You’ve written three historical novels. Tell us a little about your own family history.
Mel Bradshaw (Sr.) and Ruth Harris, my parents, were married in April 1926. The Bradshaws came to Toronto from Manchester, England in the late nineteenth century. Some eighty years earlier, the first Harris in my family tree arrived in Ingersoll, Ontario from Connecticut.
I was born in 1947 in Toronto, the youngest of three brothers. My father was forty-eight at the time. Having a dad that had seen action as a soldier in World War I gave me a more distant glimpse into the past than that enjoyed by most of my contemporaries.
Any other fiction writers in the family?
None. My father and his father were employed in business and finance. The Harris men were farmers, preachers, and/or developers of farm machinery. Except for my grandfather’s cousin Lawren, the painter.
Where did your impulse to write come from?
In a nutshell: from a love of stories.
My family were all readers, of mysteries especially. The first adult fiction I read for pleasure was the tales of Edgar Allan Poe. At a fairly early age, I started writing my own stories — though with hindsight, I can see I was trying then to imitate writers whose work I admired more than was good for my own progress.
What other careers have you had or contemplated?
At university I wrote movie reviews for the student newspaper, and I guess I considered writing film criticism for a living — which would have been another way of indulging my love of stories.
And then, after graduation, I went to Thailand with the volunteer agency CUSO to teach English as a foreign language. I found that very satisfying and continued teaching off and on after returning to Toronto.
Where do you get the ideas for your stories?
Different places. Let me take as an example my third novel, Victim Impact. The inspiration for Victim Impact was the news of the day — particularly the number of crime victims that seem to be left by the wayside in our justice system. Add to that the recent execution of an Ontario man who’d killed two RCMP officers — and the shrill demands of politicians who wanted the death penalty reinstated. A working criminologist who’d devoted his career to the study of punishment going through the horror of having his own family hit by violent crime made for rich dramatic material.
Your first three novels were all set in different time periods. What made you decide to return in your new book, Fire on the Runway, to the milieu and characters of Quarrel with the Foe?
I realized that my interest in the 1920s hadn’t been exhausted with just one book. I wasn’t attracted to the idea of writing a series per se, but the plot of Quarrel with the Foe that I thought there might be more to tell about the characters… and the period itself — Jazz Age Toronto, Prohibition, rum-running, the early days of Canadian aviation — lent itself to more stories.
What would you tell a person that wanted to write fiction?
Read lots. Don’t be afraid of being influenced. Write for love. You want readers, but don’t count on riches. And remember: no one is qualified to tell you the extent of your talent. No one — yourself included.
Mel Bradshaw is also interviewed on crime novelist Rosemary McCracken’s blog Moving Target. Topics covered include writing rituals and how to deal with editors.