Today we’d like to introduce you to Andrea Rand.
Andrea, please kick things off for us by telling us about yourself and your journey so far.
I have loved creative writing for as long as I’ve been able to hold a pencil in my hand and put words to paper. I have a distinct memory of being in my first-grade class and getting excited every time the teacher said it was time to do creative writing. Fast forward a few years, and I was reading books to my fourth-grade classmates–a series of books I’d written that featured my pet dachshunds. Although I went through phases of wanting to be a cartoonist, a comic book artist or a producer of animated movies like my idol Walt Disney, in the end, it always came back to story. I wanted to be the one writing it.
I took some creative writing courses in college but ended up majoring in business administration. I figured I could always write children’s books on the side, in my spare time, as I built a successful career in sales. However life was busy, and the dream of becoming a writer kept getting pushed off to another day, another year, another phase of life. When I started a family in 2001 and decided to quit my job to be a stay-at-home mom, I thought now was my chance to pursue that writing dream. But the children’s books never got written, or at least finished. I had underestimated how tiring, and time-consuming chasing after little ones can be, and to be brutally honest, I lacked the discipline and drive to finish a book.
I moved to Texas in 2005, and it was sometime after that when I was going through some storage boxes and found about eighty pages of a story I had started writing back in 2001, shortly after the September 11th attacks. One of the effects those attacks had on me was waking me up to the fact that not everyone enjoys the freedoms that Americans enjoy and take for granted every day. It’s not that I didn’t know this before, but I had never spent much time really thinking about it. I thought more and more about what leads a country into tyranny and what has kept America free, and started writing about a fantasy land called Kibblestan that is ruled by an oppressive regime of vicious dogs. But like most other stories I had started writing, I never finished it.
After retrieving the eighty pages from the storage boxes, I sat down and read them, and found myself wanting to know what happened next. I needed to finish. By now my kids were a little older, out of diapers and starting school. Maybe now was the time to pursue my writing dream. But the reality of writing for publication was pretty intimidating, and it was very easy to come up with excuses to keep putting it off.
Then out of the blue, it hit me one day–not everyone likes to spend their time going off writing stories just for fun. In fact, many people don’t like writing at all. But I did, and it was the one dream that had stuck with me since I was six years old. Chances are, it was going to stick with me for life, and I wasn’t getting any younger. So at that moment, I decided to get serious about learning the craft, how to navigate the publishing business and most of all, how to stick with a story long enough to escort it all the way to those last two words: THE END.
Can you give our readers some background on your art?
What started out an abandoned story re-discovered in some storage boxes has turned into a three-book saga of a fantastical land’s struggle to be free. THE CHRONICLES OF KIBBLESTAN is a fantasy series that is on the same reading level as the earlier Harry Potter books. While it is written with kids in mind, I have had several adults and teens who have told me how much they have enjoyed the series, too.
In book one, REVOLUTION, a boy named Ellis and his anxiety-prone dachshund get trapped in Kibblestan while it is under attack by monsters called Snotlins, who are destroying everything in their path in a seriously gross way. Ellis must figure out how to survive and escape and ends up unlocking some secrets about the Snotlins that spur a revolution in the land. In book two, CANINES, a girl named Kinzie promises her father that she will look after their couch-destroying, underwear-chewing, beloved mutt, Mo, while he is deployed. When Mo goes missing in Kibblestan, Kinzie sets off against great odds to find her. Time has elapsed since the first book, and Kibblestan has changed. The canines have turned evil, and a mysterious new ruler named Vladifer is now in power. Book three, THE WEB, is due to be released by the end of 2018. It takes place between books one and two, telling what happened in Kibblestan that made the canines turn evil.
I refer to THE CHRONICLES OF KIBBLESTAN as a fantastical adventure, with a patriotic twist. While the series is fun and filled with humor and suspense, I weave in some of America’s founding principles while exploring the underlying themes of liberty versus tyranny. For instance, in REVOLUTION, Ellis is the son of a Cuban exile, who has experienced communism firsthand and loves America for its freedom. When Ellis is asked to write a constitution and structure a government for Kibblestan after its revolution, he does so using the knowledge his father has passed down to him about the U.S. government and some of America’s founding principles. CANINES is dedicated to our military families and is a gentle reminder of the sacrifice family members make while their loved ones are deployed. THE WEB explores what happens when those in power aim to divide and rule.
Why do I write what I do? For some reason, I have always been drawn to writing for kids instead of adults. I think it’s because I have such vivid, fond memories of being a kid, and there is a part of me that never grew up. My main focus in writing THE CHRONICLES OF KIBBLESTAN is to entertain readers, pure and simple. But as an author, you can’t help but leave a bit of your heart on the page, and my heart is concerned that our children are growing up in a country that is becoming more and more divided every day. If my readers can enjoy my stories but also come away having learned a few things about civics or feeling a bit more proud of America and the freedom that it stands for, then that’s icing on the cake.
What is the message I hope to convey? One of my characters in the series is a wise, drooling unicorn who has traveled back and forth from Kibblestan to the human world and witnessed humanity since the beginning of time. He acts as adviser, warning Kibblestan not to repeat the mistakes he has seen humans make, and his advice is always the same. For a country to remain free, its citizens must do three things: value freedom, treat each other as equals, and never forget history.
One of my favorite quotes of his is in REVOLUTION when he’s talking to Ellis about how to keep Kibblestan free. “Some of the worst evils come about when people start throwin’ out labels, putting each other in some kind of group or class, instead of seeing each other for what they really are. Just people.” If I could choose one message for readers to take away from my books, that would be it.
Any advice for aspiring or new artists?
When I give my presentation to school children about how to become an author, one of the slides in my slideshow is of a man sticking his head inside the open jaws of an alligator, because letting others see your work can sometimes feel a bit like this. It is scary to share your writing with the world, but you’ll never improve your craft without letting others read your work and tell you what they think. There is a saying that writing is a journey, and I could not agree more. It is a journey with plenty of ups and downs, and you’ve got to have people in your corner to cheer you on and motivate you to keep going. To meet other writers, there are a few things you can do. If you are a children’s writer, I highly recommend looking into the North Texas chapter of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI). You can also contact your local library, as many times they know about and even host local writing groups. The annual DFW Writers conference is a great place to meet other writers and industry professionals. And you can also visit the website for DFW Writers Workshop www.dfwwritersworkshop.org
What’s the best way for someone to check out your work and provide support?
My books are available in paperback or e-book. Paperbacks can be bought directly from my website www.andrearand.com or online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. E-books are available on Amazon Kindle, Nook, Kobo, Apple i-Books and most other places where e-books are sold. I also am available for speaking engagements and writing workshops where I will always have my books available for purchase. One of my favorite things to do is to visit schools and encourage young writers. I give presentations about what it’s like to be an author as well as presentations on craft that align with some of Texas’ writing TEKS. More information can be found on my website under the Author Visits tab.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.AndreaRand.com
- Email: randwrites@gmail.com
- Instagram: author_andrearand
- Facebook: Andrea Rand, Author
- Twitter: @randwrites
Image Credit:
Andrea Rand
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