AWAKE received a 4+ star review, making it an IndieReader Approved title.
Following find an interview with author Andrew Palmer.
What is the name of the book and when was it published?
AWAKE; eBook was published August 2, 2020. Print version published Sept 9, 2020.
What’s the book’s first line?
And then it was dark.
What’s the book about? Give us the “pitch”.
A VR-game designer builds a dream simulator to control his recurring nightmares, but
when the operating system malfunctions he must confront his haunted past in order to
regain control.
What inspired you to write the book? A particular person? An event?
I originally wrote Awake as a screenplay because many filmmakers sparked their careers with low budget, high-concept genre films, and I wanted the same for my directorial debut. Science fiction has so much latitude as a storytelling device that I wanted to brand my production company around it with a focus on space, time travel, and dreams. Dream sequences in The Sopranos are some of the best ever produced, with an authentic and compelling representation of actual dreams that focuses on psychological elements to minimize costly visual effects. This became the main driving force behind Awake. I also needed a story with minimal locations, hence Eddie’s aloof character, who turns his condo into a research lab, so he never has to leave.
An actor I worked with in Sudbury told me a story about getting stung by a jellyfish growing up, which seemed like a unique origin story, so I really wanted to incorporate that into Eddie’s nightmare sequences. In university, a friend told me she had a dream about me, and we started dating shortly after – this event sparked the idea for a story in which people were connected through their dreams. My father later introduced me to Carl Jung’s collective unconscious theories (which were quite similar) and when the plot of Awake found Edward trapped in his dream simulator, this became the perfect way for him to communicate with Cura as a cry for help.
What’s the main reason someone should really read this book?
To forget their troubles with a thrilling sci-fi escape. On the surface, Awake is a psychological sci-fi thriller, but its theme actually centers on the illusion of control. Bad things happen in life and people often try to control everything that happens to them, which can become psychologically draining. Awake incorporates mindfulness techniques that I learned over the years from practicing meditation, and books like Positive Intelligence and Strong and Fearless.
The moral of the story is working alone versus working with others. When I wrote the original screenplay, Edward’s character was designed as a loner (for minimal cast expense), but after the COVID pandemic locked me in a condo for 5 weeks, I gained perspective on what Edward’s life would have been like. The quote from Orson Welles was used at the beginning to highlight the importance of personal relationships, because they are truly what makes our lives worth living.
What’s the most distinctive thing about the main character? Who-real or fictional-would you say the character reminds you of?
The most distinctive thing about the main character is his prodigious talent for computer innovation. In real life, he reminds me of Elon Musk mixed with Howard Hughes (from his later reclusive years); or perhaps the troubled genius of Bobby Fischer. Edward reminds me of fictional characters like Jacob Singer and Tony Stark; or Neo (at the beginning of The Matrix) before he embraces his destiny to become The One.
If they made your book into a movie, who would you like to see play the main character(s)?
Timothée Chalamet does a great job in Beautiful Boy as a troubled drug addict with redeeming qualities. I think this type of duality would encapsulate Edward. Paul Dano would also be great for the role. He’s a fantastic actor who would bring a lot of empathy to the character, while fitting the nerdy computer tech stereotype. Dane DeHaan was amazing in Chronicle and The Place Beyond the Pines, portraying characters that really capture the vengeful side of Edward.
For Athena, I think Kristine Froseth embodies a youthful innocence that her AI character would need to contrast the dangerous power she wields. Katherine McNamara could be another direction, bringing a more playful flirtatious character to the role. Ziyi Zhang was amazing in Memoirs of a Geisha, I’d love to see how she would play Athena. I worked with Autumn Reeser a few times and thought she would be great for Cura. Dominique McElligott’s performance on The Boys has a similar haunted past that would work well for Cura. Walton Goggins would make an interesting Jack. Jon Hamm, Idris Elba, Clive Owen, Christopher Meloni all have that alpha male/business tycoon look he would need to appear as an antagonist in the beginning.
When did you first decide to become an author?
I was always writing stories growing up, but I tried to do it professionally after working in the film industry for a few years. It’s very hard to get anyone to read a script, so I hired a comic book artist to
storyboard some pages for pitching the story and the result looked fantastic, so we completed the script as a graphic novel. Holding that first print copy in my hands was so rewarding that I wanted to keep producing new material, but illustrating graphic novels on spec is expensive. After I published on Kindle Direct Publishing, they sent e-newsletters with stats showing novels were more saleable online than comics, so I reworked Dark Frontier as a novel, with the full story serving as an outline for season 1 of a TV series. The scope of the story was so vast that it took a whole winter to plot out, and soon I was back at my regular job with no time to actually write. A colleague learned about Dark Frontier and told me that his nephew (WJ Davies) was a successful self-published author, so I contacted him to write the novel (using my notes). Dark Frontier took a year to finish and by that time I had completed another script (about my grandmother’s life in WWII). I felt pretty confident with the process of novelizing a screenplay at this point, so I hired another indie writer to novelize Whirlwind.
These scripts received some criticism for having weak characters who were pushed around by plot, so I read Creating Character Arcs by K.M. Weiland. This book really helped me understand how character arcs are woven into the story structure, and afterward I decided to write a completely character driven story. It also needed to be a high-concept niche genre, and something I could finance production of on a shoe-string budget. The resulting script Awake was received well, so I started saving money to produce it, but COVID hit and the film industry got shut down. Lockdown delayed the prospect of shooting Awake this year, but being stuck at home gave me lots of free time. Writing a novel seemed daunting and I wasn’t sure if I could do it, until one day when I was painting a landscape and realized that layering colours onto the naked canvas was a similar process to writing. This gave me the confidence to try writing Awake on my own, by ‘painting’ words around the story structure of the screenplay. About five weeks later, I finished and published the novel.
Is this the first book you’ve written?
This is the first book I’ve written on my own.
What do you do for work when you’re not writing?
I work professionally on TV and film productions as an assistant director. In 2014, I started a production company to develop TV & film, music, and novels. I also like to paint and have been lucky enough to rent some pieces to production studios for set decoration.
How much time do you generally spend on your writing?
I think my whole life revolves around writing, because the way I interpret events impacts the stories I want to tell. That being said, if I’m on a TV or film production it’s hard to pull a 14+ hour workday and then concentrate on writing. I always spend my hiatus writing, and since film production slows down a lot in the winter, I usually aim to finish a screenplay or novel during that time.
What’s the best and the hardest part of being an indie?
The best part is probably the freedom to write anything. I’ve seen a lot of series and movies sabotaged by executives with their own agenda. The hardest part from a business perspective has been marketing and sales. From a personal standpoint, getting negative criticism definitely hurts, but at the same time it’s helped me learn how to improve. I definitely felt like Michael Jordan after reading the positive IndieReader review for Awake – when he wept for winning the first NBA Championship, admitting it was a “Seven-year struggle”.
What’s a great piece of advice that you can share with fellow indie authors?
ABC. Always Be Creating. KM Weiland’s book really helped me understand character arcs, I recommend it. The president of a talent agency said to me, “Do you tell people you’re a writer, or do you write 5 pages a day?” There’s a big difference between having an idea and turning it into words on paper. The juice is worth the squeeze, but it takes work.
Would you go traditional if a publisher came calling? If so, why?
Depends on the contract. After I self-published a graphic novel, my friend (who always wanted to make a comic book) was inspired to write his own – and he just signed a deal with a traditional publisher! Their resources and networks are valuable, but at the same time he has limited control over his IP.
Is there something in particular that motivates you (fame? fortune?)
To live on a warm beach year-round and write novels would be a dream. Mostly though, I want to make movies!
Which writer, living or dead, do you most admire?
Robert Heinlein.
Which book do you wish you could have written?
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein. I loved this book and was devastated reading it because the story is exactly what I wanted to do with Dark Frontier. Apparently, James Cameron had the same reaction after watching Star Wars and then went on to write Aliens, so hopefully my story will be a good evolution to the concept that people can also enjoy.