Spy's Mate: A Conversation with Bradley W. Buchanan About Chess, Cold War Intrigue, and the Stories That Save Us. After a few months away, I couldn't stay silent. Audio Signals is back, and I'm thrilled that this conversation marks the official return.
After a few months away, I couldn't stay silent. Audio Signals is back, and I'm thrilled that this conversation marks the official return.
The truth is, I tried to let it go. I thought maybe I'd hang up the mic and focus solely on my work exploring technology and society. But my passion for storytellers and storytelling—it cannot be tamed. We are made of stories, after all, and some of us choose to write them, sing them, photograph them, or bring them to life on screen. Brad Buchanan writes them, and his story brought me back.
I'll admit something upfront: I'm not particularly good at chess. I love the game—the strategy, the mythology, the beautiful complexity of it all—but I'm no grandmaster. That's what made this conversation so fascinating. Brad has created an entire fictional world where chess isn't just a game; it's a matter of life and death, set against the backdrop of Cold War espionage and Soviet propaganda.
His debut novel, Spy's Mate, weaves together two worlds I find endlessly intriguing: the intellectual battlefield of competitive chess and the shadow games of international espionage. But what makes this book truly compelling isn't just the plot—it's the man behind it.
Brad is a retired English professor from Sacramento State, a two-time blood cancer survivor, and what he calls a "chimera"—someone whose DNA was literally altered by a stem cell transplant from his brother. He was blind for a year and a half. He nearly died multiple times. And through it all, he held onto this story, this passion for chess that manifested in literal dreams where the pieces hunted him across the board.
When we spoke, what struck me most was how deeply personal this novel is beneath its spy thriller exterior. The protagonist, Yasha, is an Armenian chess prodigy whose mother teaches him the game before falling gravely ill. In a moment that breaks your heart, young Yasha asks his mother to promise she'll live long enough to see him become world chess champion—an impossible promise that drives the entire narrative.
Brad wrote Spy's Mate after his own mother's death from blood cancer in 2021. When he told me he was crying while writing the final pages, I understood something essential about storytelling: we write to process what life won't let us finish. He gave Yasha the closure he wished he'd had with his own mother.
But this isn't just a meditation on loss. Brad brings genuine chess expertise and meticulous historical research to create a world where the KGB manipulates tournaments, computers calculate moves at the glacial pace of one per hour, and Soviet chess dominance serves as proof of communist superiority. He recreates famous chess games with diagrams so readers can follow the battlefield. He fictionalizes Soviet leaders (his Gorbachev character is named "Ogar," his Putin figure has "the nose of a proboscis monkey") but keeps the oppressive atmosphere authentic.
What I love about Brad's approach is that he wrote this novel almost like a screenplay—action and dialogue, visual and kinematic, built for the screen. Having taught Virginia Woolf while secretly wanting to write page-turning thrillers tells you everything about the tension between academic life and creative passion. Now, finally free to write full-time after early retirement due to his medical challenges, he's doing what he always wanted.
We talked about the hero's journey, about Joseph Campbell's mythical structure that still works because it mirrors how our minds work. We reminisced about the 1982 World Cup and Marco Tardelli's iconic scream (we're the same generation, watching from different continents). We discussed whether characters should plot their own paths or whether writers should map everything from the beginning.
As someone who writes short, magical stories with my mother, I understand the pull toward something bigger, something that requires more than 1,200 words can contain. Brad waited 55 years to publish his first novel. I'm 56 and still working up to it. There's hope for all of us yet.
Spy's Mate is available now, with an audiobook coming after Thanksgiving. And yes, I can absolutely see this as a Netflix series—chess looks incredibly sexy on screen when the stakes are high and the lighting is good.
Welcome back to Audio Signals. Let's keep telling stories.
Learn more about Bradley and get his book: https://www.bradthechimera.com
Learn more about my work and podcasts at marcociappelli.com and audiosignalspodcast.com
After a months-long hiatus, Audio Signals returns with Bradley W. Buchanan, a retired English professor from Sacramento State University and debut novelist. A two-time blood cancer survivor who underwent a stem cell transplant that altered his DNA (making him what's medically called a "chimera"), Brad discusses his gripping first novel, Spy's Mate—a chess thriller set in 1980s Soviet Union where the KGB manipulates tournaments and chess becomes a matter of life and death.
The conversation explores how chess dreams literally haunted Brad back to the game after years away, the bizarre tactics the KGB used to maintain Soviet chess dominance during the Cold War, and the deeply personal story behind the novel. Written after his mother's death from blood cancer in 2021, Spy's Mate tells the story of Yasha, an Armenian chess prodigy who promises his dying mother he'll become world chess champion—a narrative that gave Brad the emotional closure he couldn't have in real life.
Brad shares his writing process, from researching Soviet chess culture and KGB operations to recreating famous chess games with diagrams in the novel. He discusses balancing historical accuracy with fictional narrative, his decision to write the book almost like a screenplay (action and dialogue-driven), and why this story needed to exist. The conversation also touches on the hero's journey, Joseph Campbell's influence, and why competitive chess—with its visual drama and high stakes—would make compelling television.
Runtime: 43 minutes
1. On becoming a chimera: "I'm a two time blood cancer survivor. I also had to have a stem cell transplant in 2016, which means that I got my brother's immune system grafted into my body when my own immune system had been shown to be inept. The medical term for someone whose DNA has been altered is indeed a chimera."
2. On the book's emotional core: "When I was writing the last few pages of Spy's Mate, I was crying. Because I'd gotten the narrative to the point where Yasha could express his love for his mother openly to her knowing that she was basically going to die. I gave Yasha the final kind of emotional closure that I wish life had given me with my mom."
3. On Vladimir Nabokov's inspiration: "There's a wonderful expression by the writer Vladimir Nabokov, that as you're writing something that's interesting to you, you begin to sense that it's growing the wings and talons of a novel. I love that idea. Because the creature you're creating through your words has to fly—it has to have its own method of getting up in the air with the wings, and then it has to have those talons to grab the prey that it needs to survive and feed on."
4. On Soviet chess and propaganda: "For a long time the Soviets felt that if they could prove that they produced the greatest chess players in the world, that would mean that communism was actually the best economic system. If you could produce the smartest people, you know, according to that very narrow measure of intelligence, somehow that would enable you to prove your superiority over other types of systems."
5. On chess dreams and returning to the game: "I started to have chess dreams about 15 years ago. The pieces were sort of after me. Like I was trapped on a chess board and the pieces were kind of closing in on me and I had to defend myself. And how do you defend yourself from chess pieces? Well, you learn how to use your own chess pieces to fight back. I thought, okay, these shapes are haunting me. I need to get back into the game somehow."
1. On why Audio Signals returned: "My passion for storytellers and storytelling—it cannot be tamed. So I'm back and I'm glad that this is pretty much the official return after a few months of hiatus. My story is to help other people to tell their stories."
2. On the emotional truth of writing: "I think Hemingway said that, correct me if I'm wrong, but you know, you open your vein and you let it bleed. And to me it is like, when you write emotionally, and when I say it was your first book, I refer as a first novel. Because I feel like the novel, you can really—one thing is to write a historical book or a nonfiction book, and there's nothing wrong with that. But when you invent the character, you invent a story, you plot everything—there's gotta be something about yourself, probably a lot."
3. On the power of storytelling: "We are made of stories. Some people decide to write it, some people decide to sing it or play it or portray it in photography or in a movie. What you do, you write."
Episode: Audio Signals Podcast with Bradley W. Buchanan Book: Spy's Mate by Bradley W. Buchanan Available: Amazon (Audiobook coming after Thanksgiving) Learn more: https://marcociappelli.com | https://www.audiosignalspodcast.com/