Brian Andrews and Jeffrey Wilson Interview

Q:  Dark Intercept is the first of three novels in the Shepherd series. Can you give us a brief overview of the series?

A:  The Shepherds series follows Navy SEAL Jedidiah Johnson, a man haunted by a strange event in his youth that shook his faith and put his life on a new trajectory. Now medically retiring after an injury, he is called back into action when his estranged childhood best friend David reaches out for help in locating his kidnapped daughter, Sarah Beth. This begins Jedidiah’s journey into the world of spiritual warfare, fought in the shadows by the mysterious covert action unit known as the Shepherds. Dark Intercept kicks off an action-filled series that explores biblical concepts of spiritual warfare, good and evil, and crises in faith in a modern setting while beginning Jedidiah’s heroic journey to redemption.

Q:  “Taken meets Stranger Things” and “supernatural thriller series with military elements” have been two phrases used to describe this series. Why are those great descriptive phrases?

A:  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’d 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 battle is raging, and the players are engaged in spiritual warfare.

Q:  You’re known for having coauthored the popular military series Tier One. Why will readers of the Tier One series enjoy the Shepherd series? What is different about the Shepherd series that fans will find surprising?

A:  The Shepherds series incorporates all the thrilling elements our Tier One 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 this 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 faith. He needs God.

Q:  As coauthors, can you describe your writing process? What strengths do each of you bring to the table?

A:  We’ve had a number of years now to perfect our coauthoring process and the one thing that makes it possible is having a shared vision of the project and constant communication. When we are writing a new project, we talk many times a day, to make sure we are on track with the same story line and writing with the same voice. This is particularly important for us, because our process involves writing simultaneously.

We begin every new project by brainstorming the story. The brainstorming phase is super fun and we feel like two kids playing army in the woods. Every new project usually starts with a what-if question—like “What if a Navy SEAL had a crisis of faith after confronting real evil and in order to find his way back to God, he has to overcome an enemy his SEAL skills alone aren’t sufficient to fight?”

After we’ve brainstormed the crux of the story, we start mapping the arc into three acts. We create a bullet-style outline for the first act and then get to writing. We write in the third person with multiple POVs, so naturally, to get started, the first thing we do is assign chapters based on POV characters. As a writing team, it’s important that we each get to share time in every character’s headspace, so we rotate as we go so both authors get to spend time writing all the POV characters.

Also critical to our process is the idea of continuous developmental editing. Every two or three chapters, we pass chapters back and forth and do a rewrite of the other author’s work. This allows us to both bring our individual strengths to every chapter but also ensures that each chapter has the shared, singular Andrews & Wilson voice we are known for. These then go into the master file and we move on. As for what strengths we each bring to the table, well, that is an Andrews & Wilson brand secret.

Q:  Where did the inspiration for this series come from?

A:  This series is one we’ve been kicking around for a while. Obviously the inspiration for the military and covert operations side of the story comes from our time in service and the real-life special operators we’ve had the honor to serve beside. Blending this with faith and biblical supernatural elements, however, is inspired to an extent by the same service. In our own lives and service, we’ve had to deal with burning questions about the nature of God, His role in the world and our lives, good and evil, and supernatural, spiritual warfare the Bible tells us rages around us every day.

Jeff’s opportunity to lead a men’s military ministry for a large church further inspired both of us as we worked through the issues with veterans and active-duty service members struggling with the same questions.

Q:  What can you tell us about the research process for a series like this? Did you learn anything new while writing this particular series?

A:  As we said above, our personal experiences inform us tremendously on all aspects of the stories in this series, both our military service and our intimate involvement in the military ministry at Grace Family Church. It is exciting to delve into the Bible to research the supernatural elements of the story. Our goal was to craft a story with strong faith-centric supernatural elements that could be supported by Scripture. To help with this, we spent many hours consulting with our own personal faith leaders but also a Catholic priest friend so we could get a variety of perspectives on these elements. In the end, Dark Intercept is fiction and so our goal was not to get these aspects perfect, but to make them comfortable to those who know Scripture.

Q:  Which character in Dark Intercept was your favorite to write? Why? Which character was the most difficult to write? Why?

A:  Our protagonist Jedidiah Johnson was thrilling to write. Our shared military service gives us a certain kinship with Jed. At the same time, there were periods of struggle where the personal and spiritual issues Jed wrestles with in the story also happen to hit very close to home for us. Jedidiah is a warrior in spirit and deed, but he struggles with the same questions of faith and purpose that so many Americans do. He wants to find answers to those things creating uncertainty and confusion in his life, but for too long he’s been afraid to ask the hard questions. Looking in the mirror can be a challenge, especially when what you see in the reflection makes you uncomfortable. We think everyone can relate to that.

Writing Sarah Beth Yarnell tested our storytelling chops. It’s a challenge to find a realistic voice for younger characters and finding an authentic voice for our twelve-year-old heroine was no small endeavor. Ultimately the task was made easier by the fact that we both have daughters about Sarah Beth’s age—daughters who are strong young ladies and girls of faith. By putting ourselves in Sarah Beth’s shoes and trying to channel the courage necessary to survive her ordeal, we found the inspiration to write her story.

Q:  The Shepherd series includes a faith element. Is this a new direction for your novels? Why did you choose to include a faith element?

A:  One of the greatest blessings of writing this series for Tyndale House has been the ability to blend elements of our faith into our passion for writing gut-wrenching, authentic covert operations fiction. It was such a thrill to have great discussions with one another and others about what we believe and what the Bible says, about both the spiritual warfare aspects and the faith crisis aspects of the story. This was a new, but very natural, direction for us and one we feel is important because, as we said before, these are questions that an enormous number of combat veterans, as well as everyday folks, struggle profoundly with. After twenty years of constant, sustained, and highly kinetic combat operations in the Middle East, the number of active-duty personnel and veterans with this experience is enormous. Add to this their loved ones who often must struggle beside them with similar questions, and you have millions and millions of people for whom the questions we pose are relevant. Being able to put all of this into an exciting thriller novel gives readers a new medium to tackle their own questions of faith and spirituality. We hope as the readers of this novel go on Jed’s journey with him, they find their own answers and insights in parallel.

Q:  Male readers will enjoy this series, but why do you think female readers will enjoy it?

A:  Over the years, we were delighted to find that our novels have always resonated with an unexpectedly large number of women readers. One reason is that there is much more crossover of genre between men and women now than in the past and there is a huge population of female thriller readers. We also have always worked to place strong female characters into all our stories, as this accurately reflects the world we live in. In the case of the Shepherds series, we also have the universally accessible themes of crisis, faith, loss, and the nature of evil that we hope will resonate with everyone.

Q:  Some of the underlying themes in Dark Intercept are war, crisis of faith, and the nature of evil. Why are these relevant themes for a thriller novel releasing in 2021?

A:  These themes are not only impacting an increasingly large percentage of our population as war rages on for twenty years now, but these are also themes that are increasingly relevant to those who have never served or been close to those who have. Terrorism, COVID-19, violent protests, racism, increasingly divisive social pressures—these are things that have touched all of our lives in recent years and, we believe, are just as relevant to the themes explored in the Shepherds series as wartime service.

Q:  Why do you think this novel may be especially important for members of men’s ministries?

A:  We believe very strongly that frank discussions of faith crisis and about what God does (and doesn’t) promise in His Word are of paramount importance in men’s ministry. This equips men for the future as much as it helps deal with the past. We are all either in crisis, recovering from crisis, or have a crisis in our future. That is the reality of faith in a fallen world. We also believe strongly that biblical principles of good and evil and spiritual warfare, because of their controversial nature, are underdiscussed in ministry in general and men’s ministry in particular. As military men, we know that you can’t defeat an enemy you don’t take time to understand, and the very same principle must be applied to dealing with these issues in our faith. The Scripture is a major component of the armor of God we are called upon to wear, as Christian men, in Ephesians 6.

Q:  When readers turn the last page of this book, how do you hope they feel? What new idea or lesson do you hope they carry with them?  

A:  First, we want you to be breathless from what we hope is an exciting ride—Dark Intercept is written to be an action thriller novel. But we hope the reader also walks away inspired to find hope and answers to some of their own spiritual warfare and faith crisis questions as they get an intimate view of Jedidiah’s struggles for those answers.