Interview with J.R. Andrews

emails, hallucinations, roller coasters

J.R. Andrews writes wild stories, and appropriately, I first met him in the strange internet range of ergot. His work has also appeared in lit mags and genre mags ranging from BRUISER to Shortwave. He’s a great writer of the weird and a great person to get to know. He’s kindly shared some insights with us about his writing journey!

You started writing and submitting fairly recently, right? What changed in your life when you started your creative practice?

I’ve always loved books. My mom got me a tape player when I was three. She’d get the book and the audiobook from the library at the same time, and I would sit there and pretend I knew when to turn the page. Fooled a lot of neighbors.

Writing, on the other hand, felt like trying out for the Olympics. We weren’t exactly a literary family, and I figured you were born into it.

Then, I don’t know—I got this job doing IT at a hospital. I was 25? I had to write about a hundred emails a day, so I was getting pretty darn good at typing. There was no bolt of lightning. It was like people-watching on a warm night. One easy day, I thought to myself, “Hey, I could write something.”

Those emails really were my bootcamp. No one’s got time in a hospital. You’ve got about three sentences to get your point across, so it was good training. Grab their attention. Be specific. Get out while you can.

I’d like to claim this was recent, but there were about 10 years between my little glow-up and the very first time I submitted something. I’m shy.

What are your goals when you write a story? How much planning goes into it?

If I have a goal, it’s that my stuff is as fun to read as it is to write.

I think it was George R.R. Martin who said, “There are two types of writers: architects and gardeners.” Je suis le gardener.

I get a ton of ideas, and my method is to just let them live or die on the page. I’ve written SO MANY bad stories, but I think that’s the only way I get to the good ones.

I do like to figure out the ending pretty early in the process. I’m a big believer in painting for the final color.

What are some of your favorites of your own stories that you can point us to online? What sparked them? I’m interested in the psychedelic themes in your work!

When I was in high school, you could still buy salvia at the gas station.

Think about that. You couldn’t buy beer or cigarettes at 16, but you could buy this substance that would reliably hurtle you into this entirely weird and not understood place.

I never smoked salvia (thank God!) but the terror visions described by others never left me. One of my friends smoked that poison and went functionally blind for a whole week!

I am WAY too sensitive to drugs. I had this chronic pain issue late in my twenties that the doctors threw a lot of prescriptions at. Pretty much all of them caused me to hallucinate in one form or the other.

I think the demons I encountered during that era found their way into my horror writing. It’s good though. Speaking their names exorcises them in a way.

I don’t know about my favorite story to read, but my favorite one to write was Beyond the Tower. I woke up from this nightmare like, “Well, that was something.” Two hours later I had 98% of what became the final manuscript. I wish more of my work peeled off that easily.

What artists and other people in your life inspire you to write, and to continue writing when things are difficult? What drew you to writing about darker themes?

I work around college aged kids now – they’re probably my biggest inspiration to continue when times get tough.

As creatives, we’ve all had that moment where we’re hugging ourselves on the floor thinking, “What am I doing? I’m not an artist! I’ve wasted my life!” No? Just me?

Sorry, I call them my “kids”. They’re young adults. But they keep me young at heart. When you’re 20, that well of optimism never seems to run dry. I’ll get 50 rejections in a row, and they’ll say to me, “No worries, Mr. Andrews. The next one will be different!”

I’m glad they’re the ones making me more hopeful, instead of me turning them more cynical.

I’ve loved horror for most of my life. I still remember the rush I got the first time I read The Hellbound Heart by Clive Barker. I was high for weeks.

Good horror hits me like a roller coaster. I LOVE roller coasters.

What advice do you have for other writers who are starting out?

Writing is hard. Go easy on yourself.

Also, don’t be embarrassed about being your own biggest cheerleader. Repost that acceptance notice ten times in one day on social media! If you don’t believe in what you’re doing, no one else will either.

Are you interested in writing longer fiction as well, or does short fiction hold your fascination?

Someday I’ll write a novel, but I feel like short fiction is about to have a moment. Also, true I’ve been having this feeling for the last decade.

I am enamored with short form fiction. Especially reading it. It’s not even the impression of a life. It’s the impression of the impression of one. Done right, it’s like the world’s best magic trick. You get this feeling like, “How the hell did they do that?!”

How did the landscape of your youth (Michigan!) affect your work? Any other locations?

If something I write makes you chuckle, that’s the Michigander in me.

When I was a kid, when enough folks were together, there was this quiet competition. Everyone looking at one another thinking, “There’s a joke here someplace. I’m gonna be the one to find it.” And the delivery was invariably dry as toast. That was my childhood. That’s Midwest humor.

Oh, and drinking! That’s the other thing the Midwest is known for: a bar on every corner. You figure every country has its “Midwest.”

My family has so many hilarious drinking stories. Burning dump trunks of anecdotes about Friday night and insobriety. No shame in it. We were Catholic. Drinking was something you did at church.

It didn’t occur to me to begin consuming horror content until I moved to Florida. I was in high school at the time, so, maybe puberty had something to do with it?

I know most folks think of Florida as beaches, sunshine, and Disneyworld, but I always felt there’s a monster hiding around every corner here.