jaspasjourney

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Start The Countdown!

When is the next Jaspa’s Journey book coming out?” That’s probably the thing I get asked most often these days. And it’s a fair question. After all, the last book in the series, The Hermit of Kennecott was published five years ago, in the spring of 2020. (Wow! Is it really that long ago?) Well, I can finally answer that question… I’m proud to announce that my publisher has confirmed this week…

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What’s In A Ses?

As readers of Jaspa’s Journey will know, most of the main characters in the series are creatures collectively known as the Ses. There are countless different types of Ses, each remotely related to an animal with which we’re all familiar. Jaspa, for example, is a Giraffeses, an extremely distant cousin of the giraffe. When I’m introducing a new character, far more care goes into deciding what…

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First Things First

In a previous blog, I described all the proofreading and editing a manuscript needs to go through after it’s “finished”. But even when all this is complete, there’s still quite a lot that needs to be added to a manuscript before it’s a book. To begin with (literally), there are all the things that fill the first several pages of a book, the bits before the actual story begins. I call this the…

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Extraordinary Experiences

Imagine coming from a place where snow is a rarity. Now imagine having to then deal with a Canadian winter. We didn’t get much snow in the part of Wales where I grew up. Up on the surrounding Clwydian Hills, perhaps. But not so much down in the valleys, at the edge of the Cheshire Plain. Snow on the tops of the Clwydian Range (photo: BBC Weather Watcher MrP) These days I live in Ontario,…

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A Fresh Start

A couple of weeks ago, I heard someone with an interesting take on New Year’s resolutions. They couldn’t understand why such things had to be a chore. In fact, they suggested that instead of them being something unpleasant, like cutting out chocolate or exercising more, they could instead be an opportunity to include – or re-include – something enjoyable in your life. (And I know some people find…

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The Travel Tree

If there’s one thing Sue and I love more than anything else, it’s travelling. Nothing beats visiting new places, trying new experiences, and encountering new cultures. And we’re lucky to have the freedom to do just that. Another thing that I enjoy is collecting things. I collect all sorts of stuff… CDs and records. Books. Concert T-shirts. Countries visited. More books. The list goes on. Yep, I…

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Dreams Come True

Like everyone else, I had a lot of dreams when I was a child. I dreamt of being an astronaut. I dreamt of being a fighter pilot. I dreamt of traveling the world. The list went on… Despite that well-intentioned idiom, “You can be (or do) absolutely anything you want”, some of my childhood dreams weren’t realistic. No matter how hard I worked and studied, biology was always going to prevent me…

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Prisoner of Venice - Sneak Peek #1

As a writer, maps are crucial when I’m creating the next Jaspa’s Journey story. They enable me to plan Jaspa’s route, help me spot things that he absolutely has to visit along the way, and even ensure I don’t give Jaspa too far to travel in a day. As a reader, I find maps equally important. Whether a book takes place in the real world or some fantasy universe, I like to know where things are in…

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Coming of Age

The start of the new school year got me thinking about when I was that old. I remember moving up a year at school was such a big deal (way) back then. I’d spent the previous twelve months almost in awe of the kids in the year above. They’d seemed so much older. So much more grown up. And now it was my turn. You could say that, in many ways, each new school year was like a mini Coming of…

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Belonging

Watching and reading about the Olympics over the last month has got me thinking about what it is to belong. Of course, when it comes to the Olympics, or any international sport, it’s about what country you belong to. I was born in Wales (Wrexham, actually), but moved to England when I was 11. For the last 15 years, I’ve also held a Canadian passport. This gives me free reign to support Wales,…

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What Goes Around, Comes Around

In a recent newsletter, I talked about the many tasks that follow the initial ‘completion’ of a Jaspa’s Journey manuscript. As I mentioned at the time, the most important of these is several rounds of proofreading and editing. Manuscript versions of The Prisoner of Venice and The Ses Collector of Venice, the upcoming fifth and sixth instalments of Jaspa’s Journey (photo: Rich Meyrick) Broadly…

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School Visits

As a writer, I obviously spend a lot of time on my own, tapping away at my computer keyboard. Whether it’s researching a location, planning a timeline, fleshing out the actual story, or editing what I’ve already written, it’s a solitary pursuit for the most part. So getting out and interacting with my readers is obviously a welcome change. And my favourite way of doing this is through school…

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Difficult Choices

Being faced with difficult choices is simply a part of life. Perhaps that’s why they crop up so often in Jaspa’s adventures. Sometimes both choices are bad, and Jaspa has to select the lesser of two evils. Sometimes it’s a question of him picking what he ‘should’ do, over what he’d ‘like’ to do. Very occasionally, its a matter of him choosing between two really cool things. I mean, he can’t do…

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No Rest For An Author!

Last month I revealed the completion of (first drafts of) the next TWO Jaspa’s Journey novels, both of which are set in Venice. Completed, if you overlook the required editing, artwork creation, seemingly never-ending proof reading, and so on. One month on I have yet more exciting news… work on Jaspa’s next adventure has already begun! In fact, I already have a provisional working…

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Finished!

Start the fanfare! The next TWO novels in my Jaspa’s Journey series, both set in the beautifully unique Italian city of Venice, are finally finished! The Jaspa’s Journey series is about to grow by the addition of not just one, but two new adventures (photo: Rich Meyrick) Although, by ‘finished’, I mean the first drafts are complete. There’s still a lot of work to be done before publication.…

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Almost There...

You know that feeling? The one you get when you’re reaching the end of a book you’ve really enjoyed? On the one hand, you want to rush through the last pages to find out how it ends. But on the other hand, you don’t want it to finish at all. You want the story to continue, so you can keep on enjoying it. Well, it’s much the same with writing. And I’m currently experiencing heightened versions…

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Too Many Hats!

I’ve worn quite a few hats, careerwise, over the years. Some of them fitted perfectly, others not so well. Hat #1: Scientist If you’ve read some of my previous blogs, you’ll probably be aware that my first career was as a scientist, researching environmental change. I loved wearing this hat! In my office in at the Forschungsstation für Quartärpaläontologie (Research Station for Quaternary…