Jamieson Wolf
Number-one bestselling author
Minotaur is an Aurora Award Nominee!
I have amazing news that I can finally share!
Minotaur has been nominated for Best YA Novel in the Prix Aurora Awards! They are a prestigious award run by The Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Association (CSFFA) and the ballots are voted on by members of the CSFFA.
It’s a long process, and I am just so thrilled that I’m an official Aurora Award Nominee. So many wonderful works are submitted for consideration in a variety of different categories each year and only the top five from each category make it on the ballot. I’m gobsmacked and so very happy that Minotaur has made it on the ballot for Best YA Novel!
This is a surreal moment for me because the ballot includes authors I’ve read for so long. They are authors who gave me a home when I felt like I didn’t fit in anywhere. It’s amazing to me that I’m on a ballot with people who have been such a comfort and refuge and I sit beside them as their equal. In short, I’m having a little bit of a fanboi moment.
Minotaur features a disabled protagonist named Roanne. It’s hard to believe that in the first draft of Minotaur, Roanne wasn’t disabled at all. I knew in my heart that she was disabled, but I didn’t show the reader this because I didn’t want her disability to be the focus of the novel.
That didn’t feel right to me. In the second draft, I struggled putting more of myself in the novel. I knew that the disability Roanne has had to be like mine because if I was going to have a disabled character, it had to be one that I knew well. It had to write from lived experiences. I only revealed that Roanne lived with a disability halfway through the book. That felt a little underhanded to me. I didn’t want the disability that Roanne lived with to be the big reveal of the book. I didn’t want the reader to feel tricked or like a disability was a secret or something to be hidden.
In the third draft of the book, Roanne is shown as disabled in the very first chapter. I didn’t hide her disability, there are no big scenes calling notice to the fact that she walked with a cane, and I never named the chronic illness that Roanne lives with. Minotaur is set within a labyrinth where all the people there live in fear of a mythical beast that can and will rip them to shreds. I wanted Roanne’s disability to be the one part of normal within a large and terrifying world.
The fact Minotaur is a Prix Aurora Award Nominee is just the most amazing thing. You can find the current ballot here, featuring yours truly and so many other talented writers and artists: https://www.csffa.ca/awards-information/current-ballot/
Voting for the winner of the 2026 Aurora Awards is from June to July. Only members of the The Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Association can place their vote. This is where you come in! The Prix Aurora Award and the CSFFA honour science fiction, fantasy and horror. If you like that kind of story, consider becoming a member. It only costs $10 and you’ll get to read all of the nominated works. That’s like a ton of books for $10, not to mention membership in the CSFFA. More info can be found here: https://www.csffa.ca/
I’m so excited that I finally get to share all this! Stay tuned for more info soon!
Minotaur is available from your local bookstore and is published by Rebel Satori Press.
Rain, Breath and Water – A Poem
I swam with the rain above me.
It gently lashed at the windows,
creating a whisper that echoed
in the air.
A woman entered and waved.
I called out a
Hello!
and moved to the left side of the pool.
I knew that she was afraid of water;
she liked to use the wall to guide her,
give her a sense of safety.
I kept swimming,
the music of rain and my breath
joined by the music of release
as she slipped under the surface.
A while later,
another person entered.
I merely waved to him
because I knew that he was deaf.
Giving me a smile,
he motioned to where I was swimming
and tilted his head to the left.
I knew that he liked to swim
against the wall as could not hear.
He didn’t want to worry about
someone he may not see
on either side of him.
Nodding my head,
I moved to the centre of the pool,
which was now filled with the sounds of rain,
the gentle coo of breathing,
splashes and the soft noise of
bodies moving through water.
As I swam forward,
I found myself gently rocked
between the powerful movement
of the people on either side of me.
For a moment,
I let myself be rocked and listened
to the sounds of rain.
The Brightness of Stars – A Poem
*To my Beautiful Husband.
You have become a magician to me.
Time has bent and shifted around us.
I can still recall that moment
right before we said our vows.
As I approached you,
I could see a line of light that connected the two of us,
its glow showing me the way to you.
My stomach was so filled with joy
that the butterflies within became airborne
every time I opened my mouth.
When I focused on you to find my centre,
the light between us shimmered,
and the love we had for one another
filled the entire room.
When I looked into your eyes,
I could hear a song that existed only between us,
the air filled with the brightness of stars.
When we spoke the words that would connect us
and my lips found yours,
I believed that magic was real.
You are a magician because you help me
to see myself as I really am
and to find the best of myself,
even when those parts of me
are hidden in the shadows.
Nine years with you have passed
as if they were but a day.
I look forward to what the stars
can show us as the light between us
continues to grow and the possibility
of magic yet found makes our world
shine bright.
light/night – A Poem
I am in a deep slumber when a
light
goes off in my mind,
and I am staring into the dark,
wondering how I will fall asleep again.
Instead of letting my mind fill with worry,
which is what I usually do,
I focus on the sounds around me,
letting them lull me to sleep:
the wind is howling outside my window,
singing in its whispering wail.
My beautiful husband sighs beside me,
lost in a hopeful dream.
From a spot between my feet,
I can hear our cat snoring contentedly,
his purrs a soft motor on my ankles.
The moment before the
night
takes me once again,
a thought comes to me:
I’m happy.
Followed quickly by another:
Crap, I hope I didn’t jinx anything.
Grief for a Writer – On the Closing of Cobblestone Press
It’s no secret: I love love.
I love the act of being in love, the bliss of being loved and the infatuation that becomes lust and hopefully turns into love. I have always been a romantic at heart, so it should come as no surprise that I cut my writing teeth with romance novels.
My very first romance novel, Valentine, was published by Cobblestone Press LLC. They were a diverse and inclusive publisher that gave my voice a home. When I began writing the book, I had no idea what I was doing. I have always read romance novels. Caridad Pineiro, Nora Roberts, Diana Palmer, Linda Lael Miller and more were my constant companions and the worlds that they brought to life for me were filled with characters that I grew to love.
Before I started writing Valentine, I took a look online to see if there was anyone writing gay romance novels. There wasn’t a lot to choose from back in 1998. I’m not sure how I landed on Cobblestone Press, but once I found the site, I became overjoyed. There was a platform for me. They actively published gay romance and LGBTQ erotic romance novels.
It took me a while to write Valentine. I had heard an old myth about how Valentine had been a cleric who had been marrying people in secret against Emperor Claudius II who had forbidden any kind of marriage. He was jailed and watched over by Asterius, his jailer and protector while Valentine waited for execution.
Asterius had a blind daughter. The legend goes that Valentine gave a handwritten card he had made to the blind girl and upon trying to read the word, the girls sight was restored. I loved that myth and wondered what would have happened if Valentine and Asterius fell in love with each other. What kind of things would happen then?
The book grew from this idea and ended up spawning two other books. Valentine also launched me into the world of M/M romance. At the time, I assumed that my books found an audience with gay men that wanted to read fiction with them at the forefront. I didn’t know that most of my audience was women and I loved that so much when I learned who was reading my books.
I would go on to write forty-two romance stories for Cobblestone Press. I even taught a workshop for Cobblestone Press on how to write M/M romance that I called Riding the Lighting (which should be out later this year). I loved being at the forefront of gay romance and M/M erotic romance. I wrote for Mari Gras Press and Breathless Press, too. My first number one bestselling book was Hard, the book that launched the M/M romance line with Breathless Press.
Both Mardi Gras Press and Breathless Press closed their doors, but Coblestone stayed strong…that is until the owner and operator or the press became ill. Still, she pushed onwards until she couldn’t anymore and it was announced that Cobblestone Press was closing its doors. I thought I would have time to prepare, that I would have time to properly honour the press that had given me so much. However, the announcement was made and within the space of a day, Cobblestone Press was no more.
I have been grieving in a way. I mean, I learned so much writing for Cobblestone Press. I learned about structure, pace, character and setting through the edits of all my Cobblestone books. I learned about synonyms while editing Valentine. If the writing had been fun, it was nothing compared to the editing. I remember getting the first-round edits on Valentine and the editors note saying such lovely things as: “A dick can do more than grow hard. It can thicken, pulse, throb, vibrate, etc.” It was an eye opener for me. I knew that the editors were merely helping me make a better story with more fleshed-out characters, but with each book, I kept trying to find more words that would suffice.
I will miss Cobblestone Press. It was the platform I told most of my stories on. I am grieving for the loss of a publisher that gave me a voice and my stories and characters a home. I will miss Cobblestone Press and everything that they stood for.
The books I published with Cobblestone Press will be republished, but it won’t be the same. I will always and forever be grateful for them. I’m the writer I am today because of Cobblestone Press and I am so thankful for the gift that they gave me.
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Jamieson Wolf has written a compelling story about navigating multiple sclerosis and cerebral palsy. His story will touch your heart, make you cry, then laugh, and inspire you. A touching memoir with a bit of magic…and tarot! ~ Theresa Reed, author of The Tarot Coloring Book
Jamieson Wolf 