Andrew Suzanne had a goal. Before he graduated from high school he wanted to be a published author. Through the support of his family and an indiminishable desire, this year he self-published his first novel, Towers of Adrala, and yes, he was still in school.

As you will see from the interview, this is only the first of a trilogy. Considering what this young man has accomplished at such a young age, there is no doubt he will succeed not only in achieving this goal, but many others.

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You were 13 when you began writing The Towers of Adrala, correct?

Twelve, I think. I began picking at the idea a little before we moved from Michigan to Tennessee in 2004, but did not really pursue it until after we had moved.

What made you decide to begin writing a novel at that age?

I always wanted to write. Whenever I read a good book, watched a good movie, or played a good video game, I always wondered what it was like to be the writer. What it felt like to have created something that people enjoy and makes them think, that allows people escape from their daily frustrations into these stories of the grand and fantastic. So, I took a stab at it. A rather poorly aimed stab, as I cringe when re-reading the original drafts.

Really, though, I simply enjoyed it. Getting lost in one’s own imagination never gets old.

Was it a character that first came to mind, or the story itself?

The story came first, but it was the characters that wrote it. Without exception, every bit of the framework for the plot I laid I had to bend for the characters.

I wrote for fun and it’s always more fun to write by the seat of your pants. Sure, I know how it all ends and I have specific important scenes that have to be done, but in the large gray areas in between I was as likely to surprise myself as the readers. Some characters were made up on the spot to fill in holes and eventually gained unintended importance in the plot.

Did you write straight through, then go back and begin re-writes/editing, or did you write a little at a time, and do that as you went along?

The Towers of Adrala started off as a sixty-page abomination. It was filled with every imaginable cliché, cardboard characters, long-winded and pointless bits of description and information. It was all eventually thrown away. I started again from scratch and wrote it chapter by chapter in longhand, going back every now and then to type it all up and edit it. Later on I discovered, to my great surprise, that I had written nearly four hundred pages. I looked back and discovered that the prologue had no place in the storyline anymore, being the pompous cliché-ridden nonsense about some ‘dark-lord’ it was. (I don’t know how that was ever a good idea) The prologue was re-written, and with it came a strange sense of satisfaction that it now fit perfectly with everything, or as perfectly as a bit of writing can ever be. I then threw out the first nine chapters and re-wrote them from the ground up, then heavily edited the rest.

Essentially, it grew. Evolved. And I’m very happy with how it finally came out.

Why did you choose the self-publishing route?

That was actually a very recent decision. I had been slaving over a synopsis, finally squeezing five-hundred something pages into ten for an agent. Before I submitted it, however, I discovered that it had to be ten double spaced pages. I crunched it some more, feeling like I was applying a cheese-grater to it, then submitted it.

I wasn’t surprised when it was rejected.

Pouring over the Writer’s Market I found just how few agents and publishers fitted into the criteria I needed. My book was a Sci-Fi disguised as a Fantasy and borrowed a great deal from other genres. I had also promised myself to get published before I graduated from high school and the clock was ticking ever louder.

Then my dad e-mailed me a link to LuLu.com. The site is genius; it’s streamlined, straightforward, and best of all, cheap but professional. Seeing what I could do through their self-publishing site, I decided to do so.

What sort of lessons have you learned from writing The Towers about writing?

Read everything. Watch everything and everyone. Analyze every bit of creative work you come across. Ask every “What if?” you can possibly imagine. Most importantly, just have fun.

What really, truly wrote The Towers of Adrala, however, was obsession. I can’t truly describe my one-track mind. I related everything to my book. I began to listen to instrumental music almost exclusively because it had no words, you could take the music and apply it to your own scenarios. Nearly every moment I had that I was not doing something that required a large amount of thinking, I thought anyway. Be it taking a shower, laying in bed, waiting for the bell to ring, or listening to the teacher drone, I was creating and re-playing scenes almost incessantly. I wrote something similar to this claim on obsession in a creative-writing class. One of the critiques I got back was “Interesting, but don’t exaggerate.”

I found it quite funny and a bit frightening that other people thought I was “exaggerating”.

Do you plan to write another novel in the future?

If I value my life, then yes. The Towers of a Adrala is the first part of a trilogy and it doesn’t have one of those neat, ‘here we are in the middle of the plot but lets have some closure anyway’ endings. I treated it like one big book, that was just where I decided to chop it into not-quite-so-bite-sized-pieces. There will be two (possibly three) more Adrala books, followed by a number of prequels, one being told through the viewpoint of the supposed “evil”, and two others concerning characters I cannot disclose.

Do you feel relieved you’re finished with it, or a little sad that it’s done?

I feel falsely relieved. I feel like I crossed a finish line and then someone decided now that they were going to mention that it’s a triathlon. I’m done, but I have much more to do before I’m finished.

At the same time, I am very, very excited. I have something to show for all the years of scribbling. It’s tangible, it’s being bought, and it’s being read. I have people asking me what happens next, what do certain scenes foreshadow, what characters get together. It’s small right now, but its undeniable that now I’m beginning to feel like that aforementioned writer who has created something that others enjoy and makes people think.

Did you solely write the story you wanted to write, or did you work with it, edit it somewhat to appeal commercially to a specific audience?

I wrote the book I’ve always wanted to read but no one has written. Whenever I write I think about what would interest me, what would make me read more and what would make me remember it. I was my own intended audience. However, I also read and watch just about everything, and everything has had its own influence on my writing. I know it’s quite a bit of a claim at this point, but I do think that The Towers of Adrala has something for just about everyone.

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The Towers of Adrala now available at Lulu.com:
Hardcover
Paperback

What is interesting it how many writers are using self-publishing and POD services as a way to attract interest from agents and more conventional publishers.

The sercret with Lulu and other similar online POD sites is not publishing the book (anyone with a bit of patience can do this) but how that book is marketed afterwards. There will come a time, as a result of these type of sites, that the term “self-published” becomes meaningless due to the volume of poorly written self-published books flooding the world, so it will be down to the talented self-publsihed writers to get out there and make their book stand out from the rest.

I also wonder how long it will be before agents and publishers will say they will only consider writers who have a POD book to submit with X number of sales?