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WORK TITLE: The Wild Inside
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: https://www.jameybradbury.com/
CITY: Anchorage
STATE: AK
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born in Illinois.
EDUCATION:University of North Carolina, Greensboro, M.F.A.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer and novelist. Works in the publishing industry. Also an AmeriCorps volunteer who does storytelling for an Alaska Native social services organization.
AWARDS:Estelle Campbell Memorial Award,the National Society of Arts and Letters.
WRITINGS
Contributor to periodicals, including Black Warrior Review, Sou’wester journal, and Zone. Has written for the Anchorage Daily News. The Wild Inside has been published in Poland, Italy, France, and Hungary.
SIDELIGHTS
Jamey Bradbury was born and grew up in Illinois. Bradbury began reading horror novels at a young age and realized she wanted to be a writer by the third grade. “I will forever be indebted to my hometown librarian who, out of concern that I would encounter something too mature for my preteen brain, forbade me to go into the adult section of the library—basically guaranteeing that I would expend all my energy trying to do exactly that,” Bradbury noted in an interview for the Civilian Reader website. Acknowledging that she read many books that she did not fully understand, Bradbury went on in the Civilian Reader website interview to remark: “That half-understanding, though, meant my imagination had to work overtime to make sense of things, which I think made the real world seem even more magical and strange and weird to me.”
In her debut novel, The Wild Inside, Bradbury sets the tale in her adopted state of Alaska. The novel, which School Library Journal contributor Tegan Anclade called “part thriller, part horror,” features seventeen-year-old Tracy Petrikoff. A born trapper with a feral nature, Tracy traps animals to help feed her family but also drinks their blood, which helps her mind-meld with them. Bradbury told a Civilian Reader website contributor that the inspiration for the story came partly from an image that she had one day of an isolated house in the Alaska winter in which two people seemed to be waiting for someone to come home. The other inspiration was the novel Some of Your Blood, a 1961 novel by Theodore Sturgeon. “When I read that, I wondered how things would have been different if Sturgeon’s protagonist had been a woman instead of a man,” Bradbury noted in the Civilian Reader website interview, adding: “The Wild Inside isn’t a retelling or reimagining of Sturgeon’s book, but it does take inspiration from some of the ideas in Some of Your Blood.
In Bradbury’s novel, Tracy lost her mother two years earlier. Tracy is accosted in the wood one day by a man who throws her against a tree root, causing her to lose consciousness. Before that, however, Tracy tried to fight off the attacker and believes she stabbed him with her hunting knife. The next day she sees a man emerge from the woods with a severe wound, leading Tracy to think that this might be the man who attacked her. Later, Tracy goes back to where she was attacked and discovers a backpack filled with money, which she hopes to use to enter the Iditarod dog race. Meanwhile, Tracy is concerned that the man in the woods will return to find her and his money. Then seventeen-year-old Jesse Goodwin, a drifter, is hired by her father to help on the homestead. However, Tracey soon suspects that Jesse may have some kind of connection to the man who attacked her.
Meanwhile, Tracy has been hiding the disturbing aspects of her foray into the forest, namely her ability to connect to her prey’s thoughts through drinking their blood. In an interview for the Crimespree website, Bradbury remarked that her thinking when writing the novel was that “the mom had this weird genetic abnormality passed down through generations to the women by the women,” adding that Tracy’s mom only wanted a normal life. As the novel progresses, Tracy becomes increasingly unsure of Jesse until she discovers that he is actually being pursued as well by the man who attacked her. Still, Jesse turns out to be much more than he appears to be on the surface.
“Patient readers who like earthy, genre-blending, coming-of-age stories should be pleased” with the novel, wrote Sarah Hunter in Booklist. Calling The Wild Inside “a strange and soulful debut,” a Kirkus Reviews contributor also remarked: “Readers will warm to the unconventional persona Bradbury has crafted for Tracy, that of wilderness savant.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, January 1, 2018, Sarah Hunter, review of The Wild Inside, p. 51.
Kirkus Reviews, January 15, 2018, review of The Wild Inside.
Publishers Weekly, January 22, 2018, review of The Wild Inside, p. 56.
School Library Journal, March, 2018, Tegan Anclade, review of The Wild Inside, p. 126.
ONLINE
Civilian Reader, https://civilianreader.com/ (April 16, 2018), “Interview with Jamie Bradbury.”
Crimespree, http://crimespreemag.com/ (March 26, 2018), Elise Cooper, “Interview with Jamey Bradbury.”
Jamey Bradbury Website, https://www.jameybradbury.com (June 11, 2018).
Qwillery, http://qwillery.blogspot.com/ (March 20, 2018), “Interview with Jamey Bradbury, Author of The Wild Inside.”
Jamey Bradbury is the author of The Wild Inside, forthcoming from William Morrow, March 20, 2018. The Wild Inside, her first novel, will also be published in Poland, Italy, France, and Hungary.
Her work has appeared in Black Warrior Review (winner of the annual fiction contest), Sou’wester, and Zone 3. She won an Estelle Campbell Memorial Award from the National Society of Arts and Letters.
She lives in Anchorage, Alaska.
INTERVIEW WITH JAMEY BRADBURY
POSTED BY ELISE COOPER ON MAR 26, 2018 IN BOOKS, FEATURES, INTERVIEWS
THE WILD INSIDE
Jamey Bradbury
William Morrow Pub
March 20th, 2018
THE WILD INSIDE by Jamey Bradbury is part paranormal, part thriller, and part horror. This debut novel is very character driven, specifically with the protagonist Tracy Petrikoff, where readers wonder if everything that happens to her is driven by her imagination, some delusions, or was indeed reality.
People meet Tracy, a natural born hunter and trapper who loves the Alaskan wilderness, where she spends her days in the remote forest by her house. She still has not come to grips with her mother’s sudden death that occurred two years ago. For Tracy, it was her mother who understood her, allowing her freedom, yet laying down three important rules: Never lose sight of the house, never come home with dirty hands, and most importantly never make a person bleed. The reader finds out that Tracy gains essential strength from drinking the blood of her prey while also temporarily mind-melding with victims.
But now, because of being expelled from school, she is prevented by her father to do what she loves, working with their dogs and trapping in the wilderness. Rebelling against him, she goes into the forest anyway and it is there she is attacked by a burly man who eventually shows up at her family’s house with a knife wound. Almost at the same time, a mysterious drifter appears looking for a job. Tracy senses, Jesse Goodwin, is hiding something and is determined to get to the bottom of his secrets.
Elise Cooper: What genre would you put this book in?
Jamey Bradbury: A literary horror novel. I think it is hard to pin down because there is definitely a paranormal element.
EC: How did you come up with this story?
JB: At first, it was just a picture in my head of a family house in Alaska. It was inspired by a 1961 horror novel by Theodore Sturgeon, SOME OF YOUR BLOOD. The narrators are a Colonel, a military psychiatrist, and a patient who writes a journal of his thoughts. My protagonist, Tracy, also got her say in the form of her own journal, which she wrote at the encouragement of a school guidance counselor. This is how Tracy was born.
EC: Do you live in Alaska?
JB: I was an AmeriCorps volunteer who landed a position working with the American Red Cross doing disaster relief, first in Illinois, my home state, and then in Anchorage. I fell in love with the state. I am in awe of the trees, bears, mountains, beaches, moose, and aurora. Alaska became a huge influence on me. I see it as vast, empty, and distant, but also lush, delicate, and rich. I think many people have a cliché of Alaska with this macho perspective, that you must be tough to survive the winter and negotiate the wilderness. But it can also be a very gentle place. It has feminine qualities as well as the masculine ones. I hope I conveyed this through the story I am telling.
EC: The wilderness seems to have characteristics of the Old West?
JB: Yes. It has drawn people who want to make a new life for themselves, and those who want to disappear off the grid. Where I live, we are far from another town, the closest forty minutes, with the closest large town five hours away. I played this up in my book with a character, Jesse, who comes here to basically disappear. There is also the element where those in the bush communities survive by trapping, hunting, and eating what they kill, using the furs for trade. I have Tracy interacting with the wilderness as she desires to be in it more and more.
EC: How would you describe Tracy?
JB: She is hard to pin down. Sometimes even I wonder if she is part vampire or a werewolf that has not completely transformed. There is a genetics quality with the connection coming from the family members.
EC: I am not sure if I liked or disliked her?
JB: She is tough to like. She is problematic as she makes her decisions based on selfish and stubborn motivations. In some ways, she is an unlikeable narrator. But she also has good qualities of being loyal to her family, very caring, and a naturalist. I think I would call her more of a difficult character than an unlikeable one. I do hope the reader can find in her something that they like, admire, or at least understand.
EC: What about the Kleinhaus Book?
JB: I completely made it up. I needed an artifact to connect Tracy with a couple of strangers that walk into her life. It is the commonality between all three that draws them together. She also learns from it and recognizes some of her own values. She sees herself in the author, Peter Kleinhaus, as he lives with his family, grows up with dogs, and comes to Alaska to make a go in the wild. By doing this he cuts himself off from his family and became one with the wilderness.
EC: You bring in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race held in Alaska?
JB: Her dad used to be a regular contestant and Tracy participated in the Junior Iditarod. Tracy loves to race dogs as much as she loves to run, to hunt, and to breathe in the fullness of the woods. It provides motivation for some of her decision-making, both the good and bad. It is a backdrop and becomes a problem to overcome, because her dad has to worry about how to pay for such an expensive sport.
EC: Are you a dog lover?
JB: I do like dogs, but now have two cats. In addition to having a full-time job I live alone so I could not dedicate my time to a dog. I dog sit and named some of the dogs in the book after those dogs. I am asked if I dog sled. I only did it once when I first got to Alaska and hung out with a musher. I am basically a fan on the side-lines. This year, for the first time, I was a volunteer at the Iditarod.
EC: I recently lost my mom and could relate to Tracy’s quote about her late mom, “I caught myself waiting for her. It feels dumb to say how disappointed I was when I didn’t see her. Like just talking about her could conjure her up.” Please Explain.
JB: I have lost someone I was close to, my grandmother. One of the most difficult things is that they are gone, the finality of it. It is hard to reconcile the feeling that the persons absence should change everything. This is why I put in the book quote, ‘You expect someone vanishing out of your life to change things forever, and in some ways, it does. But not as much as you’d guess. Someone dies, and the dogs still need to get fed. You go on eating, sleeping, waking up. Snow melts, trees and grass greens up…you surprise yourself by carrying on living, despite the worst.’ Your basic day, the weather, the landscape, all do not pay any attention to the loss of this person. I think that is how you heal, by investing yourself in daily tasks. Then you think of something and want to call and tell that person. It is almost like starting to grieve all over again for that two seconds.
EC: Speaking of the paranormal, is the relationship between mom and dad similar to the couple on the TV show, Bewitched?
JB: Yeah. My idea is that the mom had this weird genetic abnormality passed down through generations to the women by the women. I originally wrote it where Tracy’s mom would say ‘my own mom didn’t understand me because it had skipped a generation.’ Her mom struggled with it because, unlike Tracy, she wanted a normal life. Her husband, Bill, the dad, is a normal dude.
EC: It is not a politically correct story, especially the way Tracy kills and eats the animals?
JB: With these moments I would give the reader a horrific scene. But it also showed how Tracy felt that she was a part of the cycle of the forest, a predator after the prey. This is how she survives and I did not want to sugarcoat what it would be like to kill an animal and then eat it.
EC: Can you explain her desire to drink blood?
JB: This is how she connects with animals and people. It is the supernatural quality of the book. What she gets from the blood is the ability to understand their experience, their thoughts, and their desires. The mythology I created is that if Tracy and her mom just tasted a little of the blood they could have only a slight impression. But if they drank the blood of a person or animal they are able to get all the thoughts and feelings. Basically, they have access to others feelings and impressions.
EC: There are many unresolved issues?
JB: As a reader I like things that are not wrapped up in a bow and want to find my own answers. I do not do a lot of character description so people can fill in the details with their imagination. As a writer having unanswered questions reflects the realities of life where you just do not get all the answers.
EC: Are you related to Ray Bradbury?
JB: Probably not. Although I did meet him and got him to sign a copy of THE ILLUSTRATED MAN I did tell him we had the same last name and he said maybe we are related. He was very nice.
EC: Your next books?
JB: My next novel is inspired by the Winchester Mystery House, and Homer, Alaska, a small fishing town located at the literal end of the road that runs into the ocean. The story I am writing has at the end of this road, a massive house with doors in every surface: large doors, tiny doors, doors within doors, doors in ceilings, doors in floors. Every door that is opened by the woman who lives there gives her access to a different point in her own life. It’s a book about memory, time travel, history, dementia, and family. I think the genre is Sci-Fi and fantasy.
I also have thought about a sequel to THE WILD INSIDE although I probably won’t write it. Many years later, Tracy comes back into society and meets someone she is not related to that is just like her with the same abnormalities.
THANK YOU!!
Interview with JAMEY BRADBURY
April 16, 2018 Civilian Reader InterviewAlaska, Debut 2018, Fiction, Horror, Jamey Bradbury, Suspense, Wild Inside, William Morrow
BradburyJ-AuthorPic (Brooke Taylor)Let’s start with an introduction: Who is Jamey Bradbury?
I’m a Midwesterner by birth and an Alaskan by choice whose cat, at the moment, keeps getting in the way of my keyboard. And I’m a writer who likes smashing genres into each other to see what happens. I have been, in the past, a receptionist, an actor with a dinner theater company, a volunteer, a CPR instructor, and a professional poop-scooper. Right now, I happily divide my life between writing fiction and doing storytelling for an Alaska Native social services organization.
Your debut novel, The Wild Inside, was published by William Morrow in March. It looks really interesting: How would you introduce it to a potential reader?
It’s partly a horror novel, partly a suspense novel, partly a coming-of-age story, set against the backdrop of sled dog racing in Alaska. Plot-wise, it’s about a girl with a love for hunting who has to contend with a pair of strangers who show up on her doorstep, one of whom is mortally wounded — something that may or may not have been her fault. At its heart, though, The Wild Inside is about whether it’s really possible for people to truly know each other.
BradburyJ-WildInsideUSHC
What inspired you to write the novel? And where do you draw your inspiration from in general?
SturgeonT-SomeOfYourBloodORMThe novel came from the combination of an image that popped into my head one day — a lonely house, its windows lit up against the Alaskan winter, with two people inside waiting for one more to come home — and a book I read: Theodore Sturgeon’s Some of Your Blood [UK/US], a 1961 “vampire” novel that isn’t really a vampire novel. When I read that, I wondered how things would have been different if Sturgeon’s protagonist had been a woman instead of a man. The Wild Inside isn’t a retelling or reimagining of Sturgeon’s book, but it does take inspiration from some of the ideas in Some of Your Blood.
I get a lot of inspiration from other writers. When I’m in the middle of a project, I often find it hard to read because reading just makes me want to write — I get halfway through someone else’s sentence only to find that I’m thinking about my own project. Even if what I’m reading is completely different than what I’m writing (if I’m reading a epistolary romance while trying to write a sci-fi mystery, say), I still find that someone else’s good writing only makes me want to write, too.
How were you introduced to suspense fiction and reading in general?
WrightBR-DollhouseMurders35thMy first love is horror, which usually has an element of suspense. I started young, reading YA ghost novels by Betty Ren Wright, before moving on to Ray Bradbury‘s creepy fantasy tales and Stephen King‘s books. I will forever be indebted to my hometown librarian who, out of concern that I would encounter something too mature for my pre-teen brain, forbade me to go into the adult section of the library — basically guaranteeing that I would expend all my energy trying to do exactly that. I spent many hours hiding behind chairs or grandfather clocks and reading books that were probably too old for me, that I only half-understood. That half-understanding, though, meant my imagination had to work overtime to make sense of things, which I think made the real world seem even more magical and strange and weird to me.
How do you like being a writer and working within the publishing industry?
So far, so good! Being in Alaska, I actually feel very removed from the publishing industry; my perspective is funneled through the contact I have with my editor, my publicist, my agent, and a handful of other people I communicate with. It’s been a pleasant experience, overall, as a first-time published writer. And I love being a writer — it’s the thing I’ve always wanted to do, the thing I’ve always done, even before anyone was paying any attention. I’m obsessed with storytelling in all its forms, and I’m happiest when I’m figuring out the most effective way to tell a story.
Do you have any specific working, writing, researching practices?
Since I’m a fiction writer with a day job, I get up around 5 a.m. to get a couple hours of writing in before I have to go to work. (I know if I put it off for the end of the day, I won’t want to do it.) My process is one of constant revision: I draft until I hit a problem I can’t solve, then I go back and rewrite everything — sometimes changing a lot, sometimes just retyping literally what’s already on the page — until I get to that place where I got stuck, and if everything goes smoothly, by that time I’ve figured out my solution. I find that this process allows me to spend a lot of time getting to know my characters, so that by the time I’m ready to revise an entire story or book, I know them down to their bones and can make decisions that make sense for each individual, story-wise.
Research for The Wild Inside mostly involved reading — books like Winterdance by Gary Paulsen and Yukon Alone by John Balzar. I also spent a lot of time on the Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s website. Probably my most valuable research, though, was reading the blogs and Twitter feeds of mushers who record their lives on the internet. There are quite a few mushers who have great feeds or keep pretty up-to-date blogs, and that view into the everyday life of an active musher was super valuable.
BradburyJ-AlaskaReading
When did you realize you wanted to be an author, and what was your first foray into writing? Do you still look back on it fondly?
My first foray into writing didn’t even involve writing, but it was still a form of storytelling. I look back on it fondly, but my brother and cousins probably still think I’m a little tyrant: As a kid, I used to make up plays and cajole the other kids in my family — who were all younger than me — into performing them on the front steps of our grandmother’s house. (My grandma was probably happy to have us all occupied for a good hour or so!)
WhiteEB-CharlottesWebIt wasn’t until I got to third grade, though, that I understood that being an author was a real job some lucky people got to do. My third grade teacher, Mrs. McMichael, was the kind of teacher who read aloud to us every day — Superfudge, and Charlotte’s Web, and Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing. She gave all the kids in the class real, bound blank books and told us to write our stories. When I turned mine in, she encouraged me to write more, and nicknamed me “Judy Blume,” since the writer and I have the same initials. That was when I realized, hey, maybe this writing thing was something I could do all the time, get better at, and even do for a living someday.
What’s your opinion of the genre today, and where do you see your work fitting into it?
I’m extremely excited about what’s going on in fiction today, especially when it comes to the way writers are experimenting with genre. I feel like writers have more freedom than ever when it comes to mixing so-called literary fiction with genre elements and inserting fabulism and fantasy into realistic stories to ask hard questions about gender, politics, identity, class, etc. I’m so interested in what writers like Leni Zumas, Carmen Maria Machado, Kelly Link, and others are doing right now. When it comes specifically to horror, I’ve never been luckier as a reader — there are so many great horror writers and writers who mix horror with other genres putting out great work right now! I mean, my to-read list alone includes Grady Hendrix, Alma Katsu, Joe Hill, Josh Malerman… As for my work, I just hope I can be another voice in the ever-developing conversation.
Do you have any other projects in the pipeline, and what are you working on at the moment?
I’m about 100 pages into the first draft of what I hope will be my second novel. True to form, I’m mashing up a couple genres again — this time, leaning on a favorite sci-fi topic: time travel. This project is set in a fictional seaside town in Alaska that’s home to the longest road into ocean waters in the world. At the end of this road, there’s a huge house that contains dozens, maybe hundreds, of doors. Doors in walls, doors in ceilings, doors in floors, doors within other doors. When the woman who lives inside this house opens the doors, each one takes her to a different point in her own life’s history. This story is about memory, dementia, family, time, and a one-eared cat named Shark.
What are you reading at the moment (fiction, non-fiction)?
BradburyJ-Reading
I’ve got a few books going right now. I just started Mira Grant’s Feed, a bloggers-meet-zombies post-apocalyptic novel that is deliciously fun. I just finished an advance copy of Lauren Groff’s short story collection Florida, which is luminous and smart and un-put-downable; seriously, there is not a dud among these stories. I’m reading Michelle McNamara’s I’ll Be Gone in the Dark, her posthumously published book about hunting the serial murderer she dubbed The Golden State Killer. And I’m about to start Mallory Ortberg’s The Merry Spinster, which I have been saving to savor.
If you could recommend only one novel to someone, what would it be?
ZumasL-RedClocksUSLately I can’t shut up about Red Clocks by Leni Zumas. My friends can’t even ask me what time it is without me saying, “Speaking of time, and clocks, have you read Red Clocks yet?” It’s about a not-too-distant future in which abortion is completely outlawed in the U.S., and the politics and ramifications of these laws are interesting enough, but what I find really compelling about the book is the lives of the five women it focuses upon. Each woman is so artfully, fully drawn, you feel their lives. And one character is an arctic explorer — so, you know, instant catnip for me.
What’s something readers might be surprised to learn about you?
I have eaten an entire barbecued sheep’s head on more than one occasion.
What are you most looking forward to in the next twelve months?
There’s a lot to look forward to: At my day job, we’re gearing up for one of my favorite Alaskan events, the Native Youth Olympics, in which high school kids compete in events that are based on traditional Alaska Native games originally developed to help people survive in the wilderness. So there are events like the Stick Pull, which helps a person develop the grip strength needed for pulling seals from the water. Summer is coming, and that’s a glorious time in Alaska — hiking and biking and camping and fishing. I’m training for a marathon in May and a 16-mile trail race in beautiful Seward, Alaska, in August. And I’m looking forward to digging deeper into this second novel, getting to know my characters, and finding out what’s behind all those doors in that mysterious house.
*
Jamey Bradbury’s The Wild Side is out now, published by William Morrow (and is available in the UK).
Tuesday, March 20, 2018
Interview with Jamey Bradbury, author of The Wild Inside
Please welcome Jamey Bradbury to The Qwillery as part of the 2018 Debut Author Challenge Interviews. The Wild Inside is published on March 20th by William Morrow.
Please join The Qwillery in wishing Jamey a Happy Publication Day!
TQ: Welcome to The Qwillery. What is the first piece you remember writing?
Jamey: I was writing before I actually put pen to paper. I used to make up plays and force my younger brother and cousins to act them out. But the first time I remember plotting out a story and putting it on paper was in the first grade, around age six or seven. I wrote and illustrated a story about a boy who moved to a new town and couldn’t make friends at school, but did manage to make friends with a monster, instead.
TQ: Are you a plotter, a pantser or a hybrid?
Jamey: Total by-the-seat-of-my-pants writer. I find if I plot things out too far in advance, the idea becomes stale to me—I don’t wind up surprising myself, or letting the characters surprise me.
TQ: What is the most challenging thing for you about writing?
Jamey: The first draft. I’m never happier than when I’m rewriting—which may account for my writing process, which consists of drafting until I run out of ideas or run up against a plot problem; then I circle back around and rewrite everything I’ve got, hoping the momentum will push me through whatever I was struggling with. I hate bumping around in the dark with no light, wondering where I am and what’s going to happen next—and that’s what a first draft feels like. But it’s worth it to get to the good stuff, i.e., the revision.
TQ: What has influenced / influences your writing?
Jamey: Alaska’s a big influence on my writing. Not just the landscape, which is pretty inspirational, but also its emptiness and distance. Alaska is such a large state, with so much space that’s only trees and wildlife and mountains. You feel the distance between people, between towns, between the state itself and the rest of the country. It’s like the physical manifestation of the psychic distance between people—the difficulty we have in truly knowing another person, which is what a lot of my writing ends up being about.
TQ: Describe The Wild Inside in 140 characters or less.
Jamey: Stubborn, feral Alaskan girl hunts animals, maybe stabs a guy, and hates being grounded. Finds people irritating, but likes dogs.
TQ: Tell us something about The Wild Inside that is not found in the book description.
Jamey: Since Tracy and her dad are mushers, they have about forty dogs they raise, train, and take care of. A lot of the dogs are named after dogs I know personally. For instance, Zip and Stella, in real life, are a Jack Russell terrier and a labradoodle I used to dog sit for. Homer and Canyon are actually two yellow labs that belong to some friends who took me sailing one time. The other dogs in the book have theme names, just like a lot of litters that belong to actual mushers—like the “words that convey movement” litter (Fly, Chug, Pogo).
TQ: What inspired you to write The Wild Inside? What appeals to you about writing a psychological thriller?
Jamey: The Wild Inside started as an attempt to write a horror novel because that’s what I love to read—especially horror that’s mashed up with what critics might deem “literary” fiction. I like books that seem steeped in reality until the surreal or weird or terrifying creeps in. In a lot of ways, if The Wild Inside is a horror novel, Tracy ends up being the monster of her own story. I think that’s what ultimately turned the story into something that’s more akin to a psychological thriller—if you’re inside the “monster’s” head, privy to her struggle with being monstrous, you end up gaining a better understanding of the scary thing, which hopefully sparks a little empathy, in this case.
TQ: What sort of research did you do for The Wild Inside?
Jamey: I’ve only been dog sledding once, and that was a short excursion with some mushers I visited when I first moved to Alaska as an AmeriCorps volunteer. So for the mushing aspects of the book, I read a good bit: books like Yukon Alone by John Balzar and Winterdance by Gary Paulson; the article “Out in the Great Alone” by Brian Phillips was helpful, too. Twitter has become a surprisingly helpful research tool, allowing me to follow mushers like Blair Braverman and Dallas Seavy. For animal and hunting and trapping information, I relied upon the Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s very user-friendly website.
TQ: Please tell us about the cover for The Wild Inside.
Jamey: The cover of The Wild Inside was inspired by a poster for the 2017 movie It Comes at Night, which also depicts a dog, seen from behind as it gazes into the terrifying, endless night. I saw the poster and thought, “That’s my cover,” so I sent it to my editor, and the talented folks at William Morrow—including jacket designer Mumtaz Mustafa—took that bit of inspiration and made something I’m totally in love with. At the heart of this book lies the protagonist’s true love—dog sledding—so a dog made sense. But the way the dog seems poised, ears up, watchful, taking in the falling snow and whatever else might be out there—I feel like it captures the tension at the heart of the novel—the draw of wildness pushing against the need for home and family.
TQ: In The Wild Inside who was the easiest character to write and why? The hardest and why?
Jamey: Tracy was the easiest. After writing and rewriting so much, I felt I knew her inside and out—her stubbornness and secretiveness, her desire to do good by her family, her simultaneous need to be her own person and live by her own rules. I grew to understand her reasons behind every action, even the truly terrible ones, even as I disapproved of the things she thought she had to do.
Tracy’s mother, Hannah, was the toughest to write, mostly because we only see her in flashback and through Tracy’s admittedly often unreliable filter. Even though Tracy is the one interpreting her mother’s actions and personality for the reader, as the writer I had to know Hannah better than her daughter did—to understand her motivations and her love and fear of her own daughter.
TQ: Why have you chosen to include or not chosen to include social issues in The Wild Inside?
Jamey: I knew early on that Jesse needed a secret—something that would pique Tracy’s curiosity and, eventually, draw the two of them together, based on their shared need to hide in plain sight. When I realized what Jesse’s secret was, I also realized that—because of Tracy’s unique ability to know other people—it was an opportunity to skip over all the questions (and doubts and suspicion) some people may have when someone reveals something like sexual preference or gender identity. With her ability to “know” a person so completely, Tracy wouldn’t have doubts or suspicion; she would accept a person for who they are, which I found refreshing.
It’s important to me to write about folks we don’t always see represented in popular culture (although, happily, representation seems to be growing and changing). It’s true that when you can see yourself in the media you consume, you can also see possibility, and perhaps understand yourself and others better. As an asexual person, for a long time I thought I was some kind of crazy anomaly; who talks about being asexual, unless you happen to be a plant? It wasn’t until I started to see asexual people represented in film and television that I realized I wasn’t alone.
I also think it’s important to tell stories about all kinds of people that aren’t just the story about their “otherness.” Not every story about a gay person has to be about their coming out. Not every story about a person of color needs to be an object lesson. I want to see stories that are just stories, that happen to have gay or trans people or people of color as their protagonists and supporting characters.
TQ: Which question about The Wild Inside do you wish someone would ask? Ask it and answer it!
Jamey: Maybe, “Where can I find the Peter Kleinhaus book Tracy loves so much?” Which is a trick question, because you can’t: I made up How I Am Undone by Peter Kleinhaus—and frankly, writing the excerpts from that was a heck of a lot easier than writing The Wild Inside. Probably because I could just write the pretty parts and not worry about making the plot make sense. But who knows? Maybe one day, I’ll tell Peter Kleinhaus’s whole story, too.
TQ: Give us one or two of your favorite non-spoilery quotes from The Wild Inside.
Jamey: “There are books out there that when you read them, you wonder how some stranger could know exactly what’s in your own mind.” I like that because it’s how I feel when I read a really great book. And because, like Tracy, sometimes I wish other people were as easy to get to know as a really great book.
One more: “There is satisfaction in running fast…My mind travels somewhere else, and I become only breath and bone and muscle. The feeling is serene and focused, powerful and energized, all at the same time.” Because that’s exactly how I feel on the rare occasion I manage to hit a meditative state when I’m out running
TQ: What's next?
Jamey: I’m working through the first draft of my second novel, which is inspired by two things: the Winchester Mystery House and Homer, Alaska, which is a small coastal town in the southeast part of the state. There’s a spit down in Homer which features the longest road into ocean waters in the world. In my book, at the end of this road, a woman has built a massive house with doors in every surface—large doors, tiny doors, doors within doors, doors in ceilings, doors in floors. Every door she opens gives her access to a different point in her own life—and, possibly, to points in alternate versions of her life. It’s a book about memory, time travel, history, dementia, and family.
TQ: Thank you for joining us at The Qwillery.
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Print Marked Items
The Wild Inside
Publishers Weekly.
265.4 (Jan. 22, 2018): p56+.
COPYRIGHT 2018 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
The Wild Inside
Jamey Bradbury. Morrow, $25.99 (304p)
ISBN 978-0-06-274199-8
Set in the dense Alaska wilderness, Bradbury's quiet yet haunting debut novel is equal parts back-to-theland
adventure story and foreboding psychological thriller. Fresh on the heels of her mother's sudden death
and an expulsion from school, 17-year-old Tracy spends most of her days hunting and trapping in the forest
abutting her family's backcountry home and kennel. When a hulking stranger attacks her in the woods, she
defends herself and almost kills him--or does she? The plot is slow but gripping: it changes course after a
17-year-old drifter named Jesse answers Tracy's father's ad for a tenant and helps take care of the dogs in
preparation for the approaching Iditarod. Though Jesse and Tracy become close in more ways than one,
Tracy suspects he's hiding something--especially after she realizes he lied about his past arid might be
connected to the person who accosted her in the woods. Bradbury builds suspense by keeping Tracy--and
the reader--mostly in the dark about what's actually going on until the gruesome reveal at the end. She also
adds other elements to keep interests piqued: Tracy's ability to sense her kills' thoughts adds a mystical
element to the narrative, and the detailed depiction of mushing is captivating. It's a unique take on rural noir.
Agent: Michelle Brower, Aevitas. (Mar.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"The Wild Inside." Publishers Weekly, 22 Jan. 2018, p. 56+. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A525839749/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=d2a3171a.
Accessed 17 May 2018.
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Bradbury, Jamey: THE WILD INSIDE
Kirkus Reviews.
(Jan. 15, 2018):
COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Bradbury, Jamey THE WILD INSIDE Morrow/HarperCollins (Adult Fiction) $25.99 3, 20 ISBN: 978-0-
06-274199-8
An Alaskan teenager on the cusp of adulthood is drawn to the feral life.
Although the folksy and stubbornly ungrammatical voice of Bradbury's first-person narrator, Tracy
Petrikoff, takes some getting used to, it conveys a visceral sense of her world. In the nearly two years since
her mother's death, a month before Tracy's 16th birthday, her home life has been thrown into disarray. Now
nearing 18, Tracy hopes to enter her first adult Iditarod. But her father, Bill, a champion musher, has given
up the sport and is deaf to Tracy's pleas to let her train. Younger brother Scott has retreated into his books
and photography. Other than tending the fleet of sled dogs her family still maintains, she is officially
grounded--she's been expelled from school for fighting. However, Tracy easily evades her father's
halfhearted discipline to set woodland traps. Her catches--martens, minks, hares, and squirrels--provide
meat for the family and pelts to sell in the nearby village. Furthermore, trusty hunting blade in hand, Tracy
gains essential strength from drinking the blood of her prey while also temporarily mind-melding with
victims. One day in the woods, a strange man slams Tracy against a tree root and she blacks out. When the
man, Tom Hatch, shows up at her home, bleeding from a stab wound, Tracy assumes she inflicted it.
Returning to the scene of her supposed crime, Tracy finds a backpack containing wads of cash, enough to
enter the Iditarod. Jesse Goodwin, a young drifter, appears, taking on the role of hired factotum. Tracy and
Jesse develop a special bond after she learns Jesse was fleeing Hatch. However, Jesse is not what he seems.
The ingredients of a thriller with surreal elements are all in place, as Tracy suspects that Hatch has
recovered and may be seeking revenge. From here the plot veers off in directions that are not only
unexpected, but at time beggar belief. Still, readers will warm to the unconventional persona Bradbury has
crafted for Tracy, that of wilderness savant.
A strange and soulful debut.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Bradbury, Jamey: THE WILD INSIDE." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Jan. 2018. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A522643098/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=2a9acc27.
Accessed 17 May 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A522643098
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The Wild Inside
Sarah Hunter
Booklist.
114.9-10 (Jan. 1, 2018): p51.
COPYRIGHT 2018 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Full Text:
The Wild Inside.
By Jamey Bradbury.
Mar. 2018. 304p. Morrow, $25.99 (9780062741998); e book, $12.99 (9780062742018).
Tracy lives to hunt, sometimes spending days in the Alaska wilderness with nothing but her wits and her
knife. Ever since her mother died, her father has kept her on a tight leash, especially when it comes to
training for the upcoming Iditarod. Tracy's preternatural drive to hunt is insatiable, however, so she sneaks
out regularly, which is where she is when the stranger attacks her. She fights back, waking up with a bruised
head and bloody hands, but she's convinced he'll return to finish what he started. When her father takes on a
hired hand, Tracy's careful secrets start to unravel, and she discovers disturbing truths about her desperate
need to hunt. Though the pacing can be haphazard and Tracy's folksy, first-person narration doesn't always
ring true, debut author Bradbury cultivates vivid atmosphere with visceral action and a dynamic cast of
characters. Tracy's unsettling compulsion for hunting takes a magic-realist turn early on, which might
disappoint fans of straightforward survival thrillers, but patient readers who like earthy, genre-blending,
coming-of-age stories should be pleased.--Sarah Hunter
YA: Seventeen-year-old Tracy's urge to find her own way, as unusual as it is, might resonate with teen
readers. SH.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Hunter, Sarah. "The Wild Inside." Booklist, 1 Jan. 2018, p. 51. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A525185636/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=6a952dcc.
Accessed 17 May 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A525185636
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BRADBURY, Jamey. The Wild Inside
Tegan Anclade
School Library Journal.
64.3 (Mar. 2018): p126.
COPYRIGHT 2018 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No
redistribution permitted.
http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/
Full Text:
BRADBURY, Jamey. The Wild Inside. 304p. Morrow. Mar. 2018. Tr $25.99. ISBN 9780062741998.
Tracy has kept a dark secret her whole life. She adheres to rules set by her late mother, and everything
seems fine until she is attacked in the woods. After waking up alone, she must figure out what happened.
When a new man shows up in town, Tracy feels like he is hiding something. To make matters worse, he
insinuates himself into her family, and she is pulled into an alarming situation where she cannot tell fact
from fiction and neither can those around her. This immersive novel is effectively told from Tracy's
perspective. Not only are the situations Tracy finds herself in formidable, dangerous, and unpredictable, but
so is the Alaskan setting. The ever-changing nature of the wilderness reflects Tracy's mind-set. Part thriller,
part horror, this book will keep readers on the edge of their seats. VERDICT Give this visceral page-turner
to those looking for a thriller with a twist.--Tegan Anclade, Lake Villa District Library, IL
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Anclade, Tegan. "BRADBURY, Jamey. The Wild Inside." School Library Journal, Mar. 2018, p. 126.
General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A529863651/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=d15a94d8. Accessed 17 May 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A529863651