I’ve had a long and varied career as a writer, from crime reporter to award-winning author.

Freelance writer, actor, improv artist, corporate cowboy, teacher, singer, songwriter…

I was always up for anything new and threw myself at it until it gave… or I did.

Here are a few highlights.

My first mystery story, I For An Eye (1981), took a PI through Biblical Jerusalem as he tried to find out whether Lucifer had fallen – or been pushed.

My first book contract – a two-book deal with Anne Collins at Random House Canada — arrived on my 50th birthday, a gift from agent Helen Heller.

I won my second Arthur Ellis Award — Best Novel for High Chicago — on May 27, 2010, which happened to be my son Aaron’s thirteenth birthday. 

Five years after optioning my book (and all characters in it) for a proposed TV series, the producer told me he wanted to make Jonah a woman. Joanie Geller anyone?

I travelled 4,000 miles to meet Ross Macdonald and missed him by that much. When he died three years later, Concordia University Magazine published this memoir of my ill-fated trip.

My byline appeared on the final front page of the Montreal Star, which folded Sept. 25, 1979. I spent my last night in journalism outside Archambault Prison, covering a convict uprising.

I interviewed Elmore Leonard in 1987 after finding his home number by going to the Toronto Public Library and looking up old Detroit phone books from the years before he became famous.

I was a story consultant on Season 2 of CBC’s hit show Republic of Doyle. I’m so used to working alone, it was odd being in a room with eight people pitching ideas. But I learned about TV rooms, earned a writing credit and walked the streets of beautiful St. John’s, Newfoundland.

Bestselling author Dick Francis based his 1988 novel The Edge on an interactive murder mystery I wrote, produced and starred in on a cross-Canada train. After that epic trip, he flew me to his home in Florida, where I spent three days explaining to Mary and him how to run a show of this kind.

I taught more than thirty writing courses at University of Toronto’s School of Continuing Studies from 2009 to 2018. In class and online, in formats ranging from five days to ten weeks, I got to share my core beliefs about writing and help writers shape the journeys their heroes would take.

Actor Tony di Santis and I pitched a story to the creators of CBC’s hit comedy Seeing Things and they bought it. Unfortunately, they only filmed eight episodes a season and ours didn’t make the cut. Just being in a room with star Louis del Grande, a creative wild man, was worth the trip.

A year after the Montreal Star folded, I trained in theatre at Concordia University and at New York’s Circle in the Square professional workshop. Reading and seeing plays every day sharpened my ear and made me a better writer and teacher. It also cemented my lifelong love for New York.