Michell Plested's Blog

Reforming an old habit

How does one go about reforming an old habit? In some cases (usually negative cases) the old habit comes easily. I think about things like procrastinating. It’s so easy to simply do nothing. Rebuilding a productive habit is much harder. It takes effort. It takes planning. Most of all, it takes diligence. Breaking the old habit in the first place I will admit, I have the problem of overcommitting. I’m usually good, going 100 miles an hour for several months, doing a ton of different things, getting pulled in multiple directions. The problem is, it always catches up with me (eventually). When that happens, things come crashing down. It’s almost like coming down from the world’s biggest sugar-high. After the […]

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False Start Shouldn’t Mean Full Stop

Having a false start shouldn’t mean a full stop. It happens and when it does, you should review what happened, pick yourself up and start again. There have been many times I’ve had to rewrite sections of a book when I’m in the editing phase. Never have I had a book where I’ve started. Thrown away what I’ve written. Started again, only to throw that away too. Until now, that is. It’s been no secret that I struggled during the recent plague years. Very little writing was done although I did think about it a lot (usually with guilt weighing me down that I wasn’t writing more). I came up with a solid plot premise for Mik Murdoch 5. I […]

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A New Day Dawns

We’re all tired of talking about it. We’re all tired of reflecting on it. And yet, it is now part of our daily lives. Yes. I am talking about wearing pants. The weather is getting colder here and pants are becoming more and more necessary. Not just to keep those increasingly frigid blasts of air from freezing important bits and pieces but because it is expected that those of us who have to go into the office should be professional. We have to think of our fellow co-workers and commuters otherwise chaos and civil unrest could commence. I know we’ve all gotten comfortable in our hermitic life-styles. We didn’t have to dress for success. We rarely saw others so bunny […]

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Interview – Simon Rose – Royal Blood

My guest today is Calgary author Simon Rose, who has published eighteen novels for children and young adults, eight guides for writers, more than a hundred nonfiction books, and many articles on a wide variety of topics. Today, we’re looking at his latest release, Royal Blood, the second novel in the Stone of the Seer series. So remind us about the Stone of the Seer series. What’s it all about? The Stone of the Seer is an exciting historical fantasy series for young adults, primarily set during the English Civil War in the mid-seventeenth century. The Stone of the Seer, is the first book in the series. At Habingdon House, Lady Elizabeth Usborne, Kate, and Tom discover a magical black […]

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Enjoying the Summer

There has been a lot going on in life lately. Not just mine, but the entire family. But I can’t blame the business for my lack of writing productivity. In fact, I’m going to do something completely out of character and not blame anything for my lack of writing productivity. I am, in point of fact, going to practice some of that self-care my day job continuously talks about. I am going to accept that I’m doing something other than writing and know that I will be getting back to it soon. No self-recrimination, no beating myself up. Just enjoy the summer and everything it presents. How is your summer going?

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Where Has the Time Gone?

Just when I thought I was getting back into the habit of blogging regularly, I realize it has been a month since my last post. How can that possibly be? Where has the time gone?   It would be easy to say I’ve been busy. I mean, I have been busy with work, home, Scouts and, happily, writing. I have been able to maintain a regular writing cadence. In the month of May, I wrote almost every day; 27 of 31 days. That added an extra 11, 000 words to my work. After too long without a regular writing schedule, it feels really good to have this progress. I say that knowing I usually write a lot more in a […]

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Try Something New

One of the many things I enjoy about writing is the ever-existing opportunity to try something new. It could be writing in a different genre, it could be trying to plan a novel (or pantster one) or it could be a new PoV. That is probably why you see me writing in so many different genres. I come up with a story idea and it sort of tells me the genre it belongs in. Scouts of the Apocalypse is a prime example of that. I’d never even considered writing horror before I got that story idea. But my Scouts enjoyed the campfire version of it so much, I knew I had to write it for real. A trilogy of horror […]

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More Writing Adventures – Pantster or a Planner

I know I’ve talked about this before, but it is something that’s been on my mind quite a bit the past couple weeks. Am I a pantster or a planner? The answer, I’ve discovered, is that I’m both. Much like I will write a story in the genre that best fits it, I will also employ either a pantster or a planner methodology as the occasion demands. For example, my first published novel, Mik Murdoch: Boy Superhero, was completely written in pantster-style. There were many reason for that, too. First, I wrote that book as a NaNoWriMo novel, which totally lends itself to pantster writing. Second, it was a story that I had been thinking about for years. I had […]

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Mistaken Identity

I feel like I’m coming out of a severe case of mistaken identity. All my life I’ve believed myself to be an extreme introvert. Except, I exhibit all these extroverted tendencies too. My work life is a good example of this. I actually prefer to be in the office. There are a number of reasons for this, not the least of which is, I like being around people. That made staying home to work for the past two years extremely difficult. I think I was in mourning for the first three months before I learned to cope with it (somewhat). Now that things are opening up again I feel my creativity awakening and my joie de vivre blossoming again. Why […]

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See you at Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo 2022

I will finally be attending the Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo as a vendor. That is particularly exciting because I have two new books to show off and, hopefully, sell. Those would be The Goddess Renewed and The Mystery of Silver Lake. If you are planning to attend, look for me in Artists Alley.

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