ABOUT

So far, I’ve written five comically philosophical novels: The Assignment, Frigate, Izzy Manheim’s Reunion, The Secret Viking, and my latest, The NeverMind of Brian Hildebrand. I also take full blame for The Urban Loft, a renovator-in-the-wry memoir masquerading as a coffee table book.

My fiction has won wide praise in the media and in literary publications in Canada, the US, and the UK. The popular press compares my work to the efforts of Mel Brooks, Monty Python and the Marx Brothers, while one literary critic ranks it with “Kafka, Joyce, Eliot, Barthelme, Nabokov and Borges for scathing inventiveness that makes readers laugh out loud and then in an afterthought of conscience, question their own ethics, morals and reality.”

I graduated from the University of Toronto and, 18 years later, post-graduated from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, where my thesis became my first novel. For a couple of years, I was a Visiting Associate Professor at the University of Toronto and also taught for five years in writing workshops at the U of T and York University, where I learned more than my students. But this may be apocryphal.

The changing face of the author. Photos from book covers over the years:

The Urban Loft photo by Colleen Myers

Thinking!

For Izzy Manheim’s Reunion by John Lloyd

For Frigate by Peter Tregale

For The Assignment by Darryl Chin

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A few words of gratitude

Self-publishing of so called “indie” books is far more complex and labor intensive than I realized at the outset. I couldn’t have done it on my own and so, inevitably, The Secret Viking became a family affair. I am beholden to my kinfolk without whose help The Secret Viking could never have been published. In many ways, this was a family project and it warrants some words of thanks.

Thanks to my daughter, Lori, for formatting and preparing The Secret Viking manuscript for publication. She also designed the book and my new website. This was, and continues to be, a giant assignment. And Lori, competently wearing many hats, continues to be to be a constant creative consultant.

Thanks to my son, Brad, for the original cover concept of Viking horns coming out of a detective hat which captures so fully the spirit and essence of the book. Also for his sound advice and encouragement throughout.

Thanks to my wife, Colleen, for the design of posters with various themes from The Secret Viking, and for constant and tireless support on this project.

I love you and am grateful to you all.

Your grateful author

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