Canadian author Craig Davidson is shown in a handout photo. As a Canadian writer, Davidson has felt the highs of scoring movie deals and receiving major literary prize nominations ??? and the lows of being "penniless" and resorting to odd jobs. THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO-Kevin Kelly

TORONTO - As a Canadian writer, Craig Davidson has felt the highs of scoring movie deals and receiving major literary prize nominations — and the lows of being "penniless" and resorting to odd jobs.

The Toronto-based author has become a star in the Canadian book world, with a Scotiabank Giller Prize nomination for his novel "Cataract City" and an acclaimed film adaptation of his short story collection "Rust and Bone."

Yet it's his horror fiction pseudonym Nick Cutter that is "keeping the lights on around the house" these days, because he can write those books a little quicker, he says.

And early in his career, he had to take on other jobs including being a school-bus driver for kids with special needs, a year-long experience he details in his moving new memoir, "Precious Cargo."

"It's tough out there right now," says Davidson. "Advances are down and I'm not saying I work harder than anybody else, but I have to get a lot of stuff out there to just keep turning things over.... No book will probably pay you more than, let's say, (an) average $50,000 a book, which is not insignificant.

"But living in Toronto, it's like you've got to have that, plus some freelance stuff, plus an odd movie option every year just to make ends meet."

Davidson got the bus-driver job in 2008 after seeing an ad in his mailbox. At that point, he'd already worked as a tree planter and house painter, and his bank account was dwindling.

When he started driving the group of kids, who had conditions ranging from cerebral palsy to fragile X syndrome and autism, he became fiercely defensive of them when they were made fun of.

He was further frustrated by the so-called "short bus" they had to ride that made them stand out even more.

Eventually, he realized his actions weren't helping them.

"It's not that those kids didn't feel shame, because obviously they did. They felt all the same emotions that any other kid felt," says Davidson, who grew up in St. Catharines, Ont.

"I saw them shamed, people embarrassed them ... but I think they did feel really comfortable on that bus and I think they liked the idea that I wasn't a teacher but I was someone who was older who was listening to them and really interested in the things that they have to say, and when I laughed it was genuine."

Davidson writes that when he took on the job, it didn't take him long "to realize something special was happening."

He then sent letters to the kids' parents to inform them that he would be chronicling the experience in the event it would one day serve as fodder for a novel. He also interviewed the parents to check his facts.

From that material, he wrote a freelance article that was published in Avenue Magazine in Calgary.

That led to the book, which runs down the children's dynamic conversations and personalities. There's "social butterfly" Nadja, who likes to tell tall tales in which someone always dies at the end, and Vincent, who has an encyclopedic knowledge of pop culture and wants to be a writer.

Other students include Oliver, a "clothes horse," and Jake, whose mother was killed by a drunk driver and grew close to Davidson.

Davidson found their stories hilarious, bittersweet and "sometimes absolutely heartbreaking."

The bus was a place where they "were listened to and taken seriously and their thoughts and ambitions and their imaginations were really cool," he says. They could simply chat, free of homework or other duties, and share secrets and confidences.

"I used to think of the bus as kind of the rolling confessional. It did feel that way," says Davidson, who is now writing a TV pilot for "Cataract City."

"It was like the mobile confessional unit and there was an amazing level of candour with those kids, but also another thing is, the kids just have candour as a result of being kids."

News from © The Canadian Press, 2016