Christopher Meades' novel The Three Fates of Henrik Nordmark is a surreal comedy of errors that was originally shortlisted for the 3-Day Novel Contest in 2007. He continued to work on the manuscript and sent it, unsolicited, to ECW Press, where editor Jennifer Hale pulled it out of the "slush pile." It was published by ECW in 2010.

According to the publisher's catalogue: "Henrik Nordmark is a bald, middle-aged security guard with few friends and no romantic possibilities. Tired of being the weed sprouting out of the wallflower, generic in his generality, Henrik has an epiphany. He will have one moment of inimitable distinction, even if it kills him.

"Henrik first sets out to experience the throes of addiction, then to become virtuous, and barring this to be known as a public menace. Inevitably he resolves to find true love and fails miserably. Along his journey, Henrik inadvertently becomes the target of a team of elderly assassins - one blind, one deaf, and the other mute.

"Henrik's counterpart is Roland, a young office worker who, thinking he's won the lottery, dumps his girlfriend and casts aside his friends. He addresses an email to the company where he works: "Dear Heartless Bastards ..."; Soon Roland's entire world - the fictional one he'd built up in his mind - comes crashing down to painful reality.

"Henrik's and Roland's lives intertwine with that of a young couple, the aptly named Bonnie and Clyde, two formerly star-crossed lovers who have grown to loathe each other. Bonnie and Clyde now have homicidal intent in their hearts, but do they have the cleverness or proficiency to pull off their respective crimes?"

Meades' characters and prose have drawn comparison to the work of Carl Hiassen and Christopher Moore. In 2009 his story The Walking Lady won the 2009 Advisor's Prize in Fiction from Toyon, the print journal of Humboldt University in Northern California.

Born and raised in Vancouver, Meades signed a three-book deal with ECW Press in July of 2009. His second novel, The Last Hiccup is a surrealist fable about an eight-year-old boy named Vladimir who is stricken with a case of hiccups for more than a decade. Set mainly in 1930s Russia, Vlad is removed from polite society and must find inner peace with himself.

BOOKS:

The Three Fates of Henrik Nordmark (ECW 2010)
$16.95 U.S. / $18.95 CDN 978-1-55022-972-1

The Last Hiccup (ECW 2012) by Christopher Meades 978-1-55022-973-9 $16.95

[BCBW 2012]