Spring
The eBook version(s) of Jonesy Flux dropped today!
So yeah, time to check in with a little news! The big one is the eBook versions coming out. These have a cool
refreshed cover design that brings all the same awesome Jonesy Power, but adds a healthy dose of
sweet Synthwave flavor. Also, the Kindle edition arrived at No. 6 in Amazon's Children's Space Exploration
bestseller list! In truth it's not the biggest horse race on the docket, but I'm pleased as punch anyway!
And better yet, I'm overjoyed and humbled to see the reviews coming in. Nothing gives me warm fuzzies quite like
hearing that some young reader tore through 400+ pages of my work in two days flat. Jonesy has some awesome readers!
Oh, and what am I doing? Just working on the next book... or two??
-- James Pray, May 11, 2021
RELEASE DAY
JONESY FLUX IS HERE
BONUS CONTENT ON THE BONUS CONTENT PAGE
AHHHHHHHHHHHH
Okay no but seriously: this has been fifteen years in the making and I'm super-thankful to everyone who helped
make it happen, who number too many to mention here (buy the book and check the acknowledgements!), but
I definitely have to call out my agent, Don Maass, my editor Ardi Alspach, and my family for helping
make Jonesy's story everything it could be.
Time to go celebrate!
-- James Pray, November 10, 2020
Summer ++
JONESY FLUX IS COMING!
Real people are reviewing my book and they are saying nice things!
Don't ask me how somebody spends their entire adult life trying to get their writing in front of people
and then gets all scared when it happens and people like it, because I WOULDN'T KNOW.
Just kidding. I just don't know. I totally should, though.
Anyway: Kirkus says JONESY FLUX is a "love letter to the space opera genre" and a bunch of other things to make me blush.
The publication date is now November 10th, 2020 (was to be October 13th before COVID-related printer delays). So close!
-- James Pray, August 2020
Summer
Site updates again! It's time to get serious!
You guys, like TONS of stuff has happened. I'm getting published. I can talk about it! It's crazy awesome!
Here's the deal. I wrote a book called JONESY FLUX AND THE GRAY LEGION. It's Middle Grade. It's got
superpowered girls, and spaceships, and robots, and aliens, and it's getting published by Sterling Publishing in October.
Jinkies, I'm excited. Are you?
-- James Pray, June 2020
Winter
I'm alive!
Nothing says "Hmm" like a website last updated seven years ago, so here we are!
Imagine my surprise that I still like the site design I cobbled together all the way back then.
I need to update the background image to something more befitting the "aspiring SciFi novelist"
idea since I've returned to my roots a bit with the latest project, but if you're reading this (oh, hey!) and
it's more wood-and-wheels than ships-and-space-marines, you just got here early, is all.
Also worth noting: if you're viewing this site on a mobile device and it looks hilarious
(in the bad way), I'm planning to get around to that, too. It wasn't such a concern back in 2012,
but I suppose that even if I've survived the intervening seven years without a smart device,
most of the western world has decided they're not only rad, but possibly the best way to look at
the Internets. If you're reading this and that's finally changed, just know I was in before it was cool.
(Not a caveman, really.)
-- James Pray, January 2019
Update: MAGENTAAAAAAAA
It's actually super on-brand now!
Fall
Site updates!
It was finally time to ditch the ugly old "I sort of remember HTML from six years ago" site design
and transition to the wonderous age of "Hey! jQuery!" I have vague plans to start putting up more
stuff, but writing still takes precedence, give or take.
It's been a long summer+fall and my first encounters with RSI issues this year have been slowing my
life down in a lot of ways. I'm figuring it out, though, especially now that things have gotten bad
enough to scare me into exercising every day. Turns out that helps! I've incorporated a lot of
updates to my writing workflow, too, and doubled (or better) my writing rate; for now the battle is
getting my body back to the point where I can put in the hours.
Considering that I just slept
a full night without ibuprofen for the first time in four months, I think I'm close.
Feel the burn!
-- James Pray, December 2012
P.S. The site design starts to have trouble if you're running over a widescreen over 1600 px wide;
I'll be making some tweaks to fix this and other issues eventually.
P.P.S. Tweaks are in. I'm concerned that I will run this out to a lot of Ps if I start using it as a revision history.
Summer
Hi!
Among the many things that have been competing for my time this summer, I've been helping my wife
update her site over at kelseyrottiers.com (as of the time
of writing, the update wasn't up yet, but maybe it is now! Mysteries!) and studying site design to
do it, and it's helped me see the shortcomings of my little thrown-together internet outpost even
more than before. Let's be honest: it's pretty homely.
On the other hand, I'm not trying to sell you anything, and you probably won't leave snickering at
me (unless you are into site design), so I figure it's okay for now.
Now get back to business and make it a good day!
-- James Pray, July 2012
Spring
Hey? What have I been doing?
Well, just writing. If it's details you want, I could add learning to be a better writer, in the
(new to me) sense of learning how best to induce myself to build a solid novel with the least waste
possible, rather than the (older, and certainly not discarded) sense of coming to understand more
deeply the craft of writing better sentences, paragraphs, scenes, chapters, arcs, threads, acts, and
so on. I have been keeping track of my little lessons and may share them later, but for now, I
am simply writing -- steadily and rather more quickly than any time in my life before now. It's
great.
I hope you are great, too.
-- James Pray, May 2012
Winter
I am still alive, really; sometimes I get into a Mode wherein I work my tail off and accomplish
much, to a degree that precludes telling the internet about it. That was my Fall season for
2011.
Anyway, there's no news to speak of just now, except that I am close to re-starting my sequel
(...again), and suspect that it will go a lot faster this time, on account of actually working. It
turns out that you really can have too many good ideas, at least if you're trying to cram them all
into the same story. I note that I've said I had this sequel thing figured out before, so I will
not say more until I actually have the cussed thing drafted.
Have fun out there.
-- James Pray, January 2012
Late Summer
If you're wondering what sort of things I have actually written, the Bio page is now updated with
answers (of a sort). If you're wondering why I don't mention project titles, it's a) to keep them
out of search engines and b) because publishers pick them out in any case. I am at peace with this,
and I hope you can be, too.
-- James Pray, August 2011
Summer
Somehow I think I've neglected to mention that Donald
Maass is representing my work. Well, he is. He is great.
In other news, I got married in May and bought a house, which has had a detrimental effect on my
writing schedule (this should not have been as surprising as it was). Something may be off when you
feel as excited as I did last night about putting down seven hundred words. On the other hand, the
washing machine is no longer helping rot out the laundry room floor, and I have shelving for
slightly more than half my books, so my schedule's opening up. Onward!
-- James Pray, July 2011
Developments
Revisions are done (for the moment) and sent off...
Now, letting plans for the sequel percolate, and waiting to see if any changes are in order for the
end of the novel. So far, plenty of good ideas, but I want to have my starting conditions a little
more finalized before I start (because I've started it twice already, and don't want to get into the
habit).
Also, I finally secured a Twitter account in my name!
Still figuring out what to do with it, as Twitter is a medium I have tried very hard to learn
nothing about up until now. Theoretically, it could be a useful promotion tool. In practice ...
well, it will take practice, yes.
-- James Pray, March 2011
Moving Forward
As of the first week of the new year, I've signed with an agent for my first* novel. To
criminally understate the matter, I'm excited. Once the celebratory phone calls, dancing, and loud
music are out of the way, though, it's GO TIME, which translates into TIME TO WORK HARD FOR A
LONG TIME, because I've got revisions to make.
I think this means it's probably time to start thinking about my web presence much more carefully
than before...
More updates to come.
-- James Pray, January 2011
*The first novel for which I've tried to get an agent. It's the 8th I've started, the 5th I've
finished, and the 2nd I've written end-to-end more than once.
Site in Development
After almost a year, the construction equipment is rolling in. The site is now in the process of
being built. All by hand, because templates are for sissies. (There's learning to do, though,
because since I was last in the business of coding sites, they've deprecated many of the ways I knew
how to accomplish things with html).
The manuscript is edited as far as I'm going to take it until an agent tells me to do more. I am
currently in the process of finding an agent.
That's it for now.
-- James Pray, October 2010
SITE_VER 0.0
It would be a grand fib to write "Under Construction" here, because this is the digital
equivalent of an acre of dark, bare earth, cross-stitched with grader tracks, with a chain fence
around it, and no construction machinery in sight.
I don't know when this site will begin to take shape. The priority is somewhere beneath finishing
editing a hefty hunk of manuscript-editing.
However! When that's done, this site will grow up to, in part, tell you all about that very story.
You should be excited.
--James Pray, November 2009
