Hello, my name is Ian K Ferguson and I am a writer. Well I must be if your reading this.
My intention for this blog is to write about whatever I deem to be interesting at the time I write it. I have read lots of advice about ‘keeping on topic’ and only write about things you are an ‘expert’ in and so on and consequently have decided to ignore it all, however well meaning.
So if you choose to ‘follow’ what I write don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Much of what I will end up writing about will be about, well, writing because that is the path I have chosen to go down.
I have spent too many years trying to make a living doing something I thought I ought to do because it paid well and I was reasonably good at it but two years ago I thought, no, sod it, I’m going to do something I think I’m good at and I know I really enjoy with the added advantage of almost guaranteeing that I would die a pauper.
So I swapped my career in the I.T. software industry (where at one point and for too many years I owned a software company in England) for the life of a scribe in Vancouver. Oh, the nobility of it all.
And you know what? I’m having great fun. In a way I’m lucky having decided to be a writer when it’s possible for anyone to do it if they are so inclined through self-publishing. Meaning the rules have changed and the days of sending a manuscript to a Publishing House after Publishing House only to be rejected have gone.
I don’t intend to get into all the self-publication options I explored here today (and there are a number of options), but I will in future posts when I have a little more time.
No, the intention of today is simply to introduce myself and invite you to return.
Before I go I ought to tell you that in the last two years I have published three books. The first was a tongue-in-cheek memoir of sorts on the trials and tribulations of supporting my home town Football team in England. It was supposed to be along the lines and tone of Nick Hornby’s ‘Fever Pitch’ which you may know became a massive seller, two movies and a play for goodness sake. Needless to say I am still waiting for my ‘Sandgrown’un’ to replicate that success.
My first novel is called ‘Two into One’ which is a book without a genre. It is part action and part romance with a lot of other things thrown in for good measure. At the end of the day I think of it as the kind of book you might buy in the airport on your way on holiday and finish on the beach.
The second novel wrote itself and is called ‘The Lynn Valley Orchard Rules’ because I think its a great title and gives a nod of acknowledgement to the great John Irving’s ‘The Cider House Rules’. The Lynn Valley Orchard is an addictions treatment centre set in the beautiful setting of the Lynn Valley on Vancouver’s North Shore where there are no orchard’s in reality just a craggy gorge.
The book takes a light-hearted sideways look at a very dark subject through the experiences of it’s four main characters as they work their way through the process of recovery from their demons so it’s meant to make you smile and make you think.
All three of these are available as Kindle ebooks and in the case of the two novels as paperbacks through an Amazon store of your jurisdiction e.g. Amazon.ca or Amazon.uk).
That’s all for now, thanks for reading this far. Come back soon.