GUEST AUTHOR - JAY JEAN JACKSON

Today I'm chatting with author Jay Jean Jackson, who has shied away from social media, but has such a charming story to tell, as to why she now writes her books, that I wanted to share it with you.

It's lovely to meet you Jay, so can you start by telling me about your writing journey.

It's lovely to be here! The first children’s story I wrote, The Tale of Totowa, came about because of my love for wildlife. I have always enjoyed writing, but never really thought of writing a children’s book before this. 

I had travelled to many countries to see wildlife in its own natural habitat, wild and free. I love photography, and wildlife encounters were always so thrilling that it had almost become an addiction. 

I can understand that, I'm a fan of seeing wildlife in the wild too!

There's nothing quite like it. My love continued and when I moved to Turkey, 19 years ago, and heard a loud chirping noise outside my window every night, I was excited and curious to see what creature it was. 

Each night for weeks I would stand on my bedroom balcony or downstairs terrace, a torch in one hand and a camera in the other, searching in the dark. However, the chirping sound would very often stop as I crept about. 

I had lost hope of ever discovering what this animal was. I had many disturbed nights’ sleep and must confess to feeling extremely frustrated, but my curiosity and love of wildlife kept me going. 

That's perseverance! What happened next?

One night, I was again standing on my terrace searching in the dark with my torch, and the noise started again. It sounded so close, echoing around me. I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t see it, but wait, was the noise coming from behind me? From inside the house! Could it have been in my house all along? I walked into my kitchen and burst out laughing. There, sitting on the edge of my dog’s water bowl, was a little green toad. 

“Hello,” I exclaimed, and the little toad looked at me, chirped and dived into the water, which he obviously thought of as his own little pond. 

I was so dumbfounded I had forgotten to even take a photo, but my imagination was stirred and I started writing ‘The Tale Of Totowa’ the very next day. 

Aww, that's really cute!

Unfortunately, once written, it remained unedited, and his story sat in the dusty archives of my computer, rather like Totowa himself, who must have been hiding all that time in the dust under my kitchen units. 

I am not sure if I ever intended to do anything with it in the way of publication. I just wanted to write, and I hoped my grandchildren would read it someday. 

So you had a manuscript collecting dust, but you have more published books now, so what happened to change that?

My next two books came about many years later, and for a very different reason. With thanks to social media, my childhood friend Alison reconnected with me. We had known each other for many years through the trials and tribulations of growing up. In fact, our mothers had been friends. Both had been nurses who had worked together many years before and had also stayed friends. 

Sadly, Alison and I had lost touch, so I was delighted to hear from her again. She was now living in France and loving her life there. I was devastated when she told me she was unwell, and I knew she was very depressed because of it. I racked my brain to think of a way to cheer her up. Travelling to see her at that time wasn’t possible, and I came up with an idea that I hoped would help. 

Whenever we spoke, we dreamt about meeting up somewhere and catching up on the parts of each other’s lives we had missed out on hearing about, so I wrote her a poem and asked her to write the next verse. I named the poem, I Wonder Where Our Bench Will Be? This is the first verse:

 

Where should our bench be?

Should it be where we have never been?

Should it look over a river or stream?

Should there be trees and grass, and flowers?

A picnic, perhaps, as we talk for hours.

Or should it be looking out to sea?

I wonder where our bench should be.

Perhaps a lake reflecting the sky?

A Paris cafe, watching passers-by?

Maybe a forest during spring or fall?

Or a snowy mountain 1000ft tall

I think I would like the sky to be blue

But as for the rest, it’s over to you.

The very next day, I was thrilled to receive a verse back from my friend. This became an almost daily occurrence, and our poem continued for months until we had finally caught up with so many of the adventures we had experienced. 

After we had shared so many of our antics over the years, the poem ended, and Alison had started to feel low again. She wanted a new challenge, so I suggested we write a children’s book. She loved the idea but suggested that I write it and she would illustrate it. I got writing straight away as I had recently visited Mexico and met a cunning little raccoon I had named Bandito. 

And these are the illustrations she sent over?

Yes. It was wonderful sending Alison each chapter I had written, and it was wonderful seeing my little characters come to life through her imagination, as she drew the pictures of them getting up to all sorts of pranks and mischief. One book led to another, and this is how ‘Douc’s Adventures In Mexico’ and ‘Douc’s Caribbean Cruise’ were created. 

I am not sure I ever really thought about having a book published. I would often write, just for the fun of it. Sometimes about my travel adventures or something funny that had happened whilst working. Quite simply, I just enjoyed writing. I also enjoyed drawing some of the amazing creatures I met. 

This is so lovely!

It is! However, eight years after my friend had sadly passed, I did wonder about publishing the Bandito and Douc books so I contacted my friend's husband. He still lived in France and we had kept in touch over the years. 

When I asked how he would feel about me publishing the books with my friend's drawings he assured me that they had spoken about it and she had expected me to ask this question one day. I was amazed she had and was able to go ahead not just with his blessing but with hers too.  

Aww, Jay, that's such a touching story.

A few months after publication I travelled to France and took a finished copy of Doucs adventures in Mexico to give to him.  Many tears were shed but it was special to see a copy of the book in the very house where she had worked on the illustrations and laughed at Banditos antics all those years before.  

That is such a wonderful history you had together, thank you so much for sharing it with me, and if you'd like to see more of Jay's work, which is aimed at 6-12 year olds, you can find her on Amazon here or you can follow her on Facebook here

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How my book cover was designed!

I've had quite a few compliments about my book cover, and questions about who designed it for me, so I thought I'd chat a bit about my experience of recruiting my perfect artist and the stages we went through before the final cover was created.

I went into this part of the experience quite nervous, as I'd been on quite a few webinars where book covers were discussed and, to be honest, it seemed a bit of a minefield. You have to look at trends, research the books in your genre and ensure yours fits in (if you want sales, that is!), don't pick certain colours because they're not in vogue, don't make the space too cluttered, but not too plain either - aaahhhh! Where do you even begin 😕?

The only thing I knew for certain was that I wanted to work with a designer and get something I loved, but how to do that? I had no idea. I chatted to writer friends, and everyone seemed to have different advice, so I decided to listen to my heart. 

My genre is humorous women's fiction, so bright colours seemed to be everywhere - no black or grey or dark colours of any kind. We're talking pinks, mints, peaches, yellows, the tones very pastel or so in-your-face they could be seen from the moon! And clear-to-read fonts seemed to be popular too - there was an occasional really fancy, twirly lettering style used, but more of them were big and bold.

Okay, so that part of my research was done but during it, I'd come to realise there were some designs I really loved, whereas others didn't do it for me at all. So what, exactly, DID I want? Hhhmmm, tricky 🤔

The funny thing is, when I was writing my novel, I got an idea that just wouldn't go away. The concept of the novel revolves around words beginning with the letter F - they dominate the novel because my protagonist is haunted by them. She had always wanted to be 'fabulous' but life got in the way and as the novel opens, she realises she's inadvertently stuck in a 'fug'! 

Add into that every chapter is about one of her Fs, from family and friends, to fellas and finances, so the F in the title needed to feature strongly on the cover. 

As you can see from the initial sketches (not completed by me, I should add 😂), I'd visualised a mini-Jaye struggling to hold up her burden, an F, and she was stuck in the gloom of its shadow. That seemed doable, didn't it? Discussions with some designers proved it wasn't that easy, so then I had my doubts. 

And there was a second problem. It's set in Scotland, in the beautiful Highlands, and I'd love them to feature on the cover, but my genre rarely has busy covers. How could we bring in a Scottish flavour, whilst also being in-keeping with the genre? Oh dear, I was asking quite a lot, and I hadn't realised.

One thing that became very apparent during my search for the perfect designer was that my vision couldn't be realised by someone buying stock images and putting them together. Yikes!  Luckily I kept looking and stumbled across the amazing Sofie Birkin, a Brit living in New York. 

Sophie's a multi-award winning illustrator, graphic designer and product designer with 10 years experience, specialising in character work and typography for editorial and publishing. Impressive, although what some of that meant I didn't really know! But chatting with her was lovely, as she's this lovely ball of positive energy, and I found out that she sketches all her covers, using the latest technology to convert them into covers, so that sounded exactly what I needed. And Sofie quickly proved to be the perfect fit for me. All these sketches are hers - she gave me so many brilliant cover ideas to choose from, but I'm jumping ahead of myself.

Her first request was to read some of my novel and then start drawing, using my half-formed ideas, and adding a few of her own. 

I wanted to utilise her creativity, because she was the expert, and she came up with some amazing ideas. For example, the dress cover (right) is a scene from the novel, where my main character, Jaye, is getting dressed-up to go out. Buying the 'right' dress had been a nightmare for her. 

Luckily her best friend spotted the perfect dress - red, sequins, and something Jaye would never have the courage to wear on her own. Once bought though, she had many misgivings, and there's a fun scene where she's preparing to go out and nothing goes right with her preparations - even the dress doesn't fit anymore, so she definitely has a love/ hate relationship with it! 

Sofie took this scene and created this amazing cover. I have to be honest, I was blown away by it. The only downside was that it was one scene from the book, and this is book 1 of a series of 3, so it wouldn't translate well into the rest of the books, but I really hated shelving it!

Another of Sofie's ideas was a charm bracelet full of Fs - such a lovely idea (left)! 

But she loved my the huge F idea too and I've included a couple of her many different styles of F she created for me. She gave me far too much choice! But I think her idea of filling the F with a Scottish view was utter genius! 

She played with putting the scene behind (left), but it was too busy, compared to others in the genre. But it does make the F pop brilliantly and her artistic skill would have made a beautiful cover - again, this was so hard to reject!

But we had our winner (first B&W sketch above) and she then got busy colouring it in. Great, I thought, job done. But no! I had no idea this would be another nightmare!

There were definite colours that seemed to be more popular, so Sofie researched for me and came up with some examples (below). There was a choice of background colours, font colours, shading, shadowing, outlining - wow, my head wanted to explode 😂 

The thing about these covers is that I liked them all, but when you have to make a choice, where do you start? 

I went to my beta readers, friends and family, and definite favourites started to emerge, which was very helpful.

Then there was more to-ing and fro-ing, ideas bouncing back and forth. Luckily for me, Sofie has patience by the bucket-full and she needed it, because it was so hard to choose.

Eventually decisions were reached - on the outline-colour of the F and the text, the tone of the shadows, the colouring of the Scotland within the F (she created both sunsets and sunny skies!) and because I love Inverness and the surrounding area, she even drew the silhouette of a Loch Ness Monster in the water - sheer brilliance!

So this was the cover I ended up with, and I'm delighted with the work Sofie produced. She's a very talented artist and if you ever need someone with heaps of talent, then you can see her work here

It was definitely a collaboration and we choose popular colours, went for a fashionable plain background which was enhanced by shading from pink into blue, and she hand-drew a cartoon-style character representing my main character (her hair colouring, frame, etc) in the style that's everywhere just now in my genre.

The great news is that books 2 and 3 also revolve around letters, so this design is going to carry on through the series and I can't wait to see them! Of course, I can't wait to finish writing them either 🤣

So now my book is out in the world, and I'm thrilled. I've already had some lovely reviews, which you can read more about in my blog post here, or you can see them on Goodreads here 

And don't forget that you can also buy a copy - it's available in Paperback or electronically on Kindle (and is currently free on Kindle Unlimited).

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