Tag Archives: Arthur Ellis Award

How I Got Published: Anthony Bidulka

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Anthony Bidulka is the author of two series. The fast paced thriller series featuring Disaster Recovery Agent Adam Saint and the long-running, award-winning mystery series featuring Russell Quant. Among his many awards are:

 2013 Lambda Literary Award Finalist for Best Men’s Mystery

2012 #1 Fiction Bestseller  McNally Robinson Saskatoon

2011 American Library Association GLBT Round Table Over The Rainbow Top Mystery

2010 Arthur Ellis Award for Best Crime Novel Finalist

2010 Rainbow Award for Best Gay Mystery/Thriller

2009 Saskatchewan Book Award Finalist for Book of the Year Award

Anthony loves to throw a good party, travel, collect art, write, and answer the question: Where the heck is Saskatchewan and why do you live there? He was inducted into the University of Saskatchewan’s Wall of Honour in 2011 and in 2014 was named Citizen of the Year for his community, charitable and professional pursuits in his home city of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

How I Got Published

I would wager a hefty amount that if you sat in a room with a dozen published writers and asked the same question, you’d get a dozen different answers. I’m grateful for that because I think it sends a hopeful message to new/beginning writers that there isn’t just one way to make this happen.

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How I Got Published: Gail Bowen

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Gail-Bowen-

 GAIL BOWEN’s first Joanne Kilbourn mystery, Deadly Appearances (1990), was nominated for the W.H.Smith/Books in Canada Best First Novel Award, and A Colder Kind of Death (1995) won the Arthur Ellis Award for best crime novel; all 14 (and counting!) books in the series have been enthusiastically reviewed. In 2008, Reader’s Digest named Bowen Canada’s Best Mystery Novelist; in 2009, she received the Derrick Murdoch Award from the Crime Writers of Canada. Bowen has also written plays that have been produced across Canada and on CBC Radio. Now retired from teaching at the First Nations University, Bowen lives in Regina.

How I got published – Gail Bowen – November 6, 2014

I’m always uneasy talking about my writing career, because so much of it simply involved being in the right place at the right time.  In 1987, at the request of my friend Rob Sanders, now publisher of Greystone, I had co-written a novella titled 1919: The Love Letters of George and Adelaide for Western Producer Prairie Books. My writing partner had no interest in continuing to write, but I did. When my husband and I were doing our graduate degrees in English, mysteries were our summer reading.  I wrote Deadly Appearances and sent it to Rob, who was then with Douglas & McIntyre just at the moment that Douglas & McIntyre were beginning to publish mysteries.

         The manuscript was a mess, but Rob hired Jennifer Glossop an extraordinary editor and she whipped the novel into shape.  When D&M decided to cut their mystery line, I’d just completed the manuscript for A Colder Kind of Death. 

Rob Sanders called M&S and the next day James Adams phoned and asked to see the manuscript. I’ve been with M&S ever since.

Visit here and here for more on Gail Bowen.

How I Got Published: Rosemary Aubert

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Rosemary Aubert

 Rosemary Aubert is the author of sixteen books, among them the acclaimed Ellis Portal mystery series and her latest romantic thriller Terminal Grill.

Rosemary is a two-time winner of the Arthur Ellis Award for crime fiction, winning in both the novel and short-story categories. She appears in the recently-published popular short story collection Thirteen.

She is a member of the Crime Writers of Canada and the Mystery Writers of America. She conducts a much-in-demand writer’s retreat at Loyalist College in Belleville, Ontario each summer, as well as mentoring writing students who are studying at the School of Continuing Studies at the University of Toronto.

As a hobby, Rosemary studies math and science and has recently completed her second stint attending lectures at the International Summer School at Cambridge University in England. She intends to use some of this math knowledge in future works. Rosemary is an active member of the Arts and Letters Club of Toronto where she promotes Canadian writing and encourages other writers like herself.

How I Got Published

I have been writing and publishing since I was a teenager. The six Ellis Portal books have arisen from my love of my adopted city, Toronto, where I have now lived for almost 45 years.

I write about Ellis Portal, a man who was once a prominent member of the legal profession, in fact, a judge. He has, however, fallen on hard times and lived for a while in a shack he made out of cardboard in the wild valley of the Don River than runs through the city.As the years (and the novels about him) have gone on, he has been restored to his former legal life, although much altered by all he has been through. He is by no means a traditional sleuth but instead a man to whom fate is constantly handing problems that only he can solve, and the problems always involve murder or the suspicion of murder.

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How I Got Published: J.K. Messum

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J.K. Messum

J. Kent Messum is an author & musician who always bets on the underdog. His debut novel ‘Bait’ was published in Autumn 2013 by Penguin Books and won the Arthur Ellis Award for ‘Best First Novel’ in 2014. His second novel ‘Husk’ was published in 2015.

HOW I GOT PUBLISHED 

             “Never tell me the odds.” – Han Solo

            By the time I’d finished my novel Bait in the summer of 2012, failure was no longer an option. I didn’t know what my chances were in the publishing world, and truthfully, I didn’t want to know. Bait was my third attempt at writing a book, and I felt I really had something. It also felt like time was running out. For years I’d ignored all the advice to “pick a real career” or “get job security”. Instead, I went all in on my dreams, never formulating a fallback plan, making sure there was no safety net beneath me to raise the stakes. Now, eight years into a ‘ten-year’ success plan, I found myself nearing the end of my tether. My writing career had gotten little traction. No real publishing credits or measurable success could be identified. My other career in music had withered and died. That, combined with the recession, landed me in a bad spot financially.

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How I Got Published: Sam Wiebe

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Sam Wiebe

Sam Wiebe’s debut novel Last of the Independents was published by Dundurn Press this fall. A crime novel set in Vancouver, Last of the Independents, won the  2012 Arthur Ellis Award for Best Unpublished First Novel. Sam’s short fiction has been published in American and Canadian magazines, including Subterrain and Criminal Element. He’s currently at work on his follow-up novel.

How I Got Published

My path to publication was a bit unorthodox. I’d had short stories published, and one had placed second in the ‘Scene of the Crime” writing contest. My ‘break’ came when I entered the manuscript for my novel Last of the Independents in the Crime Writers of Canada’s Best Unpublished First Novel competition. It was short-listed, and went on to win. Soon after, Dundurn Press contacted me and offered to publish the book.

 Publication is a slow process–the book has just come out this August. In the meantime, I’ve published other stories, and had one nominated for an Arthur Ellis award. I’ve also secured an agent, based off the manuscript for my second novel.

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