Stark Reflections on Writing and Publishing EP 288 - Edo van Belkom on Re-Adapting and Re-Inventing Your Writer Self
Mark interviews Canadian author Edo van Belkom about his life in writing, and the January 2023 the Paramount+ TV series adaptation of his Silver Birch Award-Winning Novel WOLF PACK by Jeff Davis and starring Sarah Michelle Gellar.
Prior to the interview, Mark shares comments from recent episodes, a brief personal update, welcomes new Patron Dharma Kelleher, and a word about this episode's sponsor.
You can learn more about how you can get your audiobooks distributed to retailers and library systems around the world at starkreflections.ca/Findaway.
In their conversation, Mark and Edo talk about:
- An old picture of the two of them at a "Sci-Fi Saturday" multi-author event from the late 90s where Mark was one of the managers (Attendees were David Shrogryn, Edo van Belkom, Carolyn Clink, Robert J. Sawyer, Douglas Smith, Andrew Weiner, Mark Leslie, Sally Tomasevic, Marcel Gagne)
- Edo's journey as a writer, beginning with his first published short story being published in an annual "Year's Best" anthology
- Writing about six or seven novels before his first one sold, and writing books that weren't published until more than twenty-five years later
- Working on gaming-tie-in related novels
- Landing his agent after having a short story appear in one of Jeff Gelb's "Hot Blood" anthologies
- Following his wife's advice to write a YA novel, which became the award-winning novel Wolf Pack and how that book was sold over a telephone pitch/proposal
- Having a couple of his mass market paperback novels (Scream Queen and Blood Road) be optioned for films
- Some of the silly things that writers hear when speaking to non-writers at parties such as "why don't you write a bestseller?"
- What being nominated for the Silver Birch Award did for that book
- Winning the Silverbirch Award
- Going from selling 10,000 copies of the first book in the series to only about 1,000 or so copies of the 2nd and 3rd books in that series
- How the greatest part of winning the Silver Biirch Award was the live event at a small stadium in downtown Toronto, Ontario
- Winning the Bram Stoker Award for a short story ("Rat Food") that he co-authored with David Nickle
- What it was like co-authoring a story well before the days of the internet
- Edo's short story collection Death Drives a Semi and how, when looking for places to market it, he found a trucker magazine that he ended up writing a series of stories in for fifteen years
- The "Mark Dalton: Owner, Operator" series of stories
- Converting a one-day workshop for truckers about fuel efficient driving practices into a novel
- Details and experiences related to the ice roads in Canada's Northwest Territories. (Ice roads are seasonal winter roads built over frozen bodies of water. The ice roads in Canada are about 400 KM (250 miles) long and are built over 64 frozen lakes
- The story behind how Wolf Pack got turned into a new Paramount+ television series
- What it was like seeing a teaser trailer for "Wolf Pack" after a year of hearing nothing about the option deal that had been signed
- How the book "Wolf Pack" got into the hands of Jeff Davis
- What it was like to be in Los Angeles for the premiere of the series, including walking the red carpet
- Seeing his name in the show's opening credits "Based on the novels by Edo van Belkom"
- Some of what's planned for the home-town showing of the first episode in the series in Brampton, Ontario
- Why, if he can help it, Edo plans on not doing any more soul-crushing in store book signings any longer
- And more...
After the interview, Mark reflects on three different things.
Links of Interest:
- Edo van Belkom (At Jabberwocky Literary Agency)
- Wolf Pack on Paramount+
- Be a guest on the Stark Reflections Podcast
- Superstars Writing Seminars (Save $100 with code: STARKSSWS2023
- Findaway Voices
- Buy Mark a Coffee
- Patreon for Stark Reflections
- Best Book Ever Podcast
- Lovers Moon Podcast
- The Relaxed Author
- Publishing Pitfalls for Authors
- An Author's Guide to Working with Libraries & Bookstores
- Wide for the Win
- Mark's Canadian Werewolf Books
- The Canadian Mounted: A Trivia Guide to Planes, Trains and Automobiles
Edo van Belkom, a former reporter on the sports and police beats for newspapers in and around Toronto, arrived on the horror scene in 1990. His first short story sale, Baseball Memories, was selected for the prestigious Year's Best Horror Stories edited by Karl Edward Wagner. The story was also nominated for Canada's prestigious Aurora Award and appeared side-by-side with work by authors such as Mordecai Richler and W. P. Kinsella in The Grand Slam Book of Canadian Baseball Writing.
Van Belkom hasn't looked back since. Some 150 short stories have sold to a variety of top magazines and anthologies in the sf, fantasy, horror and mystery genres. He has twice won the Aurora Award, taken home the Bram Stoker Award and his YA novel WOLF PACK won Ontario's prestigious Silver Birch Award.
In January 2023, that same 2004 novel and the other three books in the series was adapted into an American supernatural teen drama on Paramount+ starring Sarah Michelle Gellar and produced by Jeff Davis, known for creating the drama series Criminal Minds and the TV series "Teen Wolf."
The introductory, end, and bumper music for this podcast ("Laser Groove") was composed and produced by Kevin MacLeod of www.incompetech.com and is Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0