Alex Bledsoe

answers the Usual Questions

Alex Bledsoe is an American writer best known for fantasy/sword and sorcery titles. He's been a reporter, editor, photographer and door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman.

Has your interaction with fans, for example, at conventions, affected your work?

Alex Bledsoe

It has, in the sense that it keeps me aware that people actually care about what I write.

I wrote just for myself (not by choice, mind you) for a long time, so meeting fans and hearing what they think about the books is still a novelty for me.

Is there any particular incident (a letter, a meeting, a comment that stands out?

I did a panel and signing at C2E2 in Chicago last year, and a young lady came up to tell me how much she enjoyed my Firefly Witch stories. She was vision impaired herself, and she appreciated the fact that the character's own visual impairment didn't define her, or become the topic of the stories. I was quite touched by that.

Do you have a favourite author or book (or writer or film or series) that has influenced you or that you return to?

They books are almost too numerous to mention. Each book I write has its own set of inspirations and influences. Constants are detective writers Raymond Chandler and Robert B. Parker, literary writers Raymond Carver and William Faulkner, and genre greats HP Lovecraft and Charles de Lint. And, at the risk of sounding like a cliche, Shakespeare.

I was 14 when Star Wars came out, so that was a huge influence. Also Dawn of the Dead (the original), Red River (John Wayne and Montgomery Clift), and Branagh's Henry V.

Who is the person you would most like to be trapped in a lift with? or a spaceship?

Lift: My wife. We hardly ever get any time away from the kids.

Spaceship: Mike Nelson, Crow T. Robot and Tom Servo.

Who is the person you would most DISlike to be trapped in a lift with? Or a spaceship?

Gordon Ramsey. Mere words cannot express how much I despise him, and anyone who finds him entertaining. If there's a poster boy for our current bullying epidemic, it's him.

What would you pack for space? (Is there a food, beverage, book, teddy bear, etc that you couldn't do without?)

Probably my iPod. I can endure a lot of tedium if I have good music, and I have to believe real space travel would be pretty tedious. Music is what keeps me going when I'm washing dishes, doing laundry or mowing the lawn, all the day-to-day stuff I have to do instead of writing. Good music is a soul saver.

What is the most important thing you would like to get/achieve from your work?

When I'm an old man sitting on the porch, I want to be able to look back at what I've written and not be embarrassed. That means not chasing trends, not pandering to popularity, and staying true to my own inner goals. It's not always easy, but I've veered from it in the past at my own moral peril. There are things I've written that I'm not proud of, so I'm much more selective now about what I'll work on.

What is the special satisfaction of your work?

The one thing that never gets old is having total strangers tell me how much they like something I've written. I worked in a vacuum for a long time, so I'm still surprised when people "get" what I'm doing. It doesn't get old, and I don't think it ever will, and I'm amazingly grateful each time it happens.

submitted by Alex Bledsoe

26 August, 2013

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Just the facts:
Born: Gibson, TN
Resides: Mount Horeb, WI
Bibliography/Awards: The Tufa novels (most recent: Wisp Of A Thing), the Eddie LaCrosse novels (upcoming: He Drank, And Saw The Spider), the Firefly Witch short stories and various others.

Web site: http://alexbledsoe.com

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