A Slice of Cake With...David Bridger

This week I am delighted to be having a slice of cake with fellow indie author David Bridger.

David settled with his family and two big dogs 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 & Fantasy novels. Sometimes they’re informed by his experiences out on the crinkly blue. He's a green socialist, a Quaker, a spoonie, an adopter of donkeys, a lifelong Liverpool FC supporter, a vegan, a tree hugger, a lover of blues rock and blues jazz, a Browncoat, and a Whovian of the 9 & 10 era (starting with Rose and ending with Donna).

What kind of books do you write?

I write about characters in our world and in others, in our time and in others. It's always character-driven, and there's always love (as well as other emotions) because that's what makes my world go around. Always at least one love story in every book, although not necessarily with any romance fiction tropes. There's also likely to be some science in it, foreground or background and even in the fantasy section of my SFF output, because I love science and often enjoy following some research idea down a theoretical rabbit hole until I can't remember where I am or how I got there. That's when the magic can happen for me.

One of my beloved loyal readers pointed out a few years ago that I often write about abandoned people who build families of their friends. Which I hadn't realised until she said it, but she's right, and it's no surprise.

        

Can you describe your writing why?

Writing saved my life. Sounds melodramatic, but I think it's true. I'd always intended to write novels when I retired from my long career in the Royal Navy, but I didn't expect that retirement to happen until my mid-50s or so. Certainly not my mid-30s, but that's when while a patient in a military hospital after the 1991 Gulf War I caught a respiratory virus that mutated into severe ME. The navy was good to me, as I had been good for the navy, but after many months of bedbound near-paralysis, they had to let me go.

My world didn't crash. The process was too silent and invisible for that. It simply dissolved.

The obvious battle was physical. 27 years after that first infection, it still is. But back in those early years, it was essential for my survival that I find some way of keeping my brain active, and learning how to write novels was my chosen route. It saved me from destruction. And, happily, it turned into a second career.

Share with us your favourite passage from the book you enjoyed writing the most.

This is the opening of my novel The Honesty of Tigers, in which a recent widower spends his final hours in the company of his adult children and then wakes up an infant to live his life all over again as a boatbuilder in a small Cornish fishing town. It was the boats bumping shoulders that did it. These were the first lines I wrote in the book, and that description made me happy. Here's the snippet:

We walked down to The Anchor for the quiz night that evening. The kids had been nagging me to go with them for weeks. Six weeks, to be exact: since eight weeks after your funeral.

So there we were, and it was the beginning of my end.

It was the twentieth of March, the first day of spring, although it didn't feel like it. Helen and Jane and I went arm-in-arm around the inner harbour wall as the water turned inky, the breeze blew salty, boats bumped shoulders like drunken kettledrums, and streetlights started popping on in sequence.

Tell us about your latest project

Quiet Resistance is an alien invasion novella, a science fiction thriller that features the meeting of two lesbian characters who might enjoy a hopeful future together if they can survive the next five days.

What is your favourite cake?

Now then, we've reached the important stuff!  I have two favourites: carrot cake, which I'll eat whenever I can get it; and rum baba. Is that cake? It's cakey, isn't it? I'm going to call it cake. Thing is, my body can't cope with alcohol anymore, so when I eat a rum baba it hits me like a hot flush bus. Sets my brain buzzing and my blood fizzing. A once-per-year treat, therefore. Maybe not even that often, but I do love them.

For the baking inclined, here is a lovely recipe for an Easy Carrot Cake. 

You can keep in touch with David on Twitter @DavidBridger and follow him on Facebook. Be sure to check out his website too. 

Join me next week when I will be having a slice of cake with author Howard Linskey, grilling them gently about their writing life and of course sharing their favourite cake.

If you would like to take part in A Slice of Cake With... please fill in the form found here. I'd be delighted to have you.

Claire Buss is a multi-genre author and poet, completely addicted to cake. Find all her books on Amazon. Join the discussion in her Facebook group Buss's Book Stop.