Hi, and welcome to the October edition of my official newsletter. I’ll talk about what is going on with me having to do with my writing projects, my personal appearances if I’m making them, and some other personal items and other odds and ends with some tenuous connection to writing. I try not to take it way too seriously, although writing is life to me, absolutely.
So, let’s talk writing and a couple other things.
Those Personal Items…
You can’t tell from the photo immediately above this text, but it is entirely too hot for the end of September/early October around the state of Iowa. On the day of my school’s homecoming last Friday, we hit a high of 90 degrees Fahrenheit. For those who were reading this newsletter around the same time last year, you must have read of how I nearly had a panic attack wondering if I’d ever feel cool again in this state.
Well, based on the most recent weather reports, I’m hopeful we will stay under 80 degrees after this weekend. It would be nice to have an October that feels like actual fall weather I remember experiencing in past falls. Both my daughter and younger niece, in particular, are great fans of fall and the Halloween season, and would appreciate some more appropriate weather.
Otherwise, I don’t have much to say about my my personal circumstances. The school year keeps rolling as always, and I am always trying to learn something new about how to teach. I’m not sure I’ll ever stop learning about teaching for as long as I do it. Then again, the fact people have been paying me in one way or another to write for the past thirty years or so and I have not learned everything there is to learn about it might have been a good hint at the answer.
Writing Projects
Time to take a look at my ongoing projects, in varying steps of production.
- 1The top of my priorities at the moment is The Yank Striker 3 (AKA YS3, AKA Working Title): The Yank Striker series follows the exploits of Daniel John “DJ” Ryan, a fledgling American soccer player who leaves his family behind to try his fortune with an English Premier League team in the East End of London. Check this out if you want more information about the first book in the series, and this link if you want to know more about Book 2, The Yank Striker’s Journey2.
- YS3 continues DJ’s story as he tries to grow as a footballer, despite new challenges and an unexpected event that could either be a setback or opportunity.
- I spent most of my time this week on this project. I’m currently over 15,000 words on the rough draft. If you’re curious about who DJ’s interacting with in this part of the manuscript, he’s facing a fellow American gridiron coach’s son who has now gone over to the true football3 and meeting someone who might be important to his personal life.
- Someone needs to guess what the title of the new book is. Seriously.
- Either number two or three priority, depending on the moment, is the sequel to my debut novel, The Holy Fool. This journalism thriller features Samuel “Sonny” Turner, a newspaper columnist tasked by his editor and mentor with protecting his newspaper, the Chicago Journal, from sale by its unscrupulous owner and breaking a major story on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars during the 2008 presidential election and Great Recession.
- The sequel revisits Sonny beginning in 2024, sixteen years after he’s left Chicago and founded his news site, The Fool. In addition to the … let’s say volatile political situation his birth country is now in and how he plans to cover it from a distance, he’s also dealing with the fact he’s a Midwestern boy from Iowa who’s been out of his own country, living in Switzerland, and raising his children in a foreign land speaking foreign languages and growing up in a way he never did in Meskwaki4, Iowa, or in the state capital of Des Moines. He is dealing with many of the typical issues of emigres away from America5.
- I haven’t done much writing on this story, but I have been pondering how to handle putting it together. As I’ve started to write this book, it has become apparent for the first time in my fiction experiences, I’ve written myself into a corner. I thought it might be useful to briefly discuss how I think I’m going to get myself out of a jam.
This is where some minor spoilers will pop up, so you may want to speed ahead to the amusing meme photo below (the one with the guy and two girls) if this is an issue for you. It never is for me, but regardless…
The Fool 2 sees Sonny spend the vast majority of his time in Switzerland as he directs the coverage of events in the United States, with one exception which I won’t reveal here. You’d expect this; Sonny is the editor in chief, he’s not the one chasing down stories anymore like he did sixteen years previously in the events of The Holy Fool. He’s the one directing the action, passing on his knowledge and insights to the reporters in the field. It’s the difference between being a lieutenant leading a rifle company into a firefight and a lieutenant colonel or higher directing his men from rear positions.
However, I recently heard of (but did not watch, thank the universe), the recent adaptation of The War of the Worlds starring Ice Cube, which was apparently an entire movie featuring characters staring at screens, typing, and doing secret tech stuff.
- Naturally, I did not in any way wish to emulate 2025’s War of the Worlds in my book. So, how was I going to avoid this trap? I realized Sonny is going to have to share the spotlight.
- All three of my published books have featured limited third-person narration, which means they concentrated on following the actions, more or less, of one character (DJ in The Yank Striker series, and Sonny (for the most part) in The Holy Fool). By contrast, what I’ll call third-person multiple point of view (POV) narration is third-person narration where more than one character serves at the main POV character.
- One of the main examples of this narration is the A Song of Ice and Fire book series written by George R.R. Martin6. I first had a chance to try out this technique when I started writing some fan fiction on the side, so I have some familiarity with it.
- So, I’ll use some of the existing journalist characters from The Holy Fool who still work with Sonny on his new project as well as some new young recruits7. It will be a good opportunity to explore some characters I didn’t have the chance to explore until now and to bring them into the story. I’m looking forward to it.
Now let’s get on with the other projects taking up my time…
- The Untitled Iowa Series: This is a series of novels I’ve started to ponder (maybe three so far) set in a small Iowa town on the Mississippi River not much different from the ones I’ve lived in for the past few decades. Part of the themes of this story fit into the current social and political environment, while showing how smaller communities process larger sociological and historical changes.
Also, I want to attract more local readers if I start producing stories set here in local settings. Sue me for wanting to be more popular.
These are the stories I have already started to formulate in my head.- The first one I am calling the working title The Land, The River, and The Waste. This was inspired indirectly by a recently completed short story (more on that whenever it gets released). It will be a sci-fi/horror novel set in Iowa, leaning on the environmental damage being done to my home state.
After doing quite a bit of - The Heart Project: This is speculative/fantasy/soft sci-fi story I have in mind informed by our troubled times involving four one-time friends, a high school reunion, and a microcosm of a larger sense of chaos. The vast majority of the story would be focused in Iowa, even though it touches on events occurring nationwide and globally.
All quiet on this project – This will be Book 2 in the series rather than Book 1.
- The first one I am calling the working title The Land, The River, and The Waste. This was inspired indirectly by a recently completed short story (more on that whenever it gets released). It will be a sci-fi/horror novel set in Iowa, leaning on the environmental damage being done to my home state.
- Kayfabe Stories: This is a story about a family of pro wrestlers from Texas and a member of this family, an aspiring young writer, who is determined to understand what it all means.
All quiet on the Western Front when it comes to this project.
I’m On the Road This Month…
As it turns out, I have a busy October coming up before all the book festivals and events start to slow down. I hope to see you there at one of these events.
First, let me thank, one more time, the owners and staff of Bent Oak Books in Fort Madison, Burlington By the Book in Burlington, and the Atlas Collective in Moline, Ill., for being such wonderful hosts for me at my events at all three places. These are fantastic independent bookstores and the people behind them are fantastic as well. I am looking forward to returning to all three places in the future.
- I will be at the Windsor Heights Book Fair on Sunday, October 5, at the Masonic Lodge at 1141 69th St., in Windsor Heights, Iowa (outside Des Moines). This will be the third time I’ve appeared at the event and I’m very much up for the event. Tyler Granger, the organizer of the festival, is a good acquaintance of mine and a fellow Iowa author himself.
- Finally, I will be at the Iowa City Book Festival, which runs from October 5-12 in Iowa City. I will be attending the local author book fair as part of the event, which will be from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Oct. 12 at MERGE, 136 S. Dubuque St. I’ve always had a great time there, and I’ll be looking forward to it.
If any podcasters or bloggers are interested in new fiction, if you are interested in stories based in the world of soccer, or if you are interested in featuring writers from Iowa or the Midwest, I would absolutely be open for a feature or interview. Get in touch here or at jasonliegois@liegois.media.
Writing Quote(s) of the Week:
Somehow, this bit of advice from one of the top writers of the early 20th century makes sense to me.
If you are in difficulties with a book, try the element of surprise: attack it at an hour when it isn’t expecting it.
― H.G. Wells
This seems relatively obvious, but still needs to be said.
A writer, I think, is someone who pays attention to the world.
― Susan Sontag
As much as I’m obsessed with worldbuilding in my writing, this seems especially true.
Writing has nothing to do with meaning. It has to do with land surveying and cartography, including the mapping of countries yet to come.
― Gilles Deleuze
When I Post
Check out this post for when and what I post on a regular basis.
How to support me😊.
As always, go to the links on the side if you are reading this on a desktop/laptop or the links on my profile on mobile. If you go follow the links above, you will be able to buy both the paperback and ebook versions of my books on Amazon. If you just put “Jason Liegois” in Google you’ll find them on the first page of search results.
Ladies and gentlemen, I have quite a few places that now carry at least some of my books. Until the Iowa Indie Bookshop Tour got started a few years back, I wasn’t aware of many of these great and fantastic independent bookstores in Iowa and the Midwest.
These are the bookstores you’ll find at least some of my books8:
- Bent Oak Books, 619 7th St. Fort Madison.
- Burlington By The Book, 301 Jefferson St, Burlington.
- The Corner and More, 703 Main St., Mediapolis.
- Green Point Mercantile, 217 E. 2nd St., Muscatine.
- The Brewed Book, 1524 Harrison St., Davenport.
- The Black Rose, 116 W. Main St., West Branch
- Beaverdale Books, 2629 Beaver Ave. # S1, Des Moines.
- Pella Books, 824 Franklin St, Pella.
- The Atlas Collective, 1801 5th Ave, Moline, Illinois – my first out of Iowa bookstore, very proud of this.
I’m always looking for some new places to place my books, so feel free to hit me up in the comments if you have a suggestion.
For those who are budget conscious among all of you, my books are part of the collections of the Fort Madison, Burlington, and Musser (Muscatine) public libraries.
My poetry book The Flow and the Journey is available at Bent Oak, Green Point, Burlington By the Book, and The Corner and More, but it is also available online but not on Amazon. I’ve set up a new online store for copies of my chapbook on my WordPress site, Liegois Media. If you want to get a physical copy, go ahead and click on the button below.
The Flow and the Journey
The first collection of poetry from author Jason Liegois.
If you don’t have the budget for a paid subscription, feel free to just send me a one-time payment of whatever you have the budget for.
Final Thoughts
All you writers keep writing, and all of you keep safe. See you down the road.
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While I do appreciate you following this blog, I really would like you to subscribe to my Substack page. By subscribing to that page, you’ll not only be receiving my Substack newsletter, The Writing Life With Jason Liegois (the companion blog to this one), but you’ll also be signing up for my email list. Just click the button below.
- There’s too many breaks in this newsletter to number them off coherently. Sorry if it makes things slightly harder to read. ↩︎
- I don’t want to get into a massive amount of detail unless you’re interested. But it is a really cool soccer and family drama, trust me. ↩︎
- In the series, I alternate between calling the sport football and soccer. It honestly doesn’t matter to me either way. ↩︎
- There is no such place. It is for me what Yoknapatawpha County was for William Faulkner. There is a true Meskwaki tribe in Iowa, but no such place as Meskwaki, Iowa. I will say it is an amalgam of several eastern Iowa communities I have lived in and passed through during the past 40 years or so. I look forward to introducing it to you. It’s a pretty cool town. ↩︎
- You are going to dig meeting these kids. They’re pretty cool. ↩︎
- Allegedly he’s still writing it, heh heh. ↩︎
- Slight spoiler: Sonny is now pushing 50 and the younger reporters he worked with in The Holy Fool are now near or in their forties. ↩︎
- All Iowa locations unless otherwise noted. ↩︎