The Story behind the Story—Faith, Firepower & Fiction by Andrews and Wilson

 JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Recently, I was talking with a friend, and she asked, "Do you have other stories you'd like to explore? Other than your series?" Boy, do I! That's the thing for most writers. You have more ideas for books than you have time to put them down. And there's another bar to overcome as well - if you've become known for small-town mysteries about a cop and a priest, publishers might look askance at your idea for an historical mystery set in London. Or if you're the bestselling writing team of action-packed military thrillers, like Brian Andrews and Jeffrey Wilson, how do you tell your readers you'd like to have characters struggle with faith as well as fights? Let alone sell your publisher on the idea of adding supernatural elements to your suspense!

Well, Brian and Jeff, writing as Andrews & Wilson, got lucky. That is, if you use the formula preparation + opportunity = luck...

In corporate team-building retreats, there’s a well-known trust-building exercise where you are instructed to stand up straight, fold your arms across your chest, and blindly fall backward like a board into the ready and waiting arms of strangers. Assuming all goes well, they catch you . . . saving you from an embarrassing fall and probable concussion. When your turn is over, you switch and one of the catchers swaps places and becomes the catchee. . . .

This is the metaphor we like to use to describe the partnership between an author (or in our case coauthors) and a publisher when launching a new series. In the case of the Shepherds series, our new action-adventure series with spiritual elements, we put our trust in Tyndale House. But like any partnership, the reciprocal is also true—Tyndale had to put their trust in us. But before we dive too much deeper into the series, we’re getting ahead of ourselves, because there is an interesting “story behind the story” that we have to share.

It all started when a fellow thriller author friend of ours, Army veteran Josh Hood, was on an airline flight and struck up a conversation with the woman sitting next to him. As fate would have it, she worked at Tyndale House and noticed that Josh was working on a manuscript. Friendly small talk ensued, and after talking about his faith and background, he explained that he wrote military thrillers. She responded by telling him that Tyndale was looking to grow its men’s action-adventure presence in the market. Naturally she inquired if he had any material with faith elements that might be submission ready that Tyndale could take a look at. Josh, being Josh, said something to the effect of “At the moment I do not, but I just so happen to know some guys who do. Andrews & Wilson have a project under development that I think may be exactly what you’re looking for.”

The next day, Josh called Jeff, recounted the story, and an hour later our agent, Gina Panetierri, was in contact with Tyndale House. A couple of days later, we were on a Zoom call with Karen Watson and her team at Tyndale working out the details of a groundbreaking new series called the Shepherds. They’d never worked with us before, we’d never worked with them, but we shared a vision—the desire to bring authentic action, military characters, and spiritual elements to the marketplace.

Faith, firepower, and fiction . . . that was our mission.

Fast-forward twenty months and here we are, in the middle of launch week doing interviews and virtual events for the first book in the series, Dark Intercept. The entire process sometimes feels surreal, getting from there to here, and yet isn’t that the way of things in life? Unexpected doors are opened, unexpected introductions are made, and unexpected collaborations ensue . . . but none of that would be possible without trust.

Assuming the story behind the story has piqued your interest, by now you’re probably wondering what the Shepherds series is and what makes it unique. Great question! When the Tyndale team read the manuscript, they came back to us excitedly proclaiming that Dark Intercept is “Taken meets Stranger Things.” We immediately loved that tagline, because it truly captures the heart of the first book in the series—a thriller series with both supernatural and action components. Taken is the story of a man who is willing to risk everything and do anything to rescue his kidnapped daughter. In Dark Intercept, we find Jedidiah Johnson in a similar situation— except in Jed’s case, there’s a twist. Instead of setting out to rescue his own daughter, Jed agrees to rescue the daughter he wishes he had. The Stranger Things mash-up is a super fun and appropriate reference because just like in that series, in Dark Intercept, the reader quickly realizes there’s more going on than meets the eye in the streets of Nashville. Seemingly impossible supernatural occurrences are happening all around Jed, and the more he tries to deny them, the worse things get. An unseen war is raging, and the players are engaged in a spiritual warfare battles between good and evil.

A lot of people have asked us if the Shepherds series is a new direction for us because we’re incorporating these elements, but the answer is no. We don’t actually think of this series as a new direction, rather just an extension of the work we’re already doing. We’re best known for having coauthored the bestselling thriller series Tier One and its shared universe series Sons of Valor. The Shepherds series incorporates all the same elements our readers love and look forward to: covert operations intrigue, fast-paced action sequences, and nefarious plots carried out by bad guys who are as competent as they are vile.

What sets the Shepherds series apart from our previous work is a deeply personal spiritual component. Through the protagonist’s eyes, we tackle questions of faith and purpose. Like so many of our readers, our hero has regrets. He needs answers to questions that he’s too afraid to ask. He second-guesses the choices he’s made in his past, and the path forward he’s seeking is both unclear and frightening. To the world, he presents himself as a battle-hardened warrior who has it all figured out. But on the inside, our hero is racked with self-doubt. Like so many of us, he realizes he can’t figure it all out by himself, alone and in his own headspace. He needs help. He needs purpose. He needs faith. These are very human themes, themes that readers—both secular and spiritual—can wrap their heads around and relate to. So while we are breaking new ground by incorporating these elements into our existing framework of action adventure, the characters still drive the story. And as authors known for writing realistic, true-to-life military thrillers, we look at the faith elements not as something new, but as just another, important layer in writing characters true to the heroes we’ve served with.

Which brings us full circle back to the theme of this article: trust. There’s actually a third member of the crazy trust exercise we described: the author, the publisher, and the reader. That’s right, we’re asking you, the reader, to trust us. We’re asking you to pick up a copy of Dark Intercept and put your faith in our hands to catch you as you free-fall into an adventure that might feel a little uncomfortable or crazy at first. Don’t worry; we’ll catch you . . . and we promise you’ll have a thrilling experience for it.

 

JULIA: That's an offer you can't refuse. Readers, how do you feel about authors expanding into different types of fiction? What do you think of genre-blending? Has there ever been an author you liked better the second or third series down the road?

 

Andrews & Wilson is the bestselling writing team of Brian Andrews and Jeffrey Wilson—the authors behind the Shepherds series, the Tier One and Sons of Valor series, and Rogue Asset, the ninth book in the W.E.B. Griffin Presidential Agent series. They write action-adventure and covert operations novels honoring the heroic men and women who serve in the military and intelligence communities.

Brian is a former submarine officer, entrepreneur, and Park Leadership Fellow with degrees from Vanderbilt and Cornell. He is also a principal contributor at careerauthors.com, a site dedicated to helping aspiring authors. Jeff worked as an actor, firefighter, paramedic, jet pilot, and diving instructor, as well as a vascular and trauma surgeon. During his fourteen years of service, Jeff made multiple deployments as a combat surgeon with an East Coast–based SEAL Team. Jeff now leads a men’s military ministry for a large church in Tampa.

To learn more about their books, sign up for their newsletter online at andrews-wilson.com. Follow them on Twitter: @BAndrewsJWilson and Instagram/Facebook: AndrewsandWilson.