him is getting out of hand. He jumps onto the sofa and sinks his teeth into one of my twenty quid cushions.

“These cushions were expensive.” I yank them out of his way.

“He likes the tassels,” Mum responds.

This is our nightly routine now.

On our one-year anniversary, Dan had proposed that we move in together. My mum wasn’t overly thrilled by the turn of events, until she’d found a little house available to rent and paid the deposit without even asking us. The house happened to be three doors away from her place.

We should have known better.

Dan was indifferent to the fact that my mum had decided where we were going to live and paid a deposit without even telling us. It was one less thing that he had to do. And I couldn’t really be mad at her, she was only doing it out of the goodness of her heart. Presumptuous, yes, but ultimately only trying to be helpful. We’d signed a one-year lease two days later.

Since then, Dan has been a gem. Not many men would put up with my mother being an almost permanent third wheel. Not many men would run her cat, Pussy (no, really), down to the emergency vet at three o’clock in the morning because it looked a bit peaky. It was fine. A screeching woman yelling that it looked off-colour had just woken it up from its sleep. I look peaky at that time of day too. Dan had offered his car as transport and we’d roared off down the road at breakneck speed, scaring the poor cat half to death. Then Dan and I had sat in the parking lot for half an hour, while the vet determined that there was absolutely nothing whatsoever wrong with Pussy.

The house being so near had softened the blow of me moving out and leaving Mum with only her yappy little dog and not-sick cat for company.

“You can pop in anytime you want,” I’d told her.

I had no idea that translated into “come over every night and bring the dog and cat with you” in mum language.

The night we moved in, just as we’d settled down together on our new sofa with a glass of wine each and switched on our newly installed satellite TV, my mum’s special knock-knockknock-knock on the door reverberated through the living room. We looked at each other with dread and Dan groaned.

My mum came in, took her shoes off, sat down on the sofa, helped herself to a glass of wine and put on Coronation Street. She didn’t actually watch Corrie, but proceeded to criticise our carpets, our uncomfortable sofa (it wasn’t) the colour of the walls, the way the walls clashed with the curtains (they didn’t) the heat in the room (it was too hot) and the shirt Dan was wearing (I’d always quite liked him in it). Within three minutes, Baby had peed on my new plant. I don’t have the best of luck with plants anyway, but I’m sure the dog pee didn’t help the plant’s life expectancy.

This routine has continued almost every night in the three months since we moved in. In comes my mum, on goes Emmerdale, Corrie or Eastenders, and out comes Mum’s opinion of everything from the wattage of our light bulbs to the colour of Dan’s socks.

**Buy Kismetology!:

Amazon U.K.

Amazon U.S.

**Click HERE to read my interview with the author, Jaimie Admans!

Filed Under: Kismetology Tagged With: Chick-Lit, Featured Book, Jaimie Admans, Kismetology

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