Crown’s Jon Ford turns new page as award-winning novelist

Jon Ford’s first ever fantasy book, Hunters, has won the ‘speculative fiction’ category at The Queer Indie Awards, which is run by a US-based writers’ alliance aimed at supporting queer and ally literature.

The book was commended for incorporating LGBTQ+ representation in the narrative, which is inspired by dark fantasy dramas such as Underworld and Game of Thrones – and sees factions of vampires, werewolves and humans competing for worldwide dominance.

Hunters is book one of The Ballad of the Songbird series, which will eventually feature seven books – all written by Jon.

His award win for Hunters also comes hot on the heels of a 13-story magical mystery anthology book he partly wrote – They Walk Among Us: Malarkey’s ImaginOmnibus – which recently reached number one in Amazon’s Fantasy Anthology rankings both in the UK, US and Canada for a week.

The accolades are a far cry from Jon’s day job as an implementation consultant at Tamworth-based Crown Workforce Management, where he will often unwind from the nine-to-five task of rolling out new projects for clients by indulging in his hobby of writing about mythical creatures three to four times a week.

“Five years ago I decided to have a go at writing Hunters, which was my first book and took me three years to whip it into shape, so to receive an award from a respected writers’ alliance such as Queer Indie really blew me away as I was up against around twelve really good writers,” said Jon.

“I don’t personally consider myself to be a member of the LGBTQ+ community, but my books do have representations in there, and as such, my work is classified as ally literature as it deals with gender-fluid characters and same-sex relationships.

“Some of the characters in Hunters, for example, feature ice giants – which because of what they’re made from they can flow between any gender they want – as do the shape shifter characters.

“My ethos is that a character’s gender identity or sexuality isn’t what defines them, and so I present them in a very matter of fact way by not drawing attention to the fact that they are trans, gender fluid, gay or bisexual, and readers seem to have appreciated that.”

Although Jon views his writing very much as a hobby, he has so far sold more than 900 copies of Hunters, while his second book Blood To Earth has already achieved sales of around 400 copies, with the third book in the seven-book series, Tooth And Claw, set to be released later this summer.

“I’m no JK Rowling or Stephen King, but I’m pleased with how the sales are going,” joked Jon.

“I’m hoping to have my third book out in July time – which will focusing on a civil war.

“My employer Crown Workforce Management is really supportive of a good work-life balance, so I am able to log off at 5pm, grab my tea, and then settle down for three hours or so – although at the minute my spare time is taking a bit of a battering because we’re house training a new puppy!”

For more information about Jon’s work visit www.jonfordauthor.com