Runaway Summer

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Runaway summer

Runaway Summer is my take on “The Outsiders” meets “The Catcher in the Rye.” After 30-odd years of penning technical reports, policy documents and financial analyses, Runaway Summer was my initial foray into fiction, comedic new year’s letters to friends notwithstanding. The inspiration was a painting by local Calgary artist Neil McClelland, entitled ‘100 Days’. It features 100 tin cans, rendered Andy Warhol style on 3”by 6” panels and assembled into a 30” by 60” piece of art. The story behind the work was that he painted a can a day from wherever he was for one hundred days straight, after which he had the finished article. I figured if I wrote a page a day for 365 days, at the end of it I’d have a book. That was the genesis of the discipline, which I stuck to, finishing the novel in Venice in May of 2004.
I compressed, in time, a series of anecdotes and adventures from my boyhood days, growing up in small town Ontario, into a cogent coming-of-age narrative populated by hoods, hockey players and aspiring rock and rollers set against a backdrop of high school hijinks. As I often say, my youth thinly disguised as fiction. The ‘MacGuffin’ was the rescue of a drowning boy gone awry. It propelled the action and intrigue to the last chapter in typical page-turning fashion. The story resonated especially well with the boomer generation, the experiences portrayed being largely universal, and sold briskly, spending 32 weeks on the Calgary Herald best seller’s list in 2007.

Runaway summer

PAGES ON KENSINGTON BOOK LAUNCH OCT 25 2006

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bestseller lists 2006

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