To celebrate our year of monthly interviews at Jamie
Tremain’s blog our Christmas post welcomes bestselling author Andrew Pyper.
This Stratford, Ontario native decided there were
too many lawyers in the world and started writing thrillers and scary novels
that keep us up at night. And we’re very glad he did. Since he declared the
‘bar’ was not for him he has found much success as a writer.
Pam:
Thanks for agreeing to talk with us Andrew. I first met you at Lakefield
College a few years ago and recently you joined Liz and I for lunch at Scene of
the Crime Festival. You were there to read from your latest book Demonologist and also to receive the Grant Allen award for your contribution
to Canadian writing. How important is it to attend these events?
Andrew:
I honestly don’t know how important it is in strict business terms (if
you crunched the numbers, it might well be time better spent working on your
next book) but it is important to me. Meeting readers, fans, fellow writers, booksellers, students – it’s a great pleasure on a personal level and, I think, a necessary reminder of the community that brings us together in this wonderful, unlikely, mad racket of books. (I should say that receiving the Grant Allen Award in particular was an honour, and was part of a memorable getaway weekend!)
Pam:
You have a degree in English Literature. Who has influenced you the most
when writing your own work?
Andrew:
I’ve never had a living mentor.
My influences have all come from the page (and, sometimes, the
screen). If I had to name a shortlist,
it would look rather incongruous: Henry
James, Joseph Conrad, Alice Munro, Margaret Atwood, Martin Amis, Stephen King. Make of it what you will.
Pam:
You are a family man with small children. Your books are scary and can
cause nightmares with a sensitive soul such as me. How old will your children
be before you let them read your books?
Andrew:
I plan on giving them a gift of my entire library on the day they move
out of the house.
Pam:
The Demonologist film rights
have been sold. What are your feelings about this exciting development to see
characters you have created up on the big screen?
Andrew:
I just hope they make the movie.
Brilliant, good, bad or awful, it would be so thrilling to sit in a
darkened cinema and see your people do the things you made them do, and maybe
even say some of the things you had them say.
I’m not terribly anxious about the film “remaining true” to the book, as
it will inevitably be a different thing, its own thing. In any case, when authors retain control over
their own adaptations it doesn’t often lead to happy results anyway.
Pam:
Have you ever collaborated with another author? Would you?
Andrew:
I’ve worked on a couple of TV pitches with a friend, but I’ve never
written a whole book with someone else.
If the right person and the right story came along, I suppose I’d
consider it.
Pam:
Tell us about your writing process? Lock the door to an office or sit in
a coffee shop with your laptop?
Andrew:
Historically, I’ve been able to write pretty much anywhere – I’m not fussy about noise or pretty views or barometric pressure, etc. But over the last several years of parenthood, it’s just made more sense to work at home. So my routine is 1) Make breakfast for kids, 2) Grab coffee for myself, 3) Head upstairs to the office and close the door. I’ve probably gotten so used to it now that if I went to the café to work, I’d be ripping the espresso machine off the counter in the first fifteen minutes and screaming at everybody to get off their damn phones.
Andrew reading from the Demonologist
after receiving the Grant Allen
award on Wolfe Island at Scene of the Crime festival this past August.
Liz has joined me today in asking
Andrew a few questions as she just loves the dark side.
Liz:
In the Guardians, I was happy to see
mention of Ontario towns and cities that I'm very familiar with - Listowel,
Elmira, Kitchener, etc. And as a Canadian reader and writer, I'm always
happy to see that our familiar territory can be used successfully as a backdrop
in a story - were you ever advised to change the locale(s) to something south
of the border?
Andrew:
No, I’ve
never been explicitly asked – or even nudged – to set my novels in one place
over another. I realize this may be a
little unusual, as I have many colleagues who have been asked to change their
Saskatoon to Boston, their Dryden to Manhattan.
But it’s just never come up. For
me, setting isn’t determined by market or by nationalism, but by the story
itself.
Liz:
Any particular reason you chose not to pursue a career in law - or is
writing just more fun?
Andrew:
I don’t
know what I’d be doing for a living today if Lost Girls, my first novel, hadn’t met with the success that it
did. Probably working as a bartender
somewhere and writing on the side. Or
maybe I would have been a criminal lawyer, as that was the one area that
interested me and that I may well have been good at. But these are unwelcome speculations.
Liz:
Was there a haunted house in your childhood which you based the setting
of The Guardians?
Andrew:
I see
haunted houses wherever I go. But in
terms of growing up in Stratford, we didn’t have a haunted house (at least not
a particular one I recall) but a haunted bridge. It was located just outside town, and we’d
drive out there sometimes and freak ourselves out, daring each other to cross
it. Every youth needs a haunted something, I think. In my case, it’s been considerably more than
one something.
Liz:
When did you become interested in writing about the dark, and not always
unseen, side of life?
Andrew:
My mother
kept many of the stories I wrote when I was in primary school, and you can see
it there too, right from the beginning: the gothic, the suspenseful, the
fantastical turn. I love building
solid-looking floors and then opening a hidden trap door in the middle of them. I love what the experience of fear reveals in
my characters, as well as in myself.
Liz:
I can remember reading the Exorcist when it first arrived on the scene
and couldn't sleep without a light on for years after that. Have you ever
scared yourself when writing?
Andrew:
Yes. Perhaps I’ll leave it at that.
Liz:
The Globe and Mail best 100 books of 2013.
The
Demonologist -For me, as a parent, and grandparent, I think the
fear of losing a child, or not being able to find them, is the frightening
undercurrent of your novel - wondering how far you'd go to find
them. "Hell is a night drive looking for a missing child."
Was it difficult to separate yourself, the author, from your created character,
David Ullman, as he desperately searches for Tess?
Andrew:
I have to be emotionally involved in the story – no matter how removed
its events from my own life – and in the case of The Demonologist, David’s position as father, as a protector, was crucial to my involvement in the narrative. Discomfort, fear, real worry: these are among the necessary ingredients for me.
Thanks Andrew for spending the time with us today. We wish you continued success in your pursuit to keep our hearts pounding and scaring the daylights out of us. Demons and Christmas may not mix, but a good book is a good book under the Christmas tree or any time.
Andrew
Pyper was born in Stratford, Ontario, in 1968. He received a B.A. and M.A. in
English Literature from McGill University, as well as a law degree from the
University of Toronto. Although called to the bar in 1996, he has never
practiced.
His
new novel, The Demonologist, was published in Canada and the US by Simon & Schuster in March, 2013, and by Orion in the UK and Australia in April 2013. Film rights have been sold to
Universal Pictures with Robert
Zemeckis’company, Image Movers, producing. Pulitzer prize-winning playwright,
Robert Schenkkan, is adapting.
www.andrewpyper.com/
www.goodreads.com/author/show/33116.Andrew_Pyper
We’re glad you visited with us today to learn about
Andrew Pyper. Check him out on twitter or FB and say hullo. Better yet, get
thee to a book store and buy the Demonologist before it’s sold out.
2014 has a good ring to it and Jamie Tremain will
start the blog in January with Gloria Ferris talking to us about her new book Corpse Flower.
Talk soon,
Pam &Liz
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