TSM: You two have been co-authors for several years and have written multiple books together. What does your writing process usually look like? How has it evolved over the years as you’ve learned to write together?
A&W: Well, we’d like to give you a long overview of our insanely disciplined and well developed process, but honestly ours looks a little more like two ten year olds playing in the back yard. The most important thing, and the principle we started with from our first book almost a decade ago, was that we would put the principles of team and mission before self that were bred into us in the military to work in our writing process. There is no ego, no “yours” or “mine” in our prose. We work together to accomplish the mission, in this case to write the best damn story we can. We write simultaneously, each taking a point of view character in a particular act of the book, but we trade those characters back and forth and we each re-write the others chapters with no rule on what can and can’t be tweaked, changed, or even deleted. It requires a great deal of trust in one another, but it creates the best book we can, as a team, produce—and one we could likely not produce individually. Over the years, we may have tweaked the process slightly—we outline almost not at all now and instead spend hours on the phone, talking many times a day when knee deep in a project—but those guiding principles remain the same and are the secret sauce of our success after a couple of dozen books together.
TSM: You and your books have a relatively interactive and engaged fan base, as seen on your website. How do you think feedback and interaction from fans has impacted your careers? Has it ever felt like an increased pressure on your backs or is it more of a simple encouragement?
A&W: Well, it never really feels like pressure. Definitely more like encouragement. The Andrews and Wilson fans have become like a family, interacting with us but also, many times, with each other. That has been really fun to watch. And the diversity of the readers is really inspiring too, with just as many housewives from Ohio reading as men and women who served in the military or intelligence communities. Now, sometimes the readers get impatient (you know who you are) and send us emails demanding to know when Tier One’s Dempsey is coming back or why the wait for Chunk and his team to return in the Sons of Valor series, but that, too, just inspires us because it means the characters have become as real to our readers as they are to us!
TSM: Can you tell us about your newest book, The Sandbox?
A&W: The Sandbox brings our Andrews and Wilson brand of action thrillers to a new and exciting arena of grounded techno thrillers. An activist entrepreneur, a maligned AI, and a newly minted homicide detective with a haunted past catastrophically intersect in our book that is Silence of the Lambs meets Ex Machina.
When the CEO of the world’s leading artificial intelligence company is found murdered in his home, former Army CID officer Valerie Marks is thrust into her first case as a homicide detective. Valerie has a gift for reading people, a gift that has never failed her before. But that gift is put to the test when her instincts point her to an impossible suspect―an AI born from a secret venture with the Pentagon known as Project Nomad.
To learn the truth, Valerie must team up with two men she doesn’t trust―a Green Beret turned government spook from the Pentagon, and the victim’s former partner and leading suspect in the case. But nothing can prepare the trio for the dangers that await them and the existential threat to humanity if the Project Nomad AI has somehow escaped its sandbox.
TSM: The Sandbox is described as a “techno-thriller.” What would you say is the most exciting or interesting part of writing this tech-focused, sci-fi/speculative fiction spin on the thriller genre?
A&W: Clearly for us the most fun tackling this subgenre was stimulating our own scientific curiosity. As a former Nuclear engineer partnered with a former vascular surgeon and pilot, we obviously have the background for exploring the science behind technology, but the excitement of researching the topic of AI was beyond our expectations. And, now, it happens that AI is very much in the public spotlight, making our novel all the more timely. While we explore the topic of AI from a technology point of view, we think our readers will still find the Andrews and Wilson brand of action and suspense in the pages, and we hope they find this to be a real thrill ride that maybe also makes them ask their own questions about emerging AI technology.
TSM: The Silence of the Lambs and Ex Machina are listed as two major influences in The Sandbox. Are there any other books, authors, movies, or other pieces of media that have inspired you during the writing process?
A&W: The idea of man versus machine is certainly not a new one and has been the topic of countless books, movies, and shows. What makes this story a bit more exciting, and terrifying, is that we base it on technology that is present or in development right now. There is certainly a Terminator vibe to the story, but just as much the story is informed by stories right out of the news.
TSM: Can you tell us a bit about the process of designing an AI character such as Charlie?
A&W: Wow, what a great time that was. We tried to approach Charlie as we do most of our characters with that sort of “what if” question. While it’s clearly a bit anthropomorphic to assign truly human characteristics to the AI personality of Charlie, the what if idea here was simply what if an artificial intelligence went mad? What would that look like? For our AI Charlie, the inciting event was as simple as solitude. We know from countless studies the effects that solitary confinement can have on humans, but what if that same effect were true for an AI? When the researchers at Platform Cognition leave Charlie each night in his sandbox program, he is alone and unstimulated. Worse, because AI operates at a frame rate much, much faster than ours, that period of overnight solitude would feel like weeks or months or even years, and it happens again and again.
We had a great time developing both Charlie’s psychopathology, but also his arrogance. More fun still was developing his alter ego—his Jiminy Cricket that wants to do the right thing, even in the face of his anger and resentment. Can an AI have a moral compass or be morally conflicted? If so, this is what it might look like.
TSM: What do you hope readers take away from The Sandbox?
A&W: Look, AI is not just coming, it’s here. That element of our story is no longer speculative or even fiction. At its heart, The Sandbox is a thriller novel meant to entertain, but we hope it also makes people think about the future of this tech. We aren’t against the safe application of AI technology and we see the absolutely undeniable benefits in health, medicine, science engineering, and military and intelligence gathering. It is likely that the cure for cancer is around the corner with the help of AI. But we as a species best have a plan for how to control it. Because the negative side is out there too…waiting.
TSM: And finally, what’s next? Any upcoming projects we can look forward to from you?
A&W: Well, we always get emails from fans worried that they’ll lose touch with John Dempsey and the Ember Team from TIER ONE or Chunk and his gang of SEALs from SONS OF VALOR, but all of our series are continuing. Sons of Valor book 3 is coming out this fall, Tier One book 8 is in development as we speak, and the fourth book in our SHEPHERDS series is in the works. Obviously, we’re beyond excited to have our contribution to the Jack Ryan Series in the Tom Clancy Universe coming soon with the release of ACT OF DEFIANCE next May. Writing a sub book to celebrate the 40th anniversary of HUNT FOR THE RED OCTOBER is an honor we’ll never forget. And, folks can check out our website to learn more about the multiple TV and feature film projects we have coming up as both Executive Producers and Screenwriters. That new part of our career as storytellers has been really exciting. There’s a lot going on, so the easiest way to keep up is to subscribe to our newsletter at www.andrews-wilson.com