128 - March 8, 2020 - Blind Reset, The Ravenglass Chronicles, Oxsight Prism glasses, Sci-fi Roundtable, Atlantis

Welcome to Jon's author diary for the week ending March 8, 2020. Over the past few weeks, I’ve been working on my second draft of Blind Reset, the follow-up to my gamelit novel/meditation on disability, Blind Gambit. I thought I would have had it done by now, but I’m 3,000 words away from the end. It’s been a slow process with a lot of re-working to improve the pacing and tighten up the story. I tend to under-write my first drafts, getting the story and dialogue down and ignoring things like description or action. It’s definitely made me realise that even though I’ve got into a nice groove with The Ravenglass Chronicles, I still have the same struggles with Blind Reset as I did writing the first book. I put this down to the emotional rawness. Even though half the book is a fun adventure set in a virtual world, the other half is about coming to terms with going blind—something I’ve had to come to terms with myself. All being well, I should have the second draft complete by Tuesday. This means I can put the project aside and dive into writing The Devil, episode 15 of The Ravenglass Chronicles. I cannot wait. My feelings are that once I’ve got my open projects out of the way (Cleric of the Wasteland, Blind Reset, and the co-authored Black Death trilogy), I want to focus on one thing—a sustained epic fantasy project. I’ve been writing ideas down for a series in the Ravenglass Universe set a few hundred years after the events of my current series, with a new cast of characters and a bit of a darker feel, with thieves, assassins, and wyverns, of course! Think Scott Lynch meets Brent Weeks, with a bit of Robin Hobb thrown in for good measure. 2020 is about finishing open projects, including The Ravenglass Chronicles and the Wasteland series, so I’ve told myself I won’t start writing anything new until they’re done and dusted…though I have been toying around with an idea for a post-Earth space opera story…ooh, and that steampunk vigilante series…gah! Too many ideas and not enough time to write them. I think I need to get the James Patterson setup where I write an outline and get someone else to write the stories :D     Oxsight Prism I mentioned on last week’s Author Diary podcast that I'd put my name down for an assessment for the Oxsight Prism. These are glasses made for visually impaired people that use streaming technology to improve visual acuity, peripheral vision, and allow users to adjust the contrast between objects, etc.  This is quite exciting as my eyesight really does suck—my left eye is shot and my right eye has five percent vision. I’m not sure how much the glasses will cost, but I’m assuming they’ll be in the region of £1,000 as they are a very specialist tech.  Hopefully, they’ll be within my budget. If not, I’ll have to think of some fundraising ideas to raise the funds.   Ancient Civilizations On this week’s episode of the Sci-Fi Roundtable podcast, we dived into the speculative topic of advanced lost civilizations. We covered the work of Graham Hancock, the show Ancient Aliens, ancient Egypt, and Atlantis. Visit http://sfrtpodcast.libsyn.com or find the Sci-Fi Roundtable wherever you listen to podcasts.  Take care, Jon