Tag Archives: book launch

Good Gracious it HAS Been a While!

(Spoilers for book 2 ahead…)

This new addition to the Jack Reusen world follows Jack after he, his family, and his uncle’s cottage and garden landed in the heart of an ancient magical woodland within the world of Fey.

You’ll get to spend longer in Fey than you have in any previous Jack Reusen book. You’ll meet a strange new character who seems to be following Jack from inside his own mind. What’s more, you’ll get to learn more about Fey and how it’s connected to the Matter World. It’s a big story without being too big a read and I hope you enjoy it.

(…Book 2 Spoilers END)

There are twenty-one chapters in this new book (if you include the epilogue) and I’m currently editing chapter sixteen. I’m getting through about a chapter per day and I have some time off work so I may even get through more than that.

So, with only five chapters to go, I think it’s safe to say that I should be finished editing by the end of this week.

After literally years of plodding through drafts, I can’t believe I can say that the book will be ready in a week!

Jack Reusen and the Chilren of Fate sneak peek cover Print turnaround can be as much as a month. However, as soon as I can get it uploaded, the book will be available digitally to read via Amazon Kindle (you can either read this on a Kindle reader or you could download the app and read it on any Android or Apple device).

I’ll obviously be back on here at each step of the process to keep people updated (especially once there are print copies available too). However, I promised myself that today’s post would be brief and to the point so that I could get back to work on the editing.

Wait What’s Happening?!

In brief:

The final draft of Jack Reusen and the Children of Fate will be done by the end of this week.

The digital edition should be available sometime next week.

And finally, at long last, the paperback edition should be available to buy in late April.

More to come…

fey-flame Extra Note: I also have plans to get an audiobook version of the first book out. This would take the form of either a podcast or an Audible audiobook, to be released sometime in the next few months. This is dependent on getting my office/ recording space in proper order so expect updates on that too.

For now, thank you so much for stopping by and please accept my apologies for the long (long long long…) wait for this next book in the series.

I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I have enjoyed writing it. It’s been a labour of love. The first version was very long. The delay has mainly come from trimming it into the reader-accessible version we now have.

I always want to create books that are as accessible to as many sorts of readers as possible, and I am really happy with the story we have now.

Thanks for stopping by, below you’ll find the mandatory self-promotional book plugs but you can skip these if you’ve already read the stories so far.

Thanks for stopping by and I’ll be much quicker to get back on here again next time,

All the best, John

***

Read my books digitally for FREE

Photo by freestocks.org on Pexels.com

If you’d like to catch up on the first two books in the series you’ll find details on where to get these digitally (and potentially read them for free) below.

As always, you can get hold of print versions of the first two books from Fun Junction Toy stores, as well as by buying directly on this site (I’ll even sign a copy for you before it’s posted out). To buy from this site using PayPal, follow this link and click on the buttons for the books you’d like to buy.

Kindle Unlimited

All of my books are free to read for those with an Amazon Kindle Unlimited membership.

Kindle Unlimited currently offers a free trial for two months so you can see if you like their service.

After that, your membership would cost just £7.99 per month and you can cancel any time you like (including before the end of your two-month trial membership.

You said I could read your books for free?

Both of my main children’s fantasy books (The ‘Jack Reusen’ books, for 6 and up) are available on Kindle Unlimited. Here are the links for Amazon UK for ‘…Fey Flame‘ and for ‘…Spark of Dreams‘. On top of this, you can also find a short Christmas story I wrote a few years back, as well as my dark fantasy book (10-12+) ‘Marcus‘ (set in and around the old abandoned Victorian school in my home town of Crieff).

These are all available to read for free (even as part of your free trial) with Kindle Unlimited. What’s more, it’s always good to know that people are reading (and hopefully enjoying) my books.

If you’re in the USA, Kindle Unlimited has a similar free trial and you can find all of my books on my Amazon Author page.

A little more about my own books:

Once you’ve signed up to Kindle Unlimited, you’ll see that both of the Jack Reusen books come up as ‘free’, so you can read the whole adventure so far, for nothing.

‘Jack Reusen and The Fey Flame‘ introduces you to the land of Fey, as creatures (and other things) make their way through to the ‘matter-world’ (basically our world). Jack and his family have to discover a way of closing a collection of ‘breaches’ between the two worlds to make their world safe again.

‘Jack Reusen and the Spark of Dreams‘ is a slightly different kind of adventure. People are losing their ability to dream. Every night more and more people lose the certain something that makes human beings so good at solving problems and creating things; the spark of dreams. Jack discovers that he could be the key to understanding what’s causing this change, and he may even be the only person who can solve it and bring back the dreams and imaginations of hundreds of people.

I hope that both of the Jack Reusen books give you and/or your kids something to enjoy as you read them. Let me know what you think.

As always, thanks for stopping by my site, and I can’t wait to share even more details of my newest book,

All the best, John

Some summer holiday reading

And…they’re off!

1 Reply

Another wee sample of Karen’s artwork

‘Jack Reusen and the Spark of Dreams‘ is ready! The artwork is done, the text has been edited, all files have been sent off to the printers, and now comes the waiting. (Though the wait won’t be too long for the kindle edition, which I’ll have ready sometime tonight.)

The process for print editions is fairly simple; first they send me a digital proof (which I expect to receive sometime early next week). After this comes approval of the proof, which is kind of an odd thing to do actually; basically I send them an e-mail saying ‘yes I like my own book, send me lots’. Once I’ve told them I like my book it can take seven to ten working days for them to to print up a bundle and send them to me.

I’ll probably end up posting a lot of updates on Facebook and Twitter once I’ve got a tracking number, so if you follow either account expect to see lots of posts about UPS on the day the books head my way.

To be sure that you get hold of one of the first copies you can pre-order one by leaving a comment below (they’re £6.99) and you can either pick them up at Fun Junction, get me to deliver them to you personally, or if you’re further away I can post one out to you.

Writing this book has been a totally different experience than the last one. Knowing that people have read the first, that some readers might be emotionally invested in certain characters (no I haven’t killed anyone, nor do I plan to), and knowing that there are many more books planned, has meant that I’ve had to be very careful with this one.

There are some scenes that had to be big and dramatic and they change characters in ways that might take them a couple of books to recover from. That’s what all these big delays have been about (I originally planned on having the book out in April). The trickiest part has been the fact that two key story lines run from just one early scene involving Fynn and Thea.

They come out of the event changed, but getting the balance between developing a character in that way, and just all-out changing them is difficult. Every change I made to that one scene (you’ll see what it is soon) had a heavy ripple-effect throughout the book, at times it was like playing Jenga with a sledgehammer. After a lot of work I think I’ve got it right and I hope you guys enjoy the journey that both of these characters go on.

‘Jack Reusen and the Spark of Dreams‘ is darker than the Fey Flame (though not by a lot), my proofreader/editor left me a note about three quarters of the way through the book that simply read ‘this is freakin’ scary!’. Don’t let this put you off though. I’ve left a lot of the scarier scenes open in a way that lets the reader fill in the gaps with their own imagination. This way, readers at my eldest son’s age (seven in a few weeks) will likely find these parts a lot less frightening than their parents.

Overall the story is based around what the world would be like if people didn’t dream, imagine, or come up with new ideas. Some of this is a little scary but mostly I wanted to deal with how important imagination is for everyone. Jack has to navigate a city that doesn’t dream and it doesn’t look like a nice place to live.

I’ve said before that there are ‘zombies’ in this book, but they aren’t undead, flesh-eating monsters; they’re innocent people who are sleep-walking through life and have lost something important because of it. Jack goes through a crisis of confidence but we all know that in the end he’ll have what it takes to help them.

Thea hasn’t been left out either; she gets to be an action hero in this book. Her fight scenes were some of the most enjoyable things I have ever written (though you’ll have to get a fair bit through the book to see them) and I’m really looking forward to seeing what kind of girl she develops into in future books.

Sorry for the long post, as you can probably tell, I’m a little excited about launching the latest Jack Reusen book. I really hope you like it (when the books finally get here). I’ll keep you updated here and on the Facebook and Twitter accounts about when to expect them. In the mean time I’ve got a school book talk to prepare for. I’m off to Comrie Primary on Monday (my school between the ages of five and seven) and I’m really hoping the children there enjoy their introduction to Jack and his friends.

All the best, thanks as always for reading, cheers, John

Almost time…

1 Reply

There are two big reveals to share tonight: a sneak-peak of the cover for ‘Jack Reusen and The Spark of Dreams’, and on top of that I’m sharing the title of the very last chapter, it’s that close to completion!

I’m so sorry for the long wait, editing has been a tough run this time round. I did something with one of the main characters that I wasn’t 100% happy with, unfortunately it was quite early on in the book so changing it has had a ripple effect. ‘Jack Reusen and the Spark of Dreams’ is looking to be ready around a month later than the April release promised at the back of ‘Jack Reusen and the Fey Flame’. To everyone who has been asking about it, I am so sorry for the delay, and thank you for all the support you have all shown so far.

As for the book cover I hope you like the wee snippets shared in this post. I put out a call for an illustrator a few weeks ago and an illustrator called Karen MacAllister came forward (pop over to her illustrator website and her blog to find out more about her work). She showed me some great wee preliminary sketches and we took it from there and, thanks to Karen we now have a really dynamic and intriguing cover.

To be slightly annoying (building anticipation a bit), I’ve decided to only show small portions of Karen’s finished work. I thought it’d be more fun to share the finished article once the book is out.

I need to point out that Karen’s advice and knowledge were almost as valuable as her artistic skills in creating this cover. She really knows her stuff and de-cluttered my original plans to produce something that catches the eye and draws you in and I absolutely love the colour and tone she’s put into it.

I’m going to edit like a lunatic over the next couple of days, the book is all but done but I want to really do this justice (it isn’t easy getting the balance right in zombie scenes for kids). So many readers have been so supportive of this next leg of Jack’s adventure that I don’t want to let them down. Hopefully the story within will have the same draw as Karen’s fantastic cover.

As always thanks for reading, I’ll try and visit here more frequently over the next few days with updates so you should hopefully hear more soon. All the best, John