PUMPKIN EATER ON-LINE

If you're just tuning in, the sequel to my Lambda Award winner, Lake On The Mountain, has just been published. Here are some recent links to articles about PUMPKIN EATER and my writing, for which I am grateful.

http://dailyxtra.com/canada/arts-and-entertainment/literary/darkness-and-light

http://www.stageandpage.com/pumpkin%20eater.htm#pumpkin

SPRING 2014

Wow--it's been a busy spring! February saw the long-awaited release of Vanished In Vallarta, third in the Bradford Fairfax comic mystery series. For fans of Brad and Zach, I can tell you that the fourth book, Bon Ton Roulez, has been finished for some time, while a fifth book, Havana Club (a prequel to the series) is in the works. Look for both of those over the next two years, with additional books set in Palm Springs, San Francisco and Toronto to follow.

As well, March saw the publication of Pumpkin Eater, sequel to my Lambda Award-winning Lake On The Mountain, and second in the Dan Sharp series. If Bradford Fairfax is the happy me then Dan Sharp is the dark side of my personality. I an currently editing the third book, The Jade Butterfly, scheduled for a spring 2015 release. The fourth book, After The Horses, is also in the works. 

I hope that's enough reading for you! Oh, and by the way, I'd love to hear from people who enjoy my books, so drop me a line or find me on Facebook.

WHERE DO CHARACTERS COME FROM?

Readers often ask where I get my characters. The truth is, I don't know. While I may steal a visual from life once in a while--a nice head of a hair, a good jaw line--I don't use real people when it comes to personality. Nor are they all some version of me. If I made a list of what my character Dan Sharp and I have in common, it wouldn't be long. I am not a single dad, a private eye, or a kid from the wrong side of the tracks. Nor did I ever sell my body for sex, though I have slept on a park bench.

Growing up in Sudbury, as Dan I and did, there was no small share of potential characters: boys whose fathers were alcoholics; a girl named Shirley who had a boy's haircut and wore dungarees and came to school looking alternately frightened and angry; another girl named Pelka, whose father emigrated from Yugoslavia and who drank battery acid to try to kill himself. I knew that world and mingled with it every day at school. I never thought any of them odd--merely interesting or dull, dangerous or friendly. Nor did I ever look down on any of them.

On the other hand, like Dan, there is a little of the sleuth in me. I recall Miss Kristakos, my grade three teacher, who had polio and limped, and who I secretly followed home one day to find out where she lived so I could surprise her with a drawing of Daisy Duck the next day. Or Rex, my best friend of two months, who had no father and whose mother was so poor all she could afford to serve when I came to lunch was Kraft Dinner, which I refused as politely as I could. Rex vanished as suddenly as he appeared. The adult me still wonders how I could trace him to learn how his life turned out, as would Dan.

While I'm not Dan, I admire him and like to spend time in his company. That's why I write about him. I've had an easier life than he has, and that's one of the reasons I admire him, because he upholds principles despite the difficulties they sometimes cause him. If I knew him, I would be proud to call him my friend. I hope he would say the same of me.

THIRD DAN SHARP TITLE CONTRACTED FOR 2015!

Many thanks to Dundurn Books for the vote of confidence in backing my application for a Writers' Reserve grant from the Ontario Arts Council, as well as for contracting my third Dan Sharp mystery, The Jade Butterfly, even before it's finished. I look forward to working with the folks at Dundurn again on this title, as well as on the second book in the series, Pumpkin Eater, currently scheduled for a spring 2014 release. Stay calm and read on!