Lindsay Brambles

Email: linzib59@yahoo.com

Born in Ottawa, I spent the first nine years of my life in Ontario and Quebec; but my father had the wanderlust, a holdover from his days in the Royal Navy and Merchant Marine during WW II, and we departed Canada for Pakistan in '68. My father was an electrical engineer involved in the completion stages of the thermal power plant in Sukkur (which had been built a few years earlier under Canadian supervision). For several months we lived in the WAPDA colony in Sukkur, but with only one other Canadian family resident there we soon ended up moving to Khaipur, about forty kilometers away, where there were six or seven other expat families on a British-owned compound. We spent a little more than two years in Pakistan, traveled the country extensively, and in many respects enjoyed the experience immensely. From Pakistan we moved to Iran and lived in the city of Isfahan for nearly two years, with occasional visits to Tehran. This was during the time of the Shah, and the country was a far different place from what it is now.

We returned to Canada after our sojourn in Iran and remained home for about a year, then it was off to Tanzania. This was probably the most beautiful of the countries we lived in or visited while overseas -- especially since we were in Moshi, close to Kilimanjaro (in fact, for a month or so after we first arrived we lived in Marangu, which is the primary jumping off point for most expeditions up the mountain). Tanzania was a place of gorgeous vistas and extremely friendly people. The sort of place that evokes all manner of romantic visions, but I'm not sure I fully appreciated it at the time.

After Tanzania we spent another brief period in Canada, then headed back to Pakistan, this time living in Lahore. Living in this northern city was a studied contrast to the time we'd spend in Khaipur, but it's not a time I regret. I think you learn a lot more about yourself when you live immersed in wholly different cultures from your own. Sadly, towards the end of our stay there troubles began to brew and riots broke out. The military coup that would bring down Bhutto (the father) occurred shortly after we left.

Over the years since then I've done lots of things, always with the desire to become a published author. I started my first book when I was seventeen, hammering it out on an old Olivetti Valentine portable "manual" typewriter. I realized, however, that the manuscript wasn't good enough and shelved it . I have always, if nothing else, been a ruthless critic of my own work.

I'm a fairly avid cyclist (weather permitting), and usually put in four or five hundred kilometers a week until the snow falls. I did spend one winter riding the streets of Ottawa and enduring temperatures down in the minus twenties (centigrade), but that was only because my mother was suffering from Alzheimer's and cycling to the facility where she was being cared for was the cheapest and most effective means I could find to visit her every day. My mother died in early 2006 (a woeful, heinous death, in the very way she had most dreaded), and since then I tend to confine most of my winter fitness activities to long walks, cross-country skiing, and using various pieces of equipment in the basement.

Aside from fitness I enjoy painting, and have sold works and been commissioned to produce them. Indeed, art has almost as strong a hold on me as writing, and at some point I hope to combine the two. Some examples of my visual art can be found on www.freewebs.com/lindsaybrambles.

I also take some pleasure in doing interior decorating (the artistic side of me showing through, I guess), and home renovation. (I've always enjoyed building things; I used to have a Meccano set (Set 8) as a kid and spent many wonderful hours constructing very large and complex machines. I also spent a few years working for my older brother, building greenhouses and later some customs homes.)

I love flying, though I haven't done any in quite a while.

My interests are too many and varied to list, which is probably true of most writers. (I think we're generally rather curious people, fascinated observers of everything around us.) I like comics, though perhaps I'm less ardent about them than I once was -- largely because they just got too expensive for me to continue collecting. I do still like to collect motion picture soundtracks (the scores and not those wretched compilations of songs that half the time never even appeared in the movie). I'm a fan of Tintin, having been first introduced to the character through a half dozen issues of Children's Digest magazine that I found in the back of a bookstore in the bazaar in Karachi (but my real passion for Herge's creation didn't come until I actually encountered the Methuen English editions, the first of which I discovered in a bookstore in Isfahan). I also collect Tom Swift Junior books -- largely out of nostalgia, these being one of my earliest recollections of written SF. My collection has shrunk of late, however, several of my copies having found their way into my nephew's collection (which is five books short of complete, the last of these being "Tom Swift and the Galaxy Ghosts," a volume I would very much like to obtain for him one day).

Like most people these days, I'm interested in movies, but really only started collecting them (in small numbers, mind you) when DVD arrived on the scene. Mostly I only buy titles that include substantial behind-the-scenes and making-of content, as I am often more interested in the process of creating the film than the film itself. Truth is, had I had the opportunity, I would have gone into film making -- though it might have been more on the animation side of things. I know that I'd love to see my YA trilogy turned into some form of visual medium (not likely to happen, of course, if I can't get it published).

I'm a technophile and all round gadget lover. When electronic typewriters came out I jumped at the chance to get one. When computers came along I was eager to own one, and was overjoyed when I got my hands on a Commodore 64 -- one of the first truly affordable computers with which you could actually do something. For several years, until PCs became more accessible, I did all my writing on a C64, and I look back on that time with fond recollection (and sorely regret that I ever got rid of that sturdy little machine).

Like too many guys, I tend to crave various pieces of tech simply because they're cool. Fortunately, I don't have the budget to spend on getting most of these things, otherwise I'm sure I'd have closets full of the stuff -- much of which would probably have lost its appeal soon after the novelty of possessing it wore off. I'd still like an iPod Touch, though. ;)

What else can I say? I'm trying to keep the dream alive; and maybe, if I'm patient, things will work themselves out. But there also comes a time when you just have to let the dream die.

Interests: Fitness (road cycling, mountain biking, hiking, swimming, cross-country skiing, weight-lifting, etc.), reading (of course), painting (acrylic, oil, and water color), animation, astronomy, home renovation, interior decorating, and far too many other things

Published writer: Yes

Freelance: Yes