Guides and Resources Archives | Inspired Quill Publishing

How to Write a Standalone (but Interconnected) Fantasy Novel

As a reader, I love a long string of books set in the same fantasy world. As far as I can tell from experience, these types of interconnected books seem to come in two varieties. Sequels Vs Series: Wh...

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How To Escape Your Reading Slump: A Practical Guide for Book Lovers

You’re determined to dive into the top book on your teetering TBR pile, so you grab the paperback (or fire up your kindle), sit down in your favourite reading-nook, open the front page and… …your eye...

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8 Women In Translation for 2024

If you agree that reading diverse benefits your brain, you’re probably open to reading novels in translation. Why Should I Read Translated Works? If language affects thought, there can’t be a better w...

Should Climate Fiction Be Scary?

Good climate fiction, in my mind, should enchant you. Draw you in. And then scare the shit out of you. With a little hope, there will be enough scared readers out there to protest, take up public offi...

5 Near-Future Climate Fiction Must-Reads

Good near-future climate fiction isn’t preachy. It isn’t pandering. It’s anxious and desperate and begs you to pay attention, lest it becomes prophecy. Dystopian post-apocalyptic fic...

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Listen Up! The Benefits of Audiobooks

As with eBooks, Audiobooks are simply a different way to enjoy stories. Just when we thought the ‘eReader versus paperback’ debate was losing steam after almost twenty long years, the new clash seems ...

5 Speculative Climate Fiction Must-Reads

A lot of the best speculative climate fiction feels like it belongs to the non-fiction shelf. Anxiety-inducing, because it speaks the truth and invites us to take a peek around the corner, at what’s c...

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How to Write Effective Flash Fiction

Flash Fiction provides an appealing alternative to longer forms of literature, offering readers the opportunity to experience a complete narrative in a short amount of time. As a result, the genre has...

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Historical Context of Monsters as Metaphors

Monsters can take many forms in literature and popular culture, but what’s interesting about them is that they often represent the beliefs of an era or appear as metaphors for human fears. Monsters ha...

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How to Post Books on a Budget: Our Top 3 Tips

While the e-book was (incorrectly) hailed as “the death of the paperback”, many readers still love to see a well-stocked bookshelf standing pride of place. There’s just something about a friendly disc...

What Should I Read Next? 7 Strategies to Choose Your Next Read

We’ve all been there — you finish the last page, you close the book you were reading, and a feeling of emptiness crashes over you. You hopefully enjoyed the book, and if it was a particularly good one...

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10 Steps to Get through Your TBR Pile

Most readers have a TBR pile, even if they don’t know what a TBR pile is. In book lingo, a ”TBR Pile” is your to-be-read pile. It’s all those books that you’ve stacked up with the honest intention of ...

How to Get the Most From Your Writing Group

Before I began writing fiction, I was an academic living in a publish-or-perish world. I submitted articles to journals that accepted them, rejected them or (most often) asked me to revise and resubmi...

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Buying Books from Publishers: The Ultimate Guide

Over the last decade, buying books online has become commonplace thanks to big-name stores. And we’re not just talking about that online-only store, either. For any reader who’s trying not to default ...

Top 10 Common Character Tropes

Avid readers know how book can be an incredible form of escapism where almost anything is possible and you never quite know what’s going to happen next. This is especially true when we look at graphic...

Lockdown Reading

Books to console, inspire and escape into… With all but essential workers on lockdown, and our social lives on hold, the time seems ripe for a (lockdown) reading revolution. But this is no holid...

Fantasy Without Magic: Can it Work?

Magic and the fantasy fiction genre, they go together like Bert and Ernie – or should I say Frodo and Sam? Wherever you look in fantasy, you’ll see examples of magic. Lord of the Rings, of cours...

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How Can Authors Protect Their Mental Health?

When you first decide to be a writer, you might read books on how to write a blockbuster, you might work on your grammar and punctuation or you put hours of research into your favourite genre by readi...