WHY ME AND 98 OTHER AUTHORS ARE STALKING JILLIAN DODD

If you watch the news too much you’d be forgiven for thinking that the world is a crappy place. And after the recent Amazon reviews fiasco you might be tempted to think all writers are self obsessed morons.

In fact, the world is pretty welcoming, writers are mostly all brilliant people and here’s another reason why.

Today about 99 authors are blogging about and promoting just one author, and she doesn’t know a thing about it.

Her name is Jillian Dodd and she’s a best selling author of young adult fiction. I hardly know her except from a couple of online groups.

But she sounds like a very generous and incredibly generous woman, as well as being a well known and highly accomplished author.

She recently organized an online promotion - “99 authors, 99 books, 99 cents” - and I was invited to take part, just before Christmas. We all benefited from it; it’s just that Jill did almost all the work. All the rest of us did was sign up.

She told us all what to do, step by step, patiently and promptly answering all queries, despite being bombarded with a range of questions (“Hey, what time is 12.01 PST when it’s five twenty in the afternoon in Bellview, Texas?”) and then, having done all the work for everyone else, Amazon pulled her book hours before the promotion was about to start.

She got through that as well.

The promotion was enormously successful and Jillian stayed up bleary-eyed for forty-eight hours to make sure the whole thing went smoothly and keep everyone else’s numbers up to date.

At the end she was showered with thank you’s. She kind of just shrugged and said well, I’m glad it helped I’m off to bed now.

So. We would all like our little corners of the world to know a bit more about her.

I don’t read much womens’ YA fiction, as you’d expect. But there’s a massive audience that does and perhaps you are one of them. So here’s my good word for Jillian, and not just because she’s a good scout.

Take a look at Stalk Me: for instance: you have to be more than a nice person to get 138 five star reviews. You must know how to write a little bit.

Gossip Girl meets Hollywood in this steamy new series by That Boy author, Jillian Dodd.

Keatyn has everything she ever dreamed. Her life is following the script she wrote for the perfect high school experience. She’s popular, goes to the best parties, dates the hottest guy, and sits at the most-coveted lunch table.

She’s just not sure she wants it anymore.

Because, really, things aren’t all that perfect.

Her best friend is threatening to tell everyone her perfect relationship is a scam.
Her perfect boyfriend gets drunk at every party they go to.
It’s exhausting always trying to look and act perfect.
And, deep down, she isn’t sure if she has any true friends.

To add to the drama, her movie star mom has a creepy stalker.
A hot, older man flirts with her and tells her they should make a movie together.
And she’s crushing on an adorable surfer. Dating him would mean committing social suicide.

So she writes a new script. One where all the pieces of her life will come together in perfect harmony.

But little does she know, there’s someone who will do anything to make sure that doesn’t happen.

Fans of Keatyn are busy on social networking sites posting photos of who they think should play her in a film or television series. She’s doing a lot right.

Book two of her Keatyn Chronicles is Kiss Me. Since it’s release on the 26^th of November, it has a mere 157 five star reviews.

Not bad.

So do yourself a favour and take a look at Jillian’s work: you’ll be seeing her face a lot around the web today as 99 (sorry, 98 - maths was never my strong suit) other authors high-five a talented and extremely generous author. She does not know this has been done, so ping over to Jillian’s website or Jillian’s Facebook and give her a surprise. She deserves it!

And thanks also to the wonderful CC MacKenzie and Charles Sheehan-Miles for organizing the surprise!