About the Author
“An artist is his own fault.” John O’Hara.
Bill Walker Kte’pi was born in the summer of 1975, the day Jaws premiered. His parents met at MIT, and he was named for his mother’s uncle, the artist Willis Birchman.
He grew up in, and currently lives in, southern New Hampshire — but for thirteen years from teens to thirties lived other places, western Massachusetts, Kansas City, New Orleans, Indiana. To be an expatriate in the place where you were a kid is a strange thing to take on. The place itself changed in the time he was away. There were, then, no Starbucks, internet, sushi, ostrich burgers, Tabasco sauce, SUVs, 911 service, or cable television; his former high school has tripled in size and no longer has a smoking section; McMansions have taken over the corn fields and cow pastures. You can still find coffee milk in some convenience stores. Everyone still talks about the Red Sox and the weather.
The pizza is still the best in the country, and he highly recommends:
C&S. Pepperell, Massachusetts. Get the meatball and bacon, and bring cash because they don’t take plastic.
Monument Square Market. Hollis, New Hampshire. Everything’s good, but he orders the pepperoni, ricotta, and roasted peppers almost every time. The beer cooler stocks Dogfish Head and Abita Turbo Dog.
Most of his stories take place in the South, where his father’s family is from and where he really grew up, learned to cook, found his center. He never became a southerner exactly, but he doesn’t fit in as a northerner anymore either. Even in his last months in New Orleans, he wasn’t sure he wanted to live there forever, though it’s the place that has most felt like home. He’s going to move to New Mexico next, spend a few years there, before deciding anything more permanent.
He’s painted, experimented with computer music, and written games and comic strips, but none of it has had the same satisfaction — or played to the same strengths — as prose writing. He toyed with and ultimately rejected teaching, the priesthood, law school, and cooking professionally — in the end, whatever his other interests, he’s unable to do anything for a living but write, write, write. His “day job” has him writing everything from encyclopedias and textbooks to dating advice and gin reviews.
He sold his first short story in 1992, a story about Jack the Ripper. That means that he has now been a paid published writer for half his life, a fact that is a little startling. At the time, he called himself a horror writer. He has sometimes called himself a science fiction writer. Neither of those is quite true even as an aspiration, and other people have referred to his writing as magic realism, slipstream, soft sf, and fabulism. You may prefer those tags instead, though you are not as likely to be asked as he is.