Bradley P. Beaulieu is the author of The Winds of Khalakovo, the first of three planned books in The Lays of Anuskaya series. In addition to being an L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future Award winner, Brad’s stories have appeared in various other publications, including Realms of Fantasy Magazine, Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, Writers of the Future 20, and several anthologies from DAW Books. His story, “In the Eyes of the Empress’s Cat,” was voted a Notable Story of 2006 in the Million Writers Award.
Fantasy and science fiction were about the only thing Brad ever read regularly growing up. The first thing he recalls reading was J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit in fourth grade. He remembers it specifically because it was such a wondrous experience, losing himself in that book. He went on to read the Lord of the Rings. He didn’t really know it at the time, but those books set the stage for everything from then on. He was constantly on a search for other books that created a world as deep and immersive as Tolkien’s.
Brad didn’t come to writing early. He dabbled a bit in high school, and then again in college, but he really didn’t start to become serious about the craft of writing until he was well into his career in software programming. It was a difficult transition, moving from something as structured as software to something as flowing as writing, but it was also freeing. It was like coming home. Those books he read when he was younger he could now create on his own, from scratch, to do with what he would.
Like any writer, Brad had a lot of influences along the way, but the ones that stand out the most are J.R.R. Tolkien, George R.R. Martin, C.S. Friedman, Guy Gavriel Kay, Tim Powers, and (last but not least) Glen Cook. Brad is a software engineer by day, wrangling code into something resembling usefulness. He is also an amateur cook. He loves to cook spicy dishes, particularly Mexican and southwestern. He lives in Racine, Wisconsin with his wife and two children.
As time goes on, however, Brad finds that his hobbies are slowly being whittled down to these two things: family and writing. In that order…
