Andrew Cunningham's Blog

In Deadly Shore, the three bridges to Cape Cod are brought down by terrorists, trapping residents and tourists on the Cape over 4th of July weekend, with a major hurricane barreling up the coast.

For those readers who have never visited Cape Cod, I thought I would give you a visual feel by showing you pictures of the bridges (still standing, that is).

The first picture shows the Sagamore Bridge (the bridge near the house of the book club women in the book), and the second is the Bourne Bridge, with the train bridge off in the distance.

I spent almost 30 years travelling across the Bourne and Sagamore Bridges. When the bridges were shut down due to high winds, winter storms, and the occasional hurricane, it was easy to feel isolated, which I later passed on to the characters in the book.

Had a great time participating with my wife in the Run 4 The Sea fundraiser for the Loggerhead Marinelife Center in Juno Beach, FL, a non-profit sea turtle hospital that promotes conservation of ocean ecosystems with a special focus on threatened and endangered sea turtles. Once a turtle is healthy, it is released back to the sea. A great organization.

A rehabbing guest.

I am honored and excited to announce that the audiobooks of both WISDOM SPRING and DEADLY SHORE will be read by Greg Hernandez. Greg is a professional narrator, former news reporter for ABC radio, and former spokesman for NOAA. I am pleased to be partnering with him for these books and love his ability to bring the characters to life. Both audiobooks will be released by the Amazon affiliate Audible. Look for WISDOM SPRING this summer and DEADLY SHORE this fall.

I often think how nice it would be if the only thing an author had to do was to write. But in this day and age, being an author means doing your own publicity and promotions, finding an editor and proofreader, getting your covers designed, maintaining your website, keeping up your blog and mailings, and updating Facebook, Twitter, and any of the other social media sites you choose to play with. I’m sure I’ve forgotten something. Oh yes … and write!

Just when I thought I had it all down, along comes Audible. The company has actually been around for a while. I’m just catching up. Remember the days of Books-On-Tape? As a long-time bookseller, I was always getting free copies sent to me by the publishers, but in all honesty, I never listened to them. I preferred to read and, unlike many people, I didn’t have much of a commute, so I didn’t need something to take up my attention while stuck in traffic. But wait. I did listen to a Louis L’amour western once (yes, I like a good western). Or I should say I tried to listen to it. It was horrible. Instead of one narrator, they tried to make a production out of it using multiple voices and sound effects (“Watch out, Clem, they’re comin’ at ya.” Pow Pow. “I’ve been hit.”). Yikes! I was pretty sure even then that that wasn’t the norm though. Most are pretty well done.

Well, times have changed. Audible is the new generation of Books-On-Tape. Now you can read OR listen and switch between them. You can buy a Kindle book, then buy the Audible recording at a reduced rate, and be able to listen when you can’t read. And it will never lose your place on any device. You will always be right where you want to be. Read one minute, listen the next.

Which, of course, just adds yet another component to my already busy writing life. It is time to get my books onto Audible. Which means I have to audition narrators. My wife is holding out for James Earl Jones. Good luck with that.

Anyway, the auditioning is underway and I’ll let you know how it goes.

Authors often get asked: “Who is your favorite character from your books” and “Who was your easiest character to write?” My answer to both of those questions is the same.

Mind you, I LOVE ALL of my characters. Most of them, in one way or another, have bits of me thrown in. How could I not love them?? But in fact, it’s the character that has nothing thrown in from me that is my favorite. Scott Harper, Jon Harper’s brother in WISDOM SPRING.

Why? Because the character was fully-formed even before I wrote the book. Scott is based on my late brother (also named Scott, not coincidentally). In the book, Scott Harper is a paramedic, a bush pilot, a good cook, a mechanic, and a self-assured, loyal brother. He also has an ex-police dog named Max. The real Scott was all of these things and once had a ex-police dog, also named Max. Although Scott wasn’t a bush pilot himself (to the extent that the fictional Scott is), he was a pilot, and he owned an air taxi service called Smokey Bay Air, in Homer, Alaska. Fictional Scott is a bachelor, but the real Scott was a wonderful husband and the awesome father of two boys. He was also a superb storyteller and he possessed a great sense of humor. By far, he made Scott Harper the easiest character I’ve ever written.

In two weeks, it will have been 13 years since Scott left us in a freak accident. Writing about him was my way of honoring him. But he was such a great character, he needs more of a stage. So look for Scott to appear in a stand-alone novel of his own after I finish FATAL LIES.

My cat, Milo, wanted to be included in one of my books, so he auditioned by trying to play dead. He couldn’t stop laughing, so needless to say, he didn’t get the part.

A while back, someone asked me how I choose the locations I use in my books. Those of you who have read my books know that my characters tend to travel a lot. The exception being Deadly Shore, where everyone is stuck on Cape Cod. Using that location was easy for me as I spent almost 30 years living on the Cape.

Growing up, we moved A LOT, so I have lived in many different areas of the country, both as a child and as an adult. So naturally, I’ve used some of those locations. When you are familiar with a place, it can almost become another character in the book. Many of the locations in All Lies had a personal connection for me: I lived in Fairfield, Iowa, Wahoo, Nebraska, and Brattleboro, Vermont. My wife is from East Boston and we go there a lot to visit family. As for the Wisdom Spring locations: I once spent a lonely two months living in Logan, Utah (I had moved across country after accepting an interpreting job over the phone at Utah State University that wasn’t all it was cracked up to be). My late brother and his family lived in Homer, Alaska, and I fell in love with it the moment I arrived there. There are many other places mentioned in the books that I’ve traveled to or through, such as Las Vegas and Yellowstone.

I research other locations and I use Google Earth a lot. Fordlandia, from All Lies, is an interesting one. I ran across the book Fordlandia by Greg Grandin and was immediately fascinated by the place, so I did a lot more research on it, which led to research on Brazil and a lot of “Google Earthing” of the Amazon River. That’s how it ended up in All Lies.

I have a feeling there will always be some of my own experiences from living in so many places coming through in my books, but there is a lot of research too. I find both the memories and the research equally fun. I used to say about Wahoo that the only time I said “wahoo” with feeling was when I left. I traveled through it again about ten years ago and saw it in a totally different–and more positive–light. Either way, it, and all of the other places I’ve lived, have provided fodder for my books, so I appreciate them all.

This is the first of what I hope will be many blog postings.

Why a blog? Okay, I have a website, a Facebook page, and a Twitter account, isn’t that enough? Well, they all serve different purposes, but the one thing none of them do is to let me talk to the reader on a more personal level. Hey, you are what it’s all about. If you weren’t reading my books, I wouldn’t be writing them–and I LOVE to write them.

I want to share on a regular basis where I am with my latest book (which right now is Fatal Lies, the follow-up to All Lies, about 15-20% done), ideas for future books, what the future holds for some of your favorite characters, to answer questions, and just throw out random thoughts. You can follow my posts, which I imagine will come once a week or so, or you can just check in on my website, Goodreads, or my Amazon Author Page for feeds of my blog (assuming, of course, that I get all that technical stuff figured out–which is why this is going to be a short post and why some of you might be reading it three times!).

Anyway, I hope you will enjoy reading it!