Fabulous Last Minute Christmas Gifts

I don’t know about you, but sometimes I find gift shopping can be something of a challenge.

It’s not the ‘buying’ of the gift that I find challenging, or the wrapping, or any of that malarky, it’s coming up with an idea in the first place. Just what do you buy your cousin Edwina, the woman who seems to have absolutely everything?? It’s the stuff of nightmares. Many sleepless nights. Perhaps both.

If you’re anything like me the days roll past and before you know it, you’re roaming the aisles of your local shopping centre, desperately hoping inspiration will jump out, shake you by the shoulders, and end it all.

Well relax. This year inspiration has chosen to send you an email. Or a tweet. Or however the heck you stumbled across this blog post. Consider the following…

Books make excellent gifts

You see! And I know what you’re thinking – it’s so obvious now I’ve come to mention it! And here’s something else, books signed by the author are even more special. Ha! No more crappy I-didn’t-know-what-to-get-you-so-I-got-you-this-voucher from you! You’ve just become a master of ‘thoughtful’ gifts.

Now where on earth can you lay your hands on a signed book or two?

Right here is where!

With just a click of your mouse, or a tap of your finger, any one of the six books I’ve penned could be winging their way to you with a personalised greeting inside, or a simple ‘Best Wishes’ if you want to keep your options open. Simply select the book, or books, of your choice, by clicking the links BELOW.

The Truth About This Charming Man

My second novel… yes SECOND! Where have you been. If your Aunt (Dad, Sister, Wife, Husband, Niece… delete where applicable) enjoys a good rom-com comedy with a bit of a heist thrown in, this could be their bag baby.
RRP £8.99

Buy it signed here £7.99 + £2.80 postage

Buy unsigned from amazon here

 

The Good Guy’s Guide To Getting The Girl

My debut novel… if your gift-recipient likes Chick Lit Rom Coms in the style of Nick Horny or Mike Gayle, this could well be right up their street.
RRP £8.99

Buy it signed here £7.99 + £2.80 postage

Buy unsigned from amazon here

How to Do Everything and Be Happy

The book that started it all: ‘How To Do Everything and Be Happy’ is a book for ordinary people. With ordinary lives. It’s for people who have been ambling along and wondering why they’re not – well – just that little bit happier.
RRP £8.99

Buy it signed here £7.99 + £2.80 postage

Buy unsigned from amazon here

How to Start Dating and Stop Waiting

If they need a real guide to getting the girl, or guy, this is it. Written for everyone who’s ever found dating a challenge, dating websites to be less than fulfilling, or ‘first dates’ terrifying… How To Start Dating And Stop Waiting will help them dodge the liars, & Lotharios, and have
them dating Mr or Ms Right in no time.
RRP £8.99

Buy it signed here £7.99 + £2.80 postage

Buy unsigned from amazon here

From Invisible To Irresistible

The smaller, quirkier, companion guide to the previous title. Let me fix those underlying problems that make your otherwise attractive charming gift-recipient seemingly invisible to those they’d like to date.
RRP £8.99

Buy it signed here £7.99 + £2.80 postage

Buy unsigned from amazon here

 

How to Eat Loads and Stay Slim

And finally.. How To Eat Loads and Stay Slim. It isn’t a diet book. Not in the traditional sense. It’s a book packed full of thought provoking, scientifically-provable, ideas and changes you can make to your life to increase your chances of being slim. Now that’s a gift that keeps on giving!
RRP £8.99

Buy it signed here £7.99 + £2.80 postage

Buy unsigned from amazon here

Turning failure into possibilities – WTFHIBD episode 6

Blimey! Has it been 9 months since I wrote one of these WTFHIBD things?? Where does the time go? Actually that’s kinda the point of these WTFHIBD posts; to tell you exactly what I’ve been spending my time on.

Let’s start with GOALS.

My GOALS

2014 turned into something of a damp squib for me. Whilst a lot of good things happened, on balance it was pretty much ‘the year of disappointments’. People often tell me I’m too tough on myself, but as summer rolled into autumn all I could see was failure, failure, failure… in every aspect of my life.

But around January, and as I sat down to set my GOALs for the year I somehow managed to summon some of the fight that I’d lost in previous months, and although my 2015 goals didn’t look a whole lot different from previous years, perhaps I altered my approach to them, because even though it felt like I was starting again, at the same time the only way was up; I’d already failed at everything – it would be hard to fail even more. Success was actually the easier option.

I BECAME ‘SELF-HELP GURU TURNED NOVELIST’

Having watched my debut lad-lit, rom-com novel  – The Good Guy’s Guide To Getting The Girl – climb the charts in September… only to come crashing back down to earth again… I took the somewhat odd decision to start sending it out to agents and publishers again. On the one hand this seemed like a bad idea; I would be trying to sell a book that was already published. On the other, I could point at lots of nice reviews, the fact it did rather well during it’s first promotion, and my previous non-fiction successes. Surely that would make me, and the book, an attractive proposition?

Well, six months later and I had indeed got myself a new agent… and in turn a publicity deal with amazon!

The book underwent another edit, the cover got brighter, and after a little help from Kylie Minogue (sort of), amazon made it part of their July 99p Summer Reads promotion. It’s back up near the top of the charts …and it’s doing ok! Better than ok!

If you fancy a chuckle, as well as keeping me in the book business, now would be a very good time to spend a quid at the world’s biggest bookstore.

I STARTED MY NEXT BOOK

One of last year’s many failures was a five part serial that I wrote for a particularly well known woman’s magazine. After a full sixteen weeks of consideration, the fiction editor of magazine-that-cannot-be-named decided that it wasn’t really ‘real-world’ enough for their readers, and that she was going to pass up the opportunity of publishing it.

In the same week however, my new agent decided that actually it was a cracker of story – and could quite easily be expanded into a full length novel. My next novel. And so, Facebook pals have been subjected to almost daily word count updates, whilst readers of my other blog have been perplexed by various posts about how I use excel spreadsheets to write

I STARTED GIVING MORE TALKS

One of my few successes last year were the number of talks I was asked to give.

Whereas previously I’d been giving the odd talk to Women’s Institutes and Town’s Women’s Guilds – suddenly the U3A, the Rotary Club, the Trefoil Society, and numerous independent clubs and societies started to invite me along based on recommendations from those who’d heard me speak elsewhere.

As the year ended I realised that public speaking is pretty much one of the things I love most… and so I came up with a second talk (entitled: How I Met Kylie Minogue) and offered it to all those folk who were kind enough to invite me along the first time. The result is I’m now doing a talk at least once a week (this week I’ve done three!) – and whilst it’s hardly a living, it has relieved a little bit of the pressure I’ve been putting myself under to make a living from writing alone.

If you’d like me to come and talk to your group or society – drop me a line

My NOW List

Let’s move on from GOALS. What have I been doing for fun? (Not that writing isn’t fun – but you know what I mean…)

The NOW List is chock-a-block with exciting things that I’d absolutely love to do… sadly, most require time, money, often both, and I have neither.

That said, whilst I still haven’t managed to visit the Cook Islands, or visit Rome again, or anything that requires a plane trip, I have ticked off many items that I could do relatively cheaply, in around my local area. And some of those things included…

• A visit to Mr Foggs of Mayfair. A strangely wonderful place.
• My quest to find the strangest, experimental theatrical performances once a month – in the past few weeks I’ve seen improvised puppet shows, naked people rolling around in food, and a disturbing monologue about fantasy movies…
• A visit to a junk shop that I’ve driven past many times and always wanted to go inside
• A day at the beach with my very own luxury beach hut at my disposal
• An evening at one of London’s Roof Top cinemas

But enough about me

How about you? What have you been up to? What NOW List items have you managed to tick off? What goals have you set yourself or achieved? Feel free to drop me a line, here or on facebook, or post a comment below.

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Dave Monk (BBC Essex): How To Be Successful at Online Dating

 

Over the last few weeks I’ve been playing catch up with some of the radio interviews I’ve given over the past few months, and back in May of this year I was invited back onto the Dave Monk show on BBC Essex, to celebrate twenty five years of the internet and to talk specifically about the surge in online dating popularity.

You can listen to the whole interview by clicking the big play button in the image below, or here if you’re reading this in an email.

We talk about my own experiences as well as some scientifically proven tips and strategies to make your own dating efforts more successful, such as…

1. Whether you should smile for the camera
2. Just how much of your profile should be spent talking about yourself (vs the person you’re looking for), and
3. What to say in that opening message

Want More Tips?

If you want to delve into the detail the tips above, pick my brain for more nuggets of dating gems, or need a little more hand holding, then I have some very good news. How To Start Dating And Stop Waiting, my third self-help book, is available in paperback and as an ebook. An audio version – which includes the companion guide From Invisible To Irresistible – is also available at audible (co.uk and com)

You don’t need a Kindle device to read a Kindle book. Download the FREE kindle app for your computer, smart phone or tablet from amazon (.co.uk | .com)

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If you like a little romance in your fiction, particularly if you’re a fan of books like Bridget Jones’s Diary, or High Fidelity, or About a Boy, then you might be interested to know that  The Good Guy’s Guide To Getting The Girl, my debut novel, is finally available!

It’s available in paperback and ebook, and it can be yours in two clicks, for less than the price of a cup of coffee – click here now.

Boats, Bubbles, and Becoming Me; WTFHIBD episode 5

You know it’s about time I wrote another WTFHIBD blog post. After all I made a deal with my brother; regular WTFHIBD updates! So here we go again. Let’s start with my NOW List

My Now List

I’ve managed to tick off two NOW List items since I my last update; and I can’t really take credit for organising either of them.

For Christmas Jules – my long suffering assistant – bought me a Scuba lesson! Scuba is something that I always wanted to try as a kid. I remember begging Mum to let me join a club or something… and the barely concealed relief on her face when she told me I had to be at least eighteen years old. Then I turned eighteen. But now that I was big enough and ugly enough to send myself to scuba club… it just never happened.

I even had friends who learnt to dive and still I never got around to looking into it.

But… put it on a NOW List, make that NOW List public, and you’ll be surprised what can happen.

Like ‘HMS Wilton‘ for instance.

Not far from where I live there’s an old battle ship (a coastal mine sweeper to be precise). It serves as HQ of the Essex Yacht Club and for the longest time I’ve wanted to get aboard and look about. Not much of a problem you’d think – except that it’s not open to the public, and until recently there was no way of sending the Yacht Club any kind of message from their website!

Then one morning, a few weeks back, Della went for a run down there with Maggie her white German Shepherd and happened to bump into someone just locking the Yacht Club gates. Ten minutes of “oh what a lovely dog!” and “do you ever open this boat to the public?” later and she had arranged a personal tour from the chairman.

Goals

Last time I wrote a WTFHIBD post I mused about the importance of being true to yourself, and how it’s all too easy to get swept up in other people’s expectations of who and what you should be.

I’m ashamed to say that I’m still having thoughts along those lines all these months later. But after some significant soul searching it does feel like I might finally be getting to the bottom of them – like I might be recapturing some of the energy and drive that set me off on this journey in the first place.

Part of the reason for this might be because I’ve made significant headway with one of the goals that came out of the Vision Exercise I put myself through a while back; ten years after Kate made me sit down and start writing it I’ve finally published a work of fiction – my debut novel (The Good Guy’s Guide To Getting The Girl) came out in paperback and as an ebook a few days ago. I am officially a novelist!

I was a little nervous about putting it out there, but so far I’m delighted with the response.

But enough about me

How about you? What have you been up to? What NOW List items have you managed to tick off? What goals have you set yourself or achieved? Feel free to drop me a line, here or on facebook, or post a comment below.

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Phoenix FM Happy Club: What’s holding YOU back from being fabulous? #fear

Over the last few weeks I’ve been playing catch up with some of the radio interviews I’ve given including my ‘Happy Club’ slot of Michelle Ward‘s show on Phoenix98 FM.

Last month, I came clean and told Michelle that this happiness journey hasn’t been all roses, as well as the real reason why my novel – The Good Guy’s Guide To Getting The Girl – is being released this week (…rather than back in April when it was supposed to).

Basically it all comes down to fear.

To listen to the interview click the big play button in the image below, or here if you’re reading this in an email.

We go onto chat about what advice a successful, future version of myself would give me were he to jump back in time to the present, and discover that it’s pretty much the same advice that a less-than-successful future version of myself might say. We also answer listener questions and finish up by discussing the very book that’s had me so chewed up these past few months.

Want More Tips?

All four of my How To books are available in paperback, audio and for your kindle enabled device. In most cases the kindle versions are less than the price of a cup of coffee! Jeepers! Click here to find out more.

You don’t need a Kindle device to read a Kindle book. Download the FREE kindle app for your computer, smart phone or tablet from amazon (.co.uk | .com)

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My debut novel, The Good Guy’s Guide To Getting The Girl, is finally available!

The ebook is currently less than a quid for a very limited period. To download it to your tablet or smartphone via the Free Kindle App click here now.

Phoenix FM Happy Club: Why Random Acts Of Kindness Are Good For You

Over the last few weeks I’ve been playing catch up with some of the radio interviews I’ve given over the past few months, including my ‘Happy Club’ slot on Michelle Ward‘s show on Phoenix98 FM.

Way, way back in June of this year, Michelle and I chewed over the topic of Random Acts Of Kindness and some intriguing scientific research that’s discovered…

1. it really is better to give than recieve, but
2. you might be better storing up your kind acts and doing them all on one day!

Click the big play button in the image below, or here if you’re reading this in an email.

We chat about what makes an act of kindness truly random, and discover that Michelle’s listeners seem to have a fondness for buying people cakes. Useful to know if you happen to live in the Brentwood / Billericay area of Essex, UK. And we get completely off topic and start talking about my X-factor style audition to be an official Women’s Institute Speaker. (I passed. Just in case you were worried about that)

But back to Random Acts of Kindness; check out this fabulous Thai advertisement for Life Insurance. If this doesn’t bring a lump to your throat then I swear you’re made of stone. Click here if you’re reading this in an email.

Want More Tips?

All four of my How To books are available in paperback, audio and for your kindle enabled device. In most cases the kindle versions are less than the price of a cup of coffee! Jeepers! Click here to find out more.

You don’t need a Kindle device to read a Kindle book. Download the FREE kindle app for your computer, smart phone or tablet from amazon (.co.uk | .com)

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During the show Michelle asks why my debut novel, The Good Guy’s Guide To Getting The Girl, isn’t available yet. I squirm uncomfortably in my chair and try and come up with a plausible sounding reason. Fortunately though it is finally available!

The official launch is September 12th 2014 (that’s next week!), when the ebook will be less than a quid for a very limited period, and I’ll be personally delivering copies to anyone who wants one (that last bit might not be true). Subscribe to this blog to be reminded of the launch nearer the time, but if you can’t wait to flick through the contents of my imagination, click here now.

Phoenix FM ‘Happy Club’: Top 5 Dating Tips

Over the next few weeks I’ll be playing catch up with some of the radio interviews I’ve given over the past few months, including my ‘Happy Club’ slot of Michelle Ward‘s show on Phoenix98 FM.

This week we hop back in time to March of this year when Michelle and I talked about the highs and lows of 21st Century dating. Click the big play button in the image below, or here if you’re reading this in an email.

We chat about my top five dating tips (something that you can read more of here), why it’s too easy to fall in love with someone online, and why I eventually decided to cut off my long flowing locks all those years ago (hint: the picture to the left was taken long long loooong before I made that momentous decision)

Want More Tips?

If you want to delve into the detail behind my five tips above, pick my brain for more nuggets of dating gems, or need a little more hand holding, then I have some very good news. How To Start Dating And Stop Waiting, my third self-help book, is available in paperback and as an ebook. An audio version – which includes the companion guide From Invisible To Irresistible – is also available at audible (co.uk and com)

You don’t need a Kindle device to read a Kindle book. Download the FREE kindle app for your computer, smart phone or tablet from amazon (.co.uk | .com)

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During the show I mention that my debut novel, The Good Guy’s Guide To Getting The Girl, would be available ‘at Easter’. Then Easter came and went and the novel was nowhere to be seen. Well the good news is it is finally available!

The official launch is September 12th 2014, when the ebook will be less than a quid for a very limited period, and I’ll be personally delivering copies to anyone who wants one (that last bit might not be true). Subscribe to this blog to be reminded of the launch nearer the time, but if you can’t wait four weeks to flick through the contents of my imagination, click here now.