PAPER CHASE: Whiteway has three-book deal with Bantam

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This article was published 23/04/2011 (5581 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

WINNIPEG writer and editor Doug Whiteway, who has penned several mystery novels as C.C. Benison, is set to release the first in a three-book deal with Bantam Dell.

Twelve Drummers Drumming, the debut of a new mystery series under the Benison pseudonym, will be published through Bantam’s Doubleday imprint in Canada and Delacorte Press in the U.S.

Subsequent instalments, Eleven Pipers Piping and Ten Lords a’Leaping, are due in 2012 and 2013, respectively.

Local publisher Signature Editions published Whiteway’s crime novel Death in Cold Type, also written as Benison, in 2005. A full-time writer and former Free Press feature writer, Whiteway also spent many years as a senior editor with Canada’s History magazine when it was still The Beaver.

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Local publisher-editor Marjorie Anderson, who’s already accepting submissions for a collective novel, has put out another call for prospective writers.

Hoping to hit a 2012 publication date, Anderson is compiling a collection of 300-500 word narratives on memorable words of advice.

The book will be released by her family-owned Anderson House, with proceeds after cost to be shared equally between the editors and contributors.

With late Winnipeg author Carol Shields, Anderson also co-edited the bestselling anthology series Dropped Threads.

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In Winnipeg last year, the late Michael Van Rooy — writer and champion of crime fiction — was named a literary arts ambassador. In the U.K., genre fiction writers feel less accepted.

Following the “shabby treatment of genre fiction” on World Book Night in March, 85 authors have complained in a letter to the BBC, reports The Guardian in England.

Sci-fi writer Iain M. Banks was among disgruntled British scribes who cite the network’s “sneering tone… towards commercial fiction.”

Among those to add their names to the letter is Hugo and Nebula Award-winning Canadian sci-fi writer Robert J. Sawyer.

Van Rooy, who died of a heart attack this past winter, was honoured last Sunday night at the Manitoba Book Awards with the official announcement that a genre book award will be given out in his name starting next year.

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Winnipeg-based, Christian-oriented Geez magazine has been nominated for an Utne Reader Independent Press Award in the category of body-spirit coverage, according to a press release.

The Minneapolis-based Utne Reader is a digest of the alternative and independent press. This is the fifth time Geez has been shortlisted. It won in 2009.

Two other Canadian publications were nominated: This Magazine for social-political coverage, and literary journal Brick for best writing.

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Beat author Jack Kerouac’s 1962 novel Big Sur is to enjoy a movie adaptation, according to The Guardian.

The independent production will star Kate Bosworth and Josh Lucas; Michael Polish will direct.

Just last year, James Franco played beat poet Allen Ginsberg in Howl. An adaptation of Kerouac’s On the Road is also forthcoming this year.

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