Bostonist Interview: Samantha Hunt

How much research did you actually do before you started writing? Where did you get started?

I started writing after just a few quick Googles. The story of the Junebugs, his friendship with Mark Twain, and a notion he had to photograph thought were plenty of fodder to get me going. Over the next four years, the writing and the research became simultaneous endeavors.

Tesla has been getting his due lately (thanks to you, performer Mike Daisey, and the metal band in its own way), but why are more
people familiar with Marconi?

Tesla was a bad capitalist. He didn’t have time to protect his patents when there were so many other wonders to invent. People have become interested in Tesla now because we need more inventors who behave like artists rather than capitalists.

How do you write about such a dominant cultural figure while making sure that your own voice is heard?

I had to quit doing research after a certain point. I didn’t want to write a bibliography but rather, chose Tesla in order to write about the history of the future. He had a vision for the future that we are now living, and it looks awfully different from the one we arrived at. So while the facts of Tesla’s life are all true in the novel there is
plenty of my fiction surrounding him.

What is it about pigeons that appealed so much to Tesla?

Pigeons are good friends for lonely people. Plus they are marvels of engineering. He was so in love with one bird he thought of her as his wife.

Today, most inventions seem to be all about making money. Can you share Tesla's attitude toward making money from his work? And why was he so bad at making money?

Tesla didn’t believe that a man could own the sorts of things he was inventing, such as radio and AC. That would be like owning thunder, lightning. He once tore up a contract with Westinghouse that was worth twelve million dollars just so his AC technology would survive J.P. Morgan’s attempts to control all suppliers of electricity. If the choice was more inventions or making money by developing those patents he’d already secured, Tesla always chose more inventions.

How did you go about inventing the other central figure in the story, a chambermaid at the Hotel New Yorker? Can you tell us about the earlier versions of her and how she developed?

The strongest notion I had about chambermaids came from the artist Sophie Calle. She got a job chambermaiding and then began to photograph people’s belongings, making up narratives about the people whose rooms she was cleaning. She got in trouble for it. I think she’s brilliant. When I first created Louisa, my chambermaid, the one adjective I had in mind was “plain.” I was tired of quirky characters in books. Plain and even a bit simple. She didn’t turn out that way but those were her humble beginnings.

It appears that you started the project with Tesla at the center. In what order did you develop your characters? Did Louisa come first, then her father, and his friend with the time machine? Or do they all develop at the same time?

Louisa and her father came together after Tesla. He was first. Then Arthur, the futuristic love interest. Freddie, the dead mom, and finally Azor, the wacky friend with his questionable time machine.

What is your next project? And will it also involve historical figures?

I’m working on a couple of next projects. A collection of stories that is set right now and a novel that I recently changed the setting from 1940s America to the present. I guess I got tired of the past.