Welcome

Bruce Madole is a writer with a wry, humorous (and occasionally noir-ish) approach to story-telling. He loves strong characters with strong voices and definite flaws, and he has a long-standing love of the crime and mystery genres.  

Bruce is a lover of stories. He loves to craft stories, to build characters and give them a voice, and he is a great believer that songs, too, are a form of story.   Hence his chosen Twitter handle:  @SongsAreStories.    

Fiction: 

Bruce Madole is an award-winning author and songwriter.  A writer of poetry, lyric, and both short and long fiction (he won the John Kenneth Galbraith Literary Award in 2017, for a short crime story),  Bruce has completed six novels in the humorous crime or thriller genre, and is currently working on his next.  

Bruce is a Professional Member of the Canadian Authors Association (CAA) as well as a past-president of its Toronto Branch, and he is an Associate of the Crime Writers Association of Canada.

Recent News: It's been a busy year... 

  • Long-listed for the 2023 Crime Writers of Canada Awards of Excellence Unpublished Manuscript (novel) for
    "Gallows Humour in a Season of Mercy" (sequel to "The Assassin's Guide to Water Colour").
  • Long-listed for the 2022 Crime Writers of Canada Awards of Excellence Unpublished Manuscript (novel)
    for “The Assassin’s Guide to Water Colour" 
  • One of four participants in the inaugural MOTIVE Toronto International Festival of Authors at Harbourfront (Crime) in “Pitch Perfect"
  • Canadian Authors Association, Words with Writers Podcast interview "Episode #18 - Characters and Story Development, with hosts Chris Gorman & Brandi Tanner" 
  • Long-listed for "The 2022 Nick Blatchford occasional Verse Contest” at The New Quarterly for
    “Snug Harbour” and 
  • currently writing his 7th novel length manuscript

Songwriting:

As a songwriter, Bruce writes in roots, folk, and country ... and he is a great believer in the power of story and character.  
 

"To me, a song is a story about 18 lines long ... and my task as a songwriter is to try and change the world with 18 lines."  

Bruce is a member of SOCAN, and BMI, as well as the Canadian Country Music Association (CCMA), Country Music Association of Ontario (CMAO), the Songwriters Association of Canada (SAC) and Folk Music Ontario. 

He served for over ten years as a volunteer workshop coordinator in the Toronto area for the Nashville Songwriters' Association International (NSAI), co-founding NSAI Toronto's Tin Pan North Songwriters Festival.  He continues to describe himself as a student of the craft.  He occasionally writes articles on the subject, and is the author of a workbook (with one-day workshop) called Finding Your Inner Songwriter.  

In 2003, Bruce and his wife Marlene founded a songwriters concert series they called The Source of the Song.  Its purpose was to focus on the magic of hearing the original songwriters performing their own compositions ... to acknowledge the essential role that songwriters play in the music industry.  There's more details about Source of the Song on this site. 
 

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