A guest post by Karen Dudley.

In 1999, I was nominated for the Crime Writers of Canada (CWC) Arthur Ellis Award for Best First Novel for my book Hoot to Kill. The award is named after the pseudonym for Canada’s first official hangman, who served in the job between 1912 and 1935 (several of his successors also adopted the pseudonym). The Arthur Ellis award itself is a stylized wooden statue of a hanged man. The arms and legs jerk around when a string is pulled.

I had never been nominated for an award before (Hoot to Kill was, after all, my first novel), so I flew out to Toronto for the awards ceremony. There were drinks and dinner, and I met a number of other crime fiction writers, which was fun. And then came time for the awards ceremony. The Master of Ceremonies that year was Peter Robinson, one of Canada’s foremost crime fiction writers and a truly great storyteller. And he had a fantastic story for us that evening.

The Arthur Ellis award statues, he informed us, were not made in Canada, but rather were manufactured somewhere in the United States and then shipped up here. That year the statues had been duly assembled, boxed up, and shipped off, but somewhere between there and here, they had been lost. As the date for the awards ceremony drew closer, the CWC committee started frantically digging around to find out what had happened to them.

It turned out that Purolator had, in fact, brought the box into Canada, but they’d accidentally delivered it to the wrong house. Under ordinary circumstances, not a big deal. Unfortunately, these were not ordinary circumstances. The house that Purolator delivered them to belonged to a man whose business partnership had recently dissolved due to some rather shady business dealings. These dealings were so shady, in fact, that the man had been receiving death threats. Imagine his reaction then when he opened up the box that had been left on his doorstep and found it filled with ominous little statues of hanged men!

The police had seized the box of awards and Peter Robinson and the other members of the CWC awards committee had to do some very fast talking to get the statues released in time for the awards ceremony. As Peter remarked that night, if any of us had written that in a manuscript, our editors would have taken it out as being too unrealistic.

I’m no longer writing crime fiction. I moved into the fantasy genre a few years back. And although my first historical fantasy, Food for the Gods, was nominated for five different awards, I have to say, none of these awards ceremonies could boast the same stranger-than-fiction story as the Arthur Ellis awards of 1999.

Guest Writer Bio:
Karen Dudley wrote wildlife biology books and environmental mystery novels before she had an epiphany… she wanted to write historical fantasy. So she did. Food for the Gods and its sequel, Kraken Bake, are quirky sort of books, a bit like Xena meets Iron Chef. Food for the Gods was nominated for several awards, including a High Plains Book Award in the Culinary Division. Karen lives in Winnipeg with her husband, daughter, and the requisite authorial cats. You can read more about Karen and her books at www.karendudley.com.

What’s Up, Doc?

September 5, 2014

Kim May

Kim May 2 Comments

Back in high school I worked at Burger King. Since I was one of the few who could calculate the amount of change due without using a calculator, I was put on drive thru duty. A lot. So there wasn’t anything out of the ordinary when I took up my cramped post two days before halloween.

Two cars pulled up to the menu board and I dutifully took their orders. When the first car pulled up to the window I noticed that the passenger was dressed as a rabbit. He wasn’t wearing a pair of ears and glue on whiskers. It was a full body suit. I thought it unusual that they would be going to a costume party on a Thursday afternoon but whatever. It was close enough to Halloween.

I took their money, they took their food, and they drove away. The second car pulled up. Both the driver and passenger were dressed in red plaid hunting gear.

Before I could say hello the driver leaned forward and said “Be vewy, vewy quiet. We’re hunting wabbits!”

I couldn’t speak for a full minute. I was laughing too hard. If I tried to put this scene in a book it wouldn’t work. It’s so contrived. But dang! It was funny!

The Self-cleaning Dog

September 4, 2014

Gregory D. Little

The Writing Life 11 Comments

Our dog is a weird dog. I know pretty much any dog owner would say that. I also know what you’re thinking based on the title of this post, but no, it’s not about how my dog licks himself clean. All dogs do that. But not all dogs carry their own bag of poop to the trash on walks the way our dog does. Have I got your attention yet?

Before I get a bunch of comments below asking for my address so people can ship me their dogs for training, let me up the ante. We didn’t have to train our dog to carry his own poop. He started doing it all on his own.

Let’s back up. As you can see from the picture, my wife and I have a yellow Lab. His name is Riley. He is, if I may be immodest on his behalf, exceedingly handsome and fiendishly smart. He also has a Lab’s compulsive need to have something in his mouth. Carrying things in his mouth on walks is heaven for him. As a puppy he would pick up big rocks and bring them home just to have something in his mouth. We still use one as a doorstop. Nowadays he’s more likely to pilfer toys or tennis balls he finds lying around. If we walk him to the local tea store or the local bakery to get cookies, he carries the bag home for us. He always has to be “coaxed” (bribed) to give up the bag if it’s full of delicious food smells. Riley1

Because we live in an apartment with only public spaces around us, we’ve always been diligent about picking up after him. We would carry the bag along, trying hard not to think about what was in it, until we reached the nearest trash can or dumpster. Then one day I noticed Riley staring at the bag after I tied it off. He made eye contact with me, then looked at the bag. He kept repeating the gesture, marveling at my stupidity, and as any dog owner will tell you, this means: “I want what you have in your hand.”

Not sure where this was going to go, I rolled up the loose end of the bag above the knot and offered it to him. He took it, seeming perfectly happy, and we marched on. At the nearest trash can, I told him to drop it, and he did. He’s been doing it ever since, and nowadays he even knows where all the trash cans are and will lead the way to the nearest one.

Most people who see this are incredibly amused. I’m not exaggerating when I say we’ve stopped traffic on multiple occasions. We’ve also met people who’ve never seen him but have heard of him. He’s a minor local celebrity. We were even asked if he could be the mascot for a city ad campaign to pick up after your pets.

We’ve also had a few people tell us it was cruel to “make” our dog carry his own poop bag. What they don’t see is how mad he gets during the times we don’t let him carry it. Sometimes the bag gets torn. Sometimes there is a trash can right next to us when he goes. One time I carried a torn bag to a trash can while he followed me indignantly and tried to steal the bag the whole way. After I tossed the bag, he tried to knock down the trash can to get it back.

So yeah, up there at the beginning of the post, did I say weird? I meant great. Our dog is a great dog.

When Purple Unicorns Become More – One Horn To Rule Them All

September 3, 2014

Nancy

Doing Good in the World Guest Posts Nancy Greene Networking Publishing Superstars Writing Seminars The Writing Life No Comments

Over the years the Fictorians site has existed we’ve talked a lot about Superstars Writing Seminar. This group wouldn’t exist without Superstars. It’s hard to explain how special this conference and the people who attend it are. But maybe, Lisa Mangum’s post below might give you some idea.

Lisa has loved and worked with books ever since elementary school, when she volunteered at the school library during recess. Her first paying job was shelving books at the Sandy Library. She worked for five years at Waldenbooks while she attended the University of Utah, graduating with honors with a degree in English.

An avid reader of all genres, Lisa crossed over to the publishing side of the industry in 1997. She’s currently the Managing Editor at Shadow Mountain. Lisa loves movies, sunsets, spending time with her family, trips to Disneyland, and vanilla ice cream topped with fresh raspberries. She lives in Utah, with her husband, Tracy. She is the author of the Hourglass Door trilogy and After Hello.

So, Lisa – When is a Purple Unicorn more than just a silly mythical creature?

***

I’ve been working in the publishing industry since 1997, and I’ve seen a lot of books cross my desk. I’ve even written a few books of my own. But I haven’t ever really edited an anthology quite like ONE HORN TO RULE THEM ALL. I mean—purple unicorns? Really?

Yes, really.

The genesis of the collection came about from the Superstars Writing Seminar. I was attending for the first time, and I was both impressed and amused by the fact that a purple unicorn was the example used to illustrate how to be a professional author. The idea was that if an editor asks you for a story about a purple unicorn, you better deliver a story about a purple unicorn.

As the conversation continued, I made a comment on the Superstars Facebook page about how now I kinda wanted to write a purple unicorn story. Enough people agreed with me and responded with title suggestions and more pictures of unicorns than I imagined existed. (Though, hello, Internet, so perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised.)

The idea stuck with me, though, long after the seminar ended, and one day I emailed Kevin J. Anderson (cofounder of Superstars) and said, “This might be the stupidest idea ever—or the most brilliant.”

Together we hammered out a plan that would result in a collection of twenty stories about purple unicorns. I said I would donate my time to edit the anthology (including reviewing all the stories and editing them) if WordFire Press would publish it, and all sales of the book would benefit a scholarship fund for someone to attend next year’s Superstars.

I’ll be honest. It’s not like I had a lot of time to edit a 100K-word anthology in July. I had a novella of my own to finish writing, plus a Con to attend, plus helping my husband shoot his short film, not to mention all the work that comes with my full-time job as Managing Editor of Shadow Mountain Publishing. And yet…

I wanted to work on the project. I had such an amazing time at the Superstars seminar, and it was such a rich and fulfilling weekend that I wanted other people to enjoy the same thing. Plus, I had made dear friends with the other Superstars attendees, and I wanted to read the stories they would write.

So, as an editor, I asked for unicorn stories. And, as professionals, the Superstar authors delivered.

And oh, the stories they wrote! Some were funny, some were sad. I read stories about detectives and mobsters and fairies and moms and zookeepers and veterans. I traveled to distant planets, to Fairyland, to a Comic-Con.

It has been a joy and a privilege to work on this anthology. The stories are amazing, and best of all, with each book sold, we get that much closer to bringing even more aspiring authors into the Superstars Tribe as we help each other make the leap from amateur to professional.

Being a writer can be a crazy career choice. Publishing can be heartless. It’s a crazy world out there, kids. Best find yourself a Tribe—and bring a unicorn with you if at all possible.

***

Thank you, Lisa. Purple Unicorns are everywhere.

She picked some amazing stories for the anthology. Kevin J. Anderson and the entire WordFire gang will be at Salt Lake ComicCon starting on September 4. Stop by the WordFire Booth to say “hi” and maybe help us fund the Superstars scholarship. If you buy a copy of One Horn To Rule Them All at the Wordfire booth I bet you can get several of the authors to autograph it. The book sells for $14.95 in paperback and $4.99 in E-reader formats:

If you (like me) aren’t able to attend the Salt Lake ComicCon this time, you can find Purple Unicorns here:

Kobo: http://store.kobobooks.com/en-US/ebook/one-horn-to-rule-them-all

(Kobo like Shadow Mountain is a Superstars Sponsor so if we can send love/ sales its way, that would be wonderful).

Amazon: One Horn

Barnes & Noble: One Horn To Rule Them All.