Arthur Slade was raised on a ranch in the Cypress Hills of Saskatchewan. 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. He lives in Saskatoon, Canada. Visit him online at
www.arthurslade.com.

Q: Some might peg you as a thriller, fantasy or steampunk writer. 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. What are you most drawn to and why?

A: In many ways I’m like a sponge. At first, as a young reader, I would just soak up everything I could, naturally gravitating toward reading history, science fiction, fantasy and horror. So when I became an author, it was equally natural to write about the very things I’d been reading about. 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