Andrew M. Guy’s Followers (1)

Andrew’s Bookshelves

to-read (0)
currently-reading (1)
read (1)
did-not-finish (0)

Andrew’s Friends

Andrew hasn't connected with his friends on Goodreads, yet.

Andrew M. Guy

Goodreads Author

Born

Detroit, The United States

Website

http://www.andrewmguy.com

Twitter

guyandrewm

Genre

Fiction

Member Since

December 2015

URL

https://www.goodreads.com/andrewmguy

edit data

Learn more
Ask the Author

To ask Andrew M. Guy questions, please sign up.

Popular Answered Questions

Where did you get the idea for your most recent book?

Andrew M. Guy The story behind CITIZEN TILT and I go back to at least August of 2010. I was in a phase then, a movie treatment writing phase, only as with so many e…moreThe story behind CITIZEN TILT and I go back to at least August of 2010. I was in a phase then, a movie treatment writing phase, only as with so many endeavors, I wasn't taking it seriously. That's still probably a good outlook to have and believe it or not I have to remind myself almost daily not to get too wound up over absurd things happening in the world. If you need an example, look no farther than the presidential campaign. Donald Trump? Ted Cruz? Ben Carson? Come on.

I was cranking out these four page movie treatments. In August of 2010, I wrote one called Wyld Card:

Logline: The USA is all-in heads up against the world’s most violent wealthy terrorist, and there’s just one problem: it’s going to take an act of Congress to get their “Aces” (sic) out of “the hole”!

I even assigned roles to known quantities: James Coburn, Sophia Loren, Yaphet Kotto, Maureen McCormick (yes!), Jackie Earl Haley (double yes!)

Total absurdity but not any less absurd than lots of stuff I've seen in the movies, read in books. Not any less absurd than stuff I've read about in history books or seen on the nightly news, really.

Now, at the same time I was writing this, I was also the guy in charge of sending out poker game announcements (I still am). These are written based on a time honored formula. A nonsense subject line (I think subject lines are tyrannical), a sort of headline that was also nonsense, an odd picture found on the web (no shortage of those), followed by the when, where, how much, etc., of the poker game. After that, freeform nonsense of the short or long variety. That month, I decided to paste the whole Wyld Card movie treatment into the email, in the freeform nonsense section.

The responses I got back were encouraging. Normally these guys never even nibbled at any of the bait I threw out there, which was part of the fun, I suppose. Getting them to nibble. "Speechless," and "When is your power lunch with the guys at Paramount?"

So the basic bones of CITIZEN TILT were taking shape: a great poker player, prison, the president, a megalomaniacal filthy rich terrorist loving challenger.

So, fast forward six years. I had been downsized out of a job earlier in the spring, I wasn't getting any younger . . . I really wanted to write s novel. I had other story ideas but I kept coming back to this one. And the pull was imagining the guys in the poker game, the same ones who had read the Wyld Card movie treatment, reading CITIZEN TILT. Sometimes I would look up from the paper or the screen and catch myself, and ask, "Really? This is your novel? It's absolutely nuts!"

Maybe so. But it progressed better than anything I had ever attempted to novelize before, and believe me, I have tried my hand at novelizing a hundred times. Thank goodness I did not give up. It may not win any prizes, but CITIZEN TILT kept me going with a smile on my face, and made me laugh, and still gives me a huge sense of accomplishment. Now I look up from the screen and catch myself saying, "Yes! I did it! It's absolutely nuts!"(less)

flag