First Light Updates
Hello again!
It feels odd providing updates on a book that I haven’t technically written a word of in 2+ months, but that’s not to say I haven’t been working on it!
I am almost done the first draft of my next book, First Light. Over 100k words have been written and the ending is mapped! There’s just one tiny little section I need in order to piece it all together. I think I’ve got it figured out, but it’s taken quite the white-boarding sessions to do so! Once that gets ironed out, the plan is as follows:
1) I’ll take this “Zero Draft” (a term I stole from NK Jemisin) and turn it into a draft that will be read by others, what I consider my Alpha Draft.
2) I will send that Alpha Draft to a small group of people for constructive feedback.
3) That feedback will be incorporated into the Beta Draft, and depending on how much change is needed I will either:
4a) Have that Beta Draft read by another group of people OR
4b) Send that Beta Draft to agents!
That’s the plan for this book this year. I’ve got some other writing projects stewing, but that’s for another time.
If you want to be a part of the Alpha or potentially Beta reading teams, please email me and let me know why you want to be part of the team. I do ask that you be familiar with my writing, having read at least one of my novels, preferably Land of the Elements, as I believe that is the best writing I’ve done so far and thus most closely resembles my abilities now.
I hope to share more about this project in the near future, as I’m really excited about this story.
Until then, happy reading! (In case anyone needs a rec, pick up The Fifth Season by NK Jemisin. Amazingly creative writing, winner of the Hugo Award, and just all-around a great book!)
JB6
Ghost Ship of the Bay
Happy Spooky Season!
In celebration of what is by far my favorite holiday, my friend Phil Richardson and I wrote a spooky, Halloween-themed short story!
Enjoy Ghost Ship of the Bay which can be read for free here on my website!
Happy Halloween!
JB6
What Comes Next?
Hello again!
An update has been overdue, so it’s time to pull back the curtain on what’s been going on and what comes next after releasing Land of the Elements! To those of you who have read Land of the Elements, thank you! If you haven’t read it yet, you can pick up a PDF copy for free! I had a great time drawing inspiration from my childhood and bringing that adventure to life, and I hope my joy for the story is shared in your experience reading it.
I’ve been asked a few times about if I’m doing a sequel to LotE, and while I have indeed planned out a second book (and actually written a bit of it), there are a couple of things that are taking precedence before I revisit Link’s grand adventures:
The first is a fun one: I’ve started DMing! I’m actively running a homebrew D&D campaign, and it’s been so much fun that I’ve decided to enshrine our misadventures in short-story form. Turning a recorded session into a readable story takes time, but it’s a great exercise and should make for some fun, light reading by the end! Our group has brought to life an eclectic cast of characters, and I intend to capture their originality and chemistry from the get go. I’m not sure what I’ll do with this, so stay tuned!
Next, The Bards are in full-swing with MD Ren Fest on the immediate horizon! This year, we have four weekends at Revel Grove along with a special show at Ram’s Head On Stage in Annapolis! It’ll be a busy but exciting and music-filled fall!
Finally, I’m working on my next fully fledged book! The idea for lit like a wildfire in my brain and never stopped spreading, so I had to get going on it right away. I’m diving back into fully-fledged fantasy, and since February, I’ve been working on First Light (working title). I won’t reveal too much now, but imagine if you could choose your powers…based on what constellation was in the sky!
More to come!
JB6
Who Wants a Free Book?
by John Bachkosky (1/11/24)
Hello Everyone!
Today is a very special day, as I am happy to finally release Land of the Elements! You can download a copy of the manuscript for free here!
I strongly believe that Land of the Elements is my best writing yet, and I want to once again thank everyone who helped make this book the best version of itself, including my alpha and beta readers, my editor, and especially my loving and supportive wife. Thank you all!
If you want to know more about how Land of the Elements came to be, check out my previous blog posts about the book.
I sincerely hope you enjoy Land of the Elements. Thank you for taking the time to read it, should you choose to.
That’s all! Happy reading!
JB6
Coming Soon: A Free Book!
An update on the projects I’ve been working on this year!
by John Bachkosky (12/1/2023)
Hello again!
It’s been a busy back half of the year, but as the holidays roll around, I wanted to share some exciting updates and news about both Land of the Elements and my band’s upcoming album!
First, a little story. Back in fifth grade, my friend John and I drew little cartoon faces for our friends. Our principal got mad at us for charging people for our doodles (a whopping $0.25…), so we drew them for free and accepted “tips” instead. This also happened to be the same year that he and I created the original, composition notebook version of Land of the Elements.
The cartoons John and I used to draw, turned into cufflinks and gifted to me by my wonderful wife for our wedding last year.
In John’s honor, and in the spirit of “I’m not a professional writer by any means,” I’ve decided that I am going to share Land of the Elements with you all for FREE! Come January 11th, the PDF will be available for download. If anyone does want a physical copy, it will still be available on Amazon for the minimum price I am allowed to set.
The cover for Land of the Elements
I am proud of what this story turned into, and I hope that everyone can enjoy reading it as much as John and I enjoyed creating it. I so wish I could share with you the original “fifth grade version” as well, but after searching high and low for the better part of two years, I have been unable to find that composition book. Hopefully, this version captures the same wonder and whimsy with which we made the original!
Along with my new book, I am beyond excited to say that the next album from The Bards is coming soon! I can’t reveal anything just yet, but head to TheBardsBand.com and sign up for the newsletter to stay up to date on upcoming releases.
That’s all for now! Happy Holidays!
JB6
The Plan
by John Bachkosky (6/21/23)
Happy Summer Solstice!
As I mentioned in my April post, my band is hard at work on our second album! It’s become quite an ambitious project, but I (in my biased opinion) think it’s some of the coolest music. I can’t wait for you all to hear it early next year.
In the meantime, I’ve decided to forge ahead with Land of the Elements! Yes, that means that no agent I queried wanted to represent the book. More on that in a minute. I’ve decided that I want to leave some room for sequels to this book, so I need to rework the ending a bit to fit this new plan. This shouldn’t be a long process, but I do need to comb through the story once more to ensure all the details line up. Once that’s done, it’s self-publishing time!
Land of the Elements will be available this fall - I’ll announce the official date later this summer once I have all of my ducks in a row.
If you want to get a taste, you can read Chapter One now!
About the agents: While I’m disappointed that the agents I queried decided to pass (or just didn’t respond), I am still very proud of and excited about this book. It’s a love letter to my own childhood, and I hope everyone that reads it enjoys the adventure!
JB6
Twenty Seven & Counting
In the month of January, I sent out forty five queries to agents about my upcoming novel Land of the Elements. Since then, I’ve heard back from (you guessed it) twenty seven of them declining the opportunity to represent LotE to publishers in one form or another. The rest simply haven’t responded. Most of the rejection emails say the same thing:
“Thanks for the opportunity, but I don’t think I’m the right fit. Writing is subjective though, so don’t get discouraged!”
It’s hard to stay encouraged when you keep getting the same generic “thanks, but no thanks” response. But as one iron in the fire seemed to cool, another heated up.
In the month of February, my band recorded The Bards Crawl—a five-song album featuring covers of traditional Irish folk songs. On a particularly cold day late in the month, we went to a beach on the Chesapeake Bay and filmed a music video for the lead track: The Wellerman. We wrapped our final shot, us walking away from the beach, as it began to rain on us in 45 degree weather. We simply kept on walking towards the car and closed the doors just as it began to really pour. The shoot was frantic and freezing, but that miserably cold and windy shoot turned into something we never expected.
In the week after the shoot, I cut together multiple iterations of the video, hoping that I could get a good enough cut out of what little footage I had (the shoot had only lasted about twenty minutes due to the weather and lack of sunlight). I managed to put together a video that we were all happy with, and on March 5th we released it to the world.
And the world responded.
Since its release, our video for The Wellerman has (wanna guess?) twenty seven thousand views and counting, including over five hundred likes and dozens of comments and subscriptions from everywhere. We figured that we were simply riding the popularity wave of the song itself, but the comments we’ve gotten spoke to something else:
“Tôi yêu thích bạn và bài hát của bạn!” (Vietnamese: I love you and your song!)
“Baaardzo fajnie.” (Polish: Sooo cool)
“знать бы еще про что поют” (Russian: What else do they sing about?)
“Heck yes!” (English: Heck yes!)
We were stunned by the response, especially in those first two weeks. In the year of our channel’s existence, only two of our previous twenty four videos had garnered over a thousand views. In mere weeks, The Wellerman had more than doubled our entire channel’s total views and showed no signs of stopping.
So we went back out a month later and, with the help of my wonderful wife, filmed a video for Drunken Sailor. It was still bitterly cold and particularly windy, which made filming tricky. Looking anywhere but into the wind put Kevin’s hair in his face, but the sun was behind us, making lighting a challenge. Eventually we found a decent angle and just went for it.
Thinking that it probably wouldn’t do as well as The Wellerman, we released the Drunken Sailor video on April 3rd. In barely more than two weeks it’s pulled in over thirteen thousand views and over four hundred likes. More comments have come in as well, proving to us that maybe we weren’t just lucky in choosing The Wellerman a month ago:
“Beautiful song, congratulations from Mexico”
“This is really good! Greetings from Ukraine!”
“Great voices, hope to see more stuff from you all!”
Before releasing these music videos, our YouTube channel had around fifty subscribers, most of which were friends and family (they’re your first fans!). Now we’re knocking on the door of three hundred, gaining more every day, and I personally know none of the new arrivals. It’s not famous-YouTuber levels of engagement, but it’s thrilling to watch it grow nonetheless. In May, we’ll release our twenty seventh video, stay tuned!
All during this time, as our two new videos get viewed nearly a thousand times a day each, I get more “thanks, but no thanks” emails from agents that said the same thing:
“Publishing is such a subjective industry; so, please don’t be discouraged.”
“As you know, this is a very subjective business, and, even though it's not right for me, it might be the perfect fit for another agent.”
“I do not have the enthusiasm for this project to be the right person to champion it forward. Please keep in mind that publishing is highly subjective. Do not be discouraged!”
It has been hard to hear that my writing isn’t resonating enough with anyone I had sent it to. I’ve put a lot of time and effort into bringing to life a story near and dear to my heart. But just as the agents have all said “no thanks” to my writing, people around the world are saying “give me more” to our videos simply because we put them out there.
So that’s what I’ll eventually do with Land of the Elements. Just as with The Last Wizard and Kingdom’s End, Land of the Elements will be self-published (unless an agent swoops in at the eleventh hour, but I’m not holding my breath). I’m going to put my work out there. You never know who’s going to find it and enjoy it.
By the way, want to guess the number of reviews The Last Wizard has on Amazon?
JB6
New Year, New Stories
by John Bachkosky (1/9/23)
Happy 2023!
I hope your first week in the new year has brought you a fresh sense of adventure, possibility, and whatever you need to be successful in your resolutions.
This new year is going to be an exciting one! Land of the Elements is currently being shopped to literary agents in the hopes that a publishing deal can be made in the not-to-distant future. (You can read Chapter One here)
I’m going to give this avenue a real chance, sending off queries to at least three agents a day for the month of January. I’m confident in this project—I think it’s my best writing yet—though this part of the process is rather subjective. Cross your fingers!
Additionally, I will be continuing to develop One Time, the short-story collection I revealed back during NaNoWriMo. I had originally intended to post the first story to my site, but I’m going to hold off on that for now. I want to give LotE the attention it deserves, especially while shopping it around.
But that’s not all I’ve got on my plate for writing projects this year. For those of you who follow my band—The Bards—on social media, you may have seen our announcement back in December…we’re writing another album! Starting this month, we are going to be putting together fourteen (as of now) original songs for Bards 2—the actual title will be revealed at a later date. There are lots of inspirations going into this primarily folk rock album, and we can’t wait to share it with everyone! Bards 2 is going to come with plenty of surprises and inside looks, so be sure to follow us on YouTube and Instagram. If you want to be the first to hear our new music, follow us on Spotify as well!
Here’s to a productive, exciting, and most importantly fun 2023!
JB6
NaNoWriMo Update #4
And just like that, a month of writing (and editing…so much editing…) has come and gone.
This week was a busy one with the holiday and the “Bards-giving” show we put on at Stan & Joe’s Wednesday night, but plenty of writing still got done! With the Land of the Elements final draft complete—I can’t wait to share it with you all—the focus was back on creating! I normally post on Mondays, but I was on a roll yesterday with a new story for One Time and wanted to finish up before posting my final NaNoWriMo word count.
One Time now sits at 30,367 words between seven stories, one of which is only 200 words.
It’s been a lot of fun working on both Land of the Elements and One Time this month. Having NaNoWriMo as a reason to stay motivated was extremely helpful, and I am now in a really good place with future projects! Looking forward, I hope to start marketing Land of the Elements to literary agents sometime in the new year. I’m really excited about this; I think LotE has a lot of potential to be a fun and accessible entry point into fantasy for all readers.
Sometime next week I will post the opening story to One Time here on my website. It’ll certainly still be in draft form, but I think it’s strong enough to provide a taste of what’s to come!
For those of you that did NaNoWriMo, I hope you managed to hit your word counts! For those of you that were just along for the ride, I hope you enjoyed it!
Oh, and one more thing…I really can’t wait to share it with you, so here’s the opening chapter of Land of the Elements.
JB6
NaNoWriMo Update #3 - It’s DONE!
Three weeks in…and Land of the Elements is done!
Sometimes you just get on a roll, and that’s exactly what happened with LotE this week. I sat down on Tuesday to edit a couple of chapters and ended up cranking out twice as many as I’d planned. As the week went on and my progress crossed over 70%, I got excited. I decided to buckle down and finish up the draft before the holiday, and now Land of the Elements is complete: 93,129 words!
The next step is simple: copy edits! Now that this draft is done, I want another pair of eyes to look it over for grammatical errors. I’ve certainly improved my technical writing skills since I wrote and published The Last Wizard almost three years ago, but I’ve read and edited Land of the Elements so many times that I am certain I’ve made plenty of mistakes. If I’m going to shop this book around to literary agents in 2023, I want it to be the best it can be!
With my focus squarely on finishing the LotE draft this week, I hardly had any time to add to One Time. That’s not to say my word count was zero. I wrote a very simple 200-word story, and it was actually really fun to write! I have to give my friend Phil credit on the concept for this one. It’s simple, it’s efficient, and (in my opinion) kind of funny!
As Thanksgiving and our big Bards Thanksgiving Eve show in Annapolis approaches, I don’t know how much time I’ll have to write this coming week. I’m hoping to break 20,000 words written for One Time before the calendar hits December, which the next story I have drafted should achieve.
(Also…the new Pokemon game rules, and that will be a significant time sink as well…good thing Brandon Sanderson hasn’t also recently released an explosive conclusion to a long standing series…crap.)
Enjoy the turkey!
JB6
NaNoWriMo Update #2
And so arrives the halfway point of NaNoWriMo!
This past week, the bulk of my time was spent on the final draft of Land of the Elements. I got a whopping 42% done this week, bringing the total to 47%. Halfway there (basically)! The editing itself has been fairly smooth sailing. I am happy with the prose—the book itself is easy to read, and the pacing is great. I have not had to add much to fix the character problems I talked about last week. I have found that removing certain lines of dialogue and simplifying scenes has helped just as much—if not more so—in places. I have one major plot fix to bring to the back half of the book, but even with that I suspect Land of the Elements will come in around 95,000 total words.
Even with the progress made on Land of the Elements this week, One Time still got some love. The third short story is written, and the word count now stands at 16,524. I’m hoping to break 30,000 before the end of the month, and so far that pace is holding! I have about a dozen total story ideas for this book, and I hope to get through about half of that by the time NaNoWriMo comes to a close.
My goal for this next week is to hit the end of act two in Land of the Elements and draft another story for One Time. The way things are going, I suspect I’ll be further along than that, but with Pokemon Scarlet/Violet releasing on Friday, who knows!
Until next week!
JB6
Introducing “One Time” - NaNoWriMo Update #1
Wow, time flies when you’re writing a bunch!
This past week, I consolidated feedback on Land of the Elements. I read through what beta readers gave me, identified common threads, and grouped issues to better understand the weak points of the story. Most of the feedback centered around the secondary characters and their decisions, which is not a surprise to me. Character development is my weakest skill, and one I actively work on when I write. I was talking with a friend of mine the other day about how when characters’ actions and decisions don’t have the proper consequences, it makes the story harder to enjoy. I don’t want Land of the Elements to fall victim to this, so I’m taking time to make sure each character—no matter how prominent their role—feels cohesive and realistic. It’s always a challenge to face the shortcomings of something you’ve worked on for a while, but I want this story to be the best version of itself.
As of this point, the final draft of Land of the Elements is 5% complete.
During NaNoWriMo, I wanted to have something more relaxed and fun to work on when I needed a break from fixing and finalizing LotE. Editing can be a frustrating process, and I have a whole folder of undeveloped ideas that call to me, begging for more. It was a hard choice, but there was one that I ultimately kept coming back to. Imagine if every person on Earth had a single-use power that allows them to do exactly what needs to be done in order to achieve something they really want? Imagine a world where every human could make one thing go perfectly right for themselves. Imagine if everyone had a One Time.
I’m really excited about this one. One Time is going to consist of several short stories exploring this concept and the consequences that come along with it. When I write, I often focus more on the big ideas I have for a world and plot than I do on the characters. This time, I wanted to create something where I had to put the focus on the characters. It’ll be a fun change of pace from editing when I need it, and it should help me improve my character writing skills. At the end of the month, I hope to have a good number of the stories done or drafted. I will also be posting one of them here!
As of now, One Time has two stories written with a grand total of 11,286 words.
Not bad for week one of NaNoWriMo!
NaNoWriMo (or, “writing a lot in a month”)
by John Bachkosky (11/1/2022)
November has arrived!
Like many other authors, I will be taking part in National Novel Writing Month, or “NaNoWriMo,” which is more than just a fun name—it’s a challenge!
NaNoWriMo began in 1999 with a straightforward idea: write 50,000 words of a novel in 30 days. Now, people all around the world draw upon their determination to get the story in their heads onto paper. In 2006, a nonprofit organization—under the same name, “NaNoWriMo”—was born that “provides tools, structure, community, and encouragement to help people find their voices, achieve creative goals, and build new worlds — on and off the page.” They are dedicated to supporting writing fluency and education through programs like their Young Writers Program, which had over 90,000 participants last year. You can learn more at nanowrimo.org.
Every author treats NaNoWriMo differently, but the challenge has become increasingly popular thanks to fantasy author Brandon Sanderson—one of my favorite authors—who posts consistent updates about the book he is writing at the time under the name SandoWriMo (Sanderson Writing Month). Books you may have heard of, such as The Night Circus by Erin Morganstern, have started out as NaNoWriMo projects, too.
For me, November will serve two purposes. First, I will be consolidating feedback from the Land of the Elements beta read and implementing changes into a “final” draft that I will then begin marketing to agents in December. Second, I will be writing a new novel with the goal of writing as close to 50,000 words as I can. Throughout the month, I will post weekly updates that include the word count and some story hints for both stories I’ll be working on.
For those of you joining NaNoWriMo, happy writing!
JB6
A Year of Fun
by John Bachkosky (9/15/22)
It's hard to believe that a year has already passed since the first Bards single, The Lady of the Lake, was released!
Since then, we've learned over seventy songs—from Irish folk tunes to classic rock songs—put on a bunch of shows, filmed a music video, and debuted a whole album's worth of original music! It's been an incredible first year, and it's been full of fun.
There is nothing quite like playing live music. We love playing music together (it's why we do this) but even more, we love playing for you, our fans. The energy at a Bards show is unlike anything I've ever experienced. Grabbing the attention of a crowd of strangers and slowly building a relationship with them through our music over the span of a few hours is incredible. Turning a room full of strangers into a chorus of voices singing along—and occasionally dancing—as the calendar turns over is so rewarding, uplifting, and encouraging. The smiles on faces, the laughter, even the simple bobbing of the head—that's what makes everything we do worth it.
It's been a remarkable first year, and we are so grateful to everyone who has supported us in so many ways. We can't wait to show you what's next! From the bottoms of our hearts, thank you all!
Stay tuned ;) year two is going to be exciting.
JB6
The Bards Crawl Pt. 2 (August Update)
by John Bachkosky (8/10/22)
This past weekend, The Bards Crawl returned as we trekked out to Deep Creek Lake and played back to back nights at Moonshadow and Vagabond Taproom. We had a fantastic time and made some new friends (Hi Tad!) while playing a handful of new covers!
The Bards at Moonshadow in McHenry, MD
Next up, we return to Vagabond Taproom on August 19 before a private show on the lake the following night. In the meantime, keep an eye on our YouTube channel, which is linked at the top of this site. We’ll be posting a few new performance videos from our first round of shows, including some special full-band performances from a one-night-only performance we did at the end of July with some friends. I guarantee you won’t want to miss those!
We are also excited to announce that we have added a Baltimore date to the Nov/Dec show schedule! The Bards Crawl will making a stop at Don’t Know Tavern on Saturday, November 12. We hope to see you there!
As the fall leg of The Bards Crawl is in full swing, writing news is fairly thin. Land of the Elements is in its beta read, and I am currently plotting out the sequel(s), which is all I will reveal for the time being!
Until then, hope to see you at a Bards show! Come say hello! We’ve got stickers!
JB6
July Updates - Science Rules!
by John Bachkosky (7/18/22)
Summer is in full swing, and so are the projects!
As of July 1st - with a small panic-edit because I left a section out on accident - Land of the Elements is officially in the beta reading stage! A group of trusted friends are going through what I have written and will let me know by early fall what problems I have left to iron out.
To my beta readers, thank you times a thousand for taking the time to read my book (especially those who were part of the alpha read as well)!
As I set aside Land of the Elements for now and await feedback, it’s time to gear up for another round of Bards shows! The Bards have been hard at work this summer learning new covers, arranging acoustic versions of originals we haven’t played live yet, and incorporating new instruments into the line-up! We can’t wait to show you all what we have been working on.
Short update this month, but lots going on! I’ll be back in August to share updates about The Bards! Hope to see you at a show soon (check the tab labeled “The Bards” for all of our dates/times/locations)!
Oh! One other thing! This past week, NASA debuted some stunning images from the newly operational James Webb Space Telescope. I am quite the space nerd, so to say I was in awe of the pictures is an understatement - they are beautiful in every way, and their grandeur cannot be overstated. The pictures include galaxies dancing around one another, a star giving its final performance as it explodes into a stunning array of colors, and a stellar nursery nestled underneath gigantic stars. Check them out here: https://www.nasa.gov/webbfirstimages
JB6
P.S. - Read Victoria Schwab’s Shades of Magic series. It’s got dynamic characters, a brilliantly built and fascinating world, and a thriller of a plot to tie it all together. It’s built to be a series on HBO or something. Seriously.
Land of the Elements
by John Bachkosky (6/15/22)
The year was 2005, and us fifth graders had been assigned a project. I wish I could tell you what it was, but my friend John and I went completely off-script and made a fantasy board game because that’s what we wanted to do. We put significant eleven-year-old-quality effort into it, and our teacher liked it—or pitied us and our nerdy ways—enough to give us a B.
We liked our game so much that we decided, “hey, what if we wrote a story to go with it?” (This was before we knew about Dungeons & Dragons, which we surprisingly never really got into.) Thus, Land of the Elements was born. A board game complete with a companion story book, written and illustrated by two eleven year olds who worshiped video games like Legend of Zelda and Pokemon along with board/card games like Catan and Munchkin.
The brilliant authors of the original Land of the Elements.
Unfortunately, the board game and composition notebook we wrote in were lost to time. I do, surprisingly, remember most of what Land of the Elements was about. Not the board game so much—I couldn’t tell you how it was played—but that notebook is vivid in my head. The stick figure drawings that accompanied each chapter. The incredibly complicated love story between the two protagonists that only eleven year olds could so masterfully write. The clear this-is-totally-just-Legend-of-Zelda nature of it all. Our handwriting in blue pen on the front cover. Writing in it in our rooms—John’s painted green and orange for Pokemon LeafGreen and FireRed, mine painted dark blue and orange for the Denver Broncos (who John got me hooked on as I learned about football).
As part of a mural done in elementary school, each student got to do a “self portrait” on a ceramic tile that was then added to the overall project. Needless to say, John and I nailed ours.
We spent days on this project, carefully crafting our own fantasy world. One we could escape into together when we needed it most—on days where the real world was full of bullies we couldn’t stand up to, we traded it for one full of monsters we could slay. With the help of our imaginations, we turned our basements and backyards into temples and dungeons to explore, all while avoiding booby traps and solving puzzles.
When John passed away two years ago, one of the first things that came to my mind was that little book. I tore my room apart looking for it. I searched through boxes in the attic, despite the heat of summer. I scoured my childhood home for some sign of this silly little notebook that represented a core memory.
But it was gone.
Land of the Elements wasn’t the only project John and I worked on together. Our band, DeD Walrus (a brilliant name of John’s creation, inspired by Def Leppard and Led Zeppelin) played around Baltimore, Annapolis, and College Park, Maryland.
I have heard people say that as you get older, memories become faded and details become harder to recall. I like to think that those memories become polished. We are eager to remember the good times and forget the bad, which is why I think we look back fondly on things like our childhoods and people we have lost. I hope that some of that old composition notebook—with Land of the Elements written in a fifth grader’s handwriting on the front—finds its way into this next project. Speaking of which…
I am excited to reveal that my next novel, Land of the Elements, will be the fully realized version of this story started seventeen years ago. This one’s for John, who shared with me not only a name, but a brotherhood. We grew up together, fighting, laughing, exploring, growing, and, above all, supporting each other. Fritz (as he was known to me, even in his own house, given our shared first names) was always there for me, always down for an adventure, and always living his life his way. I’m sad he will never get to read this book, despite helping inspire it all those years ago. But I think he’d be excited that after all this time, Land of the Elements will once again be an escape for those looking for one, just as it was for us back in 2005.
JB6
2:00:17
Morale is a balloon. It takes time and effort to build up and no time at all to deflate, whether you let the air out or pop it with something sharp.
I did (and completed) my first triathlon in three years over the weekend, and despite the heat and more hills than I expected, it popped my balloon. Hard. Two hours and seventeen seconds. My slowest race ever by a wide margin.
My next book—the title of which I have yet to officially reveal—was going great, but after taking a break to read some books and (supposedly) shorten my books-I-want-to-read list, I realized just how far I have to go as a writer. That felt more like letting the air out of the nozzle at the bottom, maybe squeezing it to make that funny high-pitched noise at times. Each book I read deflated the balloon some.
Brandon Sanderson (Words of Radiance), Victoria Schwab (A Darker Shade of Magic), and Leigh Bardugo (Six of Crows, Crooked Kingdom) are absolute masters of their craft, and I loved their books. I enjoyed getting lost in their characters and stories, but doing so also made me feel like a very small fish in a vast ocean.
It's hard to acknowledge, but I am not the athlete I used to be, nor am I the writer I want to be. I don't have the time or effort to put towards performing at the athletic level I once did, nor can I sit for hours a day plotting out and writing books at the same time, not to mention managing a growing band that I adore. My world and my body have both changed, and the former will continue to do so. And that's exciting, but with it comes revelations. The balloon must be re-inflated.
I had aspirations of doing a half Ironman this summer, but in reality I don't think I can get my body ready in time. I want to enjoy that experience, and at this rate, it would be a slog. I also wanted my next book to be done by fall, but it won't be the quality it deserves if I push it. The Bards is a project that grew faster than I anticipated, and I want to dedicate the time that it deserves. Something has to give, or at the very least, expectations need to be managed.
The future may hold another half or full Ironman, but it's not the immediate future. This next book is special and important to me—it is part of a healing process that I don't think I'll ever be done with. I can’t wait to share it with you all, but I want it to be at its best.
For now, though, I am going to let myself breathe. The balloon popped because of the pressure I put on myself. Another half Ironman can happen any time. My next book will be ready when it's ready. The only one putting deadlines on me is me, so I am taking a step back and regrouping.
That being said, I will be revealing my next book in June. No release date, no progress updates, just a title and the story behind it.
Until then,
JB6
The Results Are In
by John Bachkosky (4/12/22)
Good afternoon, everyone!
Well, the beta read of my third novel is complete! I got a lot of great feedback, and it has led to the following conclusion: there is a lot of work left to do.
While I originally called it a beta read, I think in hindsight it was more of an alpha read given the changes that are going to come. It’s always interesting to see where you actually are versus where you think you are with a story once you let other take a peek at it.
The timeline for this project is going to be pushed back a bit, as I do really want to get this one right. This story means a lot to me, and I want it to really stand out and be everything it has the potential to be. While the story is fairly solid (some plot holes to fix) and the world-building is done (and going to be expanding into other books!), the characters were a bit lacking overall. No story is a good story without a compelling and engaging cast of characters, so I am going to take some extra time to make sure that they are the best versions of themselves.
I will be taking the rest of the month off to focus on writing and shows for The Bards. I will be back in May with some updates…and maybe even a title reveal!
Until then, find a good book and go get lost in it!
(If you need a recommendation, I suggest A Darker Shade of Magic by Victoria E. Schwabb)
JB6
The Bards Crawl
by John Bachkosky (4/5/22)
Hi everyone!
Exciting news: The Bards are going on tour!
In case you missed it, on Friday we announced The Bards Crawl - our first series of shows in and around the state of Maryland. We are beyond excited to be playing live, and hope you’ll come out to enjoy the 40+ songs we have been working on since early February.
The Bards Crawl tour poster 2022
The first slew of shows, all in April, are listed above on our poster, with more on the way. We’ll be covering songs from bands and artists like The Eagles, Panic! at the Disco, Queen, and P!nk, as well as playing acoustic versions of some of our original songs found on our debut album. We’ll even be throwing in some classic Irish folk tunes, so there will be something for everyone. We’ve put together some great shows, and hope you enjoy them as much as we do!
Until next time,
JB6