Andrea Hairston’s alternate history adventure, Redwood and Wildfire, is the winner of the Otherwise Award and the Carl Brandon Kindred Award.
We chat with Andrea all about Redwood and Wildfire, along with writing, book recommendations, and more!
Hi, Andrea! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?
When I was six, I played a willow tree in a play and I got hooked on trees and theatre. But I didn’t think theatre was going to be my serious life. I assumed I would be a physicist or a mathematician and do plays on the side. This was the plan all the way to second semester junior year in college, but then I ran away to the theatre! And while teaching theatre in Hamburg, Germany, I decided to write sf novels.
I love to cook and try recipes I get from dreams or recipes that come to me when I take a twenty-mile ride up into the hills. Writing science fiction came to me like that while I was biking around what was then East Germany, a recipe I had to try!
How has the first month of 2022 been for you?
Too much rain and ice and not enough snow, but full of so many good events and happenings, that I haven’t had time to appreciate everything.
When did you first discover your love for writing?
At six. I wrote stories for my mother, told myself stories when I couldn’t sleep. I wrote plays for my brother and I to perform a few years later.
What was the first book you ever remember reading?
E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web
Your new novel, Redwood and Wildfire, is out now! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
Adventure, romance, music, hoodoo magic
What can readers expect?
Characters who stay with you, wake you up at night to read on and stay with you after you’ve finished the book. Humor and good times along with challenges and mystery. Hope—despite a clear eyed view of what goes wrong in the world
Where did the inspiration for Redwood and Wildfire come from?
I was trying to write another novel. Redwood Phipps and Aidan Wildfire were minor characters in this other novel—old theatre people who had been around the world doing theatre and silent film. After 140,000 words and trying to slip their story in to the background, I decided to do the research and write an historical hoodoo novel focused on them.
Can you tell us a bit about the challenges you faced while writing and how you were able to overcome them?
The research was daunting. I had never don a historical play or story. My first novel, Mindscape, takes place in the future. The historical record is lacking. No one talked to women artists about their experiences in minstrel shows and early films at the turn of the 20th century. I taught a course that explored theatre and film of the period and talking with students about the period helped a lot. I had the voices of my great aunt and grandfather talking to me, urging me on. I had to speculate on lost history. I had to recover what had been ignored. I had to conjure the story.
Were there any favourite moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?
I loved coming up with the film that the Redwood and Aidan make. It’s a silent film and a romance too. It was fun to look at those old movies and imagine what my characters would make. I also wrote a scene where Redwood hoodoos a lion. Aidan’s songs were a blast to write.
What’s next for you?
I am working on my next novel, Archangels Of Funk, which is part of my five book deal with TorDotCom. Five Books! I can barely believe it–but each word I write makes it more real. Archangels is the story of Cinnamon Jones, scientist, artiste, and hoodoo conjurer and takes place in the Massachusetts of my mind in an alternate present after Water Wars have scrambled the world. Disruptors and the Nostalgia Militia roam the roads wreaking havoc. Invisible Darknet lords troll the internet solidifying their power. Cinnamon and her Circus-Bots are part of a community of Motor Fairies, Wheel-Wizards, and Co-Ops trying to hold on to who they’ve been while coming up with the next world. Of course, not everybody has the same vision for the future–so who gets to tell the story of our lives?
Lastly, do you have any 2022 book recommendations for our readers?
- Trouble the Waters: Tales from the Deep Blue, edited by Sheree Renée Thomas, Pan Morigan, and Troy L. Wiggins
- Booth by Karen Joy Fowler
- Algorithms Are Not Enough, creating general artificial intelligence by Herbert L. Roitblat
- Squirrel Hill, The Tree of Life Shooting and the Soul of a Neighborhood by Mark
- Oppenheimer
- Face by Joma West
