William Watt, nominated for the Best Unpublished Crime Novel Manuscript

William Watt’s novel, Predators in the Shadows, is nominated for the Best Unpublished Crime Novel manuscript written by an unpublished author sponsored by ECW Press with a $500 prize.

William is a retired educator living in North York, Ontario. He graduated from York University with combined honours in English and sociology and later earned a Master of Education degree at the University of Toronto. 

To keep busy after retirement, he took on a succession of activities. He owned a chocolate shop, trained security guards to write reports, worked for Statistics Canada, sold cars, and interviewed homeless people as part of a health study for McMaster University. 

At age seventy, William enrolled in two short-story writing courses at George Brown College. As he had always enjoyed reading murder mysteries, one of his stories introduced Toronto Police detective, Joe Latimer. It was so well received by both his writing class and his reading group, that his sister, Marlene, suggested he develop the character into a novel. 

This led to another course at George Brown where he received advice from Rob Brunet regarding plot development and timing. He later met Robert Rotenberg at Noir at the Bar who offered valuable guidance on character development and chapter structure. Although neither gentleman has read Predators in the Shadows, both read excerpts of a previous endeavour and provided constructive criticism. Through Rob and Robert, he learned that writing is truly a craft that is developed through hard work and feedback from more experienced writers.

William and his wife, Vanessa, enjoy bird watching and have travelled to many parts of Canada to photograph their feathered, and occasionally, furry friends.

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