Holy smokes! I woke up this morning to find that, to my amazement, Adventures In Solitude “leads the way” with TWO BC Book Prize nominations!

The book is nominated in the categories of Roderick Haig-Brown Award for Best BC Book (“to recognize the author(s) of the book that contributes most to the enjoyment and understanding of British Columbia”), and the Bill Duthie Booksellers’ Choice Award (“presented to the originating publisher and author(s) of the best book in terms of public appeal, initiative, design, production and content”).

It’s a stunning honour to be nominated along side some of my Canadian writer heroes, such as Douglas Coupland (Marshall McLuhan), John Vaillant (The Tiger), and George Bowering (My Darling Nellie Grey). The complete list of nominees can be seen here.

The winners will be announced at the Lieutenant Governor’s BC Book Prizes Gala on Thursday April 21 in West Vancouver BC (my hometown), and I’ll be there!

Thanks as always to Harbour Publishing, Samantha Haywood, Naomi MacDougall, Christy Nyiri, Russell Letawsky, Vancouver Is Awesome, Dave Bidini, and everyone who has kindly either take part by being a character in the book, and to all those who have supported it!

Here’s the latest in my series of Home Movies from Desolation Sound BC, where my book Adventures in Solitude takes place. Due to the severity of our rocky coastline, we have carved out a network of trails through the woods behind our cabins. The trails meet up at several junctions, and so no one gets lost, we’ve put up a few little sign posts, like I’m doing here… kind of a cross between Mr. Dressup, Indie Craft Attack, and LOST.

The most common question I get asked at various book events is “do your neighbours hate you?”

The second most common is “will you write another book?” I usually answer with “hopefully”. The next question is usually “what will the book be about?” I usually answer  “it will probably be about my band, The Smugglers, for which I was the singer for about 17 years”.

The thing is, even while The Smugglers were still a band, I had always been planning to write a book about the experience, and even started one during the CBC lockout in the summer of 2005. But I got distracted… by spending so much time in Desolation Sound during the lock out! That was also the year Jian Ghomeshi asked me to start telling stories about Desolation Sound on the radio, stories that would eventually become Adventures in Solitude.

I always thought for sure that if I were to write anything, The Smugglers book would be first. It might be a (big) blessing in disguise that it wasn’t, as by sheer luck and passion and totally against surrounding popular opinion, the subject matter of Adventures in Solitude turned out to have much broader appeal than what I expect the lurid road filth of The Smugglers book would.

I guess this is a round-about way to unofficially announce that I’ll begin putting together The Smugglers book soon. I’ve certainly been inspired by two recent Facebook albums posted by a couple of amazing fans.

The first, which fairly neatly chronicles the very first few years of our “career”, from about 1988 – 1993, was put together by Baron Cameron, and old friend from West Vancouver.

Check it out here.

The second, which fairly neatly chronicles the second half of our “career”, from about 1994 – 2005, was put together by Stacy DC, originally from Thunder Bay, Ontario, and now in the Okanagan Valley of BC. (Stacy has one of three Smugglers tattoos that exists in the world as well).

Check it out here.

Thanks to both of these awesome people for actually KEEPING this stuff, and thanks to both for giving me permission to raid their collections when the time comes.