Author Biography

THE STORY SO FAR

For Ian Gregoire, the journey to becoming an author was a long one with many stops and starts along the way. It began at seven years of age when he read The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis for the first time. This magical childhood experience kindled a love for both reading and storytelling that remains undiminished to this day.

It was a few short years later, as an eleven year old, that Ian first came to believe he had discovered his calling in life. For an English assignment at school he was required to write a short story to be entered into a literary prize. While he can’t for the life of him remember what his story was about, he has never forgotten that it earned him a runners-up place, and a certificate presented to him during a school assembly. From that moment he knew he was meant to be a fiction writer, though he never suspected it would take him three decades to reach his destination.

The dream stalled ten years later after Ian dropped out of university, abandoning his degree. Though still enjoying storytelling as a hobby, he reluctantly came to the decision to put his author ambitions on hold until he turned thirty. In an unusual move for an idealist, he made the pragmatic choice to attain financial stability and security before resuming his journey towards publication because of his awareness that most authors don’t earn enough money to be able to live off their writing alone.

After subsequently wasting the best years of his life pursuing soul-destroying “careers”, first in the service sector, then in retail, followed by a brief stint in web design, Ian found that his thirtieth birthday had come and gone. Now in his mid-thirties, he was no closer to achieving the financial independence that would allow him to seriously pursue the dream. But it no longer mattered, for he was now fully committed to writing and publishing his first novel by the time he turned forty.

Two aborted attempts to write this novel, first in 2014, and again in 2015 meant that come the start of 2016 Ian was only weeks away from turning thirty-nine with his deadline for finishing and publishing the book only a year away. The added pressure only increased his resolve to get it done, and after a full year of hardships (not all of it on account of the actual writing) the task was finally completed in January 2017―the end result being The Exercise Of Vital Powers.

A couple of weeks after self-publishing the book, Ian submitted it to author, Mark Lawrence, for inclusion into the third Self-Published Fantasy Blog Off competition. The surprisingly positive response received by The Exercise Of Vital Powers caused him to wonder how much better could the book have been if he had gone the extra mile, and taken on the expense of hiring a professional editor and graphic designer. At the start of 2018 the decision was made to invest in a revised second edition of the book to garner more readers before the eventual publication of the sequel novel.

This is just the beginning of Ian’s quest to become your future favourite fantasy and science fiction author. The rest remains to be written.