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Matt Hughes (2005)
As a jack-of-all-trades wordsmith, Matt Hughes of Comox has juggled journalism and politics with mysteries, crime fiction and the creation of new worlds. A university drop-out "from a working poor background,"; Hughes is a lapsed member of Mensa who has worked as a staff speechwriter to Canadian Ministers of Justice, Small Business and Environment. "Before I got into newspapers, I worked in a factory that made school desks, drove a grocery delivery truck, was night janitor in a GM dealership, and was briefly an orderly in a private mental hospital."; Also a ghostwriter for hire, Hughes can't be easily labelled, and this versatility has not necessarily been a blessing for someone who set out to be an author of hardboiled fiction. The release of his fourth sci-fi volume, The Gist Hunter & Other Stories (Night Shade Books $33.95) is akin to another unplanned but welcome pregnancy. "I admire authors who can make a plan and follow it, the ones who proceed from short stories to a coming-of-age novel then on to prestigious prizes and bestsellers. But, apparently, admire is all I can do. I cannot emulate.";
Combing mystery and sci-fi, The Gist Hunter & Other Stories features nine stories taking place in the universe of The Archonate, plus stories of Henghis Hapthorn, a Holmesian "discriminator"; of Old Earth. Hughes' previous titles include Black Brillion, a novel about a pair of mismatched cops of the far future, plus a ghosted biography of Len Marchand, the first Aboriginal elected to federal parliament since Louis Riel. Hughes' fiction career was kick-started in 1997 when Doubleday Canada published Downshift, a humourous thriller, that led to short stories in Hitchcock's magazine and Blue Murder, a web-based zine. Hughes won an Arthur Ellis Award and graduated to a New York agent. While he ghosted a medical thriller for a prominent US heart surgeon along the way, Hughes was also dabbling in an alternate universe. "Years before, I'd entered Arsenal Pulp Press's three-day novel contest, writing 27,000 words over 72 hours. I called it Fools Errant, an allegorical pastiche in the styles of sci-fi grandmaster Jack Vance and P.G. Wodehouse."; Hughes expanded his hasty tale into 72,000-word fantasy novel that follows the adventures of a layabout aristocrat Filidor and a wizened old dwarf Gaskarth.
He published Fool's Errant with Maxwell Macmillan Canada only to have his novel plummet into obscurity when Robert Maxwell's empire promptly collapsed.
"By 1999, Fools Errant was but a faint regret and I was a budding crime writer. Then I saw an interview with a senior editor at Time-Warner's Aspect imprint who was looking for offbeat fantasies. On a whim, I sent her Fools Errant. She not only bought it, but commissioned a sequel, Fool Me Twice."; Both works appeared in paperback in 2001. Hughes' agent couldn't sell any of his thrillers but he was able to sell a third sci-fi novel, Black Brillion, to Tor, the world's biggest sci-fi publisher. Black Brillion: A Novel of the Archonate blends science fiction and fantasy with touches of Carl Jung. A peacekeeper of Old Earth, Baro Harkless reluctantly joins forces with the stylish swindler Luff Imbry. Their common enemy is Horselan Gebbling, a notorious con-man who may hold the cure for the fatal ailment known as the lassitude. Next, a sci-fi anthology editor asked Hughes for a short story, and suddenly he was selling 'shorts' to the mass market pulps, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Asimov's, and two British mags, Interzone and Postscripts. "Within a year I had sold enough to make a collection,"; he says. That's the gist of how The Gist Hunter & Other Stories came to be published by a San Francisco company. So Matt Hughes has inadvertently played hopscotch with his writing career. "Other authors ascend a golden ladder. I hop, like Pearl Pureheart, from one passing ice floe to the next. "If there is a plan behind any of this, it must be deeply unconscious. But since I honour my unconscious as the guy who actually supplies the creativity, maybe this is the way it has to be."; Gist Hunter 1-597800-20-1
[BCBW 2005]
Combing mystery and sci-fi, The Gist Hunter & Other Stories features nine stories taking place in the universe of The Archonate, plus stories of Henghis Hapthorn, a Holmesian "discriminator"; of Old Earth. Hughes' previous titles include Black Brillion, a novel about a pair of mismatched cops of the far future, plus a ghosted biography of Len Marchand, the first Aboriginal elected to federal parliament since Louis Riel. Hughes' fiction career was kick-started in 1997 when Doubleday Canada published Downshift, a humourous thriller, that led to short stories in Hitchcock's magazine and Blue Murder, a web-based zine. Hughes won an Arthur Ellis Award and graduated to a New York agent. While he ghosted a medical thriller for a prominent US heart surgeon along the way, Hughes was also dabbling in an alternate universe. "Years before, I'd entered Arsenal Pulp Press's three-day novel contest, writing 27,000 words over 72 hours. I called it Fools Errant, an allegorical pastiche in the styles of sci-fi grandmaster Jack Vance and P.G. Wodehouse."; Hughes expanded his hasty tale into 72,000-word fantasy novel that follows the adventures of a layabout aristocrat Filidor and a wizened old dwarf Gaskarth.
He published Fool's Errant with Maxwell Macmillan Canada only to have his novel plummet into obscurity when Robert Maxwell's empire promptly collapsed.
"By 1999, Fools Errant was but a faint regret and I was a budding crime writer. Then I saw an interview with a senior editor at Time-Warner's Aspect imprint who was looking for offbeat fantasies. On a whim, I sent her Fools Errant. She not only bought it, but commissioned a sequel, Fool Me Twice."; Both works appeared in paperback in 2001. Hughes' agent couldn't sell any of his thrillers but he was able to sell a third sci-fi novel, Black Brillion, to Tor, the world's biggest sci-fi publisher. Black Brillion: A Novel of the Archonate blends science fiction and fantasy with touches of Carl Jung. A peacekeeper of Old Earth, Baro Harkless reluctantly joins forces with the stylish swindler Luff Imbry. Their common enemy is Horselan Gebbling, a notorious con-man who may hold the cure for the fatal ailment known as the lassitude. Next, a sci-fi anthology editor asked Hughes for a short story, and suddenly he was selling 'shorts' to the mass market pulps, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Asimov's, and two British mags, Interzone and Postscripts. "Within a year I had sold enough to make a collection,"; he says. That's the gist of how The Gist Hunter & Other Stories came to be published by a San Francisco company. So Matt Hughes has inadvertently played hopscotch with his writing career. "Other authors ascend a golden ladder. I hop, like Pearl Pureheart, from one passing ice floe to the next. "If there is a plan behind any of this, it must be deeply unconscious. But since I honour my unconscious as the guy who actually supplies the creativity, maybe this is the way it has to be."; Gist Hunter 1-597800-20-1
[BCBW 2005]
Submitted on July 20, 2005 in By David.
