Every Tuesday, get to know a bit about the stories behind the books you love, and discover your next favourite novel.

Zilla: Canada is a big place, and we need stories that cover all of it—the small, quiet places where people have big, loud adventures. Bring a touch of whimsy, and you’ve got Matthew Del Papa’s anthology SuperCanucks. So Matthew, tell us about it!

Matthew: SuperCanucks features eleven stories that explore the usual superhero tropes while shining a spotlight on the unique corners of Canada. Not your typical big city superhero, but those who live in and around Canada’s more often overlooked locales—isolated small towns and rural outposts. These heroes battle unique Canadian dangers, including government bureaucracy and the overreaching neighbours in the south.

Zilla: What inspired you to write this book?

Matthew: Living in small-town Canada I noticed that, though superheroes were having a cultural moment, the action always seemed to centre on big, American cities. Canada came as an afterthought. And rural communities didn’t even get that. Excluding Smallville, Kansas—which Superman had to leave before achieving greatness—there’s little to no mention of towns. But surely, I thought, some superheroes would stick close to home. What would life be like for them? Balancing a secret identity with nosy neighbours? 

Zilla: Is there a visual image—a painting or a photo—that inspired you?

Matthew: There was a movie scene that has long stuck with me. The details are lost but the character, a young person, was driving away from home and the camera locked on the rear-view mirror of the family waving goodbye as they faded into the distance. It reminded me of countless friends and family who had to leave my hometown to attend school or find work elsewhere. That sad sojourn happens so often in the rural parts of Canada that we’ve named it: the Brain Drain. SuperCanucks wonders if something similar would happen to super-powered citizens—would the ‘best and brightest’ have to leave—and what that might mean for those left behind. Would small towns be stuck with ‘C’ level heroes?

Zilla: Why do you write? 

Matthew: I write to keep my head from exploding. Combine a vivid imagination with insatiable curiosity and my childhood daydreams grew vivid and complicated. Getting these down on paper turned a liability into a productive creative outlet. I’ve long had an animal-like hunger for stories, gorging on anything I could get my hands on since discovering science fiction and fantasy. Reading voraciously led me to try my hand at writing.

Zilla: If you weren’t a writer, what do you think you’d do instead?

Matthew: Routine is a big part of my life. I prefer order to chaos but enjoy excitement and a good challenge. These traits make me think a career in the military or law enforcement would have been an interesting alternate path. Several relatives served in the navy and I’ve friends who became police officers (Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Ontario Provincial Police). I’d like to believe that I could have done the same. That said, I’m a huge coward and so prefer writing about conflict to living through it.

Zilla: What’s your next writing project?

Matthew: I’m toying with a book of connected short stories about a directionless thirty-something who inherits his uncle’s private investigator business. It would feature a lot of humour as my point-of-view character learns the ropes and works to keep the doors of Milks’ Independent Investigations open. I plan on setting it in a fictional neighbourhood of the Greater Toronto Area, a sort of small town subsumed by the city but still clinging to the lingering shreds of its own identity, and filling it with memorably bizarre characters.

Zilla: Thanks for sharing your story and your process. We’re looking forward to reading! Where can the Night Beats community find you and your book?

Matthew: My co-editor, Andy Tayler, has a website. Our anthology is available at most major bookstores and can be purchased directly from our publisher.