Jon Rance's Blog

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Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start writing!

It's been four years since I released my first novel, 'This Thirtysomething Life'. I can't believe it's gone so fast and now I'm on the verge of completing my fifth novel! I can't believe that either. When I finished writing 'This Thirtysomething Life', I didn't even know if I'd write another novel. I didn't expect much to happen and I definitely didn't expect it to become a top ten Kindle bestseller, get a publishing deal, an agent, then write four more books. What happened was literally my wildest dreams. And so it feels a bit cathartic this week because on Friday June 3rd, 'This Thirtysomething Life' is going to be the Amazon kindle deal of the day! For one day only it's going to be just 99p!


For those of you who don't know, this is a big deal for authors. When a book is the deal of the day, you're guaranteed to sell lots of books. This might result in some extra income - which is always nice for us struggling writers - but for me this is about something else. This is the chance for my first novel, which I'm so proud of, to have another day in the spotlight. It's done so well and has been published in five other countries, received 626 reviews on Amazon, and was the catalyst for my career. It's nice to think of it getting some new readers. It's a book I'm tremendously fond of and I hope that on Friday people give it chance, have a read, and enjoy it. 

So I raise a glass - coffee at the moment, but definitely a beer later - to my début novel that did so much more than expected. 'This Thirtysomething Life' will always remind me of a time in my life and will always be the most important book of my career. Below I've included the original self-published cover and the published version by Hodder and Stoughton. And as a side note, I've also reduced the sequel, 'This Family Life' to 99p too!







This is the original cover I designed when I self-published the book in 2012. I rather like it. it doesn't look as professional as the Hodder version, it's a bit raw, but I think it works. 





And here is the version you see today. Hodder did a great job with the cover and it's still one of my favourites. So here it is. Friday, June 3rd, and 'This Thirtysomething life' is the Amazon kindle deal of the day! Please share with friends and help me give this little guy one last big day in the sun!



Cheers,
Jon X

It finally happened. I sent off my latest book to my editor for the final edit. It's almost done. I will get it back in a few weeks, make the last changes, then it's off to the publisher - hopefully for a book deal! But at the moment I'm not thinking about that. At the moment it's time to take a moment to breathe. And relax.

I started this book in November and so it will be my quickest book so far. It's also the longest at 103,000 words, which is 10,000 words or about 30 pages longer than my last book, Sunday Dinners. There's a couple of reasons why this book has been written so quickly. 1) I've worked harder than ever before. 2) The story came to me fully formed pretty quickly and so was the easiest book to write in that sense. 3) The characters also came to be fairly quickly and so I didn't have to spend ages re-writing it trying to get the voices right. I really have worked harder on this book than any other before. All of my books have taken a year or longer to write, but this one just came to me so quickly and so easily. 

So what does that mean? Is it going to be rubbish? I hope not. It's actually my favourite book I've written so far. It was definitely the most enjoyable to work on. Sunday Dinners was a really hard book to write. For whatever reason the story never quite worked and the characters needed more developing and the whole thing just went on and on. It took nearly two years from start to finish. This book, on the other hand, was the complete opposite. I knew the story was really strong and once I started putting in the characters, the whole thing just came together. Sometimes in writing it does feel too easy, but I think learning to trust your gut is something that's invaluable. I didn't over think this book, I just wrote it.

So here I am with an almost finished novel seven months later. So what's this new book about? Well it's a romantic comedy. I say that because I don't think I've written one yet. People sometimes lump me into that genre, but I've never gone out to write one. This time I did. I mean really. I wanted to write a proper, full on, British romantic comedy that had everything a Brit Rom-Com should have. The beautiful settings, the comedy, the romance, the quirky friends, the dashing leading men, great dialogue, the music, a proper English wedding, and lots of booze. The story is something that I don't thinks been done before, but I think the real strength is the characters. I really love the characters in this book. Characters make romantic comedies. We don't watch rom-com films or read the books because we want a surprise ending - we want the couple to get together - we watch them because we enjoy spending time with the characters. I hope you love these crazy bunch of people as much as me. 

So right now I'm going to catch up on some reading, watch a few films, a couple of TV shows, and relax because I've earned it. I can't wait to introduce this book to you. Until next time my friends. 

Hugs,
Jon X

Hello,


I'm excited to have a new author on my blog today. Steven Scaffardi is just about to release his second comedy novel, 'The Flood' and so I thought I'd catch up with him and see what all the fuss is about.








1. Hi, Steven, welcome to my blog! It's good to have you over for a pint of lager and a packet of crisps. For the people out there who have never heard of Steven Scaffardi tell us a bit about yourself.
Cheers Jon, it's great to be here. For people who have never heard of Steven Scaffardi before, I am tall, athletic, and as good looking as David Beckham. I once dated Kelly Brook and Sofia Vergara at the same time, and believe it or not, I am the person who wrote the lyrics to Baby for Justin Bieber. And if that hasn't impressed you, I am also a lad lit author in my 30s desperately trying to recapture my youth on the pages of my two novels, The Drought and The Flood - both part of the Sex, Love and Dating Disasters series.
2. To promote your first book, The Drought, you ended up spending a year on the stand-up comedy circuit, what was that like? 
It was a great experience, full of the most eclectic mix of people I think I have ever met, from out of work actors to a six-foot blonde who graced the covers of lads mags, and 20 year veterans of the circuit who had never quite made it and hated the world for it, to people who had very messed up views about what they thought funny was! There is probably a book that could be written about some of those characters! I did it for a year and I managed to get to the final of the Golden Jester competition after about 50 gigs which wasn't too bad. Nothing quite beats the buzz of being up on that stage when you're having a good gig. The flip side of that, of course, is that it is the most awful place in the world to be when you have a bad gig. Apart from a South American prison perhaps. 

3. I've always had the ambition to do a bit of stand-up at some point, any tips?
Do it! Someone once said to me that stand-up comedy is the best hobby you can ever have. You get to stand around in pubs all evening watching comedy! The best advice I can give is make sure you write a varied set because if you stick to one story or theme and it doesn't work, you have nowhere else to go. And don't be afraid to try different material. Open mic stand-up comedy audiences can be quite forgiving because they know you are new, so when something works keep it in, and when something bombs throw it out. Sooner or later you'll have a set that works.
4. How is it different writing stand-up comedy to writing a comedy novel?
With stand-up you don't really have time to build up to the joke like you might in a book. When you first start up in stand-up you are doing gigs where you have 5-10 minutes (at most) to do a set. It might not sound like a lot, but believe me - trying to find five minutes of material that is funny is really hard. I take my hat off to guys like Micky Flanagan and Kevin Bridges who put together an hour long show with laughs all the way through. With stand-up you are constantly looking for a quick punchline to keep the audience on side. They have turned up to have someone make them laugh after all. With a 5 minute set, you want to aim for a laugh at least every 20-30 seconds, but with a comedy novel you have more time to build things, even if the reader already knows where you’re going. In The Drought, you know from the very start that Dan is on a sexual drought. As a reader you know at each and every attempt to get his leg-over he will fail, but it doesn't matter. My job as the writer is to make sure that even when the reader knows Dan's latest attempt is doomed to failure, they are always thinking "But what if he does succeed this time?" 



5. Your second novel, The Flood, is out now - congrats! - tell us a bit about it?
The Flood is the follow-up to The Drought, although you could quite easily pick up The Flood without having read The Drought. This time the main character, Dan, gets himself into more dating disasters when he makes a drunken bet with his friends that he could date four girls all at the same time. That challenge is hard enough as it is, but when the girls he ends up dating include a stalker, an ex-girlfriend, the office ice queen and the one that got away, Dan soon finds out that dating a flood of women is a lot harder that he thinks. He has eight weeks to juggle all four girls without them finding out about each other. 
6. This is a question I've been asked a few times. Why do you write romantic comedy? What draws you to the genre?
It was a combination of two things. 1) My wife is a huge romcom fan and I have lost count of the amount of times I would shout out "But a man wouldn't do that!" watching one of those films. Let's be honest, men are not very good at romance. We rarely get those sort of things right, and even though we talk a good game, we're fairly hopeless at understanding the opposite sex so I wanted to tell a story from the male perspective. And 2) Most guys have stood around the pub talking rubbish about first dates and relationship experiences. More often than not, those stories are hilarious for all the wrong reasons. I started making notes of all the funny stories I'd heard, threw in a few of my own experiences, exaggerated them for comedy value, and that is pretty much how The Drought came about.
7. OK, here's the bit where you get to show us how good a salesman you are. Why should people buy your book?
Because (hopefully) they'll laugh lots! The best contemporary fiction, in my opinion, is the stuff you can relate to, and I try to do that with my books. I have a had a lot of male readers tell me how much they can relate to some of the stupid things Dan and his friends get up to, while most women are horrified (in a good way) to find out what men really think. I've been lucky to have some really great reviews on Goodreads and from book bloggers, and that probably carries more weight than anything I could tell you. Chick Lit Plus said of The Drought: "Steven Scaffardi's first novel is absolutely hilarious and will leave every reader, male or female, laughing out loud." Hopefully that might make one or two of your fans give it a go.


8. You describe yourself as writing lad-lit. What exactly is lad-lit and how does it compare to chick-lit?
Lad lit is best known as the male equivalent of chick-lit, primarily written by men exploring relationships, emotions and day-to-day life experiences from the perspective of a male protagonist. Often told with humour, charm and wit, lad lit leaves many readers laughing out loud at the scenarios men get into. My favourite lad lit analogy is this: If book genres were diets then lad lit would be the rather disheveled 'before' picture and chick lit would be the perfect 'after' image. Lad lit is like that car crash of a first date you went on or that person you went out with and still wonder years later "What was I thinking?" For me, the goal of chick lit is to get to that perfect happy ever after (HEA) ending, but lad lit does not always have to follow that pattern. In relationship terms, you have to get through a whole lot lad lit before you find your perfect chick lit!
9.  What are your top five books by men about life, love and relationships? To get the ball rolling and to see if we're any different mine would be: Nick Hornby, High Fidelity, Tony Parsons, Man and Boy,  David Nicholls, Starter for Ten, Mike Gayle, My Legendary Girlfriend, and since I really can't include my own books and these are all better than mine anyway, The Buddha of Suburbia by Hanif Kureishi. 
That's a pretty good list - I'm not sure I can beat that! High Fidelity and Man and Boy have to be in there, without question, and you couldn't have a top five list of books by men about relationships without Mike Gayle, although I'm going to opt for Seeing Other People. Another author I'm a big fan of is Danny Wallace and I really enjoyed Charlotte Street so I would put that one in there. The last spot is tough as you have other great authors in the genre like Matt Dunn and of course your good self (This Thirtysomething Life is next on my read list!) but I think I'll give a shout to Nick Spalding for his Life From... Both Sides because I think it's a great series of books.
10. What's next for Steven Scaffardi?
I am busy promoting The Flood as part of this Lad Lit Blog Tour right now, but I already have plans for the third instalment of the Sex, Love and Dating Disasters series. The working title is The Pact and this time Dan and his friends travel to Latvia in search of a girl who dated Dan's best friend Rob. It is a little bit different to the first two books in that the theme to this book is a bit of a tribute to one of my favourite books of all time The Book With No Name. It includes a whole host of unsavoury characters including a Russian mafia don, two drag queens, a pimp who is stuck in the 70s, a sleazy hotel boss and his strange wife, two karaoke loving corrupt cops wo worship Wham, and a henchman who goes by the name of Ray The Local. I'm hopeful of having it out by the end of the year, but we'll see.
11. Cheers Steven, I hope you enjoyed the pint and the crisps and thanks for answering my questions. One last question and it's the classic question every author gets asked. What are your top five writing tip?
Thanks for having me Jon, it's been a blast and the pint and beer snacks were a pleasant bonus. My top five tips would be: 1. Create bios for your characters. The more you know about your characters, the better equipped you will be to write about how they will react in certain situations. 2. Create a playlist for your book like a movie soundtrack. I find music really helps come up with ideas and develop scenes you are writing. 3. Make sure you have a great proofreader. The amount of little mistakes and errors that creep in will surprise you. I've conceded that I'm not a good writer, I'm a good storyteller! 4. Always be prepared to make notes on the move. I'm forever tapping into my note app on my iPhone as the most brilliant ideas always pop into your head at the most random of times. 5. Immerse yourself into the world of book bloggers. These people will become your best friends, but don't take them for granted. They blog for the love of reading and they do a bloody good job if you ask me.

Thanks so much to Steven for popping over. He's doing a ridiculous number of interviews and blog appearances for the release of 'The Flood'. If you want to check out some of his other blog tour stops have a look at this...

Hello! I'd love to welcome Lynda Renham back to my blog. Lynda is the Queen of the romantic comedy and she's back with her new book, Perfect Weddings. Welcome Lynda.
Thank you Jon, and thanks for featuring me on your blog. I always love to visit.





Tell us something about this book you've told no one else.

Ah, okay. One character in the book named Rosie was originally named Rube. In fact she was Rube right until the very end when my husband reminded me I had used that name in a previous novel (can I remember all their names?) Anyway I didn’t dare change the name until it was finished as I feared I would lose her character if I did. So she got changed right at the end. I still prefer Rube and still see her as a Rube.


The book is called, Perfect Weddings, did you have a perfect wedding and where did the idea come from?
My marriage to Andrew is my second and yes it was perfect as far as I was concerned. We held the ceremony in our garden under the canopy of our summer house. The garden was decorated with flowers as was the summer house. We had a hand fasting ceremony where you tie your hands together with different coloured ribbons. The reception was drinks on the village green where there was a string quartet and then food in our local. It was perfect.
OK, it's time to put on your sales hat, why should people buy this book?
Because it’s funny, it’s warm, it’s romantic and it makes you feel all happy inside at the end.
I love romantic comedies and I'm writing my own at the moment. What's the secret to a great rom-com?
I’m not sure I know. But I think a good balance of laughter and reality helps. People have to be able to relate to the characters so it can’t be silly. Good strong characters and of course a lovely leading man always works for the ladies.
As an author myself, I'm always interested to read about other writers and how they work. This was your tenth novel - congratulations! - is it getting any easier or more difficult?
It’s getting more difficult I think. Finding the humour, not repeating oneself, finding new situations, it all makes it more difficult I think.
I was offering some advice to a young writer the other day and I told them to pick a genre and stick to it. This has definitely been the case for you. You've really made a name for yourself as a romantic comedy author - and rightly so - but do you have any ambitions to write anything else?
Oh yes. I so want to write serious stuff. In fact I used to but nobody bought them. I’ve one book I want to work on that is finished but needs editing and another that is just begging to be written but it’s not what my reader wants. But I may well give it a go in the future.
As your book is called, Perfect Wedding, what would your perfect wedding be like?
Exactly as I had it above.
If you could go back and talk to yourself when you were writing your very first book, what would you say to yourself?
Don’t be so disheartened when you get rejected. It really isn’t the end of the world. Even agents and publishers make mistakes and turn down books that go on to be the most successful books ever.
Thanks so much for taking the time to talk to me today. One last question before I let you go. What are you working on next?
Right now, nothing. I’m just writing posts for reviewers but I think it may well be the second in my Little Perran series next which are written by Amy Perfect, of course.

PERFECT WEDDINGS IS OUT NOW!

I've just finished the first draft of my latest novel so I thought now would be a great time to write a blog about it.

The title to this blog shouldn't actually say, 'How to write a first draft' and maybe should be titled 'How I write a first draft'. The thing is, there is no right way to write a first draft. There's also no wrong way. It's just your way. I bet no one in the world writes a first draft like me. Maybe they do, but if so they should definitely stop. It's chaotic and every time I finish one I'm always amazed it makes any sense whatsoever. Because here's the thing about a first draft. The only thing that matters is that you finish it and when you do, you think, I can work with this. These are my only requirements. 

Step one: Start. I've lost count of the number of people I've met in my life who say, "one day I'm going to write a novel". And whenever I ask them why not now they always have an excuse. They don't have time etc. The thing about writing a novel is that you have to commit to actually writing a novel. It's a marathon. You have to stop thinking about it and just start. You have to put the hours in.

Step two: Start. This is the bit where you have to do something. Some people will spend months planning, some will spend ten minutes. There is no right way. Some people will try and tell you that you have to have pages of notes, chapter summaries, character bios and maybe you will and maybe you won't. For each of my books I've had varying degrees of notes before I started. For some it's a lot and for others barely a few pages. The important thing to remember is that this is your book and you will write the way you write. 

(A quick note about this. I've read a couple of 'how to write novel' books and they're fine, but honestly I don't believe in learning how to write. You can't learn how to write. The best way to learn is to read books and study them. I read a lot of books in the same genre as mine and studied how they worked. For me this was far more valuable than reading books about writing. You can pick up tips, but for me writing is something natural and organic. You either can or you can't. You can definitely get better though, but that comes from lots of writing!)

Step three: write a lot. OK so once you have the general story idea, a rough list of characters, a starting point and a vague idea of an ending, you need to crack on. You can spend days, weeks, months, maybe even years putting off starting but at the end of the day, you need to start getting words down on the page.

Step four: Don't stop writing. I think this might be the most important thing about writing a first draft. I said above that there isn't a way to write a first draft. There are no rules. BUT. I think the one thing that most writers I know have in common is that when writing a first draft you need to keep going. I only go back and read the previous chapter before every new day to get a feel of where I am, but I don't go back and re-write. I just keep going until I have 90-100,000 words and then I stop. The end. If you try to make every chapter "perfect" before you move on you'll never get the momentum to keep going.

Step five: When it's done, read it back. This is the bit that always terrifies me. Reading it back is hard because there's going to be terrible mistakes, bits that don't make a lot of sense, character flaws and huge holes in the plot. The only thing that really matters though is that when you're done you think, I can make this good. 

Step six: Think. This is an important part of the process. It took me a long time to be OK with spending time thinking. You think you always need to be writing, but you don't. Once you have a completed first draft you need to give yourself time to read it and think about it. Really think about it because the hard work is just beginning. 

Writing is a very personal thing and the more you do it, the more you will find your style. For me the first draft is a way of understanding the story and the characters. As I write new story ideas develop, characters start to come alive, and so even though at the start I don't have everything mapped out, by the end of the first draft I have a good idea where I'm going. 

The important thing to remember, and this is something first time writers might have a hard time with, is that you will edit this book so many times and the final draft will be nothing like the first. The saying, writing is re-writing is so true. So when you're writing your first draft just get it all out. Be creative, let it flow, write paragraphs of utter nonsense, feel the story, the characters, let them breathe, let the words go and when it's all done, you can sit back in the knowledge that you've done it. You're on the first step to writing a novel.

Of course it is only the first step. People say that looking at a blank page is the hardest thing about writing, but I disagree. Looking at 97,000 words and then trying to turn that jumble of words into a perfect, finished novel is a lot harder. There's so much to do once you have a first draft, but that's a different blog. Right now, I'm excited because I have a first draft and you know what? It's one I can definitely work with. 

Until next time.

Hugs,
Jon X

It's February already. Can you believe it? I can't. The last six months have gone by so fast. If it wasn't for the nearly completed first draft of my new novel, I would have questioned whether it even happened. I suppose that's the great thing about writing novels, it gives life some perspective. I see every year how much I have (or haven't) done. At the moment I'm feeling quite accomplished. I'm a few thousand words from completing the first draft of my new novel. Yay!

So what's going on? Well, funny you should ask, but lots actually. As mentioned above I've almost finished the first draft of my new book. It's a really funny romantic comedy and I absolutely love it. I think the characters really sparkle and it has my usual mix of comedy and drama - although it's very different from Sunday Dinners, which definitely had more drama. This book is first and foremost a comedy, but as always when you're talking about love, it has some heavier scenes. I'm super excited about this book - can you tell? Once the first draft is done, I'll go through and edit a few times before sending it off to my lovely editor who will do her magic. We'll go backwards and forwards until it's finally done and then the exciting bit, you get to read it!

I also have another project I'm working on. It started a few years ago, before I'd even written This Thirtysomething Life. I wrote a novel that never saw the light of day for many reasons. I always liked the concept and I love the title. I spent some time re-reading it recently and I was actually quite surprised how much I loved it. It needs a lot of work as I'm a much better and more experienced writer now, but I'm going to resurrect it. I've always had qualms about going back to old work, but I think this is a really good story and hopefully with some hard work, it can be a great one! I'm excited about it! 

So the upshot of all this is that hopefully I'll have two books out this year. I might not, depending how things go, but it's on the cards. 

In other news, I've been approached by a television production company about Sunday Dinners. It was a very tentative, early enquiry, but it's exciting and who knows, maybe one day a version of it might end up on the box! That's always been one of my biggest dreams so fingers crossed.

And lastly, a big thank you to everyone that's had a hand in Sunday Dinners. It's been my most successful book since This Thirtysomething Life and it's given my writing career a real boost! It's doing well in America too, which is quite a lovely surprise. It's a book that was turned down by publishers because it didn't have a market, so it's quite gratifying for me on a personal level. It goes to show that we shouldn't give up on our dreams!

Any other business? Well yes, actually! In celebration of Sunday Dinners doing so well, it's going to be on sale in the UK! From today until Sunday it's going to be reduced from £1.99 to just 99p! So please if you haven't got a copy yet, grab one and tell all of your friends to get one too! And thanks so much again everyone - you are all stars! Click on the cover below for your copy!







Until next time!

Hugs,
Jon X

A very happy new year to you all! I hope you had a lovely, brilliant and fantastic Christmas and new year! It's been a bit of a sad start to 2016. First we lost David Bowie to cancer and then today Alan Rickman. Two marvellously talented people. It got me thinking about creativity and why we do what we do. 

The thing about David Bowie and Alan Rickman was that in an industry of amazing, talented people they were both incredibly unique. There was only one David Bowie. Only he could have sung Space Oddity. His voice and songs were so different from anyone else and yet fit snugly within the fabric of music as comfortably as The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. He was a one off. The same can be said of Alan Rickman. I was never fortunate enough to see him perform in the theatre, but in the film roles I saw him in, there was no one like him. From the villain roles in Robin Hood and Die Hard, which were just extraordinary, to Love Actually, where he brought his own unique style to an otherwise fairly mundane role, Rickman was special. It's what makes him and Bowie such a loss. They were unique.

It got me thinking about why we do it. Being creative isn't something we do for money or fame, it's something inside of us. I write because I love it and because there's nothing else I want to do. I write novels because I honestly believe they can change the world in the same way that film, television and music can. Being a creative person is about making something that only you can do. I write books I hope will make people happy, make them think, and give them somewhere to go outside of their own world. I hope my writing makes a small difference in the world and when I eventually pass on too, I hope the work I leave behind will mean something. Occasionally I get emails, tweets or messages from people who say how much they enjoyed a book or that it helped them through a difficult time. This is what books, films and music is about. Without art life is just black and white. Art is the colour. We need it more than ever and this is why I do what I do and why I feel such a sad sense of loss when people like David Bowie and Alan Rickman die. They were the colour. 

There are so many wonderful, brilliant, creative people in the world and when the truly special ones die we sit up and take notice. As we should. Let's celebrate all art and appreciate it's value in society. We write, dance, sing, act, create because it's inside of us and we have to share it with the world. 

A happy 2016 to you all.

Hugs,
Jon X