At 70, a novelist is born

Retired engineer Alan Bradley submitted 15 pages to a British competition, won the prize and sparked a lucrative bidding war for his six-book murder-mystery series

by Fiona Morrow writing in Saturday's Globe and Mail
February 13, 2009 at 12:46


KELOWNA, B.C. — Alan Bradley picks me up from a Kelowna roadside. He's come to my aid after a taxi driver who misunderstood “Kettle Valley Tapas Bar & Grill” took me to the other side of Lake Okanagan, over the beautiful new bridge, to the Cattle County steakhouse in Westbank. I have no choice but to send out an SOS to the man I am already late to meet, hoping he will turn out to be a kindly sort.
“Don't worry,” Bradley says with a smile as we finally arrive at his local bar, a good hour later than our original appointment. “We have plenty of time. I'm in no hurry.”

His relaxed attitude is in stark contrast to the hype whipping around the literary world about this soft-spoken 70-year-old, who politely orders a second lunch so that I don't have to eat alone. The publishing phenomenon du jour, Bradley is a first-time novelist who has sold a series of six novels, across 13 countries, for an undisclosed (well into six figures) sum, a startling accomplishment that began with just 15 pages of typed text, and one close encounter with a forest fire.

First: the 15 pages. In early 2007, prompted by his wife, Bradley, a retired radio-television engineer, entered a small fiction competition – the Debut Dagger – run by the U.K. Crime Writer's Association. Sponsored by British publisher Orion, the Debut Dagger competition receives around 600 entries a year; entrants must submit the first chapter (3,000 words or less, or in Bradley's case, 15 pages) and a synopsis for a murder mystery.


The first draft took Bradley just a couple of days, but he then spent weeks polishing it, only just sneaking the first pages of The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie in under the final deadline.
In June that year, he was told he made the short list.

The following day, two of the judges called his agent to express interest in publishing the book, and one of them inadvertently let slip that Bradley's submission was the competition winner. His life changed almost overnight.
Negotiations began immediately, sparking a bidding war, and on June 27, Bradley agreed to sell Orion the rights for three books in Britain.

By the time he went to London to pick up the award on July 5, Bantam had picked up the U.S. rights and Doubleday had signed up for Canada. The Sweetness at the Bottom of The Pie was released in Britain last month and hits store shelves in Canada today.
Read the full wonderful story at the globeandmail.com