Gary Blackwood

Jesse Lawrence
Jan 27, 2024
5 min read

Young Adult/Mixed

I've been writing and submitting my work since my teens. In addition to 36 novels and nonfiction books for young readers and adults, I've had a dozen stage plays produced/published. I grew up in Pennsylvania and have lived in a lot of other places in the States, but am now happily living and writing on the North Shore of Nova Scotia.

Gary, it's exciting to have you on Authors Spotlight today. With so much to cover, let's jump in. Please introduce yourself and an overview of what you've been writing for the last 35-odd years.

They have been odd years indeed. After decades of gadding about the States, I've settled down on the beautiful North Shore of Nova Scotia, where I seem to be more prolific than ever-which is saying quite a lot. I'm up to 36 books at last count, with a couple more looking for homes. I've also had a dozen or so plays produced/published, plus a slew of magazine stories and articles. I'm continually going off in new directions, so I don't bore myself or my readers. For the same reason, I tend not to write work that's easily pigeonholed--which sometimes makes it difficult to find a publisher, of course. But I like to read unclassifiable things, so why wouldn't I want to write them?

So, how did it all begin? Was writing always a goal of yours? Or did it sneak up on you?

I started reading at a very early age and quickly became a book maniac, which led to becoming a writing maniac But my mother tells me I was making up stories even before I could actually write. By the age of 13, I was sending out mss. to magazines--handwritten ones. (The mss., not the magazines. And not in my handwriting, which was pretty awful, but my mother's) At 16, I got my first encouraging letter from a magazine editor (at Amazing Stories), and at 19 I sold my first short story. And then I made the questionable decision to concentrate on writing novels. Which I proceeded to do--nine of them over a period of 16 years before I finally published one. My motto became "Never give up."

And, you began mostly writing for younger audiences. What drew you to writing for this age range?

Well, my first published story was for young readers, as was my first published novel, Wild Timothy. So it seemed like a good idea (at the time) to build on that. My plan seemed to be working for a while; I brought out another middle-grade novel, then a YA--and then my editor left. For the next 8 years, I didn't publish another novel of any sort. I went back to writing articles and short stories and the occasional short nonfiction book on assignment--and teaching for The Institute of Children's Literature. Then, after sending The Shakespeare Stealer out to roughly 40 publishers, I finally hit the jackpot with Dutton, which wanted a sequel, then another, and I was back on track.

More recently, you've been writing for adults and delving into the realm of screenplays. What did you have to learn as you changed mediums?

Neither medium was exactly new to me. A couple of those early unsold novels were for grown-ups; one even came close to being published, but the publisher folded before that could happen. I turned that novel, a Western, into a screenplay--not too tough a chore, since I'd been writing stage plays for a while. I found an agent for it, and wrote a couple more scripts which went nowhere, as screenplays are wont to do. Then my agent left the business--do you see a pattern here? Got another agent, who also retired--was it something I said? I kept on writing middle-grade and YA novels until--you guessed it--my editor retired (not by choice). Since I had a reasonable income from royalties, I started to explore new territory. It's been a steep learning curve.

Publishing has changed a lot since I began; it's pretty much essential to have an agent--which I did, for a brief time. And she placed one book for me, a Victorian mystery. Yes, genre; an easier sell. And then, she didn't retire, she just didn't "get" my next book, The Devil to Pay, which has numerous storylines; it also has elements of several different genres and lives up to none of them. I did find a publisher for it eventually, and it's getting some good reviews. In the meantime, I returned to screenwriting, which I really enjoy. Another steep learning curve, not in terms of writing them so much as in terms of selling them. There are more markets for scripts than ever, but also more people writing them. I've alternated between original scripts and adaptations of some of my novels, including The Shakespeare Stealer, which has had some close calls (long story!) but no actual takers yet.

In your opinion, how has the industry changed since you began?

I think the two main changes in the world of book publishing have been 1) the merging of independent imprints into huge conglomerates and 2) the increasing ability to self-publish and self-promote. Dutton, which published The Shakespeare Stealer and a number of my other titles, is now, along with several other imprints, part of the Penguin Random House conglomerate. Very few houses will now consider unsolicited mss. and they tend to prefer surefire sellers. There are a number of newish indie publishers, such as Black Rose Writing, who brought out The Devil to Pay and lots of other very good titles, but their size limits them as far as editorial and marketing are concerned, so a lot of that is up the author--another steep learning curve, especially for tech un-savvy folks like me. Writing for the theatre has become even more challenging; there's a big demand for very short plays and not nearly as much for full-length ones. And Covid, of course, dealt a near-death blow, or worse, to many companies. But live theatre will always survive somehow.

While the genres may be different, do you use the same process for writing your stories? Or does that differ too?

Your works are emphatically reviewed with phrases like, "wry humor" "action-packed" and "literary master" within different genres and for different audiences. How do you balance the various aspects of emotion, compelling stories, and writing style without one overshadowing the others?

Back to the serious stuff. Can you tell us about your daily or weekly writing routine and how that keeps you going?

I work on the Pavlov Principle. I stick to a mostly predictable schedule (I told you I was square) so that when I sit down each weekday at basically the same time, I automatically start to salivate--I mean, create.

Well, that was informative. Thank you for sharing. Before we go, please tell us about a forthcoming project or release.

Since I have three finished projects in search of an agent or an editor, plus a nonfiction proposal, it didn't make sense to start on another one just yet. I'm forcing myself to take a sabbatical of sorts- though not really since there's the unending chore of finding places and people to submit my existing work to (and there's a lot of it!) and trying to get as much notice as possible for The Devil to Pay. (In addition, I'll soon start rehearsals for a new stage play, based on the life of the resident ghost at our local Arts Centre; that's not a chore, but it definitely is challenging!)