Hello Drew. Thank you so much for sitting down to chat with us today. We are so excited to be able to publish another fantastic book with you through Eerie River Publishing.
Without giving away too much detail, tell us a little bit about the new book, coming out on Novemeber 13 2024 with Eerie River.
What was the inspiration?
The inspiration came from a few threads in my mind coming together during and after COVID. At the time, I was fascinated by the idea of what horrors lie in the unknown of a reborn world. We were just coming out of it when I really got the novel going, and there were elements of returning to normalcy and that initially felt uncomfortable. The way people use (or don’t use) converters in the story is definitely an allegory to masking, for instance. Another thing that I was very eager to do, from a writing standpoint, was challenge myself beyond what I had done with Sentinel and Nothus. I think there is an epicness and weight to literary language that I wish I saw more in modern horror. The problem is that it's very difficult to do, and if you get it wrong, you come off sounding like an idiot. Some readers will certainly think that I did not pull it off!
How did this turn into a novel?
Completely by chance and by mistake. Originally, I was responding to a short story call from a publisher that has since gone under. They were looking for post-apocalyptic / alien stories, so I wrote a 6000 word concept and submitted it. The story made it to the very final round but was rejected. I actually took it very hard. I really believed in this story because it just felt different. About a year later, my friend Austrian Spencer read it and encouraged me to turn it into a novel. Without him, it would simply be a short story still collecting dust.
Will you have an in person lunch party?
Yes. We absolutely will have an in person launch party here in Washington, DC. I might even try to coordinate with a local bookstore this time. There are a bunch of high quality indie bookstores in the area.
Do you believe in aliens?
To be honest, I'm not sure that I do believe in aliens. I've kind of subscribed to this theory that we may be in some kind of cosmic dead zone where other intelligent life forms either came before us or will come long after us, or are positioned in the universe such that contact during this humanity's existence would be impossible. That said I wouldn't be totally shocked if one day they popped up. I just think we would’ve observed something more palatable by now.
What do your family and friends think of your writing?
Well, I’m very honest with them about what my work is and is not. I simply do not encourage them to read it because many don’t like or can’t tolerate horror, so I just ask them to buy it and leave an Amazon review. That's good enough for me. But I do share a special kinship with the few who are into it, and I so adore talking about my work with them. In fact, I leaned heavily on one of my closest friends who is into this kind of literature to gut check many elements of the story (and even the cover) during this process. She knows nothing about publishing or the indie horror community or any of that. She's just an intelligent person who likes to read good literature and gets horror. And she’s very honest with me. I think it's important to keep those kind of people around you.
What is it about this genre that you love?
There is something about horror — whether it's visual or literary — that pushes some really unique emotional response buttons. There is simply no other emotion that comes close to feeling viscerally afraid. I love the adrenaline rush we get when we’re forced to confront a fears or great unknown. We learn a lot about people in those moments, who they really are and what they really think. There is a truth in horror and in fear that I find liberating.
Are there any subjects you’re not comfortable writing about?
This is truly a great question for horror authors because horror is supposed to be the one place where nothing is off limits. I feel very uncomfortable writing about child abuse, whether physical violence or sexual violence. But I recognize its power as a storytelling mechanism (ie: stakes/motivation) and appreciate and the position of cautionary tales when it comes to acts of such pure evil. I actually do address it in this novel. It's one of the content warnings. So without revealing too much, my approach was to simply talk over and around the acts themselves. That is to say, we do not witness any of these acts happening. We simply see their aftermath, both immediate and long term. I think a good storyteller can evoke the same palpable emotions from their readers by doing it this way, instead of getting into the disgusting nature of the act itself. Of course, maybe I'm just saying that because I'm not comfortable doing it that way.
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