An Inside Look - With Shaun David Hutchinson
Author of The Five Stages of Andrew Brawley
*Another summer Monday, means another "inside look" with an author.
*It has been such an honor to connect with authors and "chat" with them about their novel, the characters, and their thoughts about the story.
*I have had such fun connecting with authors and "picking" their brains.
*Here are the links to my first ELEVEN interviews...
Interview #9 with Melanie Conklin (Author of Counting Thyme)
Interview #10 with Claire Legrand (Author of Some Kind of Happiness)
Interview #11 with Lynn Plourde (Author of Maxi's Secrets)
Interview #10 with Claire Legrand (Author of Some Kind of Happiness)
Interview #11 with Lynn Plourde (Author of Maxi's Secrets)
*I first learned of Shaun David Hutchinson when I read his novel We Are The Ants which I enjoyed very much.
*After reading that novel I looked into what else he had written and found this title. I was intrigued by the title and the cover.
*You can't really compare the two stories, but they were both so wonderful, interesting, and page turning.
*While reading The Five Stages of Andrew Brawley I could not put it down and probably finished in a day or two.
*As I tend to do when I love a novel, I reached out to the author and had a few back and forth conversations with Shaun.
*Here are his responses to my questions about the main character Andrew...
*After reading that novel I looked into what else he had written and found this title. I was intrigued by the title and the cover.
*You can't really compare the two stories, but they were both so wonderful, interesting, and page turning.
*While reading The Five Stages of Andrew Brawley I could not put it down and probably finished in a day or two.
*As I tend to do when I love a novel, I reached out to the author and had a few back and forth conversations with Shaun.
*Here are his responses to my questions about the main character Andrew...
The Five Stages of Andrew Brawley by Shaun David Hutchinson (Released January 20, 2015)
How did
you come to know Andrew?
Through many, many
drafts. I started with this idea about a boy who was living in a hospital
after the death of his parents. I didn’t know much more than that when I
started writing. The first couple of drafts consisted mostly of Drew
wandering around the hospital causing mischief, and it took a while before his
story really came together. With every draft, I got to know Drew and his
story a little bit better as he revealed a little more to me about who he was and
why he was there. Some characters spring fully formed onto the page, but
Drew was kind of shy, and it took a long time to figure him out.
What do
you think is Andrew's most admirable quality?
His compassion.
He’s dealing with the loss of his family, and not dealing with it
particularly well, but he still cares about the people in the hospital and
wants to take care of them even when he’s ignoring his own needs.
Is there
anything you wish Andrew would have changed or done differently in his story?
That’s tough.
I think it’s difficult to ever finish a book. There are always
things I want to change or add. But the one thing that still bugs me is
the ending. Not the comic book ending—which I think is perfect—but the
chapter that leads up to that. I think I rushed it a little, and I’d
probably do that a little diffently.
What do
you think Andrew can offer to other young people that are experiencing similar
situations to what he went through?
Hope. I write
a lot about dark topics. Depression and death and suicide, but the one
thing Drew offers is the idea that no matter how bad things get, there’s still
hope out there. My early drafts of The Five Stages of Andrew Brawley were
called The Walls because the hospital is something of a metaphor for being
trapped by guilt and despair, but at the end Drew realizes there’s still life
beyond the walls. And I think that’s true for all of us who find
ourselves trapped by darkness. There’s always life beyond the walls.
How did you
research Andrew and the circumstances he found himself in?
I took a lot
of liberties with Drew’s experiences in the hospital. For instance, it’s
highly unlikely that a remote hospital like Roanoke would have the facilities
necessary to deal with Rusty’s severe burns. But I drew on my own
experiences training as an EMT. I worked some shifts in hospitals and
rode along with local paramedics. A lot of the descriptions of
patients—including the young boy who drowned—were based on real experiences I’d
had during that time.
Do you and
Andrew share any similarities?
I think we both
have a tendency to get trapped in our own heads and difficulty seeing beyond
the pain we’re experiencing in the moment. When bad things happen to
Drew, he gets tunnel vision, and that’s something I also deal with.
What was
the hardest scene to write about Andrew?
The scene where he
has to perform CPR on the dead boy who’d drowned. That was taken directly
from my own life. I was with paramedics who were called to a the house of
a young boy who’d drowned, and he was clearly dead when we arrived. He
was on the front lawn, and his entire family was out there, screaming and
crying, and we had to work on him. The paramedic in charge had me perform
CPR on the boy while they worked on him even though they knew there was no
chance to save him. It was the first time I’d really seen a dead body,
and it still haunts me to this day.
Who do you
think was Andrew's biggest supporter and why?
I think Drew was collecting
surrogate family members in the hospital, so he had a lot of supporters, but I
think his biggest supporter could have been Miss Michelle. I took a
little criticism for casting the social worker as a potential antagonist in the
story (and that criticism is probably justified), but Miss Michelle is really
only an antagonist in Drew’s mind. The reality is that she, more than
anyone else, wanted to help Drew. That was her job. And I think if
he’d spoken to her sooner and let her help him, she would have. Of
course, then the story would have only been twenty pages.
Why do you
think people fill up their lives by helping others when they are dealing with
their own pain and/or issues?
I was on this
panel about grief with Jason Reynolds, and we were talking about the ways in
which people deal with it. He said something really profound that stuck
with me. He said (and I’m paraphrasing here…hopefully not badly) that no
one really gets over grief. That we’re all just looking for people to share
it with. I think that’s why we help others when we’re in pain.
We’re looking for people who understand what we’re going through. We’re
looking to support others in our situation while simultaneously seeking out
that same support for ourselves. When I’m going through a bad depression
it helps me to make other people smile. Doing so doesn’t always make me
feel better at the time, but it helps me know that I can and will feel better
eventually.
What do
you think Andrew is doing as this present time?
I’ve never quite
been able to let go of Drew, so he pops up occasionally in other books. I
think he’s still out there trying to figure out his life. He’s working on
more Patient F comic books, thinking about Rusty, and living the best life he
can.
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