I’m Back! (With a New Book & Pen Name, Because ✨Branding✨)
I’m Back! (With a New Book & Pen Name, Because ✨Branding✨)
Yeah, that’s right, I’m back! Back and I’m not planning on leaving. Since the last update lots of things have happened, the biggest of which that might concern you is a new book titled Eleanor & Dale In… The Gyroscope Curse! (Part 1). A buddy horror-comedy about Eleanor, a horror fanatic who spends way too much of her free time watching scary movies and Dale, a scaredy-cat FBI agent terrified of anything remotely horror related, who so happened to be spying on her internet activity when she just so happened to be watching an elusive cursed video known as Gyroscope. A video that can and will bring the monsters from TV that scared you as a child to life. Now the two have to work together to undo the curse, as they embark on a horror fueled road trip facing not only their monsters brought to life but of other cursed characters as well. The book is an homage to the campy horror movies, making it a perfect read for spooky season!
The book is available for on Amazon (under my second pen name “Kyle J. Webb”) or you can read it right now on the /r/QuadrantNine subreddit, where I’m releasing each chapter for free every Tuesday and Thursday between now and Halloween.
As much as I didn’t want to use a second pen name, I’ve been around the indie scene long enough to learn that the best practice for releasing different genres is to have different-but-similar pen names to release your books under. This is simply to not confuse the almighty algorithm, and mixing the audiences of my more serious and more comical works. Other than my first book, The Novel Killer, all future publications under my Jonathan K. Webb name will be more serious projects and the Kyle J. Webb name will be used for more lighthearted and comical projects. Although, for all intents and purposes, Jonathan K. Webb can be seen as my “main” name, while Kyle J. Webb is more of a “spinoff.” My current work in progress is a Jonathan K. Webb project.
A few more updates for those of you curious what I’ve been up to since the last edition:
- 💍 Got married!
- ↔️ Changed jobs, then changed jobs again back to the one I initially left. Should have seen this coming, boomeranging is so common here, mostly because the work-life balance is just so good. Which means more time to write! (The more stressful job was also one of the reasons why I became less active. Too much stress to focus on writing).
- 🎙️ Stopped podcasting. I love podcasting, but it’s a lot of work and was taking a lot from my other passions. Maybe one of these days I’ll create a writing podcast, but for now writing is the main focus.
- 🌱 Life.
What’s Happening?
- Playing with Ideas / Stay Tuned - Now that my schedule has cleared up for the most part with getting The Gyroscope Curse! (Part 1) out, I'm playing with some ideas on how I want to fill my writing time when I'm not working on my main project or editing another. I'm still TBD on them, but I will be sure to include what they entail in future newsletters.
- Social Media - I’ve been pretty active on Bluesky and Reddit, and a little bit on Instagram. Feel free to follow me!
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Writing
- Books - My main focus is books, and always will be. I’m currently 80k words into the largest writing project I’ve ever embarked on with an estimated final word count around 140k to 160k. I can’t say much right now, but I will say that it’s an homage to my favorite book of all time, Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer.
- Flash Fiction & Short Stories - I also plan on writing more responses to /r/WritingPrompts on a more frequent basis, which I will usually repost on /r/QuadrantNine and archiving on my website. I'm also playing with the idea of writing more short stories or novellas in addition to the big projects and flash fiction, but that is TBD for now as I'm recalibrating my schedule.
Cool Things I Love
Books
- Hummingbird Salamander by Jeff Vandermeer - I missed this Vandermeer book when it came out, but I’m happy to finally get around to it. I didn’t think a literary-thriller could even be possible, but Vandermeer does an amazing job blending the two genres that should not even belong with each other.
- The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition by Jane Friedman - This is a must read for any writer who’s thinking of putting their work out there. Friedman shares her in depth knowledge from working in publishing on everything from taxes to newsletters to where to publish. A great primer on the business end of writing. Even if you don’t plan on making writing your full time job, or even plan on making any money from it, if you want to get your work out there I cannot recommend it enough.
Games
- Clair Obscure: Expedition 33 - I’m about 2/3rds of the way through this game and it is easily one of my favorite games of all time, and I don’t even really like turn-based RPGs. But the story is so good and the combat is so satisfying, especially once you understand how to nail a perfect setup. I'm also really slow at beating games, so it might be a bit before I finish act 3. But that ending of act 2 was just 🤯
A Question For You…
🎃 Halloween is upon us, what's your favorite spooky season tradition?
Mine is binging horror books and watching cheesy horror movies with my brother.
That's it!
Thank you for reading this edition of Dispatches from Quadrant Nine. See you in two weeks for another edition! For more, you can check out my website JonathanKWebb.com follow me on Substack, Instagram, Bluesky, and Reddit. I also have a small subreddit dedicated to discussing all my writing over at /r/QuadrantNine that you can subscribe to.
See you next month!