In the welcome silence I raised my cup and said to Froust, “To happy endings.”
“Doubtful,” he said.
“Well, then,” I said, “to the best endings we can manage.”
About the Author
The name I answer to is Matt Hughes. I write fantasy and suspense fiction. To keep the two genres separate, I now use my full name, Matthew Hughes, for fantasy, and the shorter form for the crime stuff. I also write media tie-ins as Hugh Matthews.
I’ve won the Crime Writers of Canada’s Arthur Ellis Award, and have been shortlisted for the Aurora, Nebula, Philip K. Dick, and Derringer Awards.
I was born in 1949 in Liverpool, England, but my family moved to Canada when I was five. I’ve made my living as a writer all of my adult life, first as a journalist, then as a staff speechwriter to the Canadian Ministers of Justice and Environment, and -- from 1979 until a few years back-- as a freelance corporate and political speechwriter in British Columbia. I am a former director of the Federation of British Columbia Writers and I used to belong to Mensa Canada, but these days I’m conserving my energies to write fiction.
I’m a university drop-out from a working poor background. Before getting into newspapers, I worked in a factory that made school desks, drove a grocery delivery truck, was night janitor in a GM dealership, and did a short stint as an orderly in a private mental hospital. As a teenager, I served a year as a volunteer with the Company of Young Canadians (something like VISTA in the US). I’ve been married to a very patient woman since the late 1960s, and I have three grown sons.
In late 2007, I took up a secondary occupation -- that of an unpaid housesitter -- so that I can afford to keep on writing fiction yet still eat every day. These days, I’m in Italy but any snail-mail address of mine must be considered temporary; but you can send me an e-mail by clicking on my name in the footer of this page. I’m always interested to hear from people who’ve read my work.
http://www.matthewhughes.org
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Also by Matthew Hughes
Fools Errant
Downshift (as Matt Hughes)
Fool Me Twice
Gullible’s Travels (omnibus edition of Fools Errant and Fool Me Twice)
Black Brillion
Majestrum, A Tale of Henghis Hapthorn
Wolverine: Lifeblood (as Hugh Matthews)
The Spiral Labyrinth, A Tale of Henghis Hapthorn
The Commons
Template
Hespira, A Tale of Henghis Hapthorn
The Other
To Hell and Back: The Damned Busters
To Hell and Back: Costume Not Included
Old Growth (as Matt Hughes)
To Hell and Back: Hell To Pay