OUR SCENE | AUTHOR SPOTLIGHT
Anthony Bidulka On the Road to Beautiful BY E.B. BOATNER | PHOTOS COURTESY OF ANTHONY BIDULKA
Anthony Bidulka’s Going to Beautiful marks an even dozen mysteries; one stand- alone, two Adam Saints, eight Russell Quants (with Flight of Aquavit making Bidulka the first Canadian Lambda Award winner.) But before becoming a gay Lambda-Award-winning myster y writer, he had a thriving career as a (gay) CPA. Why the change? To what benefit? “My husband, Herb, and I had a tradition where every year, usually in January, when there’s plenty of snow on the ground [in Saskatoon], we’d escape to somewhere hot, sit on the beach, drink too many umbrella drinks, review the year past and make plans for the coming one. “Unbeknownst to me, I’d become a broken record, always making the same promise: “This year I will make time for writing.” I never did. Problem was, I had a very busy and challenging career as a CPA, on track to make partner. At the end of 70-90 hour work week, I rarely wanted to use my downtime to sit in front of a computer. I know, I know, some would say that if the passion was great enough, I’d make the
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time. But for me, it wasn’t going to work. I was going to be a CPA, or I was going to be a writer. It couldn’t be both. “It was Herb who first suggested I put my money where my mouth is, quit my job, and try writing full-time. I was fast approaching one of those milestone ages where you sit back and take stock of your life, the life already behind you, and what’s ahead. I knew that if I didn’t at least give writing a try, even for a little while, it would be something I’d regret when my days were done. After that, it was a slippery slope. I gave my notice and bing-bang-boom, before I knew it, I was spending my days in my home office writing a book. “People often comment how different the careers of CPA and writer are. That is true, yet I credit my accounting background for giving me an advantage when dealing with the business aspects of being a writer, something many authors dislike. I know how to read royalty statements, I know about contracts, I’m familiar with marketing and promotion. Being a writer who is a CPA is actually a pretty good combination.” Russell Quant’s acutely aware of his age, years, and Beautiful’s protagonist, Jake Hardy, mentions his 55th birthday party even before revealing the sudden, violent death of husband Eddie Kravets. Implacable Time is har vesting Beautiful’s ageing citizenr y. Is Beautiful’s ending a work-around to Time’s sweeping scythe? “One of the things I love about the writing process is that it gives us writers a place to explore our inner feelings, investigate our opinions, air our grievances, wrestle with our worries, argue with ourselves, challenge ourselves, find out who we really are. “Some present it front and center in works of non-fiction, others, like myself, have the benefit of camouflaging it in the façade of fiction, like ingredients in a tasty cake. With the Quant books, although Russell himself had some concerns about growing older, I don’t know if it was as much a concern for me, the author. It was more my curiosity about developing a character who changed and aged along with the books. “In the early books I was very keen on pre-
senting a gay man heading into middle age who, as a valid life choice, was content to be single. Believe me, I had some push-back on that from readers. The older Russell got, the more readers wanted him to be coupled. It took me a while to recognize this as a compliment, they cared about Russell and wanted him to be happy, as they defined it. “Jump ahead almost 20 years to the writing of Going to Beautiful, and I have a much different relationship with aging. I always had an inkling that the 50s would be a challenging decade for me in terms of aging. It’s a time when you are making a solid move away from being able to refer to yourself as middle-aged; there is likely more behind you than ahead of you, there is a strong likelihood that you will be dealing with aging parents, deaths in the family, and other long-lived challenges. The 50s tend to be when your body begins to show you how it might/will eventually betray you. Between my husband and me we now have three new hips, so I was right! “All that boo-hoo, woe-is-me being said, I also believe growing older is a privilege. My motto is: life is short so you’ve got to make it
