We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Alex S. Bradshaw a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alex S., appreciate you joining us today. Do you wish you had started sooner?

I would definitely start sooner!

I have always dabbled in storytelling and writing but I didn’t really believe that I was allowed to write seriously until about ten years ago.

Like I say, part of the reason was that I thought I wasn’t allowed to want to be a writer. Not really. That was for other people who were more creative or knew some secret formula. I could tinker with a few things here and there but they had to be for me or my friends and shouldn’t be mass consumption.

I remember the moment when the lightbulb went on that meant it was okay for me to take it seriously: I was at the World Fantasy Convention in 2013 and having drinks with someone I’d met. They asked me about any creative projects I had going on and I said that I only had a few for fun things just for me as I was trying to get a job in publishing rather than write. I was putting together an anthology of stories that other people had written as a kind of portfolio of editing work. But he pushed me and wanted me to talk about the projects (which are now firmly in the trunk as they say!). As we talked about them I got more and more animated and they said to me that it sounded like I really wanted to be a writer.

When they said that I just stopped. For some reason I’d not let myself believe that I wanted to be a writer, but they were right! I did want to make my own stories!

From then on, I took my writing more seriously and delved into the craft and the writing community, but I wish that I had realised that it was okay for me to want to write sooner. Think of all the other stories I could have told with those extra years!

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I have always loved storytelling and after I went to university I took that love and headed into the publishing industry. I found myself in the Contracts department and have worked for a few publishers over the last decade or so (large and small) but I have always kept telling stories, whether that’s in my own writing or together with others in tabletop roleplaying games like Dungeons and Dragons.

Like I said, once I realised that I was actually allowed to want to be a writer I dived into my own writings and have now published two books and I’m working on even more. My two published books – Trollgrave and Windborn – are set in a Norse-inspired world full of dark magic and superpowered vikings but I think that one of the things that readers like about my books is that the world feels lived in by real characters. A lot of reviewers talk about the writing pulling you right into the world as though you can feel the scratch of tree bark under your fingertips or the wet squelch of the mud between your toes.

This is something I work hard to put into my stories – that sense of reality that you could find these people out there in the world – and I am glad that readers seem to feel that it’s working!

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

The sense of making something out of nothing.

As far as I’m concerned storytelling is magic. With nothing but squiggles on the page (or screen!) I can take images and ideas and characters that have formed out of nothing in my head and get you to imagine those images and ideas and characters in your head!

That’s amazing to me.

Not only that we will both share these characters and story but that we will also have slightly different experiences of them. In its journey from my head to the page and then to your head the characters become their own distinct entity that’s shaped by your experiences as well as mine and it creates something wholly different.

Our brains react to fictional characters as though they are real. How many times have you been angry with a character in a book or a film just like you would if someone you really knew had upset you or wept for something completely fictional that happened on the page or the screen? Isn’t that amazing? I just find it absolutely mind-boggling and awe-inspiring that something that feels almost ethereal – characters and events that only exist in fiction – can have profound impacts on us as individuals and show us new perspectives and help us delve into parts of the human experience that we might never have seen otherwise.

Any resources you can share with us that might be helpful to other creatives?

I think it would have been good for me to try and find the places where similar creatives are spending their time.

One excellent organisation for me as a writer of fantasy books is the British Fantasy Society. They run great events both online and as weekend events too. And it’s a great place to meet likeminded fans as well as other creatives and find support for your own creative endeavours from people who know exactly what it’s like to be in the word-mines chipping away at that manuscript.

I think this has become easier in recent years as more and more people move onto the online space (especially post-Covid) but that is definitely something I wish I would have leaned into more sooner. You can meet fantastic people online who can offer advice and friendship and there are plenty of conventions where you can meet these people in real life as well and often they’ll be friends for life!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://alexsbradshaw.com/
• Instagram: https://alexsbradshaw.com/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AlexSBradshaw
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/alexsbradshaw
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@alexsbradshaw