WOW What a Year!

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Me & best buddy, Marc, at The Ride to Conquer Cancer

Greetings and a Very Happy New Year, Readers!

The media’s consensus is that 2016 was the Year of Crap.  Mad violence, racism, gender wars, the sanctioned rise of tyrants and unbridled greed, more wars…nice, huh? No wonder so many crime writers are turning to noir. Makes me  proud – and relieved – to be a Canadian.

Despite the mayhem on earth, 2016 treated my family, friends and myself pretty well. One of the biggest highlights was my 9th Ride to Conquer Cancer with my best buddy, Marc, in support of cancer research at Princess Margaret Hospital.  The doctors, medical staff and researchers at PMH are truly the A-team. Because of them, many of our friends have beaten back this horrible illness and continue to live happy and fulfilling lives.

I devoted much of 2016 to building my social media presence via my website and Twitter.  Blogging has been immensely freeing, allowing me to explore and share my love of street art, travel and the weird and wonderful. Readers around the globe and as far away as Macau have visited here though most of my followers live in Canada, the USA, Brazil and Germany.  As of now,  I have 1600+ followers on Twitter: mostly fellow writers or fans of crime fiction and street art.

Windigo Fire continues to draw interest. Seraphim Editions sent me my first royalty cheque, which was more than my initial advance. Wow! I also received my first payments from Public Lending Right (libraries) and Access Copyright. In December, I learned that WF was being studied by a high school English class as an example of Canadian literature – and the teacher invited me to meet his students in the New Year.  Will the students be scarier than a roomful of hostile IT clients???

1-Triple-Release-Nov_6-16-WebglowgrassIn November, Carrick Publishing released my latest book, Glow Grass and Other Tales, a collection of my published short stories and novellas. My friends, Rosemary Aubert, Donna Carrick and I made it a Trifecta launch at our favorite bookstore, Sleuth of Baker Street. We packed the store with friends, family, fans and well-wishers.  And all three of us sold out our supplies of books!! 

This year I participated in 20+ author events, flying solo or teamed up with fellow crime writers through our group, the Mesdames of Mayhem or with Crime Writers of Canada. I gave several workshops on How to Get Published at the Toronto Public Library as well as at my friend, Rosemary McCracken’s Novel II course at George Brown College. And I attended three literary conferences – whew!

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Dale Berry, me, Sarah Chen, Steve Burrows, Mysti Berry at LLC
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Meet the Canucks!

 

 

 

 

 

Left Coast Crime in February in Phoenix, Arizona was terrific. I was honoured to be on the short crime fiction panel and I partied with new and old friends at the Short Fiction Mystery Society reception, Noir at the Bar and the Meet the Canucks event hosted by CWC.  I met two of my favorite authors, Ann Cleeves and Tim Hallinan. Even fitted in a sightseeing tour of wild west ghost towns and rattlesnakes! (See my previous blogs on both subjects.)

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Coffee with Tim Hallinan, standing
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Lunch with Ann Cleeves, 2nd from left

 

 

 

 

 

Limestone Expo in Kingston, Ontario last July, was an intimate, multi-genre festival organized by horror author, Liz Strange.  Ed and I made a fun weekend of it, staying at a haunted B&B, the fab Rosemount Inn and connecting with friends, old and new. I was delighted to share a table with speculative fiction author and aardvark lover, Ira Nayman, who in another life was our daughter’s film professor at Ryerson University! Thoroughly enjoyed being on the multi-genre panel, Monstrous Imaginings.

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Selling Windigo Fire and MoM anthos
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Ira Nayman

 

 

 

 

 

 

Madonna Skaff
Madonna Skaff – Up and coming YA author
Brian Lindsay
Brian Lindsay – Fellow finalist for AE First Novel award

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Gators love marshmallows!
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Mardi Gras event

Bouchercon 2016 took place in September in New Orleans, Louisiana.  The exotic location drew in thousands of crime fiction authors and fans from North America and overseas. Easy to get lost in the crowd as a newbie Canadian author, but also great to be in the Mardi Gras parade, to nom down Creole treats at publishers’ events and to hear some of the best Noir writing ever at the Voodoo Lounge. (See my blog on Bouchercon) And during the swamp tour, we learned that gators love marshmallows!

Highlights included interviewing Hank Phillippi Ryan on behalf of Toronto Sisters in Crime, meeting Peter Rozovsky, the founder of Noir at the Bar and dinner at Arnaud’s with friends and fellow authors, Mar Preston, Nancy Cole Silverman and Ellen Kirschmann. Thanks, too, to New Orleans detective and award-winning crime writer O’Neil de Noux for organizing the Short Mystery Fiction Society lunch at Napoleon’s.

Hank Ryan – The Real Deal!
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Ayo Onatade & Peter Rozovsky
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Mar Preston and Nancy Cole Silverman

 

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Ellen Kirschmann
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Spooky Napoleon’s bistro

NaNoWriMo in November got me back to doing what writers are supposed to do: to write. Under the guiding hand of my friend, TO Poet, I hunkered down and got to work.  Impossible to match TO Poet’s staggering output of 75,000+ words, so I settled on a focused approach this year and drafted two short stories and more chapters for the WF sequel, Windigo Ice.

December was devoted to family, friends and Christmas. Much to look forward to in the New Year. Several public events coming up as well as friends’ book launches and Left Coast Crime in Hawaii and Bouchercon right here in our own city of Toronto.

We Mesdames of Mayhem will be releasing our third anthology, 13 Claws, featuring dastardly, animal-centred crimes. For the first time, we have a contest to discover one or more authors previously unpublished in the crime fiction genre. Stay tuned and hope we survive 2017!!