Tag Archives: Arthur Ellis Award
How I Got Published: Anthony Bidulka
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.
How I Got Published: 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’ is due to be published in 2015.
HOW I GOT PUBLISHED J. Kent Messum
“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.
How I Got Published: 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.
Her latest mystery was released in August 2014
Jo and Zack are both proud and a little concerned when their youngest daughter Taylor — whose birth mother was a brilliant but notoriously promiscuous artist — has two paintings chosen for a high-level fund-raising auction. One they’ve seen; the other, a portrait of a young male artist’s model, Taylor has carefully guarded in her studio. Their concern grows when it becomes clear (and quite public) that the young man is the lover of the older socialite who organized the fund-raiser — and whose husband is Zack’s old friend. Soon, an ugly web of infidelity, addiction, and manipulation seems to be weaving itself around the Kilbourn-Shreve family. Jo and Zack are doing their best to keep everyone safe, but when one of the principal players in the drama is found murdered, events begin to spiral, Taylor seems to be drifting further away, and their very darkest fears seem about to be realized