Jerome J. Bourgault's Blog, page 2

Dramatis Personae

An exhaustive and annotated listing of the characters who inhabit the world of Day of Epiphany. Enjoy!

Sister Cassandra Lalonde: The novel’s main protagonist. As the title would indicate, a nun belonging to a religious order known simply as The Order. Trained as a teacher. Lives and works at Sainte-Madeleine Orphanage in the (fictional) town of St-Jolain, Québec. Born in or around 1930, originally from a small farming community in the Outaouais region of Québec (i.e. the Québec side of the Ot...

A bit about setting

I’ve been called a very visual writer. I welcome the description. It might come from my background as a visual artist, or my natural, almost obsessive, tendency toward detail, or because film has had such a profound impact on me that it has permeated my writing. All three, I suppose. I have a great admiration for writers who can paint detailed landscapes with words; Tolkien was the master. Of course, the art of it really comes when the writer can paint an evocative and compelling picture using a...

About the epilogue…

One of the casualties from my editing frenzy of The Perpetual Now in 2019 was a scene that involved an exchange between my protagonist, Justin Lambert, and his elderly neighbour Mr. Lovato. In it, Lovato recounts an anecdote about the town of Ferguston and its history of “small-town justice.” While he doesn’t come straight out and promise that the perpetrator of Elise Lambert’s disappearance will be brought to justice, he does suggest that such things have a strange way of balancing themselves o...

Genesis of a novel: how Day of Epiphany came to be

As early as December, 2018, I’d begun to throw together ideas for my second novel. The Perpetual Now was still over a year away from publication — at this point, it was still a bloated 4th draft that was far too cumbersome to attract any serious consideration from publishers — and I knew I wanted to tell a different kind of story for my follow-up novel, one more rooted in history. 

Over the past few years, I’d been developing an interest in Canadian history of the 1940s and ‘50s, an era when ...

New trailer

See the new trailer for Day of Epiphany at my author’s site, https://www.jeromejbourgault.com

“You mean it’s DONE done?”

Part 2

In February, I finally did what I should have done months earlier and forwarded the manuscript to a brilliant and trusted colleague and friend (who was also the editor of my 1st novel, and is therefore familiar with my writing style) for a thorough copy and content edit. The process was an eye-opener: at times humbling, at times very gratifying. I could go on at length, but my main takeaway was this. The whole idea of hiring an editor (and especially a content editor) is that you’re pa...

“So, what happened to that book you said you finished?”

Part 1 of 3

OK, so maybe I spoke too soon.

Remember a year and a half ago, I claimed that my 2nd novel, Day of Epiphany, was complete and ready to be unleashed upon the world? Yeah, that may have been premature. After being expertly ignored by everyone I submitted to over the better part of a year, I went back to the manuscript thinking I could self-edit the thing into shape. Instead, I spent months of what can only be described as glorified tweaking. Eventually even I could tell the chang...

A New Chapter

(… or, rather, 26 of them)

You may remember, waaaaay back in October of 2020, I announced that I’d begun the first draft of my second novel. While it didn’t yet have a title, the general concept was already well established and I had a good idea of where it would go narratively, certainly much better than when I began The Perpetual Now, who’s story revealed itself much more gradually. The difference in the turn-around time was dramatic: rather than labouring on and off for six years, I churne...

My Interview with Fenton & White

I recently had the opportunity to field some questions from old friends and fellow author/creative types Peter Fenton and Scott White, mostly about The Perpetual Now, the creative process, and upcoming work. Read the entire interview here:

BIBA!

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the 2021 Best Indie Book Award winner for Science Fiction

About a year ago at this time, I was submitting TPN (that’s my acronym for The Perpetual Now… get used to it) for a whole whack of indie book awards. One of them was the Best Indie Book Award (BIBA), which looked appealing but whose submission deadline wasn’t until the fall. I jotted it down on my calendar, put it faaaaaar away at the back of my mind, and proceeded to chase after closer fare. Well, the ...