Apr
8
By Penny Pitcher
Angel with a Bullet, Devil with a Gun, Baby with a Bomb...that got your attention, didn't it?
It took more than 22 years for Angel with a Bullet to go from that first draft beaten out on an electric typewriter - "a nice step-up from my trusty portable manual" - to finally, after tweaking and polishing, landing a publisher within three weeks of completion. "And," says James Bay author Grant McKenzie, "I couldn't be more thrilled."
And you, dear reader, should be equally thrilled because you have a treat in store for you. Angel with a Bullet, published by Midnight Ink, is on the shelves at Chapters right now.
According to NY Times best-selling author, Tess Gerritsen, who has already read the second book in the series, Devil with a Gun (which won't hit bookshelves until September) Grant McKenzie (aka MC Grant) has created in Dixie Flynn someone who, "may be the most kick-ass heroine ever created."
High praise, indeed. But Grant is no newcomer to these kinds of accolades. Lee Child called Grant's novel Switch "a terrific thriller," and Canadian author Linwood Barclay said of K.A.R.M.A, "McKenzie really knows how to make a story move."
The McKenzie family came to Canada from Scotland when Grant was 13. That's why you can still detect the Scottish burr as he talks of those early Calgary winters and the daffodils he now enjoys as he walks to his job as Editor-in-Chief at Monday Magazine here in Victoria.
While still at College, Grant worked the 'Dead Body Beat' for the Calgary Sun. His job was to listen for "interesting" deaths coming over the police scanner and then to wake up a photographer and writer to get them to the scene. From the Calgary Sun, he went to the Calgary Herald as a bit of a jack-of-all-trades - Editor, Columnist, and Page Designer. It was during this time that his Young Adult book, Avalanche on the Prairies, was published. Grant says that even today, he receives letters from teachers commenting on the novel and its hero, a boy who suffers from Down's syndrome.
While Grant may be able to walk to work now, there was a time when he took the ferry back and forth each day from his home in Gibsons Landing to his job at the Vancouver Sun. Never one to be accused of not making good use of his time, Grant actually wrote Switch as he made these crossings. Switch has been published as well in German, Russian and Chinese, even though, as Grant laughingly admits, the Chinese version could actually be the translation of a cookbook for all he knows.
Grant had rewritten Angel with a Bullet before he took over as Editor-in-Chief at Monday Magazine, but it was not published until 2012. Prior to that were published Switch, No Cry for Help and K.A.R.M.A. Port of Sorrow came out first as an e-book and the trade copy will soon be available. Devil with a Gun hits bookstores in September 2013.
Grant chose to write the Dixie Flynn novels using a female protagonist (she's an investigative reporter for an alternate paper in San Francisco) because he wanted the reader to really "feel" the danger. It gave Grant the leeway he needed to show that while Dixie was tough and sassy, she was also vulnerable. Writing from the point-of-view of a woman, is one of the reasons that Grant decided to write these novels under the pen name MC Grant - an idea that didn't quite work as planned when his picture was splashed on the back of the book anyway.
Having a more than full time job means that Grant sits down to write mostly during weekends and some evenings when he tries to "disengage" his brain from his day job. He dreams of being able to devote himself solely to his writing, but that would mean selling at least 20 to 25-thousand books per year - doable, but Grant chuckles and says he was more optimistic in earlier days. And Canada is an especially hard market because apparently Canadians are more interested in "literary fiction."
And what does an author read in what little spare time he has? Well, Thrillers, of course, but to really escape, Grant chooses Hard Sci-Fi, Graphic Novels, and Family Sagas.
To learn more about Grant McKenzie, you can visit his website: