Firstly, I’ve had some extremely positive feedback from Dorinda Cass on her short story critique, which I supplied as a prize a week ago on this blog.
She told me, “Your critique was helpful and insightful. I have no qualms in recommending your critique service to others.”
Therefore I am pleased to announce that the First Impressions Critique Service is now open for business.
The cost is £10.00 for a critique of a story or piece of non-fiction up to 2,000 words in length. Full details of what’s included can be found on my First Impressions Critique Service page. Why not pop over and have a look?
Secondly, The Writer’s Coffee Shop is currently open for submissions. This is an independent publisher based in New South Wales in Australia and it is also the publisher that first released Fifty Shades of Grey as e-books and print-on-demand paperbacks. I thought that EL James had initially self-published the e-books but according to her website, this was not the case.
The Writer’s Coffee Shop is currently looking for stories between 20,000 and 30,000 words (a good stepping stone from short story to novel?). The stories must fall into the genres of either romance or erotica. Stories can be emailed and full details are here.
Finally, I’ve had a couple of nice surprises in the past week. I was shortlisted in the Writers’ News ‘Pride and Prejudice’ Short Story Competition – I was pleased about this since I’d gone to the trouble of reading the book (for the first time) especially so that I could enter the competition.
And today I heard that I’d won a £25 Tesco gift card for leaving a comment on Hire Bloggers Facebook page. Hire Bloggers is a new undertaking that aims to match bloggers to businesses for paid work. Wouldn’t it be nice to earn money from blogging?
Sally Jenkins 
#1 by Wendy Clarke on June 11, 2013 - 9:22 am
Great about the critique service, Sally – I’m sure it will be a great success. Also well done on the Pride and Prejudice shortlisting.
#2 by Sally Jenkins on June 11, 2013 - 12:01 pm
Thanks, Wendy.
#3 by Patsy on June 11, 2013 - 10:51 am
Sounds as though things are going well!
#4 by Tracy Fells on June 11, 2013 - 1:04 pm
Good luck with the critique service Sally – this is an excellent idea to use your skills. And congrats on Writers’ News shortlisting too. Which character from the novel did you write about?
#5 by Sally Jenkins on June 11, 2013 - 6:26 pm
Tracy, I wrote about Anne de Bourgh and her mother, Catherine, plus some of the other characters got a quick mention.
#6 by Helen Yendall on June 11, 2013 - 2:09 pm
Good luck with your critique service, Sally!
#7 by susanjanejones on June 11, 2013 - 3:07 pm
Great news that you’ve got your critique service underway Sally. I might have something, well plenty of things actually to send you someday. Well done on the Pride and Prejudice shortlisting. That was a hard one. The Tesco voucher is a lot as well. If I got paid for blog hopping and being nosey I’d be well away.
#8 by Sally Jenkins on June 11, 2013 - 6:27 pm
Being paid for blog-hopping would be brilliant wouldn’t it, Susan!
#9 by Debbie Young on June 11, 2013 - 4:06 pm
Congratulations, Sally (and how did you manage to get through school without being made to read Pride & Prejudice?!)
Thanks for the great tips, as ever. Interesting point about making money from blogging – a techie friend of mine was trying to convince me to take paid advertising on my blog but (a) I’m not convinced you don’t need zillions of hits a day to make it pay and (b) adverts on other people’s blogs are a bit irritating – or am I being naive? Off to investigate Hire Bloggers on FB now… we all have our price!
#10 by Sally Jenkins on June 11, 2013 - 6:31 pm
Debbie, Pride and Prejudice never cropped up at school. We did Lord of the Flies, Keats’ poems and several Shakespeare plays instead. I’m not sure about adverts on blogs, they can be distracting and I agree that you probably need thousands of followers to make any money. But I do fancy being paid to write blog posts …
#11 by Annie on June 12, 2013 - 8:34 am
Well done Sally. such a clever girl. thank you for all the newsy bits too.
#12 by Sally Jenkins on June 12, 2013 - 12:05 pm
I don’t know about ‘clever’, Annie – but I try my best!
#13 by Alice on June 13, 2013 - 5:11 am
Well done Sally. Is your critique service open to non fiction writers? Thank you also for the tip on Hire Bloggers. I have just signed in.
#14 by Sally Jenkins on June 13, 2013 - 12:16 pm
Yes, Alice, I am happy to look at non-fiction.
#15 by Linda on June 14, 2013 - 2:14 pm
Good luck with the critique service. It seems very reasonably priced compared with some others I’ve seen. (That has to be a good selling point for all us not-made-the-big-time-yet writers!)
#16 by Sally Jenkins on June 14, 2013 - 6:59 pm
Thanks, Linda!
#17 by Gold Price on June 24, 2013 - 11:12 pm
Thank you for your interest in The Writer’s Coffee Shop Publishing House. We are currently accepting submissions for fiction. At this time, we do not accept: short stories, short story collections, children’s books, picture books, poetry, non-fiction, true crime, memoirs, fictionalized memoirs, biographies, or choose your own ending books.