It’s been a long time since I last spoke to you on my blog. My memory often does not serve me well on the passage of time so I decided to check how long it's been. I was surprised that almost two and half years have passed, as the posting date was April 12th2018.
A lot, however, has taken place since that time. I published a new novel The Musician at the end of 2018, a sequel to my first novel The Actor. Foreword Reviews in their review called the book “an intimate novel that takes place in the spaces where art and madness overlap.” A third book is written to complete the trilogy that I’m tentatively titling The Ethan Jones Trilogy. The third book won’t be called The Author as I called the book in my The Globe and Mail interview back in July 2016 (you can read the feature here – Globe story.) The title will more closely align with not only what the third book is about but the three books as a whole. What I originally started as a single novel, The Actor, about a young man overcoming the trauma of a personal tragedy, grew into a more complex work of human emotion, passion and psychological challenge. Many seem to interpret my work as stories of mental health though that was never my intention. I’ve also been working on a follow-up to The Drive In. Not a sequel but another collection of short stories, considerably longer than The Drive In. As you can see my writing hasn’t slowed, if anything it’s increased.
At the end of 2018, Canada’s The Globe and Mail published another article this time for The Musician and gave me space to talk about books that shaped my life (here’s the link – The Globe Article).
My book(s) tour ended with the pandemic shut down after 410 events across Canada and the United States. Interestingly enough the intention was to end the tour in March and just happened to coincide with the shutdown. This plan came from circumstances that took place in late 2019 that I’ll talk about shortly. I covered 100 events in 2019.
I also wrote and conducted another dozen webinars for the Author Learning Center since my last post. The webinars included subjects from writing short stories to marketing books and oneself as an author. You can see and listen to some of these on their website at www.authorlearningcenter.com.
The biggest news, however, was in the latter part of 2019.
In August, I had just returned from the west coast swing of my 2019 book events tour and was doing a weekend event at a Chapters store much closer to home. In most of my events, as long as the store had books available I stayed. As I remember, it was early evening when a woman approached my table and asked about The Actor. Literally in seconds we had struck up a conversation and soon after she was asking for a copy of the book. The exchange was pleasant but nothing out of the ordinary when someone showed interest in my work. I have met many wonderful people in similar fashion at my book events. About twenty minutes later a gentleman approached my table, stuck out his hand and introduced himself. He wanted to know about The Drive In. Within seconds of pitching my second book, he was interested and started to explain what he did and about his media company. That was beginning. He was looking for content and by happenstance was there that night taking his mother and grandmother out for coffee at Starbucks. The woman who had bought The Actor only a few minutes before—his mother—had directed him to my table. Within two weeks we had signed a contract giving Gramercy Studios the rights to create a limited-series, scripted podcast of my novel The Drive In. His name is Max Alexandre. In January of this year, before the world was besieged in this pandemic, I signed with his media company Gramercy Studios to represent and manage my work.
I’m still doing my best to live up to the moniker The Globe and Mail gave me—the hardest-working novelist you’ve never heard. What's becoming increasingly apparent is that readers can’t say that anymore.
So watch out this fall for more and until next time, keep on reading.
Get yourself a copy of The Actor, The Drive In or The Musician and find out what many readers have already discovered.
You can follow me on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook or LinkedIn or visit my website at www.douglasgardham.com.
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