Today I have the privilege of inviting David Bridger to the blog to for a chat. I’ve had the pleasure of working with him on some of his projects, and he’s an incredible writer. You won’t want to miss his recent Science Fiction & Fantasy Collection. Stay tuned as well for Wild Times, his upcoming novel in a genre he’s dubbed HopePunk.
Welcome! To start us off, tell us a bit about your cultural, ethnic, religious, and/or spiritual background and how it informs your writing.
My ancestral mix contains threads from various Celtic communities of the British Isles. My maternal grandmother’s family escaped the potato famine in Ireland to settle in Liverpool and marry partners from that great city as well as from North Wales and Glasgow. My maternal grandfather’s people are from the Wirral peninsula, which sits immediately north of Wales. My father’s family originated in Cumbria. Culturally, then, I’m a Celt.
Politically, I’m an ecosocialist. Spiritually, I’m a Quakerish activist. These qualities blend comfortably with my cultural core. And all of it informs my writing.
I try to avoid lecturing in my fiction. Preaching. It’s easy to do when your feelings are strong about something, and especially in times like we’re living through now. No one has ever accused me of lecturing in one of my novels, I suspect because being so aware of the danger I’m at pains in the self-editing stage to remove it when I find it. In fact, this is my biggest concern with Wild Times, the big novel I’ve just sent to my critique partner. If ever there’s a chance that I might be shouting from a soapbox in a novel, Wild Times, written while Johnson ruled the UK and Trump the USA, is the one.
I completely agree about preaching. It’s definitely hard not to go there when we’re so passionate about things, especially justice for our world. I can relate.
Speaking of relating, is there a character you feel especially connected to? Why?
In my SFF Collection, it’s Lawrence, the young boy in The Hill on the Moss. The story isn’t autobiographical. My life at that age wasn’t the same as his is. But there are similarities, particularly regarding abusive teachers in whose power he and I both found ourselves. I wish I’d had a gentle, wise, scholarly adult like Sampson in my life during those sad years.
I think many of us could use an adult with so much kindness and care toward us and our learning.
Tell us a little about any upcoming projects.
The epic fantasy novel I’ve just this month finished drafting is the first time I’ve deliberately written in the HopePunk genre, although in retrospect I can see I’ve been heading this way for years.
It’s revolutionary, as am I, but peacefully so, as am I. I haven’t always been peaceful, cooperative, gentle. Nor has Joe, the main character of Wild Times. He starts by reacting to increasingly appalling events in a stereotypically masculine manner. He’s on a Hero’s Journey, encouraged along it by certain other characters. But he grows, does Joe. He learns about the social movement HopePunk, and embraces it. As have I.
He isn’t me. I’m not him. But we share many concerns about the climate crisis and disaster capitalism, and we share the same philosophy about not becoming a mirror image of the evil that we are called to fight.
About the Author
David Bridger settled in England’s West Country after twenty years of ocean-based mischief, during which he worked as a lifeguard, a sailor, an intelligence gatherer and an investigator.
Then he got hurt, came home a bit physically broken, and for good measure caught a severe Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME) virus in a military hospital.
Now he writes science fiction and fantasy novels. Sometimes they’re informed by his experiences out on the crinkly blue.
He writes what he loves for readers who love what he writes.
He is a Quakerish ecosocialist, a spoonie, an adopter of donkeys, a lifelong Liverpool FC supporter, a lover of blues and jazz, a browncoat, and a whovian of the 9 and 10 era (starting with Rose and ending with Donna).
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