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John T posted an update 3 years, 2 months ago
I’ve been neglecting you all in the Den since we moved back to Wales (Noswaith dda, bawb) but I’ll try and reconnect soon. Lots happening here – I’m self-publishing the first of three novels in late spring or early summer. Currently wrangling a website into shape (with help). Love to you all x
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Good to see you, John. x
John, what are the novels you’re self-publishing – and where’s the website?
Hi there. The website is ‘under construction’ but should go live in the next couple of weeks. I’ll post a link, if I may. The first two novels in the Apples in the Dark series should come out about 6 months apart this year. They’ll be in e-book on several platforms and print-on-demand via IngramSpark. I don’t want to get locked into the Amazon exclusive route. Apples in the Dark uses my experience of having epilepsy when I was younger. Angels and Blackbirds is a sequel, but tells an entirely different story, about a woman with learning disabilities who doesn’t discover independence until her mid thirties. Both were longlisted for the Bath Novel Award without attracting an agent, and I’m now writing a third book in the series.
Well, you’ve been busy. Feel free to post a link to your website whenever you want to. Maybe in the Podium or Coffee Shop groups so it doesn’t vanish with the activity stream (although that may take a while anyway with the way activity here has slowed down).
The books sound fascinating and the sequel sounds familiar. Is it one you were working on a while back?
Thank you, Athers. They are both a result of unpacking The Blackbird Effect, the novel that landed me an agent (for a while) in 2012 without attracting a publisher – and thereby making Harry hopping mad, because he backed it as the Next Big Thing. I wasn’t so surprised: it had too many themes and too too much business, leaving lots of passages seriously underwritten. I’m now approaching the same themes in a series of simpler plots that I can really develop. How is your writing going?
I do admire you for taking this view of things and for taking positive action to work through it. I think these sound like hard decisions.
My writing has picked up, a little, after a very slow few years. I’m about 70% into the first draft of a novel, although that in itself is a bit tricky as I wrote a fair bit and then abandoned it – so technically this draft is partly a rewrite. It stars Teabreak, and is very loosely based on one of my challenge entries (which didn’t feature him) about alternative memories emerging (and merging) in the present.