I had tremendous fun writing this. Set well after anything I've previously written about Jalon, it pits my favourite heroes against a couple of superb villains and is full of quips that ought to make you laugh. If they don't, I give up. The High King’s consort receives a worrying message from an old friend via the Guild of Assassins. Fearing for his life, she journeys to Bagdor to help him. Once there things go from bad to worse as she is maneuvered into protecting Dawn (the Chancellor of the Assassins daughter) from an ancient treasure that takes the form of a bloodthirsty coffin that always gets its man (or woman, in this case). And so the adventure begins. Along the way there will be elegant swordfights, killer spiders, gruesome deaths and a lot laughs. A black comedy set in a world of sword and sorcery, complete with magic objects that talk back, cruel villains, the eternal Fairie, the odd vampire, and an even odder vampire’s coffin, not to mention a handsome Prince.
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US and UK Now available from Amazon for Kindle. Sorry for all the delays folks, but I wanted to make this book the best I could and it took a lot of editing to get it into a state I felt completely happy with. It's taken me six month from start to finish to write this book. I used to be able to do it in two months, but I'm a bit rusty. If it sells reasonably well then I'll start the next one. Otherwise you'll have to wait till next year to see what happens next. It was a lot of fun to write, especially the scenes with Jake's family (it's getting quite large btw). I suppose I will have to continue the series soon as I had a great idea for Malcolm that I really want to write down. All the best to all who read this and download the book. The new book is coming on. Draft 1 is finished and I'm 60% of the way through Draft 2. My guess is that the whole thing will be ready to be uploaded to Kindle at the end of April or early May at the latest. One problem is that I've forgotten most of the techniques I used to get a book into Kindle format and I will have to relearn them.
Strangely, the whole Covid19 thing has slowed the process. I expected a lockdown to speed things up but instead it ended up slowing things down. However, I've washed the car and mown the lawn which are not tasks I normally enjoy (or do). I've tried to bring Jake into the 'me-too' age, but given his proclivities that has not been an easy task. The man just likes to bed women far too much. Wishing you all a safe life. John Booth Once upon a time I used to think of 50k as a book, but this one has a little way to go to finish. This is still very much a work in progress and I will have to do a lot of editing to knock it into shape. Not to mention that all my editing to create a kindle book skills are extremely atrophied. I expect all the software I used to use is completely out of date.
I am hoping to finish the first draft this month and for the first time, I know the epilogue of the book, if not the actual final chapter. But then, that's the way I write books and if you are reading this you probably appreciate my style. Not much else to say. Most likely date of publication is the first of May. I will let you know how things are going as I carry on. How is it going? I hope you are asking.
The truth is, much slower than it would have in the past. Once upon a time I could get up to 2000 words a day. These days it takes a lot longer. This is partially because I have had other things on my mind. Our cat died after nearly 21 years and that is taking time to get over. It was the Christmas period and that slowed me down. On top of that I have some minor health issues that have been distracting me. But I have got over 27k words into this story, which is about 40% of a book and Jake is driving the story along, whatever I think about it. I think he's extremely annoyed about being in a coma for three years and I'm the one he's taking out his ire on. I hope to finish the story by the middle of march. Then I have to edit and prepare it for publication. So May 2020 is a likely date. Sooner if possible. I may even have a few readers left by then, though I'm not counting on it. All the Best John Booth 'So how is the writing going?' I hear you ask.
Well I'm ten thousand words in to what is provisionally titled 'Jake's Vengeance'. I decided that if I had stopped writing for a few years, Jake must have been in a coma. Naturally he's a little cheesed off when he realises what has happened. His memory has also been frizzed, but he's slowly coming out of it. Naturally there's a young woman throwing herself at him and he never was one for restraint. I'm having fun, but my writing speed is quite slow because of other things going on in my life. Still, you can't have everything. After a long break, I wrote the first chapter of Wizards VII this morning. After such a long break from writing I'm promising nothing, but I enjoyed writing this chapter and I think it's fun so there is hope.
It's been a while since my last book. The truth is, I have spent the last few month painting, decorating, plumbing, and dry-walling our new house, so the writing pretty much stopped.
As Jake’s Break is on sale at an Amazon near you, I thought I’d recap on the wonderful world that Jake inhabits and maybe drop some clues on where it’s all going. I think of the Wizards books as being something like a season of Buffy. For those of you who don’t know or don’t remember, a typical season of Buffy ran for 22 episodes and had an overall thematic story running through it, though individual episodes were stories in their own right. I don’t quite see 22 novels in Jake’s future, but it won’t be that far off. One day the war will start and the battle for the survival of the multiverse will begin. At the moment the players are lining up. It will not be clear even during the war as to whose side each group is on. The Multiverse contains a near infinite number of universes of which ours in one nondescript component. It isn’t a static place; new universes are born from time to time and old ones are slowly dying. Raw magic wafts around the multiverse and living things can change it into something useable by the power of their minds. Because some living things will hop (teleport) to somewhere safe under duress, lots of worlds exist with humans or their close cousins on them. Parallel evolution has taken place on millions of worlds through occasional cross pollination. Actually, there are lots of truly alien worlds with methane breathers and silicon life forms to name but two, but they don’t mix much with the oxygen breathing worlds for obvious reasons. Empires have risen and crumbled, civilisations of every conceivable kind have been tried. There are worlds where humans have risen to the status of Gods. Our close cousins who rose to sentience with rather more magic in them than us occupy the hidden worlds where elves, dwarves and the fairie hold sway. There were even the soothsaying Norns, though they mysteriously died out. The hidden worlds are purely magic oriented and tend to be deeply interwoven with the natural world. Humans tend not to be naturally talented in magic, though in some empires the majority have at least some magical power. This tends to happen when their civilisation discover how to enhance the magic power in individuals. The Valhallans are one such group, the Balmackians another. Where there are a lot of Wizards laws develop to protect the normal, where they are rare, wizards tend to use their power for personal pleasure and power. Some human worlds take the technological path and a high powered rifle can always take out a wizard if the user picks his moment. Many of these worlds hate wizards and take steps to kill them. Despite this, most of the technological worlds use magic to some extent, especially ‘chain bridges’ which are portals linking one world to another. A very small number of worlds combine high technology with sophisticated magic. Jake knows the Progenitors are such a people even though he knows next to nothing about them. A mystery exists on Earth. A world in which magic had become nothing more than fairy tales because nobody was born with a wizard’s power has suddenly produced three of the most powerful wizards ever known. Dafydd and Jake were related, but Bronwyn isn’t and yet was born only a few miles away from Jake. Thus the Earth is starting to be noticed by some of the more formidable powers in the Multiverse. Jake doesn’t want to be a hero. He wants a quiet life, though his attitude has started to change because of the fun he is having at university. He is far from ready to lead people into battle, let alone the major powers of the multiverse. All in all, he would rather move timber with a fork lift truck than fight evil. He is a ‘make love not war’ sort of guy, but others keep pushing him into situations where he has no choice but to fight. Jake has already proven that prophecy can be broken. Many have plans for him, but he is determined to stay true to himself whatever the cost. I’ve been fairly quiet for a few months, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been writing. I finished writing Jake’s Quest (Wizards V) in September and published it in October. Now a new Wizards book generally does so much better in sales than my other books, that if I was writing for money I’d never write anything else. But I am not in it only for the money. I don’t want the quality of my books to drop and I think if I only wrote Wizards books then it would. I have a lot more to say about that world, but I need a break between books to follow flights of imagination in other directions. I could have started Tom and Laura IV. However, I became a bit daunted by the weeks of research that would be needed to get the ‘white slave trade’ of 1861 right, not to mention trade winds and travel times. I'll get around to that one eventually. In the end I concluded that there was a world that would make an interesting contrast between Wizards books and might even sell a few copies. (While I’m not in it for the money, I wouldn’t write if I made no money at all.) It's a world I’ve been to before, filled with characters I’m very fond of. However, my recent writing is aimed at older audiences than I used to write for. I used to write young adult, now I write adult books with sexual encounters as a major part of the mix, and Magic Limited is a series with adult story lines and themes. I don’t want very young people getting to it via The Magic Series so I don’t mention the link in the blurb, but it features characters from those books now grown up. Paul is a fun guy. Married and divorced he has distinct ideas on what he wants to do with his life. He had the option to sell magic and seized it with both hands, but he avoids the responsibilities that come with his lineage. He lives in my favourite place (Central London), and is part of that multicultural environment. He mingles with the rich and the poor, the honest and the crooks, the successful and the failures. I hope you take the time to read about Paul. If you are fans of Jake Morrissey you’ll find many similarities between those guys. They both have a taste for strong women and a tendency to make fools of themselves. I’ve even considered writing a cross-over novel, though that is not going to happen anytime soon. The Heist will be on sale from the 2nd of February. I’m about to start writing Wizards VI, which might be available as early as May. John Booth |
AuthorAuthor, imagineer Archives
July 2020
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