What the Wind Brings
April 01st, 2019
In his forthcoming historical novel, What the Wind Brings (Pulp Literature $39.95 Summer, 2019), Matthew Hughes pits a coalition of indigenous South Americans and shipwrecked slaves against the power of colonial Spain in the middle of the 16th century for the founding of Esmeraldas Ecuador. “Out of the fires of Caribbean revolution, shipwrecked onto the shores and jungles of Ecuador, a slave, a captive, and a shaman fight Inquisition-era Spain for freedom.” Like the Garifuna on the coast of Belize, the melding of escaped slaves and indigenous “Indians” spawnsed its own unique culture that spread to the Andean mountains from the coast. Hughes considers this historical novel to be his magnum opus. The imprint is not to be confused with Arsenal Pulp Press in Vancouver.
A university drop-out ‘from a working poor background’, and a self-described lapsed member of Mensa, Matt Hughes is a former journalist and political staff speechwriter to Canadian Ministers of Justice, Small Business and Environment. He has worked as a freelance corporate and political speechwriter in British Columbia since 1979. Under the name Matt Hughes, he writes crime fiction. His alter ego, Matthew Hughes, writes sf and historical fiction.
“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.” In his teens he volunteered with the Company of Young Canadians, spending six months living in a log cabin in northern Alberta with a Métis family and two weeks fighting a forest fire.
Hughes’ first novel Downshift is a humourous thriller in the style of Elmore Leonard.
Fools Errant is a fantasy novel that follows the adventures of a layabout aristocrat Filidor and a wizened old dwarf Gaskarth.
The third of the Archonate science fantasy series, Matthew Hughes’ Black Brillion: A Novel of the Archonate (Tor, 2004 $33.95) blends science fiction and fantasy and crosses Jack Vance with 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. Black Brillion was shortlisted for the Aurora Award for best long form work in English.
In The Commons, Guth Bandar must fight within the darkest recesses of humanity’s collective mind in order to save the world.
Matt Hughes’ crime novel One More Kill, (PS Publishing 2018) is extrapolated from a short story of the same title that won an Arthur Ellis Award for best story. A former US Special Forces officer, involuntarily retired from the military after contracting a low-grade form of leukemia, re regains a purpose for living when he drifts into a hobby: killing people who have done great harm but got away with it. As the story progresses, he finds a woman to share his life, makes a new friend, and meets up with an old enemy, all of whom come together in a literally explosive climax. It’s his third crime novel after Downshift (Doubleday Canada, 1997; Five Rivers, 2012) and Old Growth (Five Rivers, 2013).
His short fiction has appeared in Alfred Hitchcock’s, Asimov’s, Blue Murder, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Postscripts, Storyteller, Lightspeed, Interzone and a number of bestselling anthologies, including Rogues, edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois.
He has won an Arthur Ellis Award and been short-listed for the Aurora, Nebula, Philip K Dick, Endeavour (twice), A.E. Van Vogt and Derringer Awards.
DATE OF BIRTH: May 27, 1949
PLACE OF BIRTH: Liverpool, UK
ARRIVAL IN CANADA: 1954
ARRIVAL IN BRITISH COLUMBIA: 1963
ANCESTRAL BACKGROUND: Anglo/Irish/Welsh
AWARDS:
Arthur Ellis Award
Surrey International Writers Festival Special Achievement Award
BOOKS:
What the Wind Brings (Pulp Literature 2019)
One More Kill (PS Publishing 2018)
Devil or Angel and Other Stories (2015)
ISBN: 9781927880067
Paroxysm (2014)
The Compleat Guth Bandar (2014)
To Hell and Back: Hell to Pay (2013 Angry Robot Books)
ISBN: 9780857661647
Old Growth (2013 Five Rivers Publishing)
ISBN: 978192740049X
9 Tales of Henghis Hapthorn (2013)
The Meaning of Luff and Other Stories (2013)
ISBN: 9780988107830
Song of the Serpent (2012 Paizo Publishing)
ISBN: 9781601253880
To Hell and Back: Costume Not Included (2012 Angry Robot Books)
ISBN: 9780857661395
The Other (2011 Underland Press)
ISBN: 098266396X
To Hell and Back: The Damned Busters (2011 Angry Robot Books)
ISBN: 9780007349838
Template (PS Publishing, 2008)
Hespira (2008 Night Shade Books)
ISBN: 9781597801
The Commons (Robert J. Sawyer Books, 2007).
Majestrum (San Francisco: Night Shade Books, 2006). 1-59780-061-9
The Gist Hunter & Other Stories (San Francisco: Night Shade Books, $33.95). 1-597800-20-1
Black Brillion: A Novel of the Archonate, Tor Book, 2004 0765308-65-7
Gullible’s Travels, SFBC, NY, 2001
Fool Me Twice, Warner Aspect, NY, 2001
Fools Errant, Warner Aspect, NY, 2001; Maxwell Macmillan Canada, Don Mills, 1994
Breaking Trail (With Len Marchand), Caitlin Press, Prince George, 2000
Downshift, Doubleday Canada, Toronto, 1997
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