Welcome to Jon's Author Diary for the week ending June 9, 2019.
I am back at the writing desk after last week's half-term holiday and have been experimenting with a new schedule for my work. So instead of just focusing on one project at a time, I now work on a project that needs editing in the mornings and write first drafts and outlines during the afternoon.
I’ll track how much I do over the next six weeks to see if this is working, or whether it is slowing me down.
Writing
During the mornings this week, I worked on redrafting The Hermit, episode nine of The Ravenglass Chronicles.
In the afternoons, I worked on Cleric of the Wasteland, book 4 in the Wasteland series and have just reached the midpoint of the story. As I started work on this 18 months ago, I think it’s about time that I get this book finished!
I'm hoping that with this new way of working, I can have a solid first draft of Cleric of the Wasteland complete by the end of July.
Blind Reset?
When the fourth Wasteland book is complete, there’s a distinct possibility that I will write the follow-up to Blind Gambit. I abandoned the sequel a year ago, and revisiting it I’ve realised I wasn’t in the right headspace to make a judgement. Looking at it with a bit of distance, I can see the scenes I’ve written are solid and the outline is good.
If you’ve read Blind Gambit, you’ll know that it set half in a virtual world and half in the real world. The real world scenes were challenging to write because they are about a teenage boy coming to terms with going bling—something I have to deal with, so it’s very personal, very raw. I have half of the real-world scenes written for book 2, so it’s just a case of adding a few scenes a week to finish the story.
Book club read
I’ve started reading The Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks. This is an epic fantasy classic that I have not read before and has been on my TBR pile for years. We’re reading it as our June read in The Arcane Book Club Facebook group, so that force my hand. I’m only a couple of chapters into the audiobook and I’m already hooked.
Ancient Egypt
I’ve been on a bit of an ancient Egypt binge this week and watched a few documentaries and listened to several podcasts on the subject. I’m currently watching one on Netflix called The Pyramid Code. The first episode was great. It showed how many of the pyramids were lined up to the precession of the zodiac and arranged to reflect the solstices.
The second episode unfortunately went to the pseudo-science route, bringing in ‘subtle energies’ and magic. One of the contributors talked about the existence of light ‘orbs’ within the pyramids, suggesting untapped energy that scientists can’t explain. They can. I used to do photography. What they refer to as orbs are simply the camera’s flash bouncing off dust motes, creating the illusion of a light orb. The subject is fascinating enough as it without adding in woo.
Support my work
I continue to add content to my Patreon page—I’ve posted stories, articles, and audio, many of which are free to access, so please do check those out and support me for $1 per month at patreon.com/joncronshawauthor.
Yours,
Jon
