Tag Archives: early years chapter book

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

Off to the printers

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jack reusen and the fey flame cover 8The next step in introducing Jack to the world has been made. Just a few hours ago I sent a full draft of ‘Jack Reusen and the Fey Flame’ to the printers.

The next step is for me to go out and do a few events, the first of which will be brief reading and talk-about session at Fun Junction in Perth. I’m really excited about this because I wasn’t expecting to be able to use my workplace to show off my book.

I’ve taken part in events in the shop before; previously I took part in a ‘pirate day’ event in the Perth store as ‘Captain Jimbo’ the pirate. I read stories and led children around the shop on a treasure hunt, it was a whole lot of fun. I’m hoping that I can do something that will be just as entertaining for everyone with Jack Reusen’s world.

Another avenue that I would like to try would be local libraries or schools. I’ll have to keep my fingers crossed on that one though as it’ll probably be a little tricky, given that I’d be dealing with local authority and some of the red tape that goes with that. All the same it would be amazing. I’m not completely sure what kind of event I’d put together in that kind of venue but I’d love to give it a go.

If you have a class, club, or group which you feel might benefit from a talk about writing, or a chapter reading, then don’t hesitate to contact me either in the comments below or over on Twitter (here’s my twitter account and here’s a link to the official Jack Reusen twitter feed) or you can contact me via the Jack Reusen Facebook page.

As always thanks for reading, seeing the reader count for this website go up is always great and it makes me hopeful that Jack’s adventures will be a hit.

I look forward to keeping you up to date in the coming weeks as I embark on my month-long writing marathon to complete book two (and make a start on book three). It’s been a whirlwind over the past few weeks (especially the past couple of days) and the reaction from people so far has been brilliant, all the best, John

Finally…it’s here!

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jack reusen cover front2After a couple of late nights and more than a few editorial stumbling blocks ‘Jack Reusen and the Fey Flame’ is finally available on kindle (http://goo.gl/rovYtF).

The next step is the physical printing which I’m sorting out today, and then it’s all in the printers’ hands.

Sorry for the delay, I had a little incident with the cover that took some fiddly finicking but as you can see it’s all sorted now.

Jack is out in the world and I’d love to hear what you think of him, the first chapter and a bit are available for preview from Amazon so please have a look and leave a comment on here, or chat about it over on Twitter, thanks for stopping by the Jack Reusen website, hope to see you over here again soon, Cheers, John

Almost There!

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Winner-2014-Twitter-ProfileThe drafting is complete, visual edits are done, main preliminary work on the cover is finished (though still not finalised). The process that began with National Novel writing Month is almost complete. I’ll be at work today so there’s less time for me to finalise things but I’m pretty sure we’ll be ready to launch the kindle edition this evening/ later tonight.

This has been a strange process, editing a fiction book is new to me (I’ve written non-fiction before). The main issue, surprisingly, came from my main ‘beta tester’. I’d joked about it, but actually having a six year old listen to the story was one of the most important editing decisions I made.

Characters that I didn’t think were all that significant gained a special place in my son’s heart, while scenes that I thought offered comfort and stability made him yearn for the excitement of the action scenes.

I really feel that the balance is right now but if it hadn’t been for Logan, giving me input with an honesty only a six year old could deliver, the book would have looked very different.

As I said, the digital edition of ‘Jack Reusen and the Fey Flame’ should be live tonight and I’m really excited to see how people feel about it. Work on the next two books has already begun but as my previous post said, February will see my writing go into overdrive.

I hope you all enjoy the book and I welcome any feedback that people have. Jack’s adventures are an ongoing project and I want to make the books the best they can be. All the best, thanks for reading, Cheers, John

February will be Jack Reusen Writathon Month

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Writing with pen on paperIn February I’ll be back to my daily writing totals from Nanowrimo because I’ve come to realise that the only way this whole writing business is going to work is if I actually, you know, write.

My final edit is almost done (something like a chapter and a bit left), all I can do is apologise for how long its taking and take on board what I’m learning for the other books I’ll be releasing this year.

Book two has four chapters drafted, I’ve planned out most of the plot and only one or two new characters will be joining Jack and the gang for this one (so not too much work to do there). It would be easy for me to get complacent with this, after all I’ve said that ‘Jack Reusen and the Spark of Dreams’ will be out in April. Just now that feels like a long while away but I can’t take that for granted.

I need to remember all these little mistakes I’ve made in scheduling the release of ‘Jack Reusen and the Fey Flame’. To be honest this post is as much for me as it is for you, it should hopefully stand as a reminder for me to leave a lot more time for revisions and cover design in future.

‘Jack Reusen and the Spark of Dreams’ will be out in April, I’ll be releasing another Jack Reusen book in September, and a mini book for Christmas (about 8 to 10 chapters). Keeping all of this in mind I should really be working on this solidly. That’s why I’ve decided that February is Jack Reusen month for me, just like I did with Nanowrimo I’ll be setting myself daily targets. As I go along I’ll blog about my progress and possibly even include the odd wee spoiler on here (really really minor ones mind you, I can’t let too much slip).

To anyone still waiting for the first book’s release, it is coming, slowly but surely, I promise it will be here soon. It will be out on kindle first. This is simply because I’ll need to figure out a lot of bits and pieces with the printers for the print edition, but I can handle putting together the digital edition myself.

To put a fire under my tail I’ll put out a deadline just now (I work well with deadlines) so I’ll say that the digital edition will, at the latest, be out next Saturday (24th January) and the print edition will be available just under two weeks later (provided all goes well with the printers) on Thursday the 5th February.

All the best, thanks for popping by and I’ll introduce you properly to Jack in just over a week, Cheers, John

Remain Vigilant (boredom is death)

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charlie-chaplin-392926_640I’ve been reading my first full draft of Jack Reusen and the Fey Flame with my eldest son Logan (he’s six) and generally I’ve been able to relax, safe in the knowledge that what I’ve written seems to keep him interested, entertained, and amused. However there is one chapter where the story moves to look at Jack’s parents’ lives before he was born. For some reason it seems unable to hold Logan’s attention (I’ve a feeling it’s because its all about the grown ups).

So do I just leave it as it is? It is only a small portion of a book that overall has kept him asking for more. I could try and excuse it as a necessary evil; that some characters may need a back story that a child might not be interested in, but I’d be kidding myself. It’s a children’s book, if it doesn’t entertain children I’ve done it wrong.

So I’m reworking a full chapter and it’s having a ripple effect on the rest of the book. It’s disheartening, it’s time consuming, but I’d rather hear from my son that a small portion of my book needs work (when I still have time to fix it), than wait and wonder why I’m not selling more copies once it hits the shelves.

This book is supposed to be exciting and it’s supposed to be able to engage with an age group which isn’t always targeted by fantasy writers. Occasionally this has been a challenge for me; I really love the world-building aspect of fantasy novels but there just isn’t much room to do that in a book aimed at early-school-years children.

I have to keep a fairly fast pace, maintain the action and adventure, but at the same time I like to include aspects that feel comfortable and familiar (it should be fine to read a chapter before bed without inducing nightmares). The domestic and the fantastical aspects were sometimes at odds during early planning stages but I’d ironed most of them out.

Unfortunately this chapter is my last remaining vestige of full-on world-building but like the rest of the book I’m going to have to just allow Jack’s world to be revealed through the action. This shouldn’t be hard to change actually, and with a few careful tweaks of a very small portion of the book I think I’ll have it. Then I can finally drum up print and kindle editions and release them out into the world for you lovely people to enjoy and (hopefully) talk to me about.

It did make me wonder though, who out there enjoys overt world-building? Would you rather learn about a fantasy world on the fly, as the action progresses, or do you like to have some aspects of the world explained to you so that the action can just move along on its own unabated? Let me know in the comments below, all the best, John

What do you think the world would be like with no technology?

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wpid-imag1141_1.jpgI’ve just had an idea for a possible theme/event in book three and I’d love to get some feedback. Right here’s the basic concept, something happens that knocks out all technology in the matter-world (our world) and in Fey (the magic world) for about half a day. This would be like a power-cut on steroids, basically any mechanism crafted by human hands would cease to work, even locks would fail.

Keeping in mind that this is a book for fairly young kids I’ll be avoiding talking about death as much as possible. I’m not saying that death shouldn’t be explained to and discussed with young children, I just personally think there are a sufficient number of authors who have already tackled the subject adequately.

I just want my characters to have an adventure so I won’t be pointing out the fact that life support machines, pacemakers etc. would all be disabled too, causing potentially instant fatalities.

I will however be touching on some of the other potential dangers e.g.  looting, prison breaks, and other potential hazards of losing technology (what people might do with no phones, no cars etc.). I’ll contrast this with how the loss would be felt in Fey (where their technology is a little antiquated). For example, in Fey ploughs might break, locks won’t work (so prisoners can escape there too), and some other bits and pieces may stop working but overall life will be fairly normal.

I’m fairly certain it’s going to be easy for me to forget about some things, for example, right this second I realised that there’s a risk of food shortage in our world caused by failing technology like freezers and refrigerators. With the high potential of me being absent-minded and missing some important detail, I’d love to hear some feedback from you.

It may be the case that I’ll need to scale the event down so as to allow less time to be spent on explaining it and more time to be spent on the adventure itself. If I go this way I’ll either make the duration less, or (the option that I’m more likely to go for) I’ll only let the event happen in Jack’s immediate vicinity (maybe a forty or fifty mile radius).

Any opinions are very welcome though, thanks for reading, Cheers, John

DON’T FORGET: ‘Jack Reusen and the Fey Flame’ is available in both paperback and in digital format, please click 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 🙂

Getting to know my characters

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Jack and FynnTonight I took a short break from editing to draw up some really basic ideas of what my characters look like, it was a weird experience. In my head I’ve got pictures of what they all look and sound like but it was a whole other thing to get them down on paper.

Jack and FynnThe only character who has any resemblance to someone from ‘real life’ (in my own mind at least) is Fynn the Eldar: the first Fey person Jack meets on his entry to Fey. All the way through writing I pictured Qui Gon Jinn (or basically Liam Neeson). I could even hear him speaking the dialogue I wrote for him as I wrote it, which was actually pretty distracting.

Other than that my characters seem to have come from nowhere. I know they’re probably subconscious amalgamations of loads of people I know but consciously I just don’t see a resemblance.

I’ll do some more character profiles soon, once I’ve got a better idea about how to draw these people who’ve been following me around inside my head since the start of November. For tonight that’s me but I hope anyone dropping by has enjoyed meeting Jack and Fynn.

Let me know what you think to the character page (and to the official Jack Reusen web site itself), I’d love to hear some feedback, thanks for dropping by, Cheers, John

UPDATE: ‘Jack Reusen and the Fey Flame’ is now available in both paperback and in digital format, click 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. Hope you like it 🙂

Jack Reusen and the Fey Flame, beta testers

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wpid-imag1103.jpgI’ve got myself three wee ‘beta testers’ for the first book in the Jack Reusen series, my sons Logan and Alexander (who can be painfully honest at times) and their cousin Sophie. Over the next few days they’ll be letting me know if the Fey Flame does the trick, so until then I’ll just have to keep my fingers crossed.

In the mean time my attention has turned to artwork for both the digital and print editions. I’ve decided to keep things simple and try and capture as much of the feel of the book as I can. I’ll be putting together preliminary covers over the next few days and will get them posted on here.

Once the ‘beta test’ is complete the book will be sent to the printers and hopefully I’ll have a pile of signed copies available at Fun Junction (in Crieff and Perth, Scotland) sometime before Christmas (I’ll happily do a personally signed copy for you if I’m in when you’re there).

The digital (kindle) edition is basically ready and set to go off to Amazon, though it’ll need artwork attached too (we shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but I’m guessing having no cover won’t be a good move).

For anyone who has stumbled on this site at this early stage I’ll be uploading some sample text from the books, along with artwork etc. as I go, so if you’d like to find out more about Jack and his friends then please follow this blog or track me down over on twitter to keep track of new posts (or even just to have a blether).

UPDATE: ‘Jack Reusen and the Fey Flame’ is now available in both paperback and in digital format, click this link to find out more about the book and for links on where to get hold of your copy. Hope you like it 🙂