3Q’s Special – Andrew F. Sullivan – almost Hellboy!

Laugh all you want at my Andrew Pyper fandom – but the number of authors my love of his work has connected me with is incredibly impressive. Case in point – today’s 3Q’s Special Guest. Andrew F. Sullivan and I connected recently, but it was his friendship with Andrew that drew him to reach out to me regarding his next release. 

Andrew is a super nice guy, with a phenomenal novel coming soon (and one with Nick Cutter on the way as well!) and I’m super happy to have him drop by today!

Welcome Andrew!

Steve: What does your writing time look like? Do you try and write at the same time each day? Do you have a word count you attempt to hit?

AS: I work full time at my day job, so writing often happens on weekends or in the evenings. Long weekends also provide big opportunities. It’s mainly possible because I don’t have kids and my wife is also a writer, so she understands what it means to be deep in a draft and needing to push through at the end, even if that requires staying inside on a beautiful Sunday. It only gets really bleak when we’re both in editing mode, and the dog is the one who gets us out of the house.

If I’m on a big project like a novel, it’s usually five days a week, shooting for about 1000 words a day, but if I don’t hit that, it’s not the end of the world. 500 might be the minimum for it to not be a waste of time. There’s also fallow periods between edits, where I’m not working on anything, but reading, watching, and listening. Absorbing new information and taking time to think about what I want to do next. Then its back to the grind. Giving yourself days off is important, if only to reaffirm that there are days when you need to be on the job again, hitting the keys and making more books happen.

 

Steve: You end up at an estate sale and discover an unpublished manuscript from an author you love. Do you keep it just for yourself or do you share it with the world?

AS: You share it or you burn it. Maybe burn it if it’s terrible. Some of my favourite writers have awful books out there, and I miss that possibility. I think traditional publishing used to be a lot more forgiving of its midlist authors, letting them fail a couple of times at least before they got the axe. Now its entirely feast or famine, but maybe that was a just brief window of time when writing still had some esteem attached to it. Its irrational to assume every writer is going to write a classic every time. Failure is part of the process, integral to the whole operation. And I am burning it if it’s unsalvageable.

 

Steve: Tell me about your newest release (novel/story/poem/novella) and why someone should read it!

AS: My new novel The Marigold will be out in April 2023. It’s a story about a city decaying from within, feeding off itself, crushed by am unquenchable thirst for growth and the tech corporations desperate to control its bubbling streets. There is a sentient mold in your walls, telling you to join it. It’s hard to say no. If you’re a fan of J.G. Ballard and David Cronenberg, you’ll probably get something out of it.

 

Steve: Bonus Question! You wake up in a comic book. What is your comic book character and what is your superpower?

AS: By the wise and kind benevolence of Mike Mignola, I awake as Hellboy without the trimmed horns but clad in his dilapidated trench coat and armed with the Good Samaritan, a revolver cast from a church bell. I am a being of the pit, one with a right hand of doom and cloven feet who strides the earth unbothered. My powers are only limited by the planes of existence, my hand the key to unlocking the end of the world. That all sounds very fun to me.

Fantastic choice!

Thanks so much for doing this, Andrew!

To find more of his work – check the links!

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Andrew-F.-Sullivan/author/B00EOFR1KE

Twitter: https://twitter.com/AFSulli

Website: https://www.andrewfsullivan.com/