Hello again, readers. Merry Christmas!
As I considered what genre of author I wanted to spotlight for the December blog, my mind immediately went to, “which authors out there write a lot of Christmas-themed books?” Makes sense, right?
Then again, anyone who knows me knows I don’t always adhere to normal conventions. I don’t want the same car as everyone else or the same shirt as everyone else. My philosophy has always been that life’s too short to blend in, to be a part of the status quo.
As I considered this blog, I thought, “what could I do for my Christmas blog that would be different?” Then it hit me–instead of saccharine sweet Christmas authors (and everyone knows I love a good cheesy Christmas novel…after all, I wrote one. Ha!) how about an author that writes scary, creepy, sleep-with-the-lights-on stories.
As a youngster, I was always a hearty reader with an eclectic taste in books. Everything from thriller to romance, mystery to apocalyptic, sci-fi to inspirational, the cereal box on the breakfast table. You name it, I wanted to read it, but a good scary book always appealed to me. By the time I hit my twenties, I think I’d read nearly every book Stephen King had written.
Growing up, my parents never allowed us watch a lot of horror movies, so the topic of scary books brings me to a memory from my childhood. I was in my early teens, maybe even a little younger, and I spent the weekend with a boy from church. I risk dating myself with this story, but oh, well. His mother took us to the local video rental store. I think we even had to rent a VCR to watch the movies on because in those days most people didn’t own them. Anyway, my friend chose “Children of the Corn” and “Silent Night, Deadly Night” as the movies he wanted to watch that evening.
His mom said, “I don’t know if Brett’s mom would want him to watch horror movies. Why don’t you pick something else.”
“My mom let’s us watch scary movies all the time,” I assured her, because I’d never seen a scary movie and wanted to.
“Are you sure?” she asked.
“We watch them all the time.”
I guess my *cough* lie was convincing because those were the movies we watched that night, and I’m embarrassed to say, after watching them I had the worst nightmares ever! My poor friend’s mother had to stay up half the night with me because I was too afraid to go back to sleep.
She called my mom the next morning and told her I’d been up all night with nightmares, and after the explanation of what had happened, my mom told her it was my first time to watch horror movies because they had never allowed my brother and me to watch them. My friend’s mother apologized profusely and felt horrible, but my mom assured her it was my fault for lying, not her fault, and I’m pretty sure I was grounded for the next several weeks.
Today’s guest author, Andrew Van Wey, has written numerous novels, of which three are available on Amazon. Also, his travel narrative KEYBOARD DREAMS won a Lowell Thomas Award, which is the highest honor in the field.
I recently read one of his novels for the first time, FORSAKEN, which has been optioned for film development. I enjoyed the book and before I even finished it, I knew I wanted him as a future guest on my spotlight blog.
He has Bachelor of Arts in Screenwriting and a Master of Fine Arts in Creative writing, so it’s no surprise that in addition to writing, his passion includes literacy, education, and cutting-edge pedagogy.
It is with great honor that I introduce you to Mr. Andrew Van Wey.
Brett: Andrew, take me and our readers back to the time before Andrew Van Wey was a published author. Were you an avid reader as a child? If so, who were your favorite authors?
Andrew: I’m not sure if one can become an author—or at least a competent author—without being an avid reader as well. I was doubly fortunate in that I grew up in the 80’s and early 90’s—well before smart phones and endless digital distractions—and that I had parents and grandparents who encouraged me to read voraciously and widely; nothing was off limits. From Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark to Stephen King—whom I discovered in 3rd grade—to Tolkien and the tales of King Arthur and his court of knights to Crichton and Koontz. I can’t remember a time in my life that I didn’t have a book in my backpack and eyes on five more that would come after.
Brett: How old were you when you began writing? Was a novel your first attempt at writing, or did you start smaller and work your way into full-length novels?
Andrew: I’ve always tried to make sense of the world through stories, first by reading then creating my own. I scribbled serialized short stories in third grade about an ostrich named Birdee who wanted to become a knight and his adventures to claim the Holy Egg. By middle school I moved on to typewriters and an IBM 486 where I started really cracking out the words and stories that crossed ten, twenty, even thirty pages. They were awful, really just mediocre fan-fiction based on what I was consuming. Still, they taught me to put my butt in the chair and focus on telling a complete story, not just an anecdote.
Brett: Since you enjoy writing horror stories, I imagine you also enjoy reading horror stories. What authors in your genre inspired you to follow in their footsteps?
Andrew: Horror is such a nebulous and hard to define genre that I find half the time I’m wrestling with whether a book cleanly fits into that category of horror, or whether it falls slightly outside. Is it horror if the novel doesn’t actually have supernatural elements, such as Riley Sager? Or if it does have the supernatural, yet uses it to explore social issues rather than eliciting a sense of dread, such as Stephen Graham Jones? Ultimately, I’m not quite sure where the genre begins and ends (and perhaps that’s the fun of it), but I’ll read anything that’s well written and tells an excellent story.
Who do I admire? King, of course. Joe Hill does a great job blending horror and fantasy. J.D. Barker bills himself as a suspense author—which is a great way to keep yourself from being pigeonholed as a horror author—but his books often have an element of horror, especially his recent collaboration with James Patterson, THE NOISE. Blake Crouch is in that same vein, though he tilts more towards technothriller lately. I’ll read anything that Adam Nevill puts out.
Brett: Have you ever read a book that was so scary it kept you awake at night? If so, which book was it?
Andrew: Of course. The last one to really keep me up was J.D. Barker and James Patterson’s THE NOISE. The central mystery—what is this noise that’s driving entire towns violently insane?—along with the intensity of the novel, kept my heart racing well past my planned bedtime. I had to keep reading. Blake Crouch’s novel RUN had the same effect on me. As did King’s DOCTOR SLEEP. Often, it’s not just horror but rather the intensity of the story and subject matter that causes a visceral effect. I love it, even if I pay the next day.
Brett: For the people out there who think all horror/suspense writers must be cringey creepers who maim and murder innocent animals in their backyards for fun, tell us what a real horror writer is like.
Andrew: Horror writers are about the nicest people you’ll ever meet. They have no demons because they get them all out on the page. They’re chill. Whenever some serial killer or Jeffrey Epstein-type is uncovered, it’s never the guy who watches a ton of horror movies and has a shelf full of Paul Tremblay novels, it’s the button-down fellow who looks like Ned Flanders yet has an attic full of lamps made of women.
Brett: Let’s switch our attention to one of your novels. I recently read and very much enjoyed FORSAKEN. It’s a story that centers around a particular sinister work of art that shows up in the protagonist’s possession under mysterious circumstances, which I thought was an interesting concept. Without giving away any pivotal details, give us some of the high points of the book.
Andrew: FORSAKEN is a slow burn supernatural thriller about an art restoration professor named Dan Rineheart who comes into contact with a painting of unknown origins. Sent to him anonymously, he’s tasked with unraveling who the artist is and why it ended up with his name on it. This heralds a series of further events that threaten to fracture his sanity and devour his family. At its core the novel is about the decisions we make and the consequences they have. It’s about truth and deception. Professor Rineheart may not be a likable guy—he’s not a great husband, a great father, and he’s certainly a professional creep—yet he’s forced to reckon with his own deceptions and the painting’s in order to save his sanity and his family.
Brett: In FORSAKEN, one of the characters, Tamara, is a metaphysical medium. One of her methods of detecting the presence of paranormal entities is using a silver bowl and water. Is this a method used in the real world or did you make that up?
Andrew: Scrying is indeed a method believed to allow some perception of supernatural phenomena. Since the human eye can see only a small fraction of the light spectrum, other objects are used to refract light. In Tamara’s case, the mirrored bowl and water is based upon one that I saw used when I interviewed a psychic. However, there are many ways to scry, ranging from the distortion of smoke and heat over coals to the famous crystal ball.
Brett: Ghosts—do they exist or not?
Andrew: This is a tricky question for a writer who dabbles in the supernatural to answer honestly.
On the one hand, if ghosts do “exist” there would be ways to measure them. Do they displace light? Do they produce heat or cold? If they interact with the world (meaning, they can harm someone) then they can also be interacted upon by the world (meaning, they could be harmed by someone). So, that’s the skeptic in me saying that if ghosts “exist” in our world, they’re subject to our physical laws and wouldn’t actually be ghosts as we know and are scared of. Rather, they’d be closer to phenomena the Ghostbuster could fight with the right scientific tools and understanding.
And yet on the other hand, both my wife and I witnessed an end table full of books move across the floor as if being dragged by nothing at all. And occasionally our dog stares into the dark corner of our room, growling at the 3 a.m. shadows. It’s times like that where the skeptic in me becomes abnormally quiet.
Brett: What are some of the biggest challenges you face as a horror writer?
Andrew: Being pigeonholed as only a horror writer and not just a writer. Dean Koontz spent a lot of his early career trying to rub the word “horror” off his brand. Stephen King leaned into the idea of being a “suspense writer.” People are quick to form opinions about genres, and horror is one that brings up a primal reflex. Most people take a step back.
Brett: When it comes to novel writing, do you plot your entire book before starting it, or do you “pants” it and figure it out as you go along?
Andrew: It depends on the project. I’m two thirds discovery writer, one third plotter. FORSAKEN had a rough plot but took a few detours because my characters made unique decisions on their own. BLIND SITE as well. The more complicated the project, the more I try to plot it out ahead of time. I always need to know the endings as well the major events along the way. Still, I find there’s a certain amount of mystery I require in order to really get going at first.
Brett: Is there a story you’ve started writing but that you abandoned and never finished? Do you have plans to finish it at some point?
Andrew: Always. Whenever I kick the bucket there will be projects I didn’t finish. Neil Gaiman described his process as like a compost heap of the imagination. Sometimes you’ll circle back to them and use the whole thing. Sometimes you’ll harvest a few ideas and discard the rest. I have a shelf full of projects always composting.
Brett: Out of all the books you’ve written, is there one that stands out as being the most difficult one to write, either emotionally or technically, etc? Why?
Andrew: BLIND SITE required a tremendous amount of research to pull off. While the story has a lot of speculative elements, it’s a thriller at heart and I wanted to get as much right as I could about FBI procedure, interrogations, autopsies, neuroscience, consciousness, and near-future technology. I spent countless hours reviewing autopsy videos, sent questions to the FBI’s IPPAU to fact-check procedure, exchanged hundreds of emails. Huge pieces of research never even ended up in the story, but I’m a far better writer because of it.
Brett: On average, how long does it take you to write one novel?
Andrew: It really depends. I bounce from projects in-between drafts to give my brain some objectivity. FORSAKEN took just over a year from start to publication. BLIND SITE was two years. GRIM HORIZONS is a collection of short stories, so that doesn’t quite count.
I’ve written several other novels that are in various stages of revision as well. I print out my pages and hand edit with a red pen. I’m picky about prose. Also, I always make at least two passes near the end where I read the entire novel out loud and if anything rolls off the tongue awkward and clumsy, I revise it. I guess you could say it takes me far too long, but I’m trying to pump those numbers up.
Brett: As an author of three published novels, you’ve written several characters. Which character would you not get along with in real life? Which one would be a friend you most wish you had in real life?
Andrew: My two main characters in BLIND SITE fit this perfectly. Michaels, who is an obsessive and somewhat socially awkward investigator, would drive me up the wall. I love him, but he’s also the kind of person who would fact check a movie in real time while you’re both watching it. Caitlyn, who is blind, agoraphobic, and yet able to send her mind out of her body, is a composite character of several personalities I have known both in the United States and living in and travelling abroad, all of whom fascinate me. I’d love to spend an afternoon with Caitlyn.
Brett: When you start writing a book, do you always know the title before you begin writing? Or have there been times when the title didn’t emerge until later in the writing process?
Andrew: It changes with each project. Sometimes it hits me right away. Sometimes I don’t know the title until multiple drafts. I have a project that I’ve been working at on and off for over two years and the title is simply RV STORY. Terrible, right? I know I’ll find something better eventually, but boy does that title pain me when I see it in my folders.
Brett: Give us a short description of your working space. Is there anything you must have to flow in the creative process? When you take a minute to look out the nearest window, what do you see?
Andrew: My space is small and minimal. It’s a repurposed walk-in closet that also had an old vanity desk and drawers built in. I repainted it, slapped on some stone countertop, added bookshelves, and now it’s a writing nook that I can lock myself away, like in Harry Potter beneath the Dursley’s stairs. Since I write my first drafts in fountain pen, I have a collection in a wood stand with a dozen bottles of various colored inks nearby. It’s spartan, but when distraction is your enemy, minimal is your ally.
Brett: Let’s pretend Hollywood just called and said they want to make a blockbuster movie of ONE of your books, and you must choose which book. Which would it be? You also get to be the Casting Director—who plays the main protagonist and the main antagonist?
Andrew: I’ve been fortunate and lucky enough to have been in this position several times actually. FORSAKEN has been optioned and is under development with several production companies with first-look deals, companies whose movies have opened on thousands of screens and whose credits include contemporary horror classics. What have I learned? I’m the last person with any level of objectivity to handle these decisions. I have particular favorites (James Franco would make a good Dan Rineheart in FORSAKEN, if you ask me). But I also have tons of blind spots.
Brett: Speaking of Hollywood, not only are you a novelist, but you’re also a screenwriter. Have any of your scripts been adapted into movies/television? Or is anything coming down pike?
Andrew: I no longer write screenplays, so nothing coming down the pike that I’ve written. In a different life—before the writer’s strike of 2007, and before I transitioned to teaching and writing novels—I had a manager and a great pair of agents, and we had some really close calls with our projects, from movies to comics to television. But it takes a lot for a story to make it through the development process—from option to purchase to filming to distribution. As a screenwriter, 99% of that is out of your hands. There’s a saying: “In Hollywood you can make a killing but you can’t make a living.” I found that cycle of feast and famine to be exhausting. I’m far happier and more fulfilled having a direct relationship with my readers.
Brett: From the perspective of a writer, how does novel writing differ from screenwriting?
Andrew: Interiority. A screenplay is third person present tense with no interiority. You can’t really get in the character’s head. A screenplay is—at best—a really gorgeous blueprint. That’s not to say it doesn’t have literary qualities; some of the best scripts are brilliant reads on their own and can be invaluable to authors (go read BREAKING BAD). Still, a screenplay is part of a larger product, which is the final film.
A novel is the final product. It’s your words and the reader’s imagination. You can play around with tenses, interiority, perspective, metaphor, formatting, all those fun things you learn about in English class.
Time and format are another difference. Most movie scripts run between 100-120 pages (1 page = roughly 1 minute of film). A screenplay has to be Zen-like and precise in its word choice. In a novel you can stretch seconds out to last pages and bend a lifetime, like Tobias Wolff’s brilliant BULLET IN THE BRAIN. There’s far more flexibility in literature, but far more ways to make mistakes that might turn off a reader.
Brett: What book(s) are you reading right now? How many books are in your ‘to be read” pile?
Andrew: My TBR pile is probably about 25 books long. As of writing this on October 31st, I’m reading Adam Nevill’s newest, CUNNING FOLK. I’m also reading Matthew Fitzsimmon’s CONSTANCE. I just finished and adored Barry Eisler’s THE CHAOS KIND. On the Kindle, I’m reading Preston & Child’s BLOODLESS.
Brett: Have you ever killed off a character, then had “killer’s remorse?”
Andrew: Absolutely. I’ve literally had dreams where characters knock on my door and look at me with forlorn expressions, asking: “Why did you have to kill me off?” I never do it maliciously, but when stories have high stakes, the repercussions also need to be high. Sometimes that means a character isn’t as safe as we’d like.
Brett: What are the chances of you ever genre jumping from horror/suspense and writing something in a different genre? If so, which one would you like to try?
Andrew: I tend to push back against the idea of only writing a specific genre. Or, God forbid, only reading in one genre. I don’t eat the same meal every day nor listen to the same music, and I’d be quite the boring person if I only travelled to the same destination every vacation. One of my hero authors, China Miéville, made it a goal to write one book in every genre. While he’s perhaps a bit more literary than the standard genre writer, I think you can only grow as a writer by pushing yourself into new areas outside your comfort zone. Sure, maybe you’ll lose some readers on the hop, but you can also gain some as well.
As for what genres I’ll try, I have a few ideas and early drafts in literary fiction, fantasy, and romantic comedy.
Brett: If I were to drive to your home in California to have dinner with the Van Wey’s, what would be on the menu?
Andrew: I’m one of those annoying low-carb lots of meat and veggies people, so I’d marinate some steak, melt butter on some chicken and coat on a rub, and add some andouille sausages. Then, slice them up, skewer them with mushrooms, onions, bell peppers, eggplants, and jalapeños. Drizzle some Korean galbi sauce on them as they grill. Pair that with a huge Greek salad and you’re golden. I’m getting hungry.
Brett: I’m getting hungry, too! If you could spend an entire weekend doing nothing but bingeing your favorite television shows, what would you watch?
Andrew: I’d go back and watch BREAKING BAD. It’s an absolute masterpiece of storytelling. Every writer should study that series.
Brett: What’s your favorite hobby/activity for the rare occasions when you’re not writing?
Andrew: I’m an avid mountain biker so I try to get in 20 miles or so every day, sometimes just on roads, sometimes mixed terrain. Occasionally, I’ll go for longer. I find bicycling to be infinitely enjoyable and a great compliment to writing because I can spend an hour or two letting my brain do some subconscious plotting and problem solving while I peddle up hills and dodge rocks.
Brett: What’s your favorite format when you have time to sit down with a book (ebook, physical book, audiobook?)
Andrew: Physical book, absolutely. The feel of paper, the smell, the fact that it’s just me and the pages. An open book and a pair of headphones are the ultimate DO NOT DISTURB sign. That said, I also love my Kindle Paperwhite, which I read for an hour in bed every night until I fall asleep.
Brett: Have you ever read a novel and left thinking, “I could have written that better.”
Andrew: Yes, many times, whether traditionally published or independently published. Sometimes it’s a book that was rushed and maybe didn’t get the editorial assistance it needed. Sometimes, it got trimmed too much to meet a page count quota and it’s a six hundred page story in a three hundred page summary. Sometimes, vice versa. And sometimes the author is just at a point in their career where they lack the skills to pull off what the book seemed to promise. This goes for myself as well. Books are a fossil of our talents at a particular time. The trick is to keep learning, and even books that fall short of our expectations can be instructional.
Brett: Since you are a suspense writer, I can’t help but think Halloween might be a particularly fun time for you. What does your typical Halloween night look like?
Andrew: It’s usually the biggest holiday of the year for my wife and our friends. We have a pot luck, read scary stories by the fireplace, decorate, and watch a ton of horror movies. I’m sad to say this year it just snuck up on us and we’re ill-prepared. A combination of professional obligations, upcoming conferences, BLIND SITE’s launch, and the persistently irritating coronavirus dampened our plans. We’ll have to double down on 2022.
Brett: Since we’ve talked about FORSAKEN, give us a run-down of some of your other novels.
Andrew: GRIM HORIZONS: TALES OF DARK FICTION is my collection of short stories and novellas. I consider it a “reader magnet”, a way for curious readers to get a sample of my range of genres and voice. There are stories in there that would be broadly considered futuristic sci-fi, dark fantasy, quirky gas-lamp fantasy, psychological thriller, and straight up horror. Readers get it free when they visit my website and sign up for my newsletter.
BLIND SITE is my newest release. It’s a mind-bending technothriller with elements of horror. I describe it as RED DRAGON meets INCEPTION. The story centers on the hunt for the God’s Breath Killer—a mysterious entity that leaves no clues, no logical explanation… and no witnesses to its slaughter. Until a young woman named Caitlyn crosses its path. Caitlyn is twenty-six, blind, and agoraphobic, yet she has a rare talent. She can “blink”—sending her mind across earth. It’s a skill she shares with this killer, one she’ll have to use to help the investigators stop an adversary that can bend perception itself.
Brett: Most of us authors don’t like revealing too much about what we’re currently working on. You have ONE WORD to put us on the edge of our seats in anticipation of your next novel. What’s that word?
Andrew: Refraction.
Brett: Is there a date when your next book will be published.
Andrew: Not yet, but I’m aiming for one in the spring of 2022, and a sequel in the summer of 2022. If I can really crank it out, I might have three books in 2022. We’ll see.
Brett: Andrew, thank you so much for being a guest on my “Author Spotlight” blog. I hope you’ve enjoyed it as much as I have. Is there anything you’d like to say to your readers before we wrap up the interview?
Andrew: It was my pleasure. Thanks for having me. Closing thoughts: Read widely and don’t be afraid to cross genres and stretch. I know conventional wisdom says authors and readers should stay in their lane, but literature and fiction are too beautiful and diverse to stick to one flavor. Worst case? You don’t like it. Best case? You find entire new worlds to fall in love with. That’s a pretty sweet deal.
I hope you readers enjoyed this interview as much I enjoyed bringing it to you. What a blessing to visit with such interesting authors every month.
Andrew enjoys hearing from his readers, so if you’d like to contact him, you can do so at: [email protected], or you can go to his website at https://andrewvanwey.com/. At his website, click the ABOUT tab at the top of the page, then click the words CONTACT HIM.
If you’d like to follow him on social media:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/andrewvanweyauthor
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/heydrew/
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5187310.Andrew_Van_Wey
Bookbub: https://www.bookbub.com/profile/andrew-van-wey
His collection of short stories GRIM HORIZONS: TALES OF DARK FICTION is available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07BSWMPGY
![Forsaken: A Novel of Art, Evil, and Insanity by [Andrew Van Wey]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51m0NFEzqgL.jpg)
FORSAKEN is available at Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005LT35MA
![Blind Site: A Mind-Bending Thriller by [Andrew Van Wey]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/514balUIfaL.jpg)
You can check out his novel BLIND SITE at Amazon by clicking here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0914QP59W
Finally, if you’re interested in my books, you can click this link to visit my Amazon Author Profile: https://www.amazon.com/Brett-Nelson/e/B08D2C1YSC
Thank you for taking the time to read my blog.
Many blessings, and I’ll see you next time!
Brett Nelson