Matt Hughes
I'm an award-winning crime writer.
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The name I answer to is Matt Hughes. I write science fiction, fantasy and suspense fiction. To keep the genres separate, I now use my full name, Matthew Hughes, for sff, and the shorter form for the crime stuff. I also write media tie-ins as Hugh Matthews. I've won the Crime Writers of Canada's Arthur Ellis Award, and have been shortlisted for the Aurora, Nebula, Philip K. Dick, Endeavour (twice), A.E. Van Vogt, and Derringer Awards. I was born seventy years ago in Liverpool, England, but my family moved to Canada when I was five. I've made my living as a writer all of my adult life, first as a journalist, then as a staff speechwriter to the Canadian Ministers of Justice and Environment, and -- from 1979 until a few years back- as a freelance corporate and political speechwriter in British Columbia.
Fiction · Posts · Books
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Fiction
Mean Mr. Mustard
Published Jun 2, 2020 · 2,159 words (8 minutes) · 164 views
A little morality tale from my early crime-writing days. I wrote it for a friend of mine who was editing a worthy little fiction magazine called Storyteller.
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Fiction
E.F.T. A NOIR THRILLER
Published Jan 7, 2020 · 5,568 words (21 minutes) · 287 views
Mystery Police procedural sexual assault computer crime
It’s the late 20th century, the dawn of the computer age. A serial rapist is targeting senior women executives in Vancouver’s major banks and corporations. Oddball Detective Sergeant Harry Lukovitch and his female partner, DC Mackenzie Sinclair, are hunting the attacker. But Harry is falling heavily for Dory Novello, who may not be all she seems. And then it gets complicated.
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Fiction
Old Growth
Published Sep 5, 2019 · 5,598 words (21 minutes) · 1 like · 485 views
Mystery Sid Rafferty Matt Hughes War in the Woods Vancouver Island old growth
In 1997, I had a mystery novel out from Doubleday Canada, Downshift, that was ill-fated. The editor who wanted the book had to win a five-month argument with the marketing department. Then she left to go to another publisher three months before the novel’s release. Not good. Old Growth would have been the sequel.
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Muscle
Published Jul 1, 2019 · 12,362 words (45 minutes) · 410 views
This story that ran in Alfred Hitchcock’s, fifteen years ago. “Muscle” is, in my biased opinion, pretty cute. I think it would make a good movie, with Bette Midler, Goldie Hawn, and Joan Cusack in the cast – and Emma Thompson, if they could get her to play the lead.
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Wipe Out
Published May 29, 2019 · 3,281 words (12 minutes) · 411 views
Wipe Out was the third in my series from long ago about an ambitious Vancouver burglar named Mikey that ran in the lamented and brilliant online magazine, Blue Murder, back around the turn of the century. Today’s readers will note that advances in IT render the plot unworkable. But in those days, it was a thing.
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Something to Sell
Published Nov 7, 2018 · 3,057 words (12 minutes) · 544 views
Mikey, an ambitious burglar, finds a new way to make money. Note: this story was published in 1998, so the technology is a little primitive.
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Stepping Stones
Published Oct 23, 2018 · 4,453 words (17 minutes) · 2 likes · 665 views
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