Andrew French is an intriguing guy who also just happens to write about, well,…intriguing “stuff.” Spies, assassins and danger. Ooooh. You know, your run-of-the-mill, typical day in the peaceful English countryside. Wait a second…what?!! And you see, that’s what threw me. Take a look at his Twitter profile and you see a perfectly nice gentleman who speaks about being quite the romantic husband and devoted family man — just a nice chap — yet he supposedly has a past that enables him to write so freely and easily about seedy, deadly, terrifying people. Hmm. I’d ask him how this came about but I’m sure if he told me, he’d have to kill me. Just kidding, of course. (Although not entirely…lol.)
However, when I first started following Andrew French, it had nothing to do with thrilling, suspenseful content. He made me laugh. Seriously. I think he may have followed me first technically (it’s been a while since then) but I started to notice these clever, witty remarks and commentary coming from this fella over in the UK who I’d never met up with before. In time, I also learned that like many of my incredible writer friends gloriously found on Twitter, he’s a generous and supportive author of his writing kin. And that always scores big in my book.
I hope you’ll enjoy Andrew’s thoughts in this guest blog about his own entry into the world of writing books and when you can, visit his Facebook page to learn more about not only his books, but about the talented and amusing man himself. Andrew’s books are available on Amazon.com UK.
And be sure to connect with him on Twitter, too, at @AFrenchAuthor. Do it. NOW! Or else… *cue the suspenseful music*
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I always wanted to write a book. The sort of boys’ own adventure book that I read avidly as, well, as a boy strangely enough. It wasn’t until I found myself at home with time on my hands that I decided that I would give it a go. After all, you can only polish the same table so many times before the novelty starts to wear a bit thin.
ASSASSIN’S RUN was my first thriller novel. Never having written anything other than business plans and analytical reports, I really didn’t know where to start. All I had was a two sentence premise of a story and a nervous excitement about the mountain I was about to climb.
During the next few months I set myself a target of writing one chapter per week. Despite my best attempts to plan each chapter, they never turned out how I anticipated. I very often surprised, and sometimes shocked, myself at how both the story and the characters developed. Having written half the book I still had no idea how it was going to end as I was writing almost instinctively by that stage.
As I typed the final page I cried buckets. Partly for what I had put my protagonist, Michael Prentiss through, but mainly because I had come to the end of the journey. When I was asked how I was able to write a spy thriller I replied; it’s like doing a really complicated jigsaw puzzle, with no picture to help you and having to make each piece first.
I only ever intended to write one book. When I’d finished ASSASSIN’S RUN however I felt I knew the three main characters so well, I wanted…no, needed to know what happened to them next. So I wrote two more thrillers in the series, THE ARES FILE and then PERSONAL RETRIBUTIONS. When writing both books I again had only a two-line premise and I once again set out on a journey not knowing where it would end. I’m currently halfway through writing the fourth in the series and it’s rarely far from my thoughts.
The best piece of advice about writing I have ever been given was from Paul Groves, my English teacher at school. He took me to the side one day and said; “If you can tell the story you want to tell, as well as you can tell it, then you will be a writer.”
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