The Ranger by Eamonn Bradley
What led you into writing?
I was given a fantasy game-book when I was a kid. The ones where you choose your own path and instantly I was hooked. From there I went on to read Stephen King and became at a very young enthralled with suspense. This is the primary reason why I write both fantasy and horror. I love reading that’s a given, but I wasn’t complete until I started crafting my own worlds. As a kid I loved writing short stories. The teachers hated me because instead of writing the assigned essay with the predetermined title such as ‘How I spent last summer’, in the way they wanted me to I would twist it into a tale of encountering werewolves whilst on a camping trip with the folks. So yeah the desire to create is the purest reason why I write.
How does a typical day look?
Get up, have a coffee and go to the day job. It’s when I get home, I settle at my keyboard and try to get 2k words down on the latest book! My second novel, The Veil, is currently with me editor and I’m 30k words into my third. Details of The Veil will be on my website soon!
In what ways do your characters test your abilities?
My latest tale, (my third novel) is what if there were infected zombie like creatures in Stephen King’s The Stand. So telling this story from so many perspectives is challenging to say the least. the most difficult part will be how I pull all these stories together and provide a satisfying, cohesive narrative. But…I love the challenge!
What’s your setup?
What lasting effects have your favourite authors had on your writing and style?
Cormac McCarthy and Richard Matheson for their direct and vivid imagery. They excel in these areas and I feel I naturally write this way myself. Stephen King for his beautiful description, character development and suspense had massive inspired me too. Readers of my work say it’s a blend of these three with my own voice coming through.
What do you do for inspiration?
I never look for ideas. The trick I believe is to recognize when they come along, of which could be any time at all! I was once sitting on the bus going to work, it was raining quite heavily and remember staring at, of all things a huge puddle at the side of the road. The thought occurred to me what if people turned to water or aquafied? Thus a short story was born about a mad scientist who seeks to poison the world and turn everyone into puddle people! This will come later in a short story collection!
What repeating themes do you find yourself pulling into your stories?
Ah! the age old good versus evil is something that finds its way into my fiction, whether its fantasy or horror there’s always an element of it there. The Veil itself is, as I said my second novel, it features four late teens who discover the world is not what we think it is. As the story unwraps, their lives slowly fall apart and something happens that will change them and everyone forever.
Love too and the will to survive and never give up no matter the cost or the odds.
How do you wind down?
Reading or having a few beers with my beautiful wife!
I also co-founded The Dark Veil Society. We’re a group of indie horror writers who are going to take the writing world by storm in 2025! I like to chill in there with the guys and talk books, movies and life! We have some amazing talent in there like Molly Macabre, Robert Ling, SLEDGE, SS Fitzgerald, Steve Stark, Janelle Schiecke to name a few. We’re on X so keep an eye out!
What sort of challenges do you regularly overcome while designing your world/setting?
My biggest challenge is trusting the source of where the ideas come from. I tend to write purely on instinct as I not great at making plans. This way the story tells me where it’s going, which can be quite surprising at times! For a suspense novelist this is great, because if I don’t know where the story is going how will the reader?
What are you reading at the moment?
The Stand by Stephen King
They Who Linger by Robert Ling
Dark Bloom by Molly Macabre
What’s the most useful advice you could give to an aspiring author?
Read and write everyday, and never give up, if you’re talented your voice will find a way!
Get active on socials, make friends and set up interviews, basically get used to marketing, because if you don’t you’ll drown in a sea of aspiring writers!
Tell us about the book you’re promoting.
The Ranger has been out since the end of October 2024 and sold around 150 copies so far, so it’s doing great out there in the big bad world. It centres around a young Ranger named Eraden. He’s just finished his ten years of training and this novel features his first year out in the wild. Aragorn was always my favorite character from LotR and I wanted to play with the idea of starting from the beginning when a Ranger was young and see what happens. The story grew organically as I wrote it and it’s very classic fantasy. It’s available now on Amazon as ebook, paperback and hardback!
My new novel is more suspenseful horror. Told primarily from Charlie Macall’s perspective and as I mentioned earlier, he and his friends discover a terrible secret about the world we live in. The book follows them as their things go from bad to worse and what they need to do to survive! Hopefully coming May 2025.
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