Greetings Readers!
It’s spring at last. Vaccinations are rolling out and the Mesdames are looking forward to seeing you all in the real world before too long.
What’s more, April opens crime writing award season! And we’ve got plenty of our members with entries in this year’s Crime Writers of Canada Awards of Excellence and the Derringers.
FUN FACTS ABOUT…KEVIN THORNTON
Kevin lives in Fort McMurray, Alberta, the town that burned down in 2016. It wasn’t his fault. After travelling the world, working as a contractor for the Canadian military and being a soldier in Africa, he settled down to become a dad, editor and author.
Kevin is a multi-talented author whose work ranges from poetry, crime fiction, young adult, speculative fiction through to Sherlockiana. He has been a finalist in the Crime Writers of Canada awards at least seven times, and was honoured with the Literature ‘Buffy’ award in his hometown.
The Mesdames of Mayhem: How do your readers see you when they meet you today?
Kevin: They are disappointed at how respectable I appear.
The Mesdames of Mayhem: What unknown events in your life would astonish everyone?
Kevin: I once spent a weekend in jail in Apartheid South Africa. And I have been in terrorist bomb attacks on three continents and I was never injured once. Stick with me and you’ll be safe!
The Mesdames of Mayhem: This is amazing. You have to use these experiences in your writing!
Kevin: Haven’t yet, saving it for a rainy day.
The Mesdames of Mayhem: What other hair-raising experiences have you survived?
Kevin: I used to be a hell-raiser once. I once drank a Boeing 747 first class lounge bar dry with late great hockey player, Eddie Shack.
Follow Kevin’s blog at Blog: The Old Fort: Musings from the Oil Sands. And learn more about his incredible life and writing at Amazon.com Author page: Kevin P. Thornton.
PUBLICATIONS
Melodie Campbell’s Lands End Trilogy Book One: Rowena Through the Wall is now available on Audible!
When Rowena falls through her classroom wall and lands in an alternate world, she doesn’t count on being kidnapped – not once, but twice, dammit – and the stakes get higher as the men get hotter. Unwanted husbands keep piling up, but that doesn’t stop her from falling for the wrong brother. Not only that, she has 18-year-old Kendra to look out for and a war to prevent. Good thing she has the ability to go back through the wall.
Lisa de Nikolits‘s The Rage Room is now available on Audible!
What if you made the worst mistake of your life and got the chance to fix it? Only you made it so much worse? From the incomparable crafter of nine cross-genre works of fiction, Lisa de Nikolits expands her horizons to pen a grab-you-by-the-throat, feminist speculative-fiction thriller in the style of Groundhog Day meets The Matrix.
Audible: https://www.audible.ca/pd/The-Rage-Room-Audiobook/B08YGXPLLY
The Colony Dancers, Book 5 of Caro Soles’ Merculian mystery series, is now available in ebook/kindle format. Print to follow.
All Merculian is excited about the visiting Colony Dancers. The children’s group is so cute in their old-fashioned outfits and few stop to question how they acquired their brilliant technique so young, or why they are all so carefully guarded.
Meanwhile, Investigator Marlo is tantalized by the strong resemblance of one of the young dancers to a child who was kidnapped long ago.
How far will the guardians go to keep the secrets of the Colony Dancers?
Congratulations to Sylvia Warsh! Sylvia’s story, “Family Values” has been accepted for the 2021 BOULD anthology. This flash-fiction story first appeared in Starship Goodwords, a cross-genre anthology published by Carrick Publishing in 2012.
She also has a short story, “The German Credit” appearing in What We Talk About When We Talk About It, Volume 2, a literary anthology published by Darkhouse Books. This story is also a reprint of one of her first stories she had published.
ONLINE WRITING COURSE
Crafting a Novel, Sheridan College
Join award-winning and best-selling author Melodie Campbell for this online fiction writing bootcamp, that provides you with lots of individual attention. Learn how to create compelling plots and characters that readers care about. Get a good grounding in dialogue, viewpoint, motivation, show not tell, and what readers want. We also discuss the business side of writing, including how to get a publisher and the world of e-publishing. For the first time, all online, from your own home! 14 weeks, $302.98
2021 BONY BLITHE MINI-CON AND AWARD GALA
A Message from Cheryl Freedman
As most of you have no doubt surmised, there will be no Bony Blithe mini-con and award gala on May 28, 2021. However, we have some contingency plans in place.
Plan A: We are looking at the possibility of having an event (mini-con, party, dinner, whatever) in Toronto sometime in October or November, God willin’ and the creek don’t rise…and enough of us are vaccinated. However, we will be limiting the number of attendees to comply with the almost-certain government regs on indoor gatherings.
Plan B: If Toronto has not opened up sufficiently by this fall for people to gather indoors, we will hold an event in spring 2022. Again, this all depends on vaccination numbers.
Happy Birthday to Us! Yes, 2021 is Bony Blithe’s 10th birthday, which means that whatever event we hold, no matter what kind of event or when, it will be something special (definitely involving a birthday cake and possibly sparklers).
The 2021 award shortlist will be announced online on Wednesday, April 14. We will post on FB and the BB Website and send out an email. The winner of the 2021 award will be announced, again online, on Friday, May 28 (the date of the now-cancelled mini-con). The 2021 and 2020 physical awards will be presented at the next face-to-face BB event.
Mesdames of Mayhem 