Q: Your earlier titles feature mostly male protagonists, and your more recent titles (especially the four-book series Dragon Assassin) tend more toward female protagonists. Obviously, judging by my output, most of my ideas are either scary or fantastical. I guess the best way to put it is that I’m most drawn to whatever my idea is and the best way to tell it.

When I get an idea, there’s a process I go through deciding the best way to tell the story and then I pursue that no matter what the genre. So when I became an author, it was equally natural to write about the very things I’d been reading about. At first, as a young reader, I would just soak up everything I could, naturally gravitating toward reading history, science fiction, fantasy and horror. What are you most drawn to and why?Ī: In many ways I’m like a sponge. But you’ve also written nonfiction (including a biography of former Canadian prime minister John Diefenbaker and the titles Monsterology and Villainology), as well as a historic novel, Megiddo's Shadow. Q: Some might peg you as a thriller, fantasy or steampunk writer.

He is the author of twenty-nine novels for young readers including The Hunchback Assignments, which won the prestigious TD Canadian Children’s Literature Award and Dust, winner of the Governor General’s Award for Children’s Literature. Arthur Slade was raised on a ranch in the Cypress Hills of Saskatchewan.

Megiddo's Shadow by Arthur Slade