Interview with WritersInterviews.com for my latest release, The Abduction of Sarah Phillips

From writersinterviews.com:

Andrew J Brandt, Author of The Abduction of Sarah Philips

The Abduction of Sarah Phillips: A Thriller
Available everywhere in paperback and kindle ebook
July 19, 2019

Today we are interviewing Andrew J Brandt about his thriller novel The Abduction of Sarah Philips.

Describe the plot of your new book, The Abduction of Sarah Phillips, in a few sentences.
It’s a thriller, a kidnapping mystery set in a small Texas town. This young man, kind of in his own world and dealing with his own problems, rescues a girl from her kidnappers, and he quickly finds himself in the crosshairs of men who will stop at nothing to take her back. And, really, the book explores what happens when doing the right thing goes wrong. 

Who do you think would most appreciate this book?
Anyone looking for an adventure! There’s a place for quiet, contemplative books, and then there’s room on the shelf for these fast-paced, adventurous reads that leave you wanting more and more at the end of every page. 

Tell us about the protagonist, Cameron Davis.
Cameron is a loner, kind of retracted into his shell a little bit. He’s reeling from his parents’ divorce and the life change that goes with that. He’s bullied at school and he has a few friends who really do care about him, but he’s sort of isolated himself from them. It’s only when he finds and rescues Sarah Phillips that he begins to come out of that shell. 

Cameron is a loner and a victim of bullying, but must rise to the occasion when he finds Sarah Phillips. How does he find the strength to do what is right?
When we meet Cameron, he’s having a rough day. And even though he’s this loner, isolated kid, he’s still a good kid at heart. When he inadvertently rescues Sarah, he doesn’t hesitate to get help for her. That’s just who he is—the kind of person who, even when dealing with his own problems, still has this desire to help those around him. However, Cameron is not equipped or trained to help in this kind of situation, and things turn south rather quickly for him and Sarah.

Without giving too much away, what can you tell us about the kidnappers?
They’re human traffickers, and they have a rather grim method of taking their victims. We hear all the time about missing children, and with a constant news cycle, it’s easy to forget the details of that. The bad guys in this novel have got their system down to a science and it’s really disheartening. 

What interests you about the thriller genre?
I like page-turning action. I like feeling my heart race when I’m reading a good book, and I want my reader to feel the same thing. When you’re reading an Andrew J Brandt novel, I want you to immediately know that you’re in for a ride. 

Author Andrew J Brandt.

Is there an author that had a major influence on your writing style?
I don’t think I could pin down one specific author, but growing up, I read a lot of R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps books, so I think that definitely influenced my desire to tell a heart-stopping story. Right now, I really enjoy Chuck Hogan and Dennis Lehane. Lehane is a master of the English language and creates these turns of phrase that leave my jaw slack. 

How long have you been writing?
A long time. I have more stop-start stories on my laptop than I’d care to admit. My very first stories were Goosebumps knock-offs when I was around 10 years old. But, I’ve been writing seriously for about two years. I finished my first novel The Treehouse at the start of the year and The Abduction came quick on the heels of that one. I’m taking my time on my next book, but it’s coming together really nicely. 

How do you think you've evolved as a writer since when you first started?
As I’ve worked on more projects, they’ve gotten more and more mature with each story. The Treehouse can be read by kids and adults alike. It’s a lighthearted adventure. But with each subsequent release and story, that lightheartedness has kind of dissolved. At the end of the day, I want to leave my readers breathless. 

What are your goals as a writer for the next ten years?
Oh, you know, a couple of New York Times Bestsellers, a movie option, a series on Netflix. *laughs*

In all seriousness, I want to write compelling stories that stand the test of time. I want readers who discover me ten years from now to be able to enjoy my books just as much as the readers who follow every release. 

How have your readers responded to the book so far?
The advance readers who have read The Abduction so far have really, really enjoyed it! It’s a more mature read than The Treehouse and really explores the negative consequences that our actions can have. Readers, so far, have really responded positively to that.

What do you have in mind for your next project?
I have a couple of things in mind, and a couple of projects I’m actively working on. I like to be two or three projects ahead of release, and I like to work fast. I can’t tell you much, but the one I’m really excited about is another story of mystery about a young woman who vanishes without a trace while hiking. 

Is there anything else you'd like potential readers to know about your book?
Not every story has a happy ending. 

More Information
Visit the author’s website. 
Check out the author’s Amazon page.
Buy the book on Amazon. 
Like the author on Facebook. 
Follow the author on Instagram. 
Follow the author on Twitter. 

Author Andrew J Brandt discusses The Treehouse on Amarillo's Newschannel10

See my latest interview with Ali Allison on Newschannel10's Second Cup where we discuss growing up with The Goonies, Stand By Me and how fun it was to write The Treehouse.

Be sure to subscribe for more posts and information!

See Author Andrew Brandt discuss THE TREEHOUSE on Amarillo's ABC7.

Above is my interview with Anthony Pittman, the gracious host of the midday show on ABC7 in Amarillo, TX. We discuss The Treehouse, how I came up with the idea for the story and my advice for aspiring writers.

An Excerpt from The Treehouse

Below is an excerpt from The Treehouse, available now for preorder and out on Amazon Kindle and
paperback this Friday (April 26).

The first thing Lucas thought was that they’d been caught. Someone’s mom called someone else’s and they’d been found out. Or, his sister Allison ratted him out to their parents. His heart pounded in his chest, knowing that they’d look out the window and see all of their parents coming out to the woods –  this secret place, their hideout.

The moonlight illuminated just enough of the area that he could see that there were no parents outside, no flashlight beams coming their way. Lucas breathed a sigh of relief but choked up again when he heard a sound.

A grunt, or a cough, in these woods travelled far. The boys couldn’t see anything, but they darted their eyes about, trying to make out the source of the sound. Again, a grunt. The shuffling of feet in dirt and leaves.

There, just a few yards out the window, Lucas saw it. He pointed so his friends could see what he was seeing. It was a man trudging, laboriously, through the woods. He was carrying something large draped across his shoulders. From the rustling sound, it seemed to be a trash bag -- a large trashbag with something heavy inside.

Lucas’s heart beat even faster than before, though his body felt paralyzed. He didn’t know what was going on. Could the man see them as well, up in the tree? Could he hear them?

The man dropped whatever he was carrying on his shoulders onto the ground in front of a fallen tree log. He had a shovel in one hand, and he started to dig. The three boys watched for – what felt like to them – an eternity as this man dug a hole in the soft earth.

Finally, the man shoved the trashbag and its contents into the hole, covered it up with dirt and leaves and attempted to roll the fallen log over his handiwork. Once he was done, he ran off, back toward the city, out of the woods.

The three boys slumped down onto the floor of their treehouse. Lucas felt sweat on his palms and on his forehead. He looked at Tyler, his eyes large and full of fear. Elijah was holding his legs up against his chest. Neither of them said a word.

Tyler slowly reached up and slid the window back into place over the framed hole.

“Guys, what did we just see? What was that?” Elijah’s voice cracked, breaking the silence and darkness. It was the first sound any of them had made in almost an hour.

Tyler looked at Lucas and Elijah, the same fear still in his eyes. He said, “That was a body.”

I Built a Cardboard Nintendo!

The January 2015 Lootcrate box was awesome. It contained lots of fun, nerdy stuff (that I reviewed two weeks ago here), but what got me was the box. When you folded the box in on itself, it became a really cool cardboard NES console. Would look cool on a shelf or whatever.

But, being the tech genius that I am, the wheels started turning in my head. I had an idea starting to take form: what if I could turn this kitschy piece of decoration into a real, working Nintendo?

From there, a thought popped in my head: Raspberry Pi. The $35 mini computer meant for hacking/computing projects. After some research online, I found a Linux distribution for the Pi that supported an emulator called RetroPie. I ordered the mini computer (B+ model for the record) and necessary peripherals and waited. I also picked up a USB retro-styled controller from Hastings, seen above.

Once the parts came in, I got to work. I downloaded the OS image onto an SD card and installed the operating system on the Pi itself. I cut out the holes we would need for interconnection in the box. A USB port in the front for keyboard/game controller was cut into the space where the fake NES controller was.

I cut out holes in the back for power and HDMI connection. After mounting the Raspberry Pi inside the box, I installed the cabling and hot-glued the ports in place. After letting them set, I tested out the system. There is some command line setup here, including setting up wifi under the network config file in the linux system. And even in the RetroPie emulator software, it's necessary to configure the USB controller via a bash program.

I installed some game ROMs (that I legally own), and played a few. Original NES games played like a dream. Super Mario Bros 3, Legend of Zelda both played perfectly  with no skipped frames. I ended up overclocking the Raspberry Pi's processor and GPU because some Super Nintendo games played a little choppy. After overclocking up to about 1Ghz, they run fine. (Side-note: overclocking the Raspberry Pi can crash the system and break your SD card, but I'm willing to risk it for this project.

This was a cool project to do, and it was a blast finally getting to play with a Raspberry Pi.

Space is Super Huge.

Something I've been pondering on today...


I sometimes think about space, and how large our galaxy is, and how much distance is between us and our celestial neighbors...and how alone we are here, on this planet, in this sun system. We learn in high school that "light years" means how many years it takes for light to travel through a vacuum. So, for a star that is twenty light years away, it took twenty years for its light to reach our eyes. Follow?


Okay, so here's the deal: our scientists have found a planet that they say could harbor life, as it lies within its star's "Goldilocks Zone" -- the place within a star's orbit where a planet could harbor life. So, SETI pointed their radio telescopes at the star, and what did they hear?


Silence.


Why? The star is 180 light years away from earth. If there were beings on HIP 116454 b (seriously, we need a better exoplanet naming scheme), of similar intelligence to humans, and they were looking at the earth through their fancy radio telescopes, you know what they would hear?


Also silence.


The first radio waves strong enough to leave earth only happened 100 years ago. If there are any civilizations out there within our astronomical neighborhood, they need to be within a hundred light years of us. And then, there's the next question -- what are the odds of an alien civilization being alive and of comparable intelligence as us living at the same time as us?




#mindblown

Loot Crate!! Loot Crate Unboxing - January 2015 "Rewind"

Loot Crate! I love Loot Crate, and here is my first video unboxing of January's crate, themed "Rewind." Watch the video to see what all is included in this month's Crate. If you'd like to receive Loot Crate yourself, check out their site here.

Also, this is my first video edit using iMovie and quick Youtube-style jump-cuts.