Hello and welcome to my blog, where you can find out about my books (all the links are on the right-hand side) and keep up to date with all my news and latest releases.

My latest book, A BEGINNER'S GUIDE TO SAYING I DO is out now.
 

Below, you can find my latest blog posts, and you can also find my social media links on the right-hand side, or read my short stories using the tab above.

While you're here, don't forget to sign up for my newsletter to receive book news and exclusive content!

Thank you for visiting,

Jennifer

😊

 

Publication Day: A Beginner's Guide To Saying I Do

 

Amazon UK | Amazon US

 

Happy Publication Day to... me! My seventh book is now out in the wild (aka Amazon) and I couldn't be happier that she's now out there. I've been waiting a long time to share this story and I hope you enjoy catching up with Ruth and her friends as much as I did! The response from early readers has been fantastic - which is always a relief!

 

You can buy the book for £1.99 - or FREE if you're a Kindle Unlimited subscriber.

 

Over the next few weeks I'll be posting 'Book Extras' - quizzes, fun facts, playlists and more - so do pop back to have a look at those. If there are any book extras you'd like to see, let me know in the comments below and I'll do my best to accommodate :)

 

Later, I'll be posting a giveaway over on Twitter and Facebook to win some A Beginner's Guide To Saying I Do goodies (plus chocolate and sweets) so keep an eye out for that! My newsletter will also be going out around lunchtime, with another giveaway themed around the book - if you haven't subscribed to my newsletter you can do that here

 

 

 

A Beginner's Guide To Saying I Do is the second book in the Beginner's Guide series. If you haven't read the first instalment yet, now is the perfect time as the book is currently just 99p - but only for a limited time.

 

 

Amazon UK | Amazon US



New Books & Bargains

Hello! I hope you've had a good weekend and enjoyed the bit of sunshine we've somehow sneaked into the summer.

Tomorrow is an exciting day for me as I'll be releasing my seventh book, A Beginner's Guide To Saying I Do, which is the second instalment of the Beginner's Guide series (or 2.5 if you count the free festive short story). I'll be running a giveaway on Twitter and Facebook, plus there are some A Beginner's Guide To Saying I Do goodies up for grabs for one lucky newsletter subscriber - sign up here.

If you haven't read the first book - A Beginner's Guide To Salad - you're in luck because the price has been reduced to just 99p at the moment - so grab a bargain and catch up with Ruth and co!

 

ABOUT THE BOOK

 

 

Ruth loves nothing more than curling up in front of the telly with a family-sized bar of chocolate. She doesn’t do diets and she certainly doesn’t do exercise. But all that changes when she’s invited to her school reunion.

Bullied at school for being overweight, Ruth’s first reaction is to rip the invitation into a million pieces. But then Ruth hatches a plan. She’ll lose the weight and arrive at the reunion looking gorgeous and glamorous, leaving her old classmates in awe. Especially her former crush, Zack O’Connell.

With the help of her friends and a new, unbelievably hot colleague, Ruth begins her transformation. With six months until the reunion, losing weight will be a piece of cake, right?

 

 

Amazon UK | Amazon US

 



August Newsletter

It's almost time to send out my next newsletter and I've just realised I haven't let you know what this month's prize bundle is!

With each newsletter, I pick a random winner from my list of subscribers to win a prize, and this month you could win the following bundle, comprising of A Beginner's Guide To Saying I Do notebook and magnet, as well as some yummy chocolate to enjoy!

 

All subscribers are automatically entered into the draw so you don't have to do anything at all to enter once you've subscribed.

 

Newsletters go out around once a month, with book news, exclusive content and book recommendations. If you haven't subscribed yet, you can do that right now by popping your details in the form below!

 

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An Intro To A Beginner's Guide To Saying I Do

The second book in the Beginner's Guide series is out next week, so I thought I'd introduce you to some of the characters. You may be familiar with some of them if you've read A Beginner's Guide To Christmas (short story) or A Beginner's Guide To Salad, but there are also some new characters to get to know in the follow up!

Ruth

Yep, Ruth is back! We couldn't have a Beginner's Guide book without her, could we?

In the past, Ruth has struggled with finding Mr Right but, two years on from A Beginner's Guide To Salad, she's all loved up and about to start planning her wedding. Ruth can't wait to get married - and she doesn't have to wait long as her wedding is in just six weeks. Ruth is a bit clueless when it comes to planning a wedding, so can she put together her dream Big Day in such a short space of time?

Ruth is still the woman I adored in A Beginner's Guide To Salad - she's still a massive fan of cheesy pop, she still likes to skive off from work whenever possible, and she's still surrounded by a group of fab friends (and Theo). I've loved catching up with her and seeing what she's up to a couple of years later, and I hope you will too!

Erin

 

Commitment-phobe Erin has finally found someone to settle down with, but she isn't interested in getting married, especially when she finds herself caught up in his sister's wedding plans. Lindsay and her wedding planner are organising the biggest, gaudiest wedding and Erin has somehow ended up agreeing to be one of many bridesmaids.

 

Erin can't see the appeal of all the fuss and faffing that goes with wedding planning - how will she survive the dress fittings and hair and make up rehearsals and, worst of all, the hen weekend from (Erin's idea of) hell?

 

Ruth's best friend has mellowed a bit over the past couple of years, but she still hasn't lost her edge. She's grown up a lot, but she's still feisty and set in her ways. We get to know more about Erin this time round and I enjoyed digger a bit deeper and finding out what makes Erin tick.

 

Quinn

 

Quinn is Erin's opposite in her views of love and marriage. She believes in the magic of fairy tales and can't wait to find The One, so she can settle down and live happily ever after. Unfortunately, she's hasn't always been lucky in love, but she's still young and her perfect match is out there somewhere - she just has to stop looking in all the wrong places.

 

We've met Quinn before - though only briefly. Over the past couple of years, her friendship with Ruth has blossomed and she's now firmly one of the gang.

 

Trina

 

Ruth's cousin Trina has just walked down the aisle and married the man of her dreams, but already things are starting to go wrong. Her new sister-in-law hates her and did Rory always have these workaholic tendencies? Trina is determined to make her marriage work and not end up with multiple divorces like her mother.

 

Trina is a brand new addition to the Beginner's Guide series and I've loved getting to know her. She's sweet and naïve, which doesn't always work in her favour. Will she get her happily ever after?

 

 

 

 

ABOUT THE BOOK

 

 

Ruth can’t quite believe she’s managed to snag The One but when he proposes, she can finally accept that she’s found her happily ever after. But when Ruth finds herself booking her dream church for just six weeks away, she starts to panic. You can’t plan a whole wedding at such short notice. Can you?

Trina has only just walked down the aisle, but she’s already starting to question whether they can make their marriage work. Will they survive the honeymoon period, or have they just made a very big – and very expensive – mistake?

Erin has somehow found herself agreeing to be a bridesmaid for the tackiest wedding known to man. With drunk hens, ridiculous outfits and a terrifying wedding planner, just what has Erin signed up for?

Three women. Three weddings. But who will say I do – and who will say I don’t?

 

 

Amazon UK | Amazon US

 







Writing Tip: 15-Minute Bursts

 

Writing has been a bit difficult over the past couple of weeks; it's the school summer holidays, meaning my writing time is limited, and I've also been in the midst of The Slump.

 

The Slump seems to happen with every book I write, usually around the 20-30,000 words mark (but can strike earlier or later than this. The only guarantee is that it WILL happen at some point during the first draft). During the horrid slump stage, the words just don't seem to emerge. It doesn't matter that I KNOW what should be happening in the book (I've planned the entire book out this time, right down to individual scenes), the words won't make it onto the screen.

 

Add to this the fact I have a deadline coming up mid-September, which puts me in a bit of a pickle. I need to write. I want to write. But desk-time is limited and the words are being stubborn. Ugh.

 

But last week, I discovered a little trick to help the word count rise: 15-minute bursts.

 

After wasting my precious desk-time faffing about on social media and looking up the outfits my characters could be wearing online, I decided to set myself a timer, where all I could do was write. No 'research', no checking my book rankings, NO SOCIAL MEDIA, LADY. Once the timer was up, I could do all those things. I could leave my desk. I could have a nap.

 

Okay, I was joking about the nap. It is the school holidays, after all. There is no napping with kids around.

 

I decided on a 15-minute timer. 15 minutes is nothing, really. It's a measly amount of time, but when you're at the ripping-your-hair-out-in-frustration stage of The Slump, it seems just about manageable. So, the timer was set and off I went.

 

And do you know what? I was actually writing! Where before I was stuck, now I was typing - and it wasn't a tweet. It was actual words for my book. My characters were active. They were doing and saying. It was a miracle!

 

The 15 minutes ended and I'd managed to write 394 words.

 

Now, stop laughing. I know it's a teeny amount. I aim for 2,000 words per day. Less than 400 words isn't going to get me to my 90,000 words goal by mid-September. But this was just the first 15-minute burst. I did this six times throughout the day, totalling 2,241 words - more than my daily word count goal.

 

I couldn't quite believe it. For the past week or so, I'd been struggling to reach even half of that. Every writing session was a chore. But those 15-minute bursts had really added up, and none of them were daunting or felt like a chore. With only 15 minutes, you have no choice but to just go for it. There's no time for sneaking peeks at Twitter. There's no time for virtual shopping for your characters. There's no time to stop and agonise over the perfect word. You just have to keep going until the timer ends.

 

Of course, sometimes you do need to stop and look things up online, and you do need to find the right words, but you can do that later. I mark the spot where I would normally stop with an 'xxx' and go back once the timer has stopped. My 15 minutes have ended so I can ponder the perfect prose, or I can look up the ideal outfit my character is wearing for a posh dinner.

 

Now, I don't always reach my 2,000 words per day goal, but I'm definitely more productive and my steadily growing word count is proof of that and I don't feel panicked that I'm going through The Slump anymore.

A Quick Catch Up

 

I'm working on the first draft of Book 8, approaching the 60,000 words mark. It's a bit more difficult finding time to write during the school summer holidays, but I'm chipping away at it! My deadline is mid-September, so I'm on the right track.

 

 

 

I'm re-reading two books at the moment. The first is Rainy Days & Tuesdays by Claire Allan and the second is The Animals of Farthing Wood by Colin Dann, which I'm reading with my girls. It's my favourite childhood book and we're having the full-on Farthing Wood experience - the book, the magazines (which were out in the early 90s and I've since collected from eBay) and the TV series.

 

 

Like a lot of people, I've been gripped by The Handmaid's Tale. I'd recorded it but only started watching them a few days before the finale. I binge-watched them in time watch the last episode 'live'. It was uncomfortable viewing, but I couldn't stop watching!

 

I've also been re-watching Miranda, just because it makes me happy.

 

 

 

I haven't watched a film for a while, but 13 Going 30 (one of my faves) has been added to Netflix so I'm going to have to watch that soon (I own it on DVD, but it's more of a faff than using Netflix).

 

 

 

I'm listening to a lot of 80s and 90s songs at the moment. They're the best.

 

 

Books, writing and Luna:

 

 

 

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What have you been up to? Let us know in the comments below 😊