Lorina Stephens's Blog, page 42

Author Susan Mayse weighs in on Old Growth

Susan Mayse
Susan Mayse is a fourth generation Vancouver Islander who grew up on stories of the mining towns of Cumberland, Bevan, Nanaimo, and Wellington. She has written for many national and international publications including The Daily Mail, The Toronto Star, and The Malahat Review. She is also the author of a prize-winning novel, Merlin's Web and Ginger: The Life and Death of Albert Goodwin, a BC Bestseller and winner of the Arthur Ellis Award for True Crime and the Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction. She is the daughter of the late journalist and author Arthur Mayse.


Five Rivers sent Mayse an advance copy of Matt Hughes' new release, Old Growth, which is the sequel to his Sid Rafferty Thriller, Downshift. 
She had this to say:

Freelance writers, unlike detectives, aren't usually paid to live dangerous lives, but Sid Rafferty -- the protagonist of Matt Hughes' novel Old Growth -- asks too many wrong questions of the wrong people and nearly gets himself laid lower than a second-growth fir. The sequel to Downshift is a fine, fast-forward mystery played out in a failed one-industry BC town, and as always, Matt lays on his keen observation of people and places. You'll find something for everyone in this wry, clever book: history, developers, eco-warrriors, loggers, dope growers, me (at least my film option) and Mars water bombers. Reading Old Growth is a grand way to spend an evening or weekend grasping a Lucky Lager, or perhaps more appropriately, a BC Bud. Grab a copy and enjoy.

Old Growth is now available in print and eBook from Five Rivers and online booksellers worldwide.

Two of nine 5-star reviews for Marston's Western King

available in trade paperback
and eBookJust two of nine 5-star reviews on Amazon for Ann Marston's Western King.
5.0 out of 5 stars I would like to find more authors that write these kind stories in this era., February 21, 2013By Ron - See all my reviewsAmazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)This review is from: The Western King (The Rune Blade Trilogy, Book 2) (Mass Market Paperback)Ann Marston & Debora Chester trilogy`s of Kingmakers, & magic swords with powers. I would like to find more books in this time period.Help other customers find the most helpful reviews 3 of 7 people found the following review helpful5.0 out of 5 stars An Excellent Read, April 27, 2000By Emily - See all my reviewsThis review is from: The Western King (The Rune Blade Trilogy, Book 2) (Mass Market Paperback)"The Western King" is by far the best book in the Rune Blade trilogy. Although the first book, "Kingmaker's Sword" is also a very good book, "The Western King" definitely surpasses its prequel. Donaugh is a vivid character, and the reader's heart aches when he cannot find fulfulment.Help other customers find the most helpful reviews 

The Importance of Contracts

March 1st sees the long-awaited release of the mystery novel, Old Growth, by Matt Hughes.It’s the sequel to Downshift, Hughes' 1997 mystery, published originally by Doubleday Canada and re-released last year by Five Rivers Publishing.

In announcing the release of Old Growth, Matt tells the following story:
Both novels follow the trials and tribulations of Sid Rafferty, who is kind of an alter ego of mine — a freelance speechwriter living on Vancouver Island in the 1990s, though he gets into more trouble than I usually did.

Official publication date is March 1, but the ebook version is already available on Amazon.

Here's the may-be-interesting part:: in the 1990s, I was on my way to becoming established as a Canadian crime writer. The late and wonderful Bunny Wright (L.R. Wright on covers) one of our best mystery authors, had introduced me to her editor at Doubleday, and the editor wanted to buy a mystery novel from me. The problem was, the marketing department wanted Doubleday to go more literary and not sign another genre author. After a five-month argument, the editor won and bought Downshift. It was to be first of a series and she told me to start writing the sequel, which I did.

But three months before Downshift's release, the editor left Doubleday and went to Macmillan, which was a nonfiction house. Immediately, my printrun was cut and whatever promotional budget there was went to some other book. I was let to understand that the sequel, then four-fifths written, would not be welcome. And, of course, as a trusting newbie, I had never asked the editor for a contract. Downshift got good reviews, but most of the sales were to libraries. When I asked, a year later, to buy the remainders, they told me they hadn't bothered to do that -- as the returns came in, they went straight to the pulper.

Now Five Rivers has republished Downshift and the belatedly completed sequel, Old Growth. The lesson: no matter how friendly and enthusiastic your editor may be, don't write a word until you've signed the contract.

The first chapter of Old Growth, is now available for a free read: http://www.matthewhughes.org/excerpt-from-old-growth/

Just two of 37 Amazon reviews for Kingmaker's Sword

available in trade paperback
eBook
and audiobookJust two of 37 reviews on Amazon for Ann Marston's beloved, Kingmaker's Sword, Book 1: The Rune Blades of Celi.1 of 1 people found the following review helpful5.0 out of 5 stars Really well written, July 29, 2013By Charlie N (Vancouver, BC) - See all my reviewsAmazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)This review is from: Kingmaker's Sword (Rune Blades of Celi) (Kindle Edition)Characters, story, world. Rare is the fantasy book that hits all three so well as this one. I even wondered whether some Celtic tribes used the wonderful words of the "I love you" ritual described in the book but it seems even that's Ms Marston's invention. Can't wait for the other books to come to the Kindle.Help other customers find the most helpful reviews 1 of 1 people found the following review helpful4.0 out of 5 stars Celtic Fantasy series, ordinaire., June 25, 2013By Rebecca Smucker - See all my reviewsAmazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)This review is from: Kingmaker's Sword (The Rune Blade Trilogy, Book 1) (Mass Market Paperback)This book is probably my favorite of the 2-trilogy series. It sets up a very long story, both the interplay between two royal families in a fictional Celtic world and, later, the invasion of a much more Arabian culture.

If you are the kind of person who doesn't appreciate reading the same book over and over again, I'd probably just stick with the first 2 or 3 books. You will notice, if you read these back-to-back, that a lot of the scenes will give you deja-vu. I didn't actually check, but I wouldn't be surprised if the author lifted entire scenes and re-used them in later books.

That being said, this is a fun book and pretty well-worth a read. Just don't get sucked in!Help other customers find the most helpful reviews 

Three 5-star reviews for Downshift

available in print, eBook, and audioBy
Sandor - See all my reviews

This review is from: Downshift: A Sid Rafferty Thriller, Book 1 (Audible Audio Edition)
A really engaging and entertaining story, narrated with sharp wit, attitude, and erudite authority by Robert Gonzalez. Highly recommended for fans of the detective genre.
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5.0 out of 5 stars what if murder and mayhem entered your life?, November 12, 2013
By
Late For Dinner (Texas) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Downshift (Paperback)
this is the first non-archonite novel of Hughes' I've read, and I found it just as enjoyable.

the story apparently pulls lots of details from Hughes' life as a professional writer and sets a plausible stage for the trouble that follows.

I found the plot twists surprising-yet-believable, the main character likable and the others drawn well-enough. the setting was semi-nostalgic, which I'm not sure a younger author could have pulled off (at least not so another middle aged person would relate).

its not a book I'll probalynread again, but it is one I'm glad I read!
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5.0 out of 5 stars Old wine in new bottles, May 28, 2013
By
Algy Pug - See all my reviews

This review is from: Downshift [LegacyTitleID: 20436]
An engaging story, in which Matt Hughes' ramshackle hero, Sid Rafferty, alternately stumbles and skips through a plot populated by a cast of characters, displaying a variety of aspects of dubiousness. The story moves smartly, and the narration holds the reader's attention, in spite of a hefty mass of corroborative detail. With plenty of twists and turns, the action is hectic but remains within the bounds of credibility and the ending is satisfactorily neat without being too contrived. Bob Gonzalez's reading is beautifully paced and accurately observed and his delivery of Hughes' conversational prose really brings the book to life. Highly recommended! I look forward to the future adventures of Mr Rafferty.
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The sequel, Old Growth, is now available.

Interview with Matt Hughes, author of Old Growth

At the moment Matt Hughes is house-sitting in Montebelluna, near Venice, Italy. He took time from his exhausting writing schedule to have a chat with Five Rivers' publisher, Lorina Stephens, and talk about his forthcoming new release, Old Growth, the long-awaited sequel to Downshift.LS: In this Rafferty mystery you have him dealing with the more radical side of environmentalism, in this case the old growth crises that arose in the 1990s. What is it about that subject and period that attracted you?

MH: I was part of it. Through the 80s and 90s, I was a freelance speechwriter in BC. Some of my clients were bigwigs at the major forest companies. I also wrote for Socred and NDP politicians, and even did a few things for the late Jack Munro, head of the IWA. I got an inside view of the War in the Woods.

Remember, too, that most of Old Growth was written in 1996-97, when the events in the book were recent history.

LS: As a secondary story you have Rafferty toying with the idea of writing a screenplay about the life of real-life Cumberland mines smelter, Ginger Goodwin, who was also a political activist and conscientious objector. Why include that backdrop to the story?

MH: I was living in the Comox Valley, where the Ginger Goodwin story was just as much alive in the 90S as it is represented to be in the book. There were fierce debates in the letters to the editor columns of the Green Sheet about whether or not a portion of the then-building new Island Highway ought to be named Ginger Goodwin Way.

Also, like Sid, I am a product of the UK working poor who, through a series of unlikely events, became someone who moved through the world of corporate executive suites and political backrooms. In some ways, I was a visitor from another world, though I was more bemused by it than Sid is -- he's never entirely sure he isn't a class traitor.

LS: You write with controlled passion about British Columbia, her people, the environment, yet the view you have Rafferty assume is not one particularly politically popular. Will you illuminate that, please?

MH: I believe in that "sense of place" that Canadian fictioneers are supposed to be good at. Also, in the struggle between the big forest companies and the big environmental organizations, the people who actually worked in the woods and the mills were often just so much collateral damage. Nobody gave them much thought, yet there were towns dying because of the changes that were happening in the forest sector. Sid's background makes him particularly sensitive to the plight of the ordinary Joes who were seeing their way of life disappear.

LS: In typical Hughes style, there are a lot of ambiguities in Old Growth’s characters, their motivations, their actions. Would you say that predisposition to write about the grey of informed decisions is something you consciously pursue, or is it something of which you’re not aware?

MH: I'm leery of good guys/bad guys stories. It's a grey world, most places, most of the time. And, because of my peculiar upbringing and subsequent career path, I was always conscous of being a perpetual outsider in other people's worlds. I often don't share the prevailing prejudices.

LS: There is a very real, gritty quality to your writing, not unlike historical fiction writer Bernard Cornwell, also a British ex-pat. Is that a cultural quality do you think? Coincidence? Or, again, a conscious decision on your part to strip the gilding from the lily?
Bernard CornwellMH: I'm not really a British ex-pat, having been raised in Canada since the age of five. And going to live in the UK for a while as a housesitter taught me that I am most definitely culturally Canadian.

I'm a crime writer, and this is a crime story, so gritty fits. Also, it's a first-person narrative, so the style is reflective of the central character. Sid's a guy with serious inner conflicts and some guilt problems, of which he is painfully aware but lacks the strength to confront and resolve them. So a direct, somewhat bitter-edged style is appropriate to a story told in his voice. I don't think his story would work if he was not conscious of his own failings.

LS: The attention to detail in the novel is quite remarkable, without being distracting. Is that the result of a lot of honing after first draft, or do you write pretty much off the cuff with little revision?

MH: The latter. Most of it was recent current events when I was writing it. And I wanted that real sense of place. It's a story that could only have happened on Vancouver Island, after all. And Cumberland, where a lot of it transpires, is a unique setting -- a coal-mining town that went to sleep when the mines closed in the fifties, like the land of Sleeping Beauty. Then came the property boom in the Comox Valley, and Cumby was abruptly reawakened -- though not with a kiss.

LS: Primarily you write fantasy and science fiction under Matthew Hughes, with a huge fan following there, as well as Hugh Matthews for your media tie-ins. Do you find that separation of genre, functions and identities easier to manage than writing everything under one name? Or is there another reason for separate identities – like a clever disguise for schizophrenia?

MH: The different pen names are so that buyers for major book-selling chains won't confuse the different lines of work. But I'm basically a crime writer who slid into writing SF. So a lot of my SFwriting is actually crime writing in a science-fictional setting.

LS: What are you working on now?

MH: A series of stories about Raffalon, an archetypal thief, that have been running in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. I'm also writing a serialized novelfor Lightspeed Magazine about a far-future hardboiled "confidential operative" in a space-opera setting who becomes a wizard's henchman after the universe abruptly shifts its fundamental operating principle from rationality to magic. In other words, more crime stories disguised as science-fantasy.
Matt Hughes' Old Growth releases March 1, 2014, and is now available for pre-order through Five Rivers and online booksellers worldwide.

Format Print $25.99 CAD eBook $4.99 CAD

The Legend of Sarah now available for pre-order

In 1988 Del Rey published a novel called The Loremasters, by Canadian author, Leslie Gadallah. The novel did respectably well on the sales charts and then quietly disappeared from print.

The timeless nature of the novel attracted Five Rivers, and so discussion occurred between Editor-in-Chief Robert Runte and Leslie Gadallah. That discussion resulted in a publishing agreement in which Gadallah would be able to revise and address all the concerns she originally had, and Five Rivers would re-publish under a new, more appropriate title, The Legend of Sarah.

The story revolves around Sarah, who, at fourteen, is an accomplished pickpocket and knows all the backstreets and boltholes of Monn. She steers clear of Brother Parker and his Church of True Faith, knows better than to enter the Inn of The Honest Keeper, and avoids the attentions of Butch, the Miller's son, as best she can.

For Sarah, the one bright spot in her day is the storyteller's tales of the Old People, of their magically easy lives. And as darkness falls, if one of the wealthier listeners should happen to be so intent on the storyteller's voice as to become careless of his own purse, well so much the better. Inspired by the storyteller's narratives, Sarah often conceives of her own life as the stuff of legend for some future troubadour.

Only, such daydreams could never have prepared her for becoming embroiled with a witchy Phile, an agent of the devil come seeking the Old People's places. How could Sarah have known picking the wrong pocket could strand her in the middle of a power-struggle between Brother Parker, the Governor, and the encroaching Phile spies?

The cover is by Canadian artist extraordinaire, Jessica Allain, who has now joined the Five Rivers artistic team.

That eternal story is now available for pre-order in both print and eBook directly from Five Rivers and booksellers worldwide.


Format Print $23.99 CAD eBook $4.99 CAD

The Runner and the Saint now available for pre-order

ISBN 9781927400531 114pgs, 6x9 $11.99
eISBN 9781927400548 $4.99
The second book in Dave Duncan's The Runner series of novellas, The Runner and the Saint, is now available for pre-order from Five Rivers and major booksellers worldwide, in both print and digital formats.

In this second adventure, Earl Malcolm has reason to fear the ferocious Northmen raiders of the Western Isles are going to attack the land of Alba, so he sends Ivor on a desperate mission with a chest of silver to buy them off. But the situation Ivor finds when he reaches the Wolf's Lair is even worse than he was led to expect. Only a miracle can save him now.

This is historical fantasy at its finest, full of wit, adventure and suspense, a perfect follow-up to the first novella, The Runner and the Wizard.

The cover is the genius of Five Rivers' Art Director, Jeff Minkevics.

The Runner trilogy concludes with The Runner and the Kelpie, scheduled for release August 1, 2014.


Format Print $11.99 CAD eBook $4.99 CAD

Nate Hendley reading at Words Worth Books

Nate Hendley
Nate Hendley, author of Steven Truscott: Decades of Injustice, will be appearing at Words Worth Books in Waterloo, Ontario February 19 at 7:00 p.m.



Hendley will be reading from his book about falsely condemned adolescent Steven Truscott. Authors Ian Hamilton and Gloria Ferris will also appear.


Words Worth Books is located at:96 King Street South, Waterloo, ON
Phone: 519-884-2665
Toll-Free: 1-888-241-7546

D.G. Laderoute reading in Thunder Bay

D.G. LaderouteOn February 25, 2014, D.G. Laderoute, author of the young readers novel, Out of Time, will appear at The Thunder Bay Public Library, 216 South Brodie Street. Start time is 7:00 p.m. There'll be several local writers in addition to Laderoute reading their work that night, so come on out and enjoy some great writing read by the authors!
6 x 9 Trade Paperback $23.99
eBook $4.99
available from Five Rivers
The Game Shelf
and online booksellers worldwide
Out of Time released November 1, 2013 in both print and eBook. The novel is aimed at ages 8-14. 
Plot: For Riley Corbeau, moving to a small town on Superior’s north shore was an opportunity for his family to find a new beginning after the death of his mother. For Gathering Cloud, living on Kitche Gumi’s shore now meant it was time seek a vision and become a man. There on a beach of this legendary lake, two boys meet across time and impossibilities, brought together to face an ancient evil from Anishnabe folklore, and in doing so forge a friendship that defies time.