I subscribe to the Words With Jam newsletter and when the editor asked for book reviewers, I thought, ‘aha, I don’t write many book reviews; if someone makes me do it, then I’ll write more’. So I emailed back and said, ‘Hello, I’d love to write book reviews for Words With Jam’, attaching my review of How to be a Woman by Caitlin Moran. The editor – Jane – emailed back, said she thought my review was great and would love to have me as a contributor and gave me a deadline to send another review, of any book, new or old.
The book on the go on my Kindle at the time was the disturbing – but brilliant – In Search of Adam by Caroline Smailes, so I wrote about that, sent it off and waited for Jane to come back and say my review was shit. She didn’t say it was shit; she said it was perfect and here it is on the Words With Jam website.
Then, another nice thing happened. @StRemeze saw the link to the review on Twitter, and liked it so much he re-posted it on his blog (giving me full credit, he didn’t just rip me off).