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Carol Balawyder

 

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.

In the spring of 1999 I made a drastic career change, leaving my decade-long career as a CPA with an international audit and accounting firm to pursue writing full-time. At the time I hadn’t published so much as a Want Ad or even taken a single writing class. I was pursuing a long-held passion and carving out a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for chasing a dream. I had no idea whether it would last a month or decades. And it really didn’t matter. I just wanted to know that I tried. I knew I’d come to regret it if I didn’t.

Speaking of Want Ads, basically, I got published by answering one. It was probably one of a dozen queries I sent out that day. The only thing that set it apart was that it was in response to an ad placed in the Saskatchewan Writers’ Guild newsletter by a freelance editor in Toronto. She was looking to find manuscripts that might appeal to a publisher she’d worked with who she knew was in the market for fresh, unique, Canadian material. Having written Amuse Bouche about a world-travelling, wise-cracking, wine-guzzling, gay, prairie private eye…well, I qualified.

I was the only client the editor took on. We worked on the material until she felt it was ready to present to Insomniac Press. Since then, I have published ten books with Insomniac, living my passion.

His latest book was published in November 2014.

Canadian Disaster Recovery Agent Adam Saint is lured to the edge of the world. In the dark waters of Polynesia a trio of women, survivors of a long ago shipwreck, are discovered on an unchartered spit of jungle. Who are the women of Skawa Island? Are they victims? Or are they hiding something, complicit in their own isolation?

 

Please visit Anthony at  www.anthonybidulka.com, Facebook, Twitter (@abidulka), and YouTube.