AN up-and-coming Bromsgrove novelist has landed a major award for his work in America.

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.

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.

Jon said: “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.”

“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 shapeshifter characters.

Although Jon views his writing 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.