Jacqueline Ward's Blog

I am passionate about change. I’m a psychologist and an expert in identity construction and storytelling, but it wasn’t always that way.

At one point in my life, I hit rock bottom. I felt like I had achieved nothing and I nearly lost my home. I was in debt and it wasn’t getting better.

It did get better, but not without effort. Part of the problem was that I was listening to what other people thought of me. I didn’t know myself. I didn’t know how I had become who I am, or how I could make changes.

I’ve developed a course on how to make the changes I needed to make. It isn’t a quick fix. It isn’t hoping it wishing. You will need to put the work in to understand who you are, and how you became you. But it will be worth it.

YOU are worth it.

My Blueprint for Change course, which features my backed-by-science YOU-Identity model of identity construction launches in January 2024.

Find out more about the course, join the launch Facebook group and complete free personal change management exercises….

Find out more about YOU!

I’ve been sick with a virus this week. I don’t know if it was THE virus, but I was pretty ill. And I missed the publication day for my beloved Palace Records.

My lovely publisher Spellbound Books posted about it, but I wanted to let you know it was here. I loved writing this book. It took me back to the days of Wigan Casino and Northern Soul. It took me to Manchester and Afflecks Palace, and to when I used to dress as Madonna!

I am not Izzy, but my eternal love of music was poured into this novel. I would love it if you read it and let me know what you think.

Get Palace Records here for 99p

Here’s a bit about it:

A Story of Music, Truth, and Redemption:

In the heart of the city, Izzy Cranshaw faces a crossroads. As the owner of Palace Records in Manchester, she’s struggling to keep her beloved vinyl haven alive after the tumultuous past few years. With her team by her side and personal challenges weighing on her, Izzy’s life takes an unexpected turn.

Amidst family drama and financial worries, a proposal to buy Palace Records emerges, forcing Izzy to make a life-altering choice. In a desperate bid to save her shop, Izzy delves into the world of house clearances and car boot sales. There, she discovers the remarkable legacy of Alan Hunt, a music enthusiast whose story mirrors her own. She embarks on a search for a rare Northern Soul record but will she find the soundtrack to her life?

As Izzy and her friends unravel Alan’s mysterious past, they embark on a journey of self-discovery, love, and the enduring magic of music. Secrets are unveiled, truths confronted, and unexpected love blooms.

Just when it seems all is lost, a hidden treasure offers hope. But Izzy’s personal battles are far from over. She must mend her fractured relationships, facing revelations that could reshape her family dynamics forever.

“Palace Records” is an uplifting story of resilience, music’s transformative power, and the importance of embracing the truth. Discover a story of love, truth, Northern Soul and the enduring magic of vinyl records in this heart-warming novel.

When I started writing I never dreamt that one of my novels would become a best-seller.

I love writing. I love creating worlds and characters. I also love hearing what readers think.

Last week Bloodhound Books emailed me congratulating me at The Replacement climbing the Top 100 Amazon Charts. I was absolutely thrilled and amazed, and the amount of people who have bought it is staggering. And that’s what really matters to me. I want to write stories people love to read.

Much of this is because I love to read. I love to read crime and psychological thrillers, and I hope I am giving readers the same experience I get.

So thank you if you bought The Replacement. It’s now adorned with a bestseller sticker! The Agreement is also out now and getting good reviews. If you haven’t read it yet, you can get it here…

Get my books here…

Hello, dear readers! I am absolutely thrilled to share my latest work with you, “The Agreement.” This novel is very close to my heart, and I can’t wait for you to dive into the intricate world of love, mystery, and suspense that I’ve crafted.

Get Your Copy of “The Agreement” Now: Order Here

What’s “The Agreement” All About?

Join me on an emotional rollercoaster as we explore the journey of Kate and Jake, a couple who initially agreed to give each other space in their marriage. However, as time goes on, Jake’s desire for space intensifies, leaving Kate feeling increasingly disconnected.

In a moment of frustration, Kate makes a life-altering decision. Instead of taking the turning home after work, she continues driving, eventually booking a room at a nearby hotel to uncover the growing mystery surrounding her husband’s behavior.

But when Kate returns home to confront Jake, she is met with a shocking discovery—her husband has vanished, leaving behind only a laptop with a map tracing her recent movements and a ticking timer. The enigma deepens, and nothing seems to make sense.

Why You Should Immerse Yourself in “The Agreement”

Compelling Mystery: “The Agreement” invites you to immerse yourself in a captivating narrative that will keep you guessing until the very last page. Join Kate and Jake as they navigate a world of secrets and uncertainty.

Emotional Turmoil: This novel explores the intricate dynamics of a marriage pushed to its limits. As Kate seeks answers, she is compelled to confront not only the mystery of Jake’s disappearance but also her own emotions.

Unpredictable Journey: Follow Kate on her race against time, as she seeks answers to the mysterious countdown. With each turn of the page, you’ll be drawn deeper into the web of “The Agreement.”

Twists and Turns: Be prepared for unexpected twists that will keep you on the edge of your seat. Just when you think you’ve unraveled the reason’s for Kate’s dilemma, “The Agreement” will take you on a thrilling new path.

Available Now!

I invite you to explore the secrets of “The Agreement” by Jacqueline Ward. Click here to order your copy today!

The Agreement already has four and five star reviews. Share the excitement with fellow book enthusiasts and immerse yourself in the mysterious world of Kate and Jake. Will they rediscover their love, or will secrets forever keep them apart?

Grab your copy now and prepare for an enthralling adventure within the pages of “The Agreement.”

Order Your Copy of “The Agreement” Now: Click Here

The first review is in for The Agreement and I cried with relief.

Reviewer Michelle said on Goodreads:

Thank you to Jacqueline Ward, and Bloodhound Books for this amazing e-ARC.

I fully enjoyed this fast paced domestic thriller. I finished it in one day. I could not stop reading until I found out what the hell was going on.

This book has a very clever plot, lots of twists, and kept me guessing and wondering throughout.

There was so much going on in the storyline that it’s hard to give a synopsis, but I had no trouble keeping up with everything bc the writing is done so well.

I highly recommend this book! I loved it!

I can’t thank Michelle enough, because one of the main reasons I write psychological thrillers is because I love to read them. I want readers to feel the same way I do about other writers’ work – that it-can-wait-until-this-book-is finished feeling, and thinking about the book, even when I am not reading it.

The Agreement is not my first novel, but it never gets any easier, because reading is so subjective and all I can do is write my story and hope it touches people. With The Agreement, I felt it deeper writing it as Kate, the protagonist, is an everyday kind of person and what she does near the beginning of the novel has resonated with so many people I have mentioned it to.

So what does she do?

One day a few years ago, I was in Manchester city centre with my friend Sarah. We were talking about writing ideas, and I told her my ‘seed’ for my next novel. I was a bit desperate as the ideas hadn’t been flowing, but this single concept kept coming back to me.

What if instead of going home, you kept on driving?

She loved it, and I developed it into a firmer idea. Every time I ran it by someone, they would look intently at me and say: I’ve done that or I’ve thought about doing that

And that resonation with everyday people is what I look for in novels I read, and in novels I write.

This isn’t a spoiler, because in The Agreement this is the first in a rollercoaster of events that happen.

Thanks again to Michelle for connecting and leaving a review.

I hope you love it too!

The Agreement is available for pre-order here

I am thrilled to unveil the cover for my upcoming crime novel Random Acts of Unkindness featuring DS Jan Pearce in her search for her missing son.

I am thrilled to unveil the cover for my upcoming crime novel, Random Acts of Unkindness featuring DS Jan Pearce in her search for her missing son.

You can pre-order it here prior to release on 25th May 2023

I really love this cover. My publishers Bloodhound Books have really captured the mood of the book, which is set in Saddleworth, Oldham and Manchester.

But what is “Random Acts of Unkindness” about? Set in Manchester, the novel follows Detective Sergeant Jan Pearce as she investigates two murders and the disappearance of her son, Aiden. As she delves deeper into the case, she begins to uncover a web of secrets and lies that threaten to unravel everything she thought she knew.

Random Acts of Unkindness is a psychological thriller that explores the dark side of human nature. It’s a story about secrets, lies, and the lengths people will go to protect their own interests. I can’t wait for readers to get their hands on it and experience the twists and turns for themselves.

Stay tuned for more updates as we approach the release date for news about the rest of the series to date – and a new DS Jan Pearce book coming in 2024!

Will you wing it to bring it?

It’s one of the biggest questions in writing. Do you plan every tiny part of your novel in advance? Or do you start to write and just see where it takes you? And which one is the right way?

I am here to tell you that there is no right way. I know people who produce perfectly publishable books both ways, and I do a little bit of both. It completely depends on personal preference — some people feel that plotting before starting to write spoils the story for them. Yet some people find structure comforting.

Let’s take a look at some plot or not methods.

Losing the plot

In all the writing groups I have attended or run there have been people who steadfastly make a stance to not plot. They extend this not just to story, but also to structure.

I find this fascinating, because it often goes hand in hand with creative freedom and experimentation. You might expect lack of planning and freedom to just write would produce something quite different to a planned, structured novel. Yet many of these stories were just like the pre-structured and plotted ones — with a beginning, middle and end.

Stories are in our psyche, and we recognise the shape of a story. So while the not-plotters are not consciously plotting, the story shape still comes through to and extend to make the piece recognisable.

Bringing the plot

At the beginning of my writing career I didn’t plot at all. I just sat down and wrote for all I was worth. I could tell a story. People read it. It wasn’t until an agent mentioned John Yorke that I started to understand that there was a lot more to storytelling, and that started, for me, with the three — act structure, or, as John teaches, the five act structure.

I watched John Yorke’s YouTube interview at Google and then attended a screenwriting Masterclass run by him. It was almost an epiphany. I had gone from barely knowing anything about structure to thinking about acts and midpoints. I rushed home to check all my novels for midpoints and, sure enough, they were there. A reversal. The relief was real. But I knew I could do better with my new awareness.

I became a serious plotter and produced a plotting chart. I used this to plot my psychological thrillers and even introduced a multi-strand chart to track worlds, scenes and characters. This came in very handy when I got structural edits on one novel and had to change an entire strand.

My writing improved and my editor and agent noticed. I was invited to write a guest post for the brilliant Damyanti Biswas where you can download a copy of my plotting chart:

Here’s How Bestselling Author Jacqueline Ward Plots Her Psychological Thrillers

But then I discovered Save the Cat.

Almost Saving the Cat

Following hot on the tail of Save the Cat for screenwriters came Save the Cat for novelists. The book is an instruction manual for writing your novel beat by beat, story type by story type. You can find all about Save the Cat on this siteEditors started to tell me that Save the Cat was their ‘bible’ and they wanted their authors to stick to that format and bring beat sheets as outlines. It keeps it nice and uniform, I guess, for busy people who know what works.

In a talk at an author group I almost faced a mutiny when I started to talk about Save the Cat. Some of the authors told me that the strict formulae and defined story paths were stealing their creativity. I listened, but it occurred to me that in writing there are no rules.

But if editors want a certain format, our best chance of getting published is to present them with work in that format. I knew to my cost that if you decide to bring them an apple when they want an orange, they will choose the next person with an apple.

It seemed like the outraged authors were taking Saving the Cat a little too far. After all, aren’t rules there to guide us rather than restrict us?

Reader, I broke the rules.

Saving the Cat then setting it free

I wondered if I had been doing it wrong. I had been using the Save the Cat beatsheet and story types as guidance, not as rules. I revisited the book and thought about how I had applied all the things I had learned along the way to my plotting.

I used the beatsheet to get an idea of how my story would work, then used my own plotting sheet to go into more detail. Some writers do an outline for each chapter in advance and extend it as they write.

I talked to my writing mentor about it and she thought it was a little bit like cooking; some people throw food into a pan and something delicious appears, whereas some follow a recipe to the gram.

Plotting is the molding of the story holder, the shaper, the pot. The story is the flowing, flexible water that we pour into it. If your pot is solid, you can’t pour the water in. You have restricted your plot and left little room for the story to tread itself through the plot points.

Schrodinger’s stories

Stories are our shared consciousness. I am so convinced of this that I spend six years doing a PhD on that subject. The reason plotting or not plotting is an option is that we already know stories. Stories sit deep down in our sense of meaning and they are how we make sense of the world, alongside other meaning making language such as maths and science.

So stories are everywhere all at once. When a book is written and published it is with both the writer and the reader concurrently — a shared abstraction of a subject that they are both interested in. Like the Schrodinger’s cat though experiment, it’s a mind-bending look into how we relate to each other and what invisible dynamics move our lives collectively forward.

Cats, heroes and villains

Of course, my cat analogy has gone too far. The real meaning of ‘save the cat’ is that we need to make a likeable hero (who loves cats so much they save one) for our story so the reader can be invested and engaged.

The purpose of plot is to signpost the story shape and give the reader something recognisable to understand in the background of the story itself. It is plot and story structure that we learn throughout our lives as we are told stories over and over again; we don’t remember all the individual stories but we know what a story is and what we want from it. A path. A shape. A plotted course that we understand.

Unless you are running on pure subtext (see Sally Rooney’s Normal People for an example of this) you will need to drive the reader on with plot points and hooks to move your story forward.

We need to be rooting for someone, but it needn’t be the cat.

My advice is: don’t take it too seriously, read up on plot and structure — start with Freytag’s pyramid. Listen to John Yorke. Read Save the Cat and other writing books. Take what YOU like and enjoy from the gathered wisdom and apply it to YOUR story. It’s about what works for you, what keeps you in flow and what supports you in writing your novel.

More about Save the Cat here

If you spent any amount of time with me, you will know how much I LOVE Pro-writing Aid! It’s an amazing writing tool and I use it at all stages of editing.

Well, not they are running writing events! Next up is Fantasy Writers Week.

They’ve got some brilliant writers lined up and I’m sure it’s going to be fantastic!

You can sign up by clicking the graphic or by the button below.

I’m definitely joining this one.

REGISTER HERE FOR FREE

This book has been a long time in the making but it’s finally on pre-order.

So I usually write psychological thrillers, right? Well, at the beginning of lockdown I decided to write a book I have always wanted to write. Something a bit more joyful, but edged with working class reality and shot through with music from the late 70s punk era. And featuring women old enough remember buying jeans in the underground market in Manchester and the birdcage at the Cat’s Whiskers.

Here it is. Teenage Kicks. It’s my love letter to my beloved Manchester, the city I dreamed about every night when I lived in a paradise holiday haven for years (particularly the Arndale). Out 8th March on International Women’s Day to honour the strong women who as they get older become invisible yet stronger. You can pre-order it now.

PRE-ORDER TEENAGE KICKS FOR 99p

Set in the Northern Quarter of Manchester around the iconic Castle pub, Teenage Kicks spans the Manchester punk scene in 1978 to today as Kaye Macey and her friend Janet search for Kaye’s lead-singer sister, Stella, but find much, much more.

Kaye and Janet have seen it all. They’ve partied with the best of them and fallen in and out of love with unsuitable men. But one thing is missing. Stella. Kaye’s sister left in the late seventies, and their mother, Imelda, forbade Kaye to look for her. But now Imelda has gone.

The women search across the city for each member of the punk band Stella sang with. They toast dead pop stars, travel in a camper van called Mavis channeling Debby Harry and Kate Bush, and search for lasting love. But both of them know this could be their Last Hurrah and want to go out with a bang. Will they find Stella? Will they find love? Will they find out who was really at the Sex Pistols gig at the Manchester Free Trade Hall in 1976?

Teenage Kicks is Jax Ward’s love letter to Manchester.

I really hope you love this book. I loved writing it, although some of it was bittersweet when my mum was dying, then through lockdown. But, in the end, Janet and Kaye will have their day – thanks to Spellbound Books for publishing Teenage Kicks and bringing them to life.

So it’s 2023. I can hardly contain my excitement because this year most of the books and a short story I wrote in lockdown will be published!

But first things first. And the fist of those books is Teenage Kicks. I’m writing this in the name of Jax Ward because this is my first adventure into romantic comedy/tragedy. The brilliant Spellbound Books will publish this novel on 8th March 2023.

Set in the Northern Quarter of Manchester around the iconic Castle pub, Teenage Kicks spans the Manchester punk scene in 1978 to today as Kaye Macey and her friend Janet search for Kaye’s lead-singer sister, Stella, but find much, much more.

Kaye and Janet have seen it all. They’ve partied with the best of them and fallen in and out of love with unsuitable men. But one thing is missing. Stella. Kaye’s sister left in the late seventies, and their mother, Imelda, forbade Kaye to look for her. But now Imelda has gone.

The women search across the city for each member of the punk band Stella sang with. They toast dead pop stars, travel in a camper van called Mavis channelling Debby Harry and Kate Bush, and search for lasting love. But both of them know this could be their Last Hurrah and want to go out with a bang. Will they find Stella? Will they find love? Will they find out who was really at the Sex Pistols gig at the Manchester Free Trade Hall in 1976?

Teenage Kicks is my love letter to Manchester. I’ve often talked about how much I love my home city. When I lived in Cyprus I dreamt about The Arndale every single night! Janet and Kaye are the epitome of Manchester’s real women, and reminiscent of my aunties on my dad’s side. But there is a softer, sentimental side to them.

I really cannot wait to see this book out there and find out what readers think of Kaye and Janet – I’m expecting mixed reactions…