Can
you tell us a little bit about yourself?
My name is Andrew
Joyce, and I live on a boat in Fort Lauderdale, Florida with my dog, Danny. I left
high school at seventeen to hitchhike throughout the US, Canada, and Mexico for
a number of years. I’ve written four books, including my latest, Resolution, and a collection of one
hundred and forty short stories comprised of my hitching adventures called Bedtime Stories for Grown-ups (as yet
unpublished).
What
do you do when you're not writing?
I read books.
Steinbeck, London, Baldacci, and Child are among my favorite authors.
When
did your first start writing?
One morning, about six years ago, I went crazy. I got out of bed, went
downstairs, and threw my TV out the window. Then I sat down at the computer and
wrote my first short story. It was soon published in a print magazine (remember
them?). I’ve been writing ever since.
What
inspired you to write this particular book?
I was not inspired to write Resolution
. . . I was cajoled into writing it.
This is the backstory to Resolution:
My first book
was a 164,000-word historical novel. And in the publishing world, anything over
80,000 words for a first-time author is heresy. Or so I was told time and time
again when I approached an agent for representation. After two years of
research and writing, and a year of trying to secure the services of an agent,
I got angry. To be told that my efforts were meaningless was somewhat
demoralizing to say the least. I mean, those rejections were coming from people
who had never even read my book.
“So you
want an 80,000-word novel?” I said to no one in particular, unless you
count my dog, because he was the only one around at the time. Consequently, I
decided to show them City Slickers that
I could write an 80,000-word novel!
I had just
finished reading Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn for the third time, and I
started thinking about what ever happened to those boys, Tom and Huck. They
must have grown up, but then what? So I sat down at my computer and banged out REDEMPTION: The Further Adventures of Huck Finn and Tom
Sawyer in two months, then sent out
query letters to agents.
Less than a
month later, the chairman of one of the biggest agencies in New York City
emailed me that he loved the story. We signed a contract and it was off to the
races, or so I thought. But then the real fun began: the serious editing. Seven
months later, I gave birth to Huck and Tom as adults in the Old West. And just
for the record, the final word count is 79,914. The book went on to reach #1 status in its category on
Amazon—twice. And it won the Editors’ Choice Award for best Western of 2013.
The rest, as they say, is history.
But not quite.
My agent then
wanted me to write a sequel, but I had other plans. I was in the middle of
editing down my first novel (that had been rejected by 1,876,324 agents . . .
or so it seemed) from 164,000 words to the present 142,000. However, he was
insistent about a sequel, so I started to think about it. Now, one thing you
have to understand is that I tied up all the loose ends at the end of REDEMPTION, so there was no way that I
could write a sequel. And that is when Molly asked me to tell her story. Molly was a minor character
that we met briefly in the first chapter of REDEMPTION,
and then she is not heard from again.
So I started
to think about what ever happened to her. After a bit of time—and 100,000
words—we find out what did happen to Molly. It is an adventure tale where Huck Finn weaves through the periphery of a story
driven by a feisty female lead. Molly Lee was my second book,
which achieved #2 status on Amazon.
Now I was finished with Huck Finn for good. Now I could go back to my
first novel and resume the editing process.
But not quite.
The three books are standalones and are not part of a series. They can
be read in any order. RESOLUTION is
available as an eBook and in print.
There you have it. Perhaps now Huck and Molly will leave me alone long
enough so that I can get some editing done on my first novel.
What
was your favorite chapter (or part) to write and why?
That is a very
good question. It’s also a hard question to answer, but I reckon the passage
below should suffice as one of my favorites. As to why, I would have to say
because it defines what I was trying to convey in the novel—the struggle of my
protagonist with nefarious men, nature, and wild animals to name just a few of
his adversaries.
• • • •
•
The alpha wonders
why the two-legs have now bunched together. No matter, they will watch, they will be
ready, and when the time is right, they will feed on the meat from their bones.
It is time to move
closer to the two-legs, though it is not yet time for the attack. They must be
cautious. He remembers—from long ago—the sticks the two-legs use to kill. His
mother was killed by one. The sticks bark loudly and blood spouts from a wolf-brother
or a wolf-sister, then they are no more. He will keep his family safe. They
will not strike until the two-legs are struggling in the snow or separated from
one another, making themselves easy for the kill.
No matter the
wolves’ hunger, they will wait . . . it is their way.
The two-legs have
their ways and the wolves have theirs. Before very long, they will tear at the
flesh of the two-legs; their warm blood will drip from the wolves’ jaws—before
very long, their hunger will have fled their wolf-bodies and they will lie in
the snow with full bellies.
• • • • •
Huck
went back to the fire, bringing Bright with him, and sat down on his heels.
With one hand, he held onto his Winchester, the stock resting in the snow, the
barrel pointing to the sky. With the other, he held onto Bright’s collar. He
did not want the dog to start anything that he could not finish. He did not say
anything. He was thinking. Jass stopped stirring the mush and Molly looked up
from what she was doing. They looked at each other, then back at Huck.
Molly
asked, “Did you change your mind about hunting?”
Slowly,
Huck came out of his reverie and looked at Molly and then at Jass. Turning back
to Molly, he said, “Get John fed and get ready to move out.” To Jass, he said,
“Hurry up with that mush. We gotta be going.”
“What’s
the matter, Huck?” asked Jass.
“We
have company. There are four or five wolves up there, back on the rise, that
seem to have an extraordinary interest in us. Don’t worry, we’ll be all right.
We just have to keep moving, but from now on, we stay together. If they don’t
follow us, we’ll be fine.”
Both
Molly and Jass looked up to the rise and saw nothing. “I don’t see any wolves,”
said Molly.
“Me
either,” interjected Jass.
Huck
hurriedly stood up and turned to where they were looking. They were right, the
wolves were gone. He was about to sigh in relief when Bright growled again and
he saw a dark speck moving in the snow, then another, and another. The wolves
had come down off the rise and were coming their way.
“Feed
John,” ordered Huck. “It may be a while before we can stop again.” He did not
have to explain. Molly and Jass had also seen the wolves.
• • • • •
They move to
within a hundred yards of the two-legs and spread out in a half circle. If they
had been a larger family, they would have completely surrounded their prey. Now
is the time to observe their weaknesses and look for opportunities to mount an
attack.
The pup knows his
place, but being young, he wants to show off some. He’s behind the adults,
running back and forth, when all of a sudden he darts past the line the adults
have set. He’ll show them what a great hunter he is. As he runs past one of the
females, she turns and nips him on his right haunch. He yelps, and with a
painful whine, runs back to where he should have been. It was his mother who
had put an end to his foolishness. The alpha male observes the interplay
between mother and pup and remembers back to when he was a pup and his mother
had kept him in line in a similar manner. But that was before she was killed by
the two-legs.
What
is best writing advice you can give?
Read, read . . . and then read some more. Read everything you can get
your hands on! Reading to a writer is as medical school is to a doctor, as
physical training is to an athlete, as breathing is to life. When one reads
stuff like the passage below, one cannot help but become a better writer.
"The afternoon came down as imperceptibly as
age comes to a happy man. A little gold entered into the sunlight. The bay
became bluer and dimpled with shore-wind ripples. Those lonely fishermen who
believe that the fish bite at high tide left their rocks and their places were
taken by others, who were convinced that the fish bite at low tide.”—John Steinbeck, Tortilla Flat
Is
there anything else you'd like your readers to know about the book?
I would like to
say that I wrote Resolution in one
sitting and everything in it is my
pure genius. But that would be a lie. I have an editor that puts order to my
chaos.
One last thing:
Everything in Resolution is historically correct. I spend as much
time on research as I do writing—sometimes more.
Is
there anything else you’d like to say?
Just this: Thank
you for having me over. It’s been a real pleasure.
You can find Andrew Joyces' Latest novel, "Resolution; Huck Finn's Greatest Adventure." here:
https://www.amazon.com/Resolution-Huck-Finns-Greatest-Adventure-ebook/dp/B01E83YVJA
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/629497
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/resolution-andrew-joyce/1123675041?ean=2940152976083
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30009309-resolution
and his website:
http://andrewjoyce76.com/
