Welcome to Jon's author diary for the week ending April 5, 2020.
Hasn't it been a strange couple of weeks? I hope you're keeping safe and you’re doing your part to keep this virus from spreading.
My family and I have been isolating since March 17. We’re using the time to home-school our son. My wife is teaching him in the mornings so I can get on with my writing, and I am teaching in the afternoons.
My son now knows a lot about Medieval England and I’ve introduced to Horrible Histories.
We've been working out ways that our son can interact with his school friends. He got quite upset when the schools closed and he realised it might be several weeks or months before he gets to play with his friends again. This has involved him writing letters and doing video calls. I can't imagine how strange it must be for him.
Instead of treating this period as dead time, I’ve decided I’m going teach my son how to play guitar. I've been playing since I was ten, and it’s something I planned to teach him when he turned ten. Nevertheless, fate has bought us an opportunity to do a few years earlier.
So far, he can strum an E minor and pluck the strings in time. I haven't told him yet how much practice he’ll need to do before he gets good!
Writing progress
Blind Reset is now ready for its final edit. I’ve decided that this is going to be a two-book series. Never say never, but Blind Gambit was a book I wrote in 2018 to explore my feelings about going blind, mixed with a fun sci-fi tale. It's the most personal thing I've written, but unfortunately, it's also the worst performing book I have in terms of sales.
I finished my final draft of The Devil, book 15 of the Ravenglass Chronicles, so that is now with the editor. I'm also five chapters into the first draft of The Tower, which is book 16.
The Tower looks like it's going to be quite a long episode. There's going to be another big game changer (like we saw at the ends of book four and book eleven), before we head into the final episodes of the series.
When you look at The Tower tarot card, it's quite a horrific image. It's a card about chaos—so, expect chaos.
Oxsight Prism
Last month, I asked to send me your ideas for ways to raise money towards a pair of Oxsight Prism glasses, which will improve my lost peripheral vision.
The glasses cost £4,000/$5,000 and I had some great suggestions about how I can raise the cash.
Some people suggested that I write an exclusive story and raise money through Kickstarter. Some suggested in-person events and book signings. A few of you suggested that I make T-shirts and mugs related to the series or fancy in general. The idea with the least amount of friction was to ask readers simply to share a link to my books with friends on social media, etc.
I spoke about it on last week’s Author Diary podcast, but I'm going to put fundraising on hold until the world gets back to normal. Hopefully, that won't be too far away.
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