SAULT STE. MARIE - Judy Penz Sheluk has had — and continues to have — an interesting life and career.
A Toronto native who once worked in southern Ontario’s corporate world, Sheluk — who relocated to the Sault with her husband in 2023 — turned to her creative side and worked as a freelance writer, editor and journalist from 2003 to 2018.
Also a published murder mystery author, Sheluk branched out into non-fiction by writing and publishing Finding Your Path to Publication in May 2023 and Self-publishing: The Ins & Outs of Going Indie in December 2023.
The two books contain a great deal of advice for new writers, including how to choose which publishing platform — traditional press, self publishing or online publishing — is best for them, as well as marketing techniques.
Finding Your Path to Publication earned Sheluk the Killer Nashville Silver Falchion Award for Best Nonfiction book earlier this year.
“I figured I was a long shot. I didn’t really expect it. I still can’t believe it. I haven't gotten the award in my hands yet. It’s going to be sent to me. I think once I get it in my hands it'll feel more real,” Sheluk said in an interview with SooToday.
The author planned to attend the awards ceremony in Nashville earlier in August but family circumstances prevented her from making the trip to Tennessee.
“The name Killer Nashville shows it’s primarily a mystery writers’ conference but I entered it in the nonfiction category. I did get to watch the ceremony live on YouTube so I did get to see my name announced and within 10 minutes I had a lot of congratulations in emails from authors I’ve met along the way,” Sheluk said.
“I hope people will find the book and read it because it really is the sort of book I wish I had when I was starting out. Aspiring authors have these dreams that authors earn Stephen King money but they don’t. The average book earns less than a thousand dollars. I try to make that really clear. If you want to write a book don’t do it because you think you're going to get rich. Do it because it’s what you feel you want to do.”
After making the career transition to writing, Sheluk wrote for a number of magazines and trade publications. More recently she worked as editor of the New England Antiques Journal and Homebuilder Canada.
“I used to work in the accounting field and I got downsized a couple of times. After the last time in 2003 my husband said to me ‘you’ve always wanted to write. Why don’t you just write?’ so that’s when I started writing for magazines,” Sheluk said.
“I’ve always been an avid reader and in 2012 I went to a Bloody Words Mystery Conference in Toronto as a reader and a fan and I left there thinking I might be able to actually write a fiction book.”
Bloody Words is Canada's premier mystery conference for authors and fans of murder mystery and thriller books.
“I met some of the authors there and lo and behold they were just regular people like me, so I wrote my first murder mystery The Hanged Man’s Noose: A Glass Dolphin Mystery in 2013. I started sending it out and it was published in 2015.”
The book involves journalist Emily Garland working in the fictional town of Lount’s Landing, where Glass Dolphin antiques shop owner Arabella Carpenter opposes real estate developer Garrett Stonehaven’s plans to convert an old local schoolhouse into a mega-box store.
Since then Sheluk has published three Glass Dolphin mysteries and four Marketville Mystery novels - involving amateur sleuth Calamity (Callie) Barnstable’s investigation of cold case mysteries - with a fifth in the works.
The fictional town of Marketville in the Marketville Mystery novels is what Sheluk describes as “a thinly disguised” version of Newmarket, Ontario.
Sheluk has also published two collections of short stories entitled Live Free or Tri and Unhappy Endings, her work also appearing in several anthologies.
She has also contributed to two authors’ cookbooks.
Her work has been self-published and traditionally published.
Sheluk and her husband purchased a cottage in Goulais in 2015 as a summer getaway while still living and working near Toronto. The couple relocated to Sault Ste. Marie in 2023 and still own their Goulais cottage.
The author said she feels at home in the Sault.
“I’ve lived in a lot of places in my life, always in Ontario, and this is probably the place I’ve liked the best. I like the size of the town. I’ve always gravitated toward smaller communities. I love that within 40 minutes we can be at our cottage and I love where I live in town. I love Bellevue Park. It’s such a great resource. It’s a huge park inside the city with a river and boats going by and play areas for kids. Some people don’t realize how great it is. They just take it for granted and that’s tragic because it's rare in most towns to have a resource like that.”
Being an author is more than a job for Sheluk.
“Writing isn’t what I do. It’s what I am. I couldn’t imagine not writing," she said, adding that she is currently considering writing a northern Ontario true crime book.
Her books are available through big online outlets such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble and can be purchased in paperback, audiobook and e-book formats.
More information on Sheluk’s work, as well as her blog, can be found on her website.
