All right, so it’s been 9 months since my last post. That’s pretty crap of me. Obviously, the world went into a tailspin but maybe it’s time to tell ya’ll what I’ve been up to since January.
Thanks to Covid-19 I’ve been in lockdown since March. Being an author/hermit has definitely helped in not going stir crazy, but it looks as though I’ll still be in some kind of lockdown for the rest of the year. My repertoire of cocktails has expanded significantly. It used to be limited to espresso martinis and a vodka/schnapps/lemon juice mix. Now I’ve discovered margaritas. I don’t like limes and I don’t like tequila, but when you put them together something magical happens. My other go-to now is the vodka gimlet. I should grow limes. I’ve completely gutted my house, walls and ceilings included, and have been insulating everything and plaster boarding everything else. The weird thing about Melbourne houses is that there’s no insulation in the walls. It’s like they’re built only for summer and forget that winter gets pretty damn cold here. Our little cat is a genius for finding a way into the attic. She falls asleep on the big, soft, insulation, and then can’t find her way down, so every day she meows until someone gets a ladder and helps her down. I finished Raike 5 a while ago and sent it off to my editor. She’s gone through it and the book has been sitting on my desk, ready for my final polish, for about three months now. I honestly have no idea why it’s taken me so long to get to it. Probably because it’s the part of writing a book I hate the most – going through a bazillion notes and fixing them up. It also has a lot to do with having no door to my office, because we’re still renovating, and the house has been noisy with lots of banging. I still expect the book to be out this year, though. I’m also close to publishing a new series. It’s a dungeons and dragons-esque group of adventurers travelling the world and getting into all sorts of hijinks. I started tinkering with it a few years ago and it became my back-burner series. Whenever I was between Raike books or wanted to write a few hundred words of something that I could walk away from, I worked on this series. After finishing Raike 5 I decided to focus on this series just to change gears for a while, that way I could come into Raike 6 a lot more fresh. Well, a few weeks turned into a month or two, and the doom and gloom of the Raike world started to look a lot like the world outside, whereas the new series was a lot more light-hearted. For my own sanity I focused on the new series until the point came when I had to make a decision about Raike 6. I had already written something like 20,000 words on Raike 6 but it wasn’t easy to get into it with everything else going on in the world and at home. So, for the last six months or so I’ve been working on the new series with a new plan – finish all six books in the new series and publish them close to each other. I have three books banked right now and the other three are close to being done. I don’t expect the series to be out before March 2021, but I’ll let ya’ll know how things are going a little closer to that time. I hope you all are still safe and reading some good books, and I’ll check in with you soon. |
AuthorJackson Lear Archives
May 2024
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