Today it gives the Speculative Fiction Showcase great pleasure to interview Bradley Wind, whose novel, BULB, we featured on October 13th.
What made you choose the name BULB for your latest novel, and can you explain what the cover art signifies?
BULB was there from the start because the ideas in the novel were largely what drove the writing. One of the main technologies that affect the world of the novel is an Informed Light, an altered light that can be controlled and used to record information, all activity that light reaches, and then stored in a "Grand Archive" for anyone to access = Lightbulb. But also from my focus on the repeating forms found in nature. Strip the body of the skin and bone, leave the brain and nervous system, and take a look at flower bulb/root systems = one can't help but see the similarities between. The cover art is reflective of the ideas above and also has the conjoined twins who are characters that I use as another way express unusual connections, similar to the way I deal with synchronicity or coincidence.
I'm always telling myself stories in my art. Most of my artwork is a way to explore thought visually. I spent about 5 years on this "train" painting where I had 2 2'x2' boards side by side. I'd work the image to 3/4 completion as a whole image and then slide one board off and add another fresh one to the end. It went on for 36 panels. This is a painting that came after BULB and was, at the start, somewhat inspired by the writing of the novel.
You have also had a varied career as a toy designer and an IT consultant. Being a toy designer sounds like every child’s dream. Was it yours and did it fulfil your expectations?
I came back from working for Americorps in Texas and sort of just happened upon the job at K'Nex as a toy designer. I mainly worked as a large scale display designer/sculptor creating displays for events like the annual NYC toy fair. It was hard work but we had a great deal of fun. I can't say I ever dreamed of being a toy designer as a kid. I spent more time in the local creeks than playing with toys. I had idealistic notions of making a difference from early on in High School and working to help children was and is still important to me. I left K'Nex to travel but came back and got my IT certifications so I could work for non-profits. My first job was working for Pearl S. Buck International/Welcome House (child adoption and humanitarian aid) and for the past 17 years at Montgomery Early Learning Centers as an IT Director.
Was writing something you practised from the beginning, or was it a later stage in your creative work?
I wrote journals, lyrics, and short stories when I was younger but it wasn't until I got back from Europe in 1998 that I decided to give novel writing a try. I finished BULB in late 1999. I had an agent for it (Luke Janklow) in 2002 and it went through many revisions/drafts, but I'd put it down for years until I decided to pull it out last year and do a final revision with the help of my wife. 1999 to 2019, hard to believe the 20-year span but a good 30-40K of it has been cut, still leaving the ideas and main story much the same as that first draft.
What inspired you to write BULB?
It started as an epistolary novel based on a relationship I had with a woman from Chicago. Those letters were filled with cringe-inducing emotion largely related to the dramas that occurred before I met her and I couldn't continue with that relationship as the focus so I switched gears to the topics I'd been painting or thinking about for years. Synchronicity, privacy, resilience were the guiding ideas. I know Jung's The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious ...or might have been Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle had been topics which influenced. If I'm remembering Jung's writings correctly there is an air of too close to the occult or supernatural belief for my tastes now but there is still something to the synchronistic forms/activity that remain unanswered and is of interest.
Bulb is described on Amazon as Post-apocalyptic or dystopian science fiction. What made you choose to write in a genre topic, or was it chance?
Honestly, I had no idea it would fall into any scifi category. I was so green, new to it all, and during discussions with Luke Janklow, he didn't see it as scifi so much as litfic. I didn't think in genre terms. I was just writing my story. I see how others can and likely will view the world of BULB as something that fits into Post-apocalyptic or Dystopian fiction. Without a doubt, it's speculative fiction, but I still can see Luke's point of view.
What do you think of other contemporary science fiction, for example The Handmaid’s Tale and The Testaments by Margaret Atwood?
I haven't read THT since...late 80s early 90s? I've been reading about The Testaments and am more interested in the process she may have gone through to enter that world again. Was it financial, or market forces driving it? or lingering stories haunting her to continue? Or the adoring masses wanting more of what they'd been experiencing via the TV series. The idea of expanding a story or going back to a style of painting that felt complete at one point in your life and going back is interesting to me. The closest to contemporary scifi I've read is the Paper Girls comics by Brian K. Vaughan, Cliff Chiang, and Matt Wilson. I've been reading a lot more science non-fiction these days. I'd recommend I Contain Multitudes by Ed Yong.
You have already published other books, including A Whole Lot and I’m not a Robot, I’m a Unicorn! Can you tell us about those?
A Whole Lot is my second novel. A coming-of-age story about a boy with prodigious savant syndrome. Sort of a young Rainman, if you know the movie somewhat based on the savant Kim Peeks. I'm Not a Robot, I'm a Unicorn! was a book I created for my girls. I decided to list it on Amazon for fun, but because of the way the BLURB.com website works, its price is too high. I was recently excited my wife decided to share it with a student of hers who she said very much liked it. That kind of personal response means the most to me.
What are you planning to write next, and do you have a “work in progress”?
I do have a book I'm working on. It's somewhat about proprioception, set in the 90s. Influences might be the River's Edge movie, or possibly several of Crispin Glover's movies ...thinking of Ruben and Ed too... and tales of Yurei or Japanese ghost stories.
But with my writing, it's always Issa's Climb Mt Fuji oh snail but slowly slowly = I'm in no rush to produce.
How does your artistic process differ from your writing process; how do you organise your day?
Well, I have a full-time job, a wife and two girls - 10 and 12, two dogs, chickens, a house/yard so time is at a premium, but I work on my art and writing most nights and weekends.
What, if any, contemporary genre shows do you watch on TV, or in the cinema?
How lucky to live in this golden age of TV with so many options. I've enjoyed many, but in the past 6-12 months? Last Week Tonight with John Oliver regularly. End of the F#$%ing World, Sex Education, Russian Doll, OitNB, The Boys, Stranger Things... Movies? I'm annoyed at how few we watch. There was a time when it was several a week. Now... largely brainless action stuff - fun and I enjoy them but you know...superhero movies. I'm in the middle of Kwaidan - this great Japanese movie from the 60s. It's 3 short stories similar to Kurasawa's Dreams.
Have you produced any or many artworks connected with BULB, aside from the cover?
Oh sure. There's one at the top of my facebook author page right now...
There really are many that happened before the novel and after that completely connect to and relate, but here are a sample:
Always a very difficult question but some mainstays that come to mind: Haruki Murakami, Ryu Murakami, Fydor Dostoyevsky, Oliver Sacks, Sam Harris, David Sedaris, Ken Kesey...
What do you plan to do when BULB has launched?
Plan? Well, I know I'll feel awkward, wonder if any of my friends, family, or people I know will read and like it, hope someone (everyone!) will leave a good review, also hope people will email me and share stories of their personal synchronicity, but I guess I'm planning on trying to get others to read it.
About Bradley Wind:
He worked as a toy designer for K'nex Industries, a manager of IT for Pearl S. Buck International and is currently a director of IT for a child-focused non-profit. He raises chickens and two lovely girls with his wife in Chester County, Pennsylvania.
BULB is his latest novel.
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