Category: e-book

Have you ever brought your thoughts to life?


Hi everyone

When I took a year out of retail in 2012, I learnt a lot of new concepts. One was the idea that what we have in our minds, can manifest itself in reality, and that we are what we think. I may have heard of this before but never really paid attention to what it meant.
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Sometimes, I have the uncanny nack of being able to think of something and then an opportunity presents itself for me to be able to carry out that thought. For example on Sunday 9th March, I was returning home from work and I felt like a drink of smoothie or orange juice. Almost immediately after this thought, I was drawn to deviate from my usual walk home to go into my local Co-op. I tied to resist but felt compelled to go in there. Bingo! There it was, a smoothie made with oranges and various other ingredients, reduced from £1.05 to 35p and it was the only one left. So I bought it and drank it straight away.
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A couple of years ago, I had previously been thinking about my e-Book store and how I would learn to create an e-Book. Although I wasn’t thinking about this at the time, I walked past WH Smith and felt compelled to go into it. I had no idea why, my sixth sense was just telling me that I needed to. My mind was telling me to go to the magazine isle and to look at the magazines, but I had no idea why and then – Bingo! There was a small book all about self-publishing with e-Books. Incredible. I have these moments and feel blessed but sometimes they can also be a little scary.

Have you ever thought of something and it has become a reality, or an opportunity has presented itself to you because of your thoughts?

I have 9 pages of amendments left to do for my Break through the barriers of redundancy book. I then need to give it the once over and get someone to check it before it is published.

Next week I am at the Business Showcase South West and Only Colston networking events in Bristol.

Enjoy your thoughts and your week.

Write as soon as I am able to

Sandra

quirkybooks.net – New website coming soon


Hi Everyone

My apologies if I have not been blogging or commenting as much lately but I have some amazing news to share with you. Not only have I been having some time off from work to celebrate my birthday week but I have also commenced work on changing http://www.quirkybooks.net into a much more impressive author website which will incorporate an e-Book store in the near future. All books on this site will be my own written work. Book cover illustrations will be from a variety of sources including new illustrators.

This is an exciting time for both me and quirkybooks.

If you search for my website at the moment, you will see that it is currently under construction whilst I spend the next weeks adding content to my site. By June or July I hope to have my first e-Book available to buy on this site. I intend to self publish on Amazon too.

As always, I like to do things the quirky way, so rather than having books galore to start with, you will see books gradually appearing over time.

For my Birthday day, I visited the National Marine Aquarium in Plymouth and I hope to upload some photos I took there soon.

I have a lot of blog award posts to catch up with and I am very grateful for each and every one. Please bear with me, I will get around to officially thanking you and accepting them, although I may not be able to devote the time to contact all nominees individually due to my website preparation and new future work commitments.

Something magical is starting and I am thrilled to have you along for the journey. Thank you my friends.

Write soon

Sandra

What’s Holding You Back? – Skills and Experience – Beat Redundancy Blues


Hi Everyone

As you may know, I am currently working on my first e-Book about redundancy and helping people to get back into work and I have another WordPress blog to support this mission at http://www.beatredundancyblues.wordpress.com

I wanted to share with you my latest post from that blog, as the information is relevant to any job you go for.

So here it is:

Now that we have settled into the new year, you will probably have noticed a lot of posts about goal setting and how you need to take action in order to move forward with your life. These posts are an invaluable source of information and inspiration and they are absolutely right, if you want to achieve your desired outcome, you need to take the steps to get there by setting goals and then acting on them but in the next few posts I want us to take a look at what may be holding you back from setting goals in the first place.

Sometimes in order for you to move forward you must reflect on the past and assess the present to see what changes need to be made. If you keep doing the same thing then you will always get the same result. If you are not happy with the result then you need to change what you are doing and there is no time like the present, so what are you waiting for?

Let’s consider some of the things that may be holding you back.

Not having the right skills or experience

There is no easy way to say this, if you haven’t got the right skills and experience for the job role that you desire, in these difficult economic times, you need to either obtain them or learn to convert previous experience and learnt skills into transferable experience and skills and if you can’t do that then you probably won’t get a look in because the competition is so tough.

Do not be fooled by a job advert that states: “Previous experience is not essential as full training will be given for the right candidate.”

If the interviewer can get a person with previous experience who has the correct basic skills, the right attitude for the job and is the right fit for the team, then they will go with them instead of someone with little or no experience. When I was a retail manager I recruited my own staff  and I advertised for the experience and skills that I required and yes I still got applicants applying with little or no relevant experience and as time is money in business, usually I would sift theses applications out on first look as I had a large number of applicants. Of the applicants that were sifted out there may have been some that had the right attitude or were a good fit for the team but because I didn’t put them through to the interview stage I would never know this, so having the right skills and experience is essential.

When I wasn’t working, on the odd occasion I would apply for a job that was out of my sector and one that I had little or no relevant skills or experience in, just as I thought, I would get a reject letter or worse, nothing at all. Upon analysis, the reason I got a rejection letter was because I appeared on paper to have some of the skills and experience that were relative to the job and some transferable skills but obviously not as good a offering as someone who blatantly had the skills and experience in that sector and therefore I wasn’t surprised I was rejected and took it on the chin. When I received no reply whatsoever, it was because on paper there were barely any skills and experience relevant to the role for which I had applied, so why should the employer bother to reply to me when it looked like I had randomly decided to ‘give it a go’. An employer wouldn’t like this attitude and to be honest neither do I and when I became a manager I understood that and if I were to apply for a job now I would always tailor my CV and Cover Letter to the Job specification and that’s why I get responses when a lot of other people don’t, so if you are struggling to get responses, now you know the secret, why not try it for yourself?

If you want to gain the skills and experience to get a job you desire, you need to do voluntary work, work experience and you may need to take a course as well.

To read about what else may be holding you back be sure to read the next post on http://www.beatredundancyblues.wordpress.com   and whatever you do, stay positive.

Sandra Bellamy

Tell me how you have got on with job applications?

Still to come on quirkybooks.wordpress.com, The One Lovely Blog Award nominations.

Related articles

Writing Resolutions


Hi Everyone

Happy New Year.

As the new year has just begun, it’s time to reflect on your writing journey throughout 2012 and think about how you can improve your writing or how you can make more time for your writing, or both. You need to consider:

  • How much you write?
  • When you write?
  • What you write about?
  • How long it takes you to write?
  • What things you could give up or do less of to spend more time writing?
  • How can you find ‘spare’ moments to write?

If you are writing vast amounts but not seeing an outcome, in other words you are not seeing a story forming, it could be that quantity has taken over quality and you need to have a re-think and focus on practicing writing shorter pieces in order to develop the quality of your work.

If on the other hand, you found it hard to get started on your writing and you hadn’t written much in 2012, then it’s time to get creative.

Grab a pen and ten sheets of paper. On each sheet write one of the following category titles:

  1. Animals
  2. Birds
  3. People
  4. Family
  5. Jobs
  6. Hobbies
  7. Locations
  8. Foods
  9. Objects
  10. Magic

You should have a total of ten pages, each with a title from the above list.

Next, you need to write anything that springs to mind under each title. For example, for animals you may write dog, cat, horse, pig or sheep.

For Birds you could write, emu, peacock, sparrow, finch, duck, chicken.

For family you could write, mum, dad, sister, brother, uncle, cousin.

For people you could write anything from a detective to a boy called Peter.

Write whatever comes to your mind for each title. Go crazy if you want to, the more absurd and weird the better. This exercise is not only good for unleashing your creativity and to get you thinking differently but when you get writer’s block or just crave for fresh story ideas, you can get inspiration from these pieces of paper and can make a story out of one or more of the things you have listed for each category or from just a few categories. This means you will have no excuses for not having a new year’s resolution to either write more or to improve the quality of your writing.

My new year’s resolution is to change my quirkybooks.net site into a much more sophisticated and attractive design, incorporating an e-Book store, so watch this space for future details.

Whatever your writing resolution ensure you have one because without setting any goals you won’t take action and nothing will be achieved. If you want to progress with your writing, you need a resolution. Good luck and let me know how you get on.

Write soon

Sandra

 

The Liebster Award – Thanks And Nominations


Hi Everyone

On October 25th I was Nominated for the Liebster Award by Wendy from searchingforthehappiness.wordpress.com, thank you so much Wendy, you have an awesome blog and I love following it.

I have recently been away in London and wanted to take time to think about who to nominate before I went ahead and did so.

For this award I have received 11 questions to answer.  Hope you find out a little more about me and if you have any questions, please fee free to ask away.

1.  What has been the most rewarding part of blogging for you?

  • Writing a guest blog post for a HR company and it got a mention in The New York Times
  • Writing a blog post – Any opportunity to write and I am ecstatic
  • Communicating with some amazing people
  • Having Author and Writing Coach Rochelle Melander, guest blog on my blog
  • Having competitions for people to win a copy of Write-A-Thon
  • A blog post from my other blog, http://www.beatredundancyblues.wordpress.com being featured as a headline on Platform 3 online newspaper from Switzerland

2.  What have friends and family said about you having a blog?

My mum can’t even text, bless her, let alone go on the internet but she is pleased when I win an award. My dad picks over grammar, punctuation and spelling and tells me if there is something wrong, bless him. My friends are happy that my blog is successful and are very encouraging.

3.  Has your blog helped you professionally or is your blog just for fun?

My blog has certainly helped me professionally. It has boosted my status as a professional writer and I have other writers following my blog that I feel so honoured by.

4.  How long have you been blogging?

I started this blog in November 2010.

5.  What state or country do you live in?

I live in Exeter, in Devon, in the UK.

6.  What is your favorite hobby?

Writing of course, I adore it from head to toe and back again.

7.  What is your favorite type of food?

I like Thai food, if I can get the place serving it to cater for my allergies. East St Thai restaurant in London is good at doing this for me. I also like Chinese food and the same thing applies.

8.  Do you have a pet?  If so, what type?

I have four extremely beautiful guineapigs who live indoors with me. Snuggles, Peaches, Daisy and Cinnamon.

9.  What is your favorite book?

  • Childrens’ – I like the Gruffalo and all Mr Men and Little Miss books
  • Writing – How to Write a How To book
  • Business – How to Start and Run Your Own Internet Business

10.  What is your favorite movie?

I like the dance movie “You’ve Got Served”, Dirty Dancing and Grease.

11.  What is your favorite thing to do when you have free time?

  • Write
  • Go to the cinema
  • Spend time cuddling my guineapigs
  • See family and friends

It’s now my turn to nominate 11 blogs to win the Liebster Award:

I need to ask all the nominees above, to please tell me a bit more about yourselves by answering the 11 questions below: 
  1. What first inspired you to start writing a blog?
  2. What is the biggest challenge you have ever had to face when writing your blog?
  3. If you travelled through time, what time would you want to arrive at and why?
  4. Do you prefer to eat chocolate or sweets (or neither)?
  5. Do you prefer to read or to write?
  6. What is your favourite genre of writing and why?
  7. What is your favourite non-fiction topic to read about and why?
  8. If you could buy one book that would help you to solve a problem in your life, what would it be and why?
  9. Do you prefer to write at night or during the day?
  10. If you could be any character out of any book, who would you be and why?
  11. Do you prefer to read a printed book or an e-Book?

Congratulations to all the nominees, I can’t wait to see your answers and which 11 blogs you have chosen to nominate.

Write soon
Sandra

Write-A-Thon Winner – Close Contest


Hi Everyone

quirkybooks’ latest competition to win a signed copy of Rochelle Melander’s Write-A-Thon, was a close contest, with many people trying several ways to win.

I am pleased to announce that Casey Jo Roach is the winner of the signed copy of Write-A-Thon. Congratulations Casey.

Thanks to everyone who entered and made the competition a great success.

For this competition I asked the question: “If you could buy any self-help book, what topic would you choose and why?”

Amongst the answers were books about:

  • How to write well
  • Writing resources
  • Writing an interesting Novel
  • How to write a novel quickly
  • Getting published
  • Overcoming Depression
  • Mindfulness
  • Stress
  • De-stressing
  • Anxiety

I thought it was remarkably interesting that two main categories shone through: Writing and Health and Well-being. Two of my favourite subjects to write about. So watch this future space!

If you could buy any self-help book, what would it be? Please leave a comment below.

Next post will be about my nominations for the Liebster Award, so don’t miss it.

Write soon.

Sandra

Own Your Niche – Book Review


 

Hi Everyone

In Own Your Niche, Author Stephanie Chandler, takes the opportunity for creating your own niche business, to another level.

Packed with “more than 175 links to resources ” this book is invaluable for anyone who wants to set up their own business in this current economic climate and create not only an impact within their own field but within the global business market.

In her clear, down-to-earth, no-nonense manner, Stephanie takes you through the process of every basic component of creating a thriving business with an online profile. She includes:

  • Establishing a niche with authority
  • Building an audience and engaging a community
  • Using website know-how to convert clients into paying customers
  • The benefits of blogging
  • Marketing tactics and PR
  • E-Newsletters and Email marketing
  • How to create revenue streams from the internet

I very much enjoyed reading this book and I would recommend that anyone interested in creating on on-line business, gives it a read.

Write soon

Sandra

 

Launch of quirkybooksnet Facebook Page – Guest Blogger Rochelle Melander here on 18th September


Hi Everyone

I have some exciting news, not only will there be a guest blogger, Rochelle Melander, Author and Writing Coach, blogging here on Tuesday 18th of September, the quirkybooks.net Facebook page was launched yesterday, click on the link below to view and to Like it: facebook.com/pages/Quirkybooksnet/144394649036836

quirkybooks.net is currently a basic site about me and my writing but in the next few months you will see it transform into a more attractive design, incorporating an e-book store. Join me on this extraordinary journey of creating an e-book store especially for you, as it unravels book by book.

My debut children’s picture book should be available to buy as an e-book on quirkybooks.net before Christmas and I will be writing lots of non-fiction, How to books, many of which, will help people who have been made redundant, to get back into work.

I already have ideas for different books I intend to write but in the meantime you can have your say about what non-fiction books you might like to see in the categories of redundancy/employment/business/writing/self-belief. By this I mean would you like books on how to get work in a certain type of industry? How to cope with redundancy? How to gain the art of self-belief?

Let me know what you think by commenting below.

Write soon

Sandra