Author Archives: John Bray

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About John Bray

I'm the author of the 'Jack Reusen' series of books. My main website follows my writing adventures. When I'm not writing I'm taking in the countryside around my home in Perthshire, listening to podcasts on history and writing, creating websites for local businesses, or baking and cooking. Thanks for stopping by my profile and please feel free to say hello over on any of my blogs, Cheers, John

The zombie horde approaches

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zombie-499924_1280Zombies in an early-reader chapter book are proving an interesting challenge. I’ve just finished chapter eleven of book two (‘Jack Reusen and the Spark of Dreams’) and I’m having a lot of fun with my ‘zombies’ (as I’ve already said I’m a big zombie movie fan). I like to think I’ve kept the content creepy and exciting without making anything that would count as inappropriate for a younger audience.

Even if some scenes prove to be a little too grown-up I’ve got plenty of opportunity, once the book is done, to go back over it myself and make changes. Then comes the input of my grown-up ‘beta testers’ (who should iron out anything else I’ve missed) and then there’s my young beta testers (who will be brutally honest of something doesn’t work). The younger beta testers will provide the real test to see if the thrill is sufficiently high without leaving any hints of terror (I’m not trying to write a thriller).

This past week has been a bit manic, to be honest I’m amazed that I’ve had time to get any writing done, but I’ve managed to get through a few chapters. Though I’m sad to admit that I’m not finished the first draft yet despite the fact that I’d planned to be at this stage.

I have to keep reminding myself that missing a self-imposed deadline is no excuse to stop trying to reach my goal. I’ll have to pick up the pace soon though as I need time to edit, finalising the first book for publication took nearly a month of editing for ‘Jack Reusen and the Fey Flame‘. The longer it takes me to finish my first draft the later into April we’ll be before we see the finished product. I’ll just have to keep on plodding on.

That’s me for the night. I’m going to see if I can fit in some writing tomorrow morning before the kids get up, but recently they’ve both been up before seven each morning which doesn’t leave me much room for writing. I’ll just have to keep my fingers crossed that I’m not bombarded in the wee small hours of tomorrow morning.

Anyway progress report 27,184 words and counting amounting to 11 chapters in total completed. I’ll keep you updated as the book grows. Out of interest what time of day do you feel the most focussed? Would be interesting to chat about in the comments below, I always used to be a night-owl but I’m starting to enjoy being up early to write as the birds start singing. Anyway feel free to share your own feelings in the comments below, all the best, John

That was brilliant!

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Just finished my talk at Our Lady’s RC Primary School, Stirling. All the kids were fantastic, loads of good questions and they seemed to really enjoy meeting Jack.

I had been particularly worried about what the older kids would think to the book but I got big laughs for a good few bits (don’t worry they were supposed to be funny).

I would do that again in a heartbeat. If you’re a teacher, or are connected to a school in some way, and you think the children at your school would enjoy a book talk/author visit please let me know.

Grabbing a cup of tea in the staff room now, I’ll post again soon with an update on the progress of ‘Jack Reusen and the Spark of Dreams’. All the best, John

World book talk

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Today is the day. In a few hours I’ll be off to my first school book talk. I have no idea what to expect, I’ve chosen a few snippets from the book but aside from that I’m planning on asking the children themselves about their favourite books and about their favourite ways to make their own stories.

On top of that I’ll talking about writing and how the Jack Reusen series started. I’ve got about an hour to fill with each class so I’m hoping this’ll help keep them entertained.

I’ve got just over twenty books left and for the first time I’m hoping it’s enough. Anyway it’s all very exciting, wish me luck, cheers, John (I’ll post after the event to say how it went)

Would you like to be a zombie?

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Close_Gate_in_Case_of_Zombie_OutbreakBig spoiler for ‘Jack Reusen and the Spark of Dreams’ coming up…there are ‘zombies’ in it. I’ve got ‘zombies’ in inverted commas because I’ve tried to aim along the lines of slightly frightening, irrational people rather than terrifying undead corpses stalking the earth in search of brains. The books are for kids of five and up so, you know, I should probably avoid the brain eating.

So, there are no dead people and there is no brain eating. Other than that I’m running a few standard zombie movie scenarios in the course of the book: the general ‘something’s not quite right’ feeling evoked by the early stages of classic zombie flicks, leading on to irrational people chasing the heroes, and then our heroes are locked in a house with a horde trying to get in. Hopefully I’ve kept the scariness balanced enough for it to be exciting but not nightmare-inducing (don’t worry I’ll test it on my own kids first).

So here’s the fun bit: I was wondering if anyone out there wanted to volunteer to be a ‘zombie’. If I get a big influx I’ll need a way to decide who gets in, so feel free to give me an idea of what kind of behaviour your ‘zombie’ might display.

Here are a couple of examples, a lady with a fixed ‘plastic’ smile, her eyes gazing right through you as she makes paper aeroplanes out of important documents from her briefcase. Then there are two men queuing for coffee who attack each other over a packet of sugar but who forget their fight completely and limp away when someone interrupts them, one limping from being kicked in the butt.

Both of these come from the early ‘zombification’ stage but you could describe your zombie however you like. The basic idea is that people are losing their senses, getting lost in irrational, repetitive, and even dangerous activities (with a slightly comic twist). The best three will make it into the book. I’d particularly like to see ideas for members of the ‘zombie horde’. I look forward to hearing your suggestions/submissions (make sure you pop them in the comments below so I can find them easily), all the best, John

OK fess up, are you reading children’s fiction?

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J._K._Rowling_at_the_White_House_2010-04-05_9Rough number crunching gives us an odd statistic (though with the popularity of Harry Potter, Skulduggery Pleasant, etc. this is perhaps not surprising). Basically children (for argument’s sake let’s say those aged from 0-15) make up a little less than 10% of the UK population but sales of ‘children’s fiction’ (as defined by the publishers) makes up more than half of the fiction sold here.

Let’s assume that kids read twice as much as adults. To be honest I’m not sure I would believe that, you just need to see the average group of commuters to see how many adult fiction readers there are. Anyway let’s assume that children are more avid readers. Even then that would be two kids fiction books for every child and one for every adult. Adults make up 90% of the population, so that’s still a 9:2 ratio.

To even out the ratio children would have to be getting through a whopping nine books for every one book read by an adult. Someone, somewhere, is reading a lot of kids fiction.

I’ll admit that, aside from a very small number of exceptions, I basically exclusively read children’s fiction. A big part of that is exposure; I work in an environment filled with children’s books so when I’m deciding what to read next my attention is already there, but what’s everyone else’s excuse?

Is it the simplicity of the story-lines? Is it the departure from the every-day themes which can arise in typical adult fiction (even the most fantastical)? Many of us read for harmless escape (that’s my main motivation anyway) perhaps it’s just as simple as that: children’s fiction offers a greater escape from the stresses of adult life.

I’d love to hear your opinion, so feel free to add a comment below. It’d be interesting to see the different reading preferences and reasons behind them. All the best, John

(information gathered from 2013 and 2014 statistics)

And as simple as that, here they are…

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wpid-imag1318_burst002_1.jpgThe books have arrived! The official book launch for ‘Jack Reusen and the Fey Flame’ will be in Fun Junction in Perth this Saturday (21st February). I’ll be reading excerpts from the book and talking about stories and writing. There are three sessions scheduled, at 1pm, 2pm, and 3pm and they’ll go on for as long as kids look interested.

My last few nights have been spent reading through the book to find the best, most exciting parts to share with those of you who can make it to the launch. I can’t wait to see what kinds of reactions I’ll get on Saturday.

I’ve also been working on book two (while not chasing up book deliveries etc.) and I’m fairly happy with the book’s progress, though I’ll need to knuckle down on Sunday if I want to meet my deadline of the end of the month. Provided I can get it done by then, I’ll have four to six weeks to edit it and neaten it up (and beta test it a little/lot) before sending ‘Jack Reusen and the Spark of Dreams’ off to the printers.

I look forward to seeing you on Saturday in Perth (if you can make it along), all the best, John

Reusen Writathon

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starling-216086_1280Just in case it looks as though I haven’t been doing anything I thought I’d pop down a wee log of progress for book two (‘…the Spark of Dreams’). Currently I’m sitting near the end of chapter five with 11,846 words.

Today’s words written so far are 1,186, not a huge amount this morning but Jack has just met four new characters: a boy with no arms, a hedgehog girl, a fawn, and a bird-girl with her own special skill.

They all took a bit of work for me to be happy to start writing about them so that was a good portion of this morning’s activity.

Now stopping for a spot of lunch and then it’ll be school-run, feeding the kids, getting homework done and bath night, then hopefully sometime around nine I’ll be back at this keyboard to get to know more about these new characters.

In the mean time I’d love to hear what people think to my using a character with no arms and what kind of things you think might be worth thinking about for him. Pop your responses in the comments section below.

Until tonight, thanks for reading, all the best, John

One week on

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wpid-wp-1422646240603.jpegThis time last week ‘Jack Reusen and the Fey Flame’ went live on kindle, since then I’ve sold a lot more copies than I expected to in Jack’s first week. I’ve also had a few people reserve copies of the print edition which should be on the shelves soon (printers’ schedule permitting).

The response to Jack’s world has really surprised me and I’m really touched that so many people have shown support for my wee book series either by buying a copy, or simply by liking the facebook page and following on twitter.

On top of this I now have two book talks booked for the coming weeks. One of these might be expected (for those of you that know me anyway), as it’s a book reading/talk and signing at Fun Junction in Perth.

The other event came as a real surprise as a teacher that I know who works in a Stirling school asked if I could join in with their World Book Day event which draws in three schools. Needless to say I jumped at the chance.

However, of all the brilliant things that have happened this week I have to say my favourite is the fact that one of my son’s friends at school came up to him and told him that his dad’s book was ‘awesome’. He’s six and he’s been reading it himself after his mum bought a kindle copy this week.

That was the whole point of writing this and I hope he’s still enjoying it. It still feels kind of odd knowing that there are people out there who know Jack, and Fynn, and all the others. Part of me still feels as though the characters just live inside my head, it’s lovely to think that they’re now alive in a bundle of other people’s heads too. That probably sounds a bit weird but you know what I mean.

Anyway thanks as always for reading, if you’ve had a read of ‘…the Fey Flame’ I’d love to hear what you thought of it in the comments below, Cheers, John

Is ‘Middle Grade’ fiction a saturated market?

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middle grade middle school fictionUp until last night I had never heard of ‘MG fiction’ (or ‘Middle Grade fiction’) and no, apparently ‘middle grade’ fiction isn’t a way of describing so-so quality writing, instead it’s a way of describing your reader base. MG is another way of saying that a child will be in middle school when they read your book. We don’t really do ‘middle school’ in Scotland though so I had to look this up.

A whole new demographic is being recognised by publishers, as they decide to aim certain books at the years preceeding ‘young adult’ (basically eight years and up). Last night I (virtually) met  a whole bunch of MG writers almost by accident over on twitter.

Every Wednesday at 8pm (GMT) there’s a twitter get together under the hashtag #ukmgchat and I just happened to log in just in time to catch the last ten minutes, but they were an eye opener. So many authors had the same feeling as me about this category of fiction; despite a peculiar perception by some non-authors that this is a ‘saturated market’ our experience says otherwise, and our wish to write for that age group has not been squashed.

In my experience as a book buyer at Fun Junction I find it extremely hard to find new books to fill our ‘early chapter books’ shelves. there are staples like ‘Beast Quest’ and the ‘Rainbow Magic’ series, and there are some high profile authors in there but kids that age can get completely hooked on reading and so they come back to the shop, having read our usual fayre, asking for more and all too often there isn’t any.

The MG fiction market isn’t saturated, instead it is filled with a selection of (albeit very good) tried and tested books that most avid MG readers have read by the time they’re nine (at least that’s what I’ve found). So to say the market is ‘saturated’ is a little misleading, and even if it were ‘saturated’, kids reading now may not identify with fictional children written ten, twenty, or more years ago. At the very least the endless changes in society and technology mean that fiction has to keep up if it wants to look authentic to young readers.

Jack’s adventures are definitely aimed at the younger end of (and a little below) the MG reading level but I could still picture it on the bookshelf. That said there are a few things that differentiate Jack’s adventures from the general notion of what MG fiction includes.

For starters early romance seems to be an emotional issue and plot issue in a lot of MG fiction. There isn’t even a hint of romantic feeling in any of the younger characters in Jack’s adventures (at least at present). Romance isn’t really part of my overall plan for the series, at the moment the characters are just having adventures and learning about themselves, but I’ll have to see what happens as Jack grows up.

Next week’s #ukmgchat is apparently going to be focussed on early romance, if nothing else it could be interesting to see how other authors deal with the relationships of characters who fit in that age category, though I’m sad to say I won’t have much input of my own (at least in relation to the Jack Reusen books). Nonetheless who’s to say that I won’t keep Jack’s world going for years, I intend for him to grow up in that time (I won’t keep my characters ageless) so perhaps I could take notes for events far in the future.

Do you feel like the MG area of fiction is a ‘saturated market’? or, like me, do you think it has more to do with the presence of solid powerhouse books and authors that dominate the reading level? As always thanks for reading, Cheers, John

DON’T FORGET: ‘Jack Reusen and the Fey Flame’ is available in both paperback and in digital format. You’ll make me as happy as a kid in a boxful of bunnies if you click on this link to pop over to the ‘books’ page where you can find out more about the book and get details on how to get hold of your copy. I hope you like it as much as I enjoyed writing it 🙂

The only way is up

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World-Book-DayJust had an interesting chat on facebook messenger with a teacher I know, got some scheduling things to work out but it looks like I’ll be doing a world book day event sometime in the week starting 2nd March for up to three different schools.

Totally elated, this is a much bigger event than I had prepared for but I’m looking forward to it. I’m trying to figure out what might work best, whether to tell them about writing, read from the first book or write up something specifically for the day.

To be honest I’m inclined to keep it simple and work on my presentation, the main thing for me to remember is that I’ll have an audience of kids from five years and up to keep entertained. Now I just need to figure out what the basic material will be.

What kind of thing do you think primary school aged kids would enjoy in a book talk? If you’ve already read some of ‘Jack Reusen and the Fey Flame’ have you got any suggestions about a good chapter/section that I could read for them?

It’s been an amazing few days, thanks for all the support for the books, I’ll get on here as much as I can as things progress to keep you updated on events, book progress, or just to check in and share other bits and pieces I’ve come across. All the best, John