An Interview Regarding Dr. Roundbottom

Filed Under: My Writing, Photography, Top Post, Writing Process

K. Tempest Bradford has interviewed me for Fantasy magazine about my Dr. Roundbottom project. The interview is now live here.

K. Tempest Bradford: Did the initial inspiration for Dr. Roundbottom start with the photography or with the story?

Jeremiah Tolbert: The work started specifically in photography. I had an opportunity after a week of rain to go out and take some pictures of mushrooms. I started playing with some of the images in post, and ended up creating my most popular photograph, the eyeball mushroom. From there, I started writing flash fiction around the photography, and Dr. Roundbottom was born.

K. Tempest Bradford: Did the initial inspiration for Dr. Roundbottom start with the photography or with the story?

Jeremiah Tolbert: The work started specifically in photography. I had an opportunity after a week of rain to go out and take some pictures of mushrooms. I started playing with some of the images in post, and ended up creating my most popular photograph, the eyeball mushroom. From there, I started writing flash fiction around the photography, and Dr. Roundbottom was born.

Tempest: How does a typical Roundbottom image come about?

Jeremiah: I’m pretty strongly limited by my own surroundings and what I have the capacity to photograph myself. Some of them come from experiments in photographic techniques that I want to try out, and some of them come from specific images that I conceive and then try and photograph. Then some just come about as happy discoveries of odd things as I explore my surroundings with camera in hand.

For instance, there are not a lot of people in the Roundbottom photographs at this point because of my limited budget and access to period costumes. Luckily, I have leads on some costuming resources, so that will change with time as I do more storylines for the project. Also, my wife is hard at work sewing a more formal Roundbottom costume for myself, and a costume for a female character that’s part of the narrative.