Indie Author Living in Fort Erie, Canada (Niagara Region) – The Fifteenth of June, Fender, The Afton Morrison Series
My favorite part of writing The Fifteenth of June was creating the characters—they’re flawed, haunted, quirky, vulgar, relatable, and amusing at times. And I enjoyed every moment of inventing dialogue between them.
I captured some of my favorite quotes from six of the main characters and organized them below as plain text, click to tweet buttons, and images that can be easily shared to Pinterest.
. . . authors like Mordecai Richler and Douglas Coupland . . . known for their dark but humourous literary masterpieces, clearly guided Jones’ hand during the production of his debut novel, The Fifteenth of June.
—Niagara This Week
While completing my first draft of The Fifteenth of June, I was introduced to writing software called Scrivener.
It’s popular among indie authors, and for good reason. Among a whole host of plotting, editing, and publishing features, it was designed with the functionality to add notes and images to different chapters, parts, and character bios.
I thought it might be fun to go on a hunt for celebrities who resemble how I envisioned and described each character. A few Google searches later, I had celebrity lookalikes for each character imported into Scrivener.
From John Goodman to Emily Blunt, this is what I came up with:
I think some of the ugly truths about human nature in [The Fifteenth of June] were powerful. Fantastic debut from a talented author.
—Michael McDonald, Author of Walking Away from Depression
The world is kind of a crazy place.
Not long ago, an author had to rely on landing a traditional publishing deal if he or she wanted to sell books.
But with the invention of print-on-demand services, such as CreateSpace, and eBook technology, such as Nook and Kindle, anyone can publish his or her work to a worldwide audience. Just yesterday, for instance, someone in Brazil purchased The Fifteenth of June.
That just blows my mind . . . in a good way, of course.
That said, I still have a soft spot for local commerce and the community where I live.
I’m running a giveaway on Goodreads until Friday, March 17.
The prize?
I’ll be shipping print copies of my debut novel, The Fifteenth of June, to 10 lucky winners. If you’re that reader who prefers physical books to digital, it costs absolutely nothing—as in $0—to enter. All you need is a Goodreads account.
[The Fifteenth of June is] a process, for both the protagonist and the reader, of self-discovery and acceptance . . . and through this process, both reader and protagonist are shown glimpses of hope, of different possibilities, of the potential for change, and begin to understand that the way events and situations shape us depends on how we choose to deal with them . . .
—Daphne Kapsali, Author of 100 Days of Solitude
[The Fifteenth of June] is full of wit, and even though the story has some darkness to it, it has plenty of humor and lighthearted moments as well to balance it out.
—Dana Gore, Author of Choose Awareness
My wife went to a music festival in Orlando last fall. Alone with the dogs for the weekend, I decided to do something I had always wanted . . . to start writing a novel!
After roughly two months, I had finished the manuscript for The Fifteenth of June. I had initially titled it Stuck in One Spot, but my fabulous editor, Laura Mae Isaacman, persuaded me to rename it, and I’m glad she did.
Typing the first keystroke to self-publishing my debut novel took about four months in total, even though it felt like an eternity at times. Almost every day I told myself, “This might turn out to be the worst novel ever, but it’s worth a shot.”
I think I repeated that to myself so often because the thought of someone reading my work—let alone choosing an editor to dissect it—was terrifying.
Do you run a book club or participate in one?
If your club would like to read The Fifteenth of June, I may be able to provide you with a few complementary copies. Depending on my availability, I may also be able to join your club for a 30-minute teleconference. Please contact me for details.
Here are some sample discussion questions based on the book:
