No. 197: BRAD SHADE a.k.a. MATT SHADE / Before the TV series there were the novels & before the novels there was a short story. "Second Act" was the title, but it really was the opening act.
I had talked to my editor at Penguin Canada about writing a hockey mystery. I figured I had to create a character before signing on & not just something scribbled on the back of a coaster.
THE CODE wasn’t the first novel I wrote, just the first I got published. Others included but are not limited to: a kids’ novel about a former circus strongman and a bear; How I Made and Lost My First Million by Age 11, another kids novel, this one co-written with my then-12-year-old daughter Laura who ran a second-hand store out of her bedroom and set up franchises for her friends; and a YA novel, Star Gazing, about a young hockey player with concussion issues. These all go back more than 20 years.
But back to The Code. It was also the first one I bothered to think out, rather than write on impulse, almost certainly because of financial incentives.
Before sitting down to write the novel, I wanted to get the protagonist’s voice, character and backstory. As goofy as it sounds, I sat down and wrote a (relatively) short story in Shade’s voice. Truly, I like the short story, “Second Act” more than The Code—if a TV series had spun out of the story rather than the novel it would likely have be…
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