The Writing Life, 6 July 2025
Anxiously waiting for The Yank Striker's Journey's release (any day, folks), and some other items upcoming.
Hey, everyone out there in the online and offline worlds, it’s good to talk again. I’ve got more updates on my upcoming book, The Yank Striker’s Journey, my other writing projects, what I’ve been up to, and more.
Let’s talk about writing.
What I’ve Been Writing
The Yank Striker’s Journey (Previously referred to as The Yank Striker 2): the sequel to my book The Yank Striker: A Footballer’s Beginning. The Yank Striker series follows the exploits of Daniel John “DJ” Ryan, a prospective American soccer player who leaves his family behind to try his fortune with an English Premier League team in the East End of London. The Yank Striker’s Journey focuses on what DJ has to face now he is trying to establish himself as a footballer in England, both as an American in a strange land and someone whose sexual orientation brings extra scrutiny.
Sadly, I was not able to meet my ambitious schedule of having Journey ready to go for June. I am now hoping it becomes available now sometime this month.
The minute this is ready for release, I will make an announcement post here as well as a separate post introducing you, the readers, to the story, such as I have done for my other novels and collections.The next book in The Yank Striker Series (to be referred to for now as The Yank Striker 3). It will cover another season in the life of DJ Ryan as his football journey continues. I plan to begin writing this book the minute Journey is available for sale. It would be crazy if I had this ready by next year, but I want to be ambitious.
Last month, I talked about wondering what the protagonist of my first novel, Samuel “Sonny” Turner, the old Chicago-based newspaper columnist turned new era blogger, might think of the current news scene. In my first novel, the journalistic thriller The Holy Fool, we saw Sonny saving the fictional 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 the beginning of the Great Recession.
I have now written over 7,000 words on a first draft for the project, which was a bit of a surprise it came that fast. At most, I only want the story to be 70,000 words - a quick, lean bit of storytelling. I was thinking it would be finished by the end of this year, but with everything going on and the ghost of an ending scene already in my head, I’m thinking it will be more second half of next year. Anything else regarding the scene would be a bit of a spoiler, so I’ll keep it to myself for now.Also, no progress on1:
Kayfabe Stories (Previously The Untitled Pro Wrestling Fiction Project): This is a story about a family of pro wrestlers from Texas and a young man’s determination to understand what it all means;
The Heart Project: The 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.
Poetry work (except for the pieces I post here on Substack and the odd unpublished poem or two.
How Much I’ve Been Writing: Mid-year check
I don’t usually get into writing productivity and my ongoing word count, but now that I’m in the middle of the year, I thought it might be cool to take a quick look at what I’ve done over the course of the first part of the year.
At the beginning of the year, I’d laid out a few writing goals for 2025. Essentially, these were:
Match a goal of 225,000 words this calendar year. I was less than a thousand or so words away from this last year, and I thought it was doable.
Make my daily writing goal or quota (DWGM) at least 80 percent of the time.
Complete The Yank Striker’s Journey by this June.
Make more progress on the Kayfabe Stories project.
So, where am I at with all of these? First, here’s my numbers for the first part of the year.
Writing statistics for the first half of 2025:
Words (total): 113,755.
Words (monthly avg.): 18,959.
Revise/Plan (Total): 6,825 minutes.
Revise/Plan (monthly avg.): 1,365 minutes.
DWGM: 89%
Half of 225,000 is 112,500, so I am more than 1,000 words ahead of pace - not a massive amount, but I’m glad I’m at least a little ahead of the game. Also, I’m doing quite well on my daily quotas, so I feel good about that.
As I mentioned above, I didn’t get Journey finished in June, but that is forthcoming, so I don’t feel like a massive failure there. And I’ve doubled the amount of material I’ve written for the Kafabe Stories and have done some considerable planning, so I’m ahead there.
In short, so far so good. But I’m not taking a rest anytime soon.
What I’m Doing Having to do With Writing
It was a fantastic afternoon this past Saturday (5 July) when I attended the grand opening of Page, Print, & Pint, located in the heart of downtown Keokuk at 401 Main Street, Suite 1. Co-owners Willow Carrington and Katarina Page were fantastic hosts to me and seven other regional authors there for the event. They are just getting their business set up at the moment, but I’m hoping they’ll be carrying some of my books in the near future.
From 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday, July 12, I’ll be returning to Burlington By The Book, 301 Jefferson St., Suite 3, Burlington, IA, for an appearance and book signing. Owner Christopher Murphy has been a great supporter in recent years, and I am excited to be returning to one of the best and longest running indie bookstores in southeastern Iowa. This will be going on at the same time as the city’s well-known Snake Ally Film Festival, so maybe I’ll be seeing some film enthusiasts that day.
It’s been tough to get some new events set up, since I am still waiting on the The Yank Striker’s Journey to officially drop so I have some new stuff to offer at these events. I am hoping for quite a few more appearances this year, including the Windsor Heights Book Fair this October 5 and hopefully the Iowa City Book Festival in October of this year. Watch this space for new events. 🙂
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:
It’s funny that I can relate equally to two different quotes with such separate points of view and think they are equally valid.
Writing is something that you don't know how to do. You sit down and it's something that happens, or it may not happen. So, how can you teach anybody how to write? It's beyond me, because you yourself don't even know if you're going to be able to. I'm always worried, well, you know, every time I go upstairs with my wine bottle. Sometimes I'll sit at that typewriter for fifteen minutes, you know. I don't go up there to write. The typewriter's up there. If it doesn't start moving, I say, well this could be the night that I hit the dust.
― Charles Bukowski
Don't get it right - get it WRITTEN!
― Lee Child
When and What I Post
Check this out 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. There’s where you can find out about my first book, the journalism thriller The Holy Fool: A Journalist’s Revolt, as well as the first book in my The Yank Striker series, The Yank Striker: a Footballer’s Beginning.
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.
If you happen to visit these fine independent book stores in Iowa, you can find my books there:
Bent Oak Books, 619 7th St. Fort Madison.
Burlington By The Book, 301 Jefferson St, Burlington.
Green Point Mercantile, 217 E. 2nd St., Muscatine.
Beaverdale Books, 2629 Beaver Ave. # S1, Des Moines.
Pella Books, 824 Franklin St, Pella.
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.
My poetry book The Flow and the Journey is available at Bent Oak, Green Point and Burlington By the Book, 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.
As far as this site goes, it’s fantastic if you are signed up for my free subscription, but I would love it if you signed up for a paid one. The monthly rate is the lowest I can put it ($5 per month) but my yearly rate of $35 is a steal at less than three/fifths the monthly rate.
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
Again, sorry this is slightly late, but better late than never and it’s still on the weekend. Take care, everyone.
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I likely won’t repost these next month unless I see significant progress here.