Some writers do have ’em (birthdays, that is)!
Happy 91st birthday Carl Dow!
(May your 92nd be both happy and productive)
July 15, 2024, Ottawa — Last night I, along with my wife and daughter, spent the evening with Carl Dow to celebrate his 91st birthday one day early.
Carl — author of the story collection The Old Man’s Last Sauna and the novel, Black Grass — is, of course, also my father, and the reason the BumblePuppy Press exists at all.
As I have said more than once (and probably, have written about as well), more than 10 years ago, Carl asked if I would be interested in reading a novel he had written.
I didn’t say yes right away. He had not let me read any of his non-journalistic work since I had been a teenager, when he asked for my thoughts on a radio play he had written, and I’d told him it was, well, not very good.
But after some thought I did agree to read it, and he sent me a copy of the manuscript by Canada Post. When I sat down with it one evening a few days later, I began to read with more than a little trepidation; I had no wish to tell him he had written something bad again.
But instead, I finished what would eventually be published as Black Grass in one sitting, literally putting aside the final page just as the sun was (literally) literally rising.
I had laughed, shed a tear or three, and eagerly rushed through the climax because I needed to find out what happened next. Carl (I call him “dad” but refer to him as Carl — don’t ask why, it’s just worked out that way) was — yes — a real novelist.
I told him as much, and he told me that he hadn’t been able to interest a publisher in it. Westerns are out of fashion was one rejection; Americans don’t want to read about another country was another; too much action; too much romance; the list of ostensible reasons why it couldn’t sell went on and on.
I found it hard to believe. The Black Grass I had just read was a compelling adventure, featured an unusual but believable romantic subplot, complex characters and was leavened with wit and humour.
Granted, it had a Canadian setting; granted it bore considerable resemblance to a western … but was the traditional publishing industry so hidebound, so constrained by genre, so unimaginative, that it couldn’t see the potential in a great romance (in the tradition of Sir Walter Scott, as one university English prof put it)?
Well, my reader’s outrage percolated for a while, then I eventually decided that if no one else would publish Black Grass, I would just have to do it myself. That was the genesis of the BumblePuppy Press. (Yes, The Old Man’s Last Sauna, Carl’s collection of short and not-so short stories was published first, but Black Grass was the spark.
And so, on the 91st anniversary of his birth, we are for a brief time offering The Old Man’s Last Sauna, and Black Grass together, for the low (low!) price of only $25.00, $13.00 less than it would cost to purchase them individually. Click here to buy them now!
One more thing: Though he is now 91, Carl says that his next novel, Wildflowers: The Women Who Made McCord Chronicle, is very nearly finished. And after that? He has a sequel to Black Grass already percolating.
Happy birthday, old man — and keep on writing!
