As a child, Susan never let her hand dangle over the edge of the bed, just in case. The first time her parents left her alone with a friend overnight, a man came to the door posing as a policeman the inspiration for “Solitary Night,” the story in this collection. As a teen, she read every one of Ian Fleming's James Bond books, perhaps looking for tips on taking out the bad guy….
Susan's story “Simple Summer” was published in a previous anthology from Tundra Books called Secrets.
Gillian Chan
Gillian had a wandering childhood following her father, a Royal Air Force officer, from place to place. Always the new kid trying to fit in, Gillian became very good at observing people. This skill has proved useful in her writing to this day, as demonstrated in her story “Golden Boy.” Her two most recent books are Dear Canada: An Ocean Apart the Gold Mountain Diary of Chin Mei-ling and The Turning. Gillian lives in Dundas, Ontario, with her husband and son. Her favorite book as a teenager was Lord of the Flies by William Golding.
Alan Cumyn
Alan devoted a lot more time to hockey rinks than libraries in his hometown of Ottawa. But soon after the episode described in “Blue Jeans,” he spent an entire summer reading Mario Puzo's The Godfather. He became hooked on finding out more about the murder, mayhem, sex, and power that adult life seemed to promise. He also read, over and over, Stephen Leacock's Moonbeams from, the Larger Lunacy, and, as a result, much of his own work rebounds between the murk of human existence and its absurd delights.
Alan has written several prize-winning books for adults, and his middle-grade novels, The Secret Life of Owen Skye and After Sylvia, have either won or been shortlisted for ten national awards.
Sarah Ellis
Sarah is a much cheerier person than you might imagine from her story “Early Girl.” She lives in Vancouver (near a reservoir), where she works as a librarian, plays the ukulele, and celebrates the inner putterer.
She is fascinated by questions like, what will become of us all? She is also intrigued by the power of storytelling and the strength of eccentric families. She has written fifteen books and they are all about those three things, as was her favorite teenage read, I Capture the Castle, by Dodie Smith. Sarah's latest novel is called Odd Man Out. And after that? Blossom might need a book of her own.
Bill Habeeb
Bill grew up working in his family's grocery store in St. Joseph, Missouri, where he attended three of the town's five high schools before moving to New York City. His friend Richard Daley recommended that he read Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger, and the book changed his life. Bill is the author of Grounded for Life: No Supper, No Parole, a play that was produced in Hollywood, and he now writes television commercials.
“Please Help” is Bill's first short story for young readers.
Nancy Hartry
Nancy was born in Toronto, but honed her caddying skills in St. Catharine's, Ontario. She caddied for her dad during her high-school years, but was never asked to do anything nefarious, as Alex was in “Fore!” Nancy likes to golf, but feels it takes too long she'd rather write a novel!
Nancy works for the Ontario Ministry of Energy, Science&Technology, and she has published two picture books, Jocelyn and the Ballerina and Hold On, McGinty! One of her favorite books during her teens was Anatomy of a Murder, by Robert Traver.
Marthe Jocelyn
Marthe spent grade ten at an English boarding school, like Emily in “The New World,” and came home to Toronto with an altered perspective on who she might be. Having studied Russian in England, she plunged into reading books by Mikhail Bulgakov and Fyodor Dostoyevsky Reading hundreds of books and not doing much else eventually led her to writing.
Marthe's most recent publications include the novels How it Happened in Peach. Hill and Mable Riley: A Reliable Record of Humdrum, Peril, and Romance, as well as her first anthology, Secrets, all from Tundra Books.
Susan Juby
Susan grew up in Smithers, British Columbia, and moved to Toronto when she was nineteen. There, she had a brief career as a fashion design student. She went on to work at a variety of low-paying, low-prestige jobs such as record-store employee, restaurant server, and housekeeper, all the while gathering material for stories like “Career Woman.”
She is the author of Alice, I Think; Miss Smithers; and Alice MacLeod, Realist at Last. These books have been made into a television show called Alice, I Think, which airs on CTV and The Comedy Network.
Susan's favorite books when she was young were Catcher in the Rye, and Black Beauty by Anna Sewell. Susan and her husband, James, live in Nanaimo, B.C., with their dog, Frank, and their horse, Tango.
Curtis Parkinson
If pressed, Curtis will admit he is old enough to have been a teenager during the years he writes about in his short story “Wings.” The Second World War, following on the heels of the Great Depression, affected the lives of everyone in Kingston, Ontario, where Curtis grew up, and it influences his writing still: his latest ya novel, Domenic's War, is set in wartime Italy.
As a teenager, Curtis favored reading escapist humor Robert Benchley S.J. Perelman, P.G. Wodehouse, and Archie comic books.
Bill Richardson
Bill was born in Winnipeg, and when he was old enough to move, he did. He went to Vancouver and lives there still. Bill worked first as a librarian, and then for many years as a writer and host for cbc Radio. The two jobs, library and radio, are not so different because both are about making stories available, much like writing. Now Bill mostly writes and stares into the air. “First Meat” is the result.
Bill says his teenage years are a blur, but he remembers two favorite books: The Robe, by Lloyd Douglas, which is about Jesus, and Hamburg After Dark, by Ogden Fox, which is not.
Richard Scrimger
After reading “First Time Never Holding Hands,” it won't be a surprise that from birth until the age of eight, Richard's favorite thing was eating. Jelly donuts, for choice. Then he learned to read. For the next few years, his favorite thing was reading though he continued to eat. Then he discovered girls. We'll skip the next bit. When he was in his twenties (eating, reading, and dating now), he started to write. Since 1996, he has published thirteen books for adults and young readers. He has four children currently teenagers and they all know what to do with jelly donuts.
Richard's favorite books have always been murder mysteries.
Martha Slaughter
Martha lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She has been writing for many years, but only recently started aiming at young adult readers. When Martha was a teenager, she wrote a story every day for her car pool, one of which was a fifty-page adventure about the Beatles except that in her version, John happened to be a girl and Ringo was a beagle.
Martha's contribution to First Times, “This Boy” features Evie, who also appears in “Road Trip,” a story published in the Secrets anthology from Tundra Books.
As a teenager, Martha was a fan of the Anne of Green Gables series, by Lucy Maud Montgomery.
Ted Staunton
Ted has written many books for young people, including his two most recent teen novels, Sounding Off and Acting Up.
As a young man growing up in Toronto, Ted's favorite reading was MAD magazine, RollingStone magazine, and the book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, by Hunter S. Thompson.
Ted now lives in Port Hope, Ontario, where his son is an expert in the mixing of Flush Puppies, a key ingredient in Ted's story “Issues.”
Tim Wynne-Jones
Tim was born in England, but moved to Canada just shy of his fourth birthday. His family constantly moved from place to place, so nearly all his stories include an endless search for somewhere to call home. Perth, Ontario, is now his home, where he lives with his wife, Amanda, and three children. Tim's most recent novel is Rex Zero and the End of the World. He studied architecture at the University of Waterloo, but they kicked him out; it's lucky for us that they did. His best creations, like “A Crow in the Classroom,” are construc
ted out of words.
As a young man, Tim went quickly from reading the Hardy Boys to James Bond to John le Carre's The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, which was the first book that ever struck him as utterly adult.
This collection copyright © 2007 by Marthe Jocelyn
Stories copyright © 2007 by the individual authors
Published in Canada by Tundra Books,
75 Sherbourne Street, Toronto, Ontario M5A 2P9
Published in the United States by Tundra Books of Northern New York,
P.O. Box 1030, Plattsburgh, New York 12901
Library of Congress Control Number: 2006909131
All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency - is an infringement of the copyright law.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Jocelyn, Marthe
First times: stories / selected by Marthe Jocelyn.
eISBN: 978-1-77049-023-9
1. Life change events - Juvenile fiction.
2. Short stories, Canadian (English)
3. Short stories, American. I. Title.
PR.1285.j63 2007 JC813'.010806 C2006-905951-9
We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP) and that of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Media Development Corporation's Ontario Book Initiative. We further acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program.
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