Ian Gregoire's Blog, page 12

You’ve Got… A Mailing List To Subscribe To

  I’m not usually the kind of person who makes plans for the future―principally because in year’s gone by I’ve learned through bitter experience that if I make plans for my future someone or something will pull the rug out from underneath me, and ruin everything. As a result, I’ve spent the last two decades […]

What The Future Holds In A Post-SPFBO World

Credit: Laura M. Hughes   Greetings folks! This is the post I delayed from yesterday, announcing that the inevitable has finally come to pass; the #SPFBO adventure of my debut fantasy novel The Exercise Of Vital Powers reached its conclusion at the weekend after missing out on an unlikely place in the final, having been […]

Book Recommendation: Just Breathe By Sarah Doughty

  I originally intended to do an #SPFBO update about the elimination of The Exercise Of Vital Powers from the competition at the semi-final stage, but now I’m going to delay it until tomorrow. Instead, today’s impromptu blog post is a book recommendation for a novel I read last month that greatly exceeded my expectations. […]

Bleeding Into My Protagonists

  To varying degrees, many authors, particularly those who are genuinely passionate about their craft, invariably put a lot of themselves into their writing, whether it be in terms of their personality informing their characterisation, or their life experiences influencing their plots. I’ve never been one of these writers. I have always consciously gone out […]

Insights Into The Creation Of My Protagonist

Chinese actress Zhang Xin-Yu   It’s been very quiet on the blogging front over the last month, even though I actually have several blog posts written and ready to be posted; I’m just waiting for the right time to post them. In the meantime, I’ve decided to kick-start things again with a post about Kayden […]

The Six Month Anniversary And The Three Lessons I Have Learned

  This weekend will mark the six month anniversary of the publication of my debut novel, The Exercise Of Vital Powers. A lot has happened in that time (mostly positive I’m pleased to say), but looking back at my first six months as a published author I have no trouble admitting that I embarked upon […]

Putting All My Eggs In The Amazon Basket

  This week I’ve finally been forced to do something that I really wanted to avoid doing, but can no longer justify not doing. I have decided to make my debut novel The Exercise Of Vital Powers an Amazon exclusive by enrolling it in the KDP Select program. If you don’t know what that entails, […]

I Am The Master Of Time (Mis)Management

  You may recall from the last update on my work in progress that I decided to re-write everything from scratch because I wasn’t happy with the opening chapter. Since then, though I’m much happier about the state of my WIP, I am much less happy about the slow progress of my writing throughout September. […]

Taking On My Goodreads 2017 Reading Challenge

  I have been a Goodreads member since 2013, and every year since 2014 I have participated in the annual Goodreads Reading Challenge, wherein users set themselves a goal for how many books they will read over the course of the year. For various reasons (the principal one being I chose not to include re-read […]

Evaluating The Two Most Commonly Given Writing Tips

  There are two pieces of writing advice that I can guarantee every aspiring author received (on numerous occasions) while pursuing their writing ambitions. The first advice is “read a lot,” and the second is “write a lot.” Both are simple, straightforward tips that likely seem so obvious you might wonder why anyone would find […]