Michael Blair

Michael started writing in high school. His first story, a murder mystery called What I Did On My Summer Vacation, was accepted for publication in the high school year book, but the editor lost the manuscript. He set his sights on becoming a commercial artist. After seeing how badly commercial artists were treated in the advertising department of a major retail store chain, he lost his mind and joined the Royal Canadian Air Force. While waiting at home on leave without pay before reporting for basic training, he ran out of stuff to read and started writing a science fiction story. Following his discharge from the RCAF two weeks (sic) later, he started work on his vast collection of rejection slips.

“I started writing science fiction,” he says, “because that’s mainly what I’d grown up reading. Anderson, Clarke, Heinlein, Norton. It was my father’s fault. He’d read Verne to me as a child.

In the late sixties, however, I discovered mystery. MacDonald and MacDonald. Then Chandler, Hammett, Spillane, McBain. And that, as they say, was that.”

To support his writing habit, he’s worked as a truck driver, quality control clerk in a gasket factory, merchandising and advertising consultant, deli-counter person, graphic and display designer, carpenter, second hand bookstore proprietor, copy writer, art reviewer, computer administrator, and, since 1994 as a freelance technical writer/editor. He lives in Montreal.

He’s written five novels, two of which were learning experiences and will never see the light of day, at least while he’s alive.

Selected Bibliography
The Granville Island Mystery Series:
If Looks Could Kill, Toronto, McClelland & Stewart, 2001
Overexposed, Toronto, Dundurn Press, 2006

The Joe Shoe Mystery Series:
A Hard Winter Rain, Toronto, Dundurn Press, 2004
 

Overexposed
Just when Vancouver photographer Tom McCall thought his life was back on track, a stranger turns up on the roof deck of his floating home — dead!

A Hard Winter Rain
Joe Shoe sets out to find his best friend’s killer and along the way uncovers dark secrets going back years — secrets some people will kill to keep!

Awards
Shortlisted, Chapters/Robertson Davies First Novel Contest, 1999, If Looks Could Kill (in manuscript)
Shortlisted, Quebec Writers’ Federation First Book Prize, 2001, If Looks Could Kill

Website:
http://web.mac.com/mjblair/iWeb/Writing 
 

Email:
mjblair @ mac.com