August | 2016 | R.E. Donald

I’m looking forward to the Whistler Writers Festival in October!

By R.E. Donald

I was thrilled when I found out that the fourth novel in my Highway Mysteries series, Sundown on Top of the World, had been selected as a finalist for the 2016 Whistler Independent Book Award in the Crime Fiction Category. I was not only thrilled, but I also felt a great sense of relief.

As many other fiction writers know, confidence in our own work only goes so far. There’s an inexorable, distressing fear that our new novel has fatal flaws which, as the creator, we are just too close to the book to recognize. Releasing a new book, especially as an independent author-publisher doing so without the support of a team of publishing professionals, is taking a leap of faith. We do our best to write a novel that we ourselves would love to read, and trust that it will appeal to other readers with…

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I’m thrilled to announce that Sundown on Top of the World has been selected as one of three finalists for the Whistler Independent Book Award in the Crime Fiction category. Set in bush Alaska, it is the most recent novel in my mystery series featuring a former RCMP homicide investigator who drives an eighteen wheeler. The title is taken from the Top of the World highway that runs between Dawson City, Yukon and the town of Tok in eastern Alaska.

Sundown_cov orig I’m delighted with the many good reader reviews the book has received on Amazon and iBooks since its release last year. The reviewer for the Alaska Dispatch News called it a “finely crafted [story] driven by well-defined characters and strong sense of place”.

Those of you who have read my earlier Hunter Rayne Highway Mystery, Sea to Sky, will know that it is set primarily in the mountain resort community of Whistler, B.C., which happens to be where the award winners will be announced during the Whistler Writers Festival this October.

In the fall of 2015, a German translation of Sea to Sky was released, and award-winning translator Ingrid Könemann-Yarnell is now working on the translation of Sundown on Top of the World. (Könemann-Yarnell received the Readers Choice award from Amazon Crossing during the 2015 Frankfurt Book Fair for her translation of a book by another Canadian author.)

I’m sorry to say that I’m way behind schedule on the next novel in the series, mainly due to family health issues which prevented me from getting much writing done during the winter. I have more time to spend at the keyboard during the winter months, and too much else to do on the ranch when the good weather arrives. I’m still hoping to have it finished this year. Thanks to all the readers who have written and encouraged me to finish it as soon as I can!