Ink and Flame Episode #2
Maddie Rose Andry: Author of The Cursed and Fated Vampire series.

You can listen to Ink & Flame on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Podcasts, and pretty much every major platform you can think of—it’s everywhere your ears want it to be! Prefer visuals with your storytelling? We’ve got you covered with full video episodes available on Candlelore's YouTube channel. Wherever you like to tune in, the magic awaits!

Transcription

Tina Koutras (00:00)
Welcome to Ink and Flame. And today we are sitting down with Maddie Rose-Andry and she's going to talk about her soon to be released, Mortal End. Hi, Maddie.

Maddie Rose Andry (00:11)
Hello, hi, I'm so happy to be here.

Tina Koutras (00:13)
I'm so happy to have you here. So welcome to the podcast. And first of all, we're going to have a fantastic evening. I had to throw that in. Exactly. So first off, tell us where you are coming to us from.

Maddie Rose Andry (00:24)
Why not?

I'm in Indiana, so in the Midwest, of the heartland, or in the heartland.

Tina Koutras (00:36)
Nice. And how are you feeling today? How are you doing?

Maddie Rose Andry (00:40)
I feel great. Like I'm so excited the release is around the Corner. I would say I feel super excited and also very sleep deprived.

Tina Koutras (00:49)
I imagine. So is it excitement keeping you up

Maddie Rose Andry (00:52)
It's excitement, it's tasks, it's making sure I've got all of my, T's crossed and I's dotted and you know, book descriptions the way that I need them to be and all the formats are where I want them to be and doing all the social media content that I want. working with my street team, so excited to get this out and just, yeah, just coordination and juggling. My PA and I are like, okay.

So it releases and I already have a day schedule where I'm just gonna nap. it's a nap.

Tina Koutras (01:22)
That's

perfect. Phone's on, do not disturb, please do not. That's awesome. So were you always a storyteller at heart?

Maddie Rose Andry (01:23)
Yes.

would say yes. As a kid, I think I wandered a lot in the woods. Interestingly enough, I had a pet wolf. We didn't know he was a wolf. We thought he was a stray dog that wandered up. And he wandered up when I was about seven. We didn't figure out that he was a wolf until I was about 11 when we took him to the vet and the vet almost had a heart attack because we brought a wolf into his office.

Tina Koutras (01:41)
my.

Maddie Rose Andry (01:55)
But his name was King and he was amazing. And King and I would wander through the woods with some books that I was reading. I actually started reading Stephen King at the age of seven. Not really appropriate, but I loved it. So I gravitated towards horror movies and horror novels as a young kid. And so I would usually have a Stephen King novel in my backpack and some food and a notebook and a pen and my wolf. And I would fly around through the woods and

Tina Koutras (01:55)
Wow.

I imagine you

felt safe.

Maddie Rose Andry (02:23)
I did. Oh yeah, totally. was kind of almost like a familiar.

Tina Koutras (02:29)
That's amazing. So what was, I think you kind of already answered that. were reading Stephen King at the time, but did you have any other favorites?

Maddie Rose Andry (02:31)
Yeah, absolutely. So much fun.

Mm-hmm.

I was really stuck on Stephen King for a while at that younger age. as I kind of got into high school, I started taking more like honors literature classes. And so I gravitated into some more of the classics, fell in love with like Dante's Inferno. again, more of that like gothic-y type. fell in love with Shakespeare.

Tina Koutras (02:58)
Mm-hmm.

Maddie Rose Andry (03:00)
I did show choir and then I was also in drama. And so I loved acting and, you know, performing. And so anything that was theatrical, I was all about it. And so that's kind of the stuff that I gravitated towards. And as far as my writing back then, I was writing more poetry. So more of that kind of emotional feel that, and I wrote tons and tons and tons of poetry. And that's,

where I kind of started until, you know, it just naturally evolved into more just like structured writing, more creating characters and things like that.

Tina Koutras (03:39)
Right, so some of your poetry was it mostly teenage angst based.

Maddie Rose Andry (03:44)
I had a lot of teenage angst. And for really, really good reasons. yeah, and that's that kind of actually my whole life story kind of leads into my career and my life journey and the path of, know, what led me here today.

Tina Koutras (03:46)
you

That's kind of my next question is your career merges so many unique elements. So do you want to talk about those?

Maddie Rose Andry (04:07)
Yeah.

Yeah, so I grew up with a pretty challenging home life and I moved out when I was 15 years old. So I've been on my own since I was 15. went to, from high school early out of necessity, because I needed to work and I started college early. And so then I graduated from nursing school really young.

And so I was actively seeing patients by the time I was just before turning 19, started seeing patients and I was on the floor and I noticed in working with patients that the one thing that just kind of kept coming up was these patients that were getting admitted. I was working on a med surgical floor and that's kind of a floor that collects a lot of different things. Like I had gunshot victims and stab wound victims. And then I also had

cardiovascular like heart attack victims, stroke patients. And then I would end up with some psychiatric overflow and we just, MedSurg just kind of collects a little bit of everything. I had cancer patients and things like that. And one of the things in working, at that time I was working night shift. And so one of the things that just kind of kept evolving as I talked to my patients in the evening when things kind of slowed down, was just.

getting to know them because they're, you know, they're impatient and they're lonely. Not everybody had family members with them and things like that. And one thing that was kind of becoming more of a, like a chronic thing was that they had tough childhoods. They had really horrific trauma. And I was curious about that because obviously I had been diagnosed with a complex post-traumatic stress disorder at the age of 14 and had suffered from fugue states, blackouts.

It's really hard when you black out in the middle of a target. And then you wake up and there's this group of strangers around you and you're like, okay, that happened. And you don't have any recollection, right? Like it's just, really hard to kind of go through that and kind of go through that alone. And so watching my patients have similar experiences, I really wanted to help them because I didn't want them to go through it alone like I did. So I did some research and found a thing called

Tina Koutras (05:55)
I imagine.

Maddie Rose Andry (06:17)
It's called an ACE score and it's an assessment that we do that really measures 10 different categories of early, adverse childhood experiences is what ACE stands for. And you get one point for every category that you can say yes to on this 10 categories. And research really shows that the higher that score is, the more at risk the person is for depression, anxiety, drug abuse, addiction.

being in and out of jail or even having cardiovascular disease, cancer, long-term health problems. And so that's what I was seeing was like even these patients with diabetes or cancer, their A score was through the roof. And so I got really curious at that. And so that's where my career really evolved and I got certifications in trauma recovery. And then I also got a relationship coach certification and I did that because

Broken early attachment bonds is probably one of the biggest causes of why we suffer long-term. So our early caregivers, mother, father, grandparents, whoever helped raise us, if we didn't have a healthy bond with somebody, it's a broken early attachment bond. And we tend to repeat those cycles with our intimate partners, our friendships and our professional lives, and even with ourselves. That harsh internal voice.

Tina Koutras (07:21)
Mm-hmm.

Maddie Rose Andry (07:32)
It repeats. And so I really wanted to help people develop healthy functional attachments with themselves and with their relationships. Because if we have healthy relationships, then we have a happier life. And it's kind of how it evolved. Yeah.

Tina Koutras (07:46)
Wow.

how did that lead to or become your writing?

Maddie Rose Andry (07:52)
So I also have a literature degree with a minor in fine arts because I actually was going to go to school to be a physician. So I was in med school and life took me to Chicago and I decided that I didn't want to be a doctor, my passion has always been in the creative world, drawing, writing, performing, doing things like that. Like that's what I wanted to do. So I switched my major and that's when I really started writing.

What I want to do is take all of this experience that I have with helping people one-on-one and sink it into a fiction world where people who use escapism as a way to get away from whatever it is that they're getting away from, where they can maybe grow and evolve and, you know, be seen and heard through the character's lens. So whatever character that I'm writing, they're going to have a traumatic backstory.

which all fairy tales do, come on, let's talk about Disney, Lion King, Bambi, the dramatic backstory is a big thing. So you can pretty much guess if you ever pick up one of my novels, that is going to be a trope. All of my characters are gonna have a horrific backstory, because it's just, it's part of human, it's part of our, you know, we naturally suffer, like it's inevitable.

Tina Koutras (08:48)
It really is.

Maddie Rose Andry (09:04)
we're gonna go through some type of suffering. And it gives us something to evolve from. It gives us something to overcome. It gives us something to gain resiliency from. And so that's really what I wanted to do is I wanted to write a character who people could relate to. I also wanted to write a villain that people could feel sorry for and hate at the same time. And just kind of weave that into.

some of the things that I've seen, because I've worked with people that it's like, were they born bad, or were they made bad because of what they went through? And so that's the question that gets asked a lot in the psychiatric world is, nature versus nurture, were they born this way or were they made this way because of what they went through? And so a lot of that ends up in the pages in the novel. And so, I write a character who she's 29 years old, she's a psychiatrist, and she has PTSD herself.

And so getting to write about that mental health representation, one from my own personal experience, it's palpable. I've had people say it's graphic. I would like to say that it's visceral because from a trauma aspect, the things that happen to people when they've been traumatized, whether it's a car accident or some kind of thing that they've gone through, whether it's sexual assault, domestic violence.

You know, whatever. Traumas are different than what people think they are. I can tell you, like, there's really four components to a trauma is that you feel powerless, there's nobody there to help you, you surpass your coping mechanisms, and your expectations were violated. That's all it takes for your brain to say that was a trauma. And so it's a lot simpler than what people think it is. It doesn't have to be some massive car accident. It doesn't have to be a huge...

Tina Koutras (10:37)
Snap.

Maddie Rose Andry (10:43)
sexual assault. doesn't have to be anything like that for your brain to say, I've been traumatized. Okay. and what happens to us when we go into fight or flight is all of our senses go into hyperdrive. So our sense of smell goes up. our tactile sense goes up. What we taste goes up, what we hear goes up. So all of our five senses just go like, it's just, it's really ramped up. And so when I'm working with people with traumatic experiences,

They don't, and your brain doesn't remember things in chronological order. It's like your memory just turns into this big blob. And so when I'm working with people, it's always what did they taste or there's a smell that they get stuck on or say they were in a car accident. It's the sound of the breaking of the glass or it's the sound of the screeching of the tires or it's the smell of the burnt rubber or it's the tug of the seatbelt on their chest or in that's that tactile thing. And so when I write, I write from the aspects.

of what a trauma would be like. So it's visceral. So when we have like a fight or flight reaction, it's a visceral response. It's those five senses kicking in. And so some people who don't understand what happens to us when we've been traumatized would call it graphic, but it's actually visceral because you can actually feel what the character's going through because it's literally what happens in the human body and in the brain when we go through those events.

Tina Koutras (12:02)
Wow, that's fascinating. I'm hypnotized right now.

Maddie Rose Andry (12:04)
Yeah!

Yeah, it's really like, and that's

one of the things that I've studied a lot of is like neuroplasticity of the brain. And so that's what I actually do with clients when we're overcoming trauma, is I'm actually helping them rewire their brain and the neurons in their brain. That's actually how I overcame my own CPTSD is it's kind of the whole mind over matter, but I had to learn to rewire my brain. And that's diving into those different senses. What were the triggers?

A big trigger for me was the smell of Old Spice. And that's actually what made me black out and a target was somebody walked past me wearing Old Spice and I was gone. I remember the Old Spice and then I remember waking up. That's all I remember. Stale alcohol, huge trigger for me. So doesn't trigger me anymore because I've rewired my brain, but those were the things that were big triggers for me when I was younger.

Tina Koutras (12:41)
Wow.

Maddie Rose Andry (12:55)
And so if you think of olfactory, right? Like the olfactory sense is what I smelled. and for whatever reason for me, the olfactory sense of things, that was a way bigger trigger for me than sounds or some other things or tactile things. it was a lot of smells for me. So I had to go back into my brain and rewire my brain at those smells. I wasn't in danger if I smelled old spice.

and I wasn't in danger if I smelled stale alcohol.

Tina Koutras (13:24)
Wow, that's amazing. Okay. So, all right.

Maddie Rose Andry (13:25)
Mm-hmm.

I know, right? And so I weave

that into the fiction world. So as you're reading the characters and what they're experiencing in the scenes, I do write very visceral. So you'll get to places in the book where my main character is going through things. And I write, what is she feeling, tactilely? What is she hearing? What is she tasting? What is she seeing? And I write from that aspect.

Tina Koutras (13:57)
Wow, that's awesome. when you were reading, when you were younger, did you have any literary influences or authors that really got your attention or even helped put you on this path?

Maddie Rose Andry (14:10)
I would say, especially in high school, Laurel K. Hamilton released her Anita Blake Vampire Hunter series in 1994. I fell in love with that series, binged it as they were coming out. I was a big fan of James Patterson, so I really liked his crime mystery, the Kiss the Girls, which then got turned into a movie with Morgan Freeman.

loved all of that. So I read a lot of that after I kind of shifted from Stephen King. I'm trying to think if there was anybody else again, really went to the classics. I started doing like when I started doing my literature degree, I really got into just Gothic literature. So Wuthering Heights.

Mary Shelley, know, Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I freaking love Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. So if anybody hasn't read that, like it is such a beautiful portrayal of what we do as humans where we have a public persona and a private persona and how we hate those darker sides of ourselves. And that's really what Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is all about. And I love, love that one.

just because it kind of touches on like some of the psychology aspects I fell in love with a lot of the classics and I studied Shakespeare for over a year in college and so I, I love the fact that his comedies just means nobody dies.

Tina Koutras (15:34)
It's true.

Maddie Rose Andry (15:36)
I mean,

just like the morbidness of that, right? Like, just, love, I love, again, I'm a very dramatic person. Like I did drama and show car and I love to perform. And I just, I love us kind of, I love digging into like kind of those deeper, complex humans. I love it. I love, I love getting into that.

Tina Koutras (15:40)
you

Wow, okay. What about, how did the idea for your gothic medicine come about?

Maddie Rose Andry (16:02)
Yeah, so gothic medicine is again kind of plays into what I was just saying about Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, right? So gothic is just anything literature wise, gothic is really diving into those deeper emotions that humans naturally feel ashamed of, right? Things that we feel like we should suppress when the truth of it is, is like shame and guilt and self-hatred and all of those things are there, right? Along with hopefully some love and

Tina Koutras (16:22)
Mm-hmm.

Maddie Rose Andry (16:31)
annihilation and you know some of our passions and things like that they're all there and they co they should coexist right we shouldn't try to suppress one or the other and that's one of the beautiful things about dr. Jekyll and mr. Hyde and that's one of the reasons why it's one of my favorites it really is about that balance of learning to love yourself unconditionally and so gothic is kind of diving into almost what we call that shadow material or the darker side of the human experience and things like that

And medicine is really just the art of healing. So however we choose to do that, like, so I do that in my medical practice, but I also want to do it in fiction because escapism and fiction was a huge thing for me as a child, like writing and reading books and wandering into the woods and doing all that stuff saved me from the horrific reality of my childhood. I think that's why I gravitated to horror as a child because the monsters in the pages helped me process

the terror that I felt on a daily basis that something horrific was going to happen to me or my mom or my brother helped me kind of process that fear in a safe way because those monsters and villains and bad guys, they weren't real. Okay, so I got to process the emotional, complete the trauma response in a controlled environment. And I think it saved me in a lot of ways. And so that's

I know what I want to do with writing now. And so that's really what Gothic medicine is all about. I'm going to dive into the deeper emotions. All of my books are going to be adult fiction. So, and sometimes people struggle with what is young adult, what's new adult and what's adult fiction. Young adult is for teenagers that are, you know, starting to dive into some of those deeper-ish emotions for their age. New adult are people who are just moving out of home and they're trying to figure out what adulting is all about.

And so you're kind of getting a little deeper into the emotional state, you know, like the decade of the 20s is a decade I would never want to go back to. It is so hard that transition. No, thank you. So I personally, as an author, will probably never write New Adult. I hated my own personal experience with the 20s, like hated it. So I will. I won't write it. That's why my main character is a 29 year old female verging into the 30s. Right.

Tina Koutras (18:35)
right

Maddie Rose Andry (18:53)
But adult fiction, that's when you've shifted out of those trying to stumble your way through life and you have a little bit more of a handle on your emotional state and there's a little bit more resiliency and you're stepping into that re-birthing process. So you're letting your childhood go, you're evolving, you're growing and yet you're being reborn. And so that's what I love about adult fiction.

Tina Koutras (19:19)
That's okay. I'm being every answer you gave. I'm just staring at you while you're speaking because it's like it's incredible. I love it. So your debut novel, Mortal End is packed with dark, vibrant themes and cursed vampires. We're already hooked because Paul and I love vampires. When did you get the idea for the book? When did you first get the idea for the book?

Maddie Rose Andry (19:28)
Thank you so much.

Yeah, so the book was actually finished in 2009. Yeah, it's been sitting on a shelf for 16 years. So it's finished in 2009. I have been a huge vampire junkie, everything. So Buffy the Vampire Slayer, fell in love with it. I was actually introduced to Buffy the Vampire Slayer by one of my college professors. I never even watched it. My college professor.

Tina Koutras (19:51)
Wow.

Maddie Rose Andry (20:10)
was like, who was trying to get me to publish back then. She was like, no, you absolutely have to watch this show because she was one of my, she was my Victorian lit professor and then also my Gothic literature professor. And she was like, no, watch this. gonna, you're just, and I just like binge watched it. And it was just like, it was so good. But just absolutely love vampires. And I, I'll go into that a little bit more why, but I finished it back in 2009.

I actually went to Eugene, Oregon, which is the setting of the book. And I stayed for seven days and I wrote a lot of it on site. So I was on location. There's a part in the book, the chapter is titled, my chapters are titled and it's called Cherry Tree. And the tree is real. It does exist. It's a real tree in the Owen Rose Garden. And I remember I was walking around with a backpack, same kind of thing I did as a kid. There's usually always,

a notebook on me. Now it's my phone, right? It's notes and it's pages and it's things like that. But I'm writing no matter where I'm at. As soon as I get inspired, something comes out. And so back then it was a notebook and a backpack and all this other stuff. And I walked up to this tree and I just started sobbing. This is like this 200 year old cherry blossom tree held together with stilts and wires. it just, and it was in full bloom, full bloom. Freaking gorgeous.

gorgeous tree, and yet it looked grotesquely tortured. Like it looked like a tree that wanted to lay down and die, but we wouldn't let it. And I just like dropped to the ground, pulled my notebook out and started writing. Like, and I was sobbing and the tears were splattering on my notebook. And that is when that's where in the book, Phenise gets turned into a vampire. And she connects with this tree.

in the same way that I connect with this tree. and if you know what cherry blossom trees signify in Japan, they are beauty and violence, death and rebirth. That's what they signify. That's why it's on the cover. So it's like, she's like, I mean, this tree is just, and it's still there. It's so freaking stunning,

Tina Koutras (22:09)
rebirth.

I

Maddie Rose Andry (22:25)
And here's this woman who's this human woman who's being attacked and getting turned into a vampire. She wants nothing more than to give up, but she's fighting and all these things are going on. And so she's connecting with the torture and the beauty of this tree. And it's really her only connection to the world so that she can numb out to what's actually happening to her. not long after that, I, I was driving down,

I, the internet, the coast, right? And I was just, and my husband, now my now husband, was driving down the road and I was just sitting there writing and I happened to look up and I was like, I just need a sign for where I go next. And I looked up and there was a sign that said Devil's Churn. And I was like, stop.

stop please. And he was like, okay. And we got out and I went over and it was like, my gosh. And I wrote another scene there. And it was just the the way that the devil's turn is the water is just so chaotic. And just like, and it's eroding into the earth the way it kind of like tunnels in. And it's actually really dangerous.

Tina Koutras (23:10)
Thank

Maddie Rose Andry (23:29)
since I wrote this back in 2009, somebody's actually died there because they slipped off and got, because it tunnels down in and like, yeah, it's really dangerous. And so it's, but just the power that comes off the Pacific Ocean, if you've never been, it's just out of this world. And that's why I went there to write the novel. And I sat on the beach, on the coast,

Tina Koutras (23:34)
sucked in yet.

Maddie Rose Andry (23:52)
and wrote so much of this dark, gloomy, gothic, vibey book sitting on the beach with my hair getting whipped around and like in this like turbulent environment. And so it's palpable. You can feel it in the book. So that's really how it was born. It didn't get published because I tried to traditionally publish it. know, indie authors didn't really exist back then.

and I worked on that for like a year and a half. I don't think the world was ready for me. Cause I have a little intense. I don't think the world was ready for me and that's okay. and then, and I ended up in a domestic violence situation. So I had two children and then I almost died in 2013. and I became a single mom with two kids under the age of two. And so my dream of becoming an author got tabled.

Tina Koutras (24:24)
Ha ha ha ha!

you

took a backseat.

Maddie Rose Andry (24:46)
Yeah, we shelved her.

Tina Koutras (24:48)
Yeah.

Maddie Rose Andry (24:49)
He needed to go

on the shelf. And then I was a single mom for quite some time.

Yeah, it took some healing from that. And I worked on my own trauma recovery at that point. I just, I loved my girls and I had to take care of my girls. And I was so grateful that I was alive to get to be a mom. And that became my priority. So I took time to raise them. They're now 11 and 13 and

It was just back in May of 2024, I was like, it's time to dust her off and bring her to life. And I rewrote it. So I started and I completely rewrote it in four weeks, got it to an editor and here we are.

Tina Koutras (25:35)
Amazing. Okay. I've had a couple moments where the things that you've said have just triggered so much of a reaction for me. It's just amazing. I can't wait to listen to this again.

Maddie Rose Andry (25:49)
And that's really

what the advanced readers who have read it, they're, I have, my street team is amazing. It is a group of women who have just absolutely fallen in love with the story. And I, I love interacting with them and getting to know them because they're emotionally invested in my characters and me and in my journey. And it's just, it's palpable. And I just feel really blessed.

Tina Koutras (26:15)
I really love the dynamic of straight teams, to be honest with you, because I read a lot when I was younger, and it's only been in the last two and a half, three years that I came back to it, because, you know, life. so Instagram taught me what straight teams were, because I didn't even know. And seeing them and what they do and how they promote their

Maddie Rose Andry (26:20)
Yeah.

Tina Koutras (26:41)
writer, their author. I love it. It's just amazing.

Maddie Rose Andry (26:44)
Yeah, it's having this group of amazing human beings rally around me because they believe in me and they love what I do and what I've written.

It's, it's, it is a found family, which is one of the tropes that's in my book. and it is one of the most surprising blessings that I've gotten out of deciding to publish is just finding them. so just in all, like on a regular basis, just how fabulous having them in my life is. Yeah.

Tina Koutras (27:15)
That's awesome.

so we've kind of taken on a few different answers. I guess, yeah, you kind of swallowed up a couple with that part. I guess writing vampires can be a little bit different for some people. vampires have changed over the years. We're not just, the blah, I want to your blood vampires anymore.

Maddie Rose Andry (27:24)
Yeah, I was looking through here.

Tina Koutras (27:44)
We've evolved a lot and there's a lot more to vampires. what draws you to them to begin with? And then what is your favourite aspect of the ones that you've created?

Maddie Rose Andry (27:50)
Mm.

Yeah, I feel like vampire history and lore, honestly, they and I don't know how much you've looked into it you said you and your husband love vampires. But they actually started out as kind of a monstrous villain for everyday people to blame for unexplained lead diseases that their medicine didn't understand.

So people would get a blood disease that would cause bleeding from the ears and the eyes and things like this. And they blamed it on something supernatural. And that's kind of what gave birth to the vampire legends and things like that. Over time, they got a little bit more romanticized. And I think why we romanticize vampires just from a human aspect is that one of the things a lot of people fear is death because we don't know what comes after, right?

And so this concept of this immortal being who gets to defy death, but the curse around that is you have to live off the living, right? I think we find that fascinating because it helps kind of curb that fear of death a little bit. And so when we get to escape into a vampire story that we've romanticized, that we get to alleviate some of that fear of death.

I think that's also one of the reasons that, I mean, I've had multiple near-death experiences myself. And so I think that's the reason why I've been drawn to vampires myself is just that it is a natural human emotion to be scared of what happens. And grief isn't something that we get taught how to really process. It gets pushed under the rug. Like something happens to us and we're grieving and it makes the other people uncomfortable around us. And so then it's just like,

I don't know, it's just like rub some dirt on it or get up, brush it off. It's kind of some of those natural answers that we get from the people around us. And so then we don't actually ever get to really properly grieve. And so I think vampires give us a way to deal with that. I think for me in writing them, I have found a lot of joy in twisting it up a little bit.

because vampires are these soulless demons of like, legs on humanity. And I didn't do that.

I didn't do that. was, it's not, that's not, those aren't my vampires.

Tina Koutras (30:09)
Perfect, I can't wait to read it. Yeah, please do. Let it rip.

Maddie Rose Andry (30:11)
And I'm happy to share a little bit more about how it's different. Yeah,

one of the, I know one of the questions that you asked me was about the dark and broody. My vampires are definitely dark and broody, not all of them, but my main male vampire, Emil, he's dark and broody. And then I made him British to boot. I have a ancient British dark broody vamp who's so much fun.

Tina Koutras (30:30)
you

Maddie Rose Andry (30:36)
And I really can't wait for the world to get book 2 because it is written from his point of view. I will say getting into his head has been one of the highlights of my life.

I have really enjoyed writing him. But from that point of view, I got to use a little bit of like my own morbid sense of humor that being in the healthcare world, I've had to deal a lot with death as patients pass away and dealing with families who are losing a loved one. I've been there for a lot of people's ends and it's hard. in the healthcare industry, you learn to

detach from your patients so that you can maintain your sanity. And if you don't, you're going to end up anxious or depressed or so many other things. And so there has to be a healthy degree of detachment that you learn. And for me, it's been through sense of humor and dealing with my own mortality, right? so I have a lot of peace with my own mortality because I've been there when a lot of other people have passed away. And so

Dealing with that, I would say that's where a lot of my inspiration from my vampires have come from is that I do have kind of this dark morbid sense of humor that has come from my years of healthcare. I don't know if that's good or bad.

Tina Koutras (31:45)
Thank

I'm positive that in your book it's going to be awesome.

Maddie Rose Andry (31:54)
So yeah, that's how

my vampires are a little different from that a little bit.

Tina Koutras (31:59)
Okay, so for listeners who haven't yet discovered Mortal End, can you introduce us a little bit to the universe that you've created? I know that it's set in modern day, so can you build a little bit on what aspects you kept from our world or if it's all the same as our world?

Maddie Rose Andry (32:03)
Mm-hmm.

It is.

It is modern day Earth. So the cursed and fated vampire universe does take place in modern day Earth. Doesn't necessarily stay in this timeframe. So we do go back and forth. The prologue actually starts in the 11th dynasty of Egypt, so 4,000 years ago, with our first creation of the first vampire in the mortal realm.

who ends up being our villain. And that's the one that I usually have people check content warning for because it's intense. And that's where some of the female rage comes in into the one of the tropes And if you want to skip the prologue, because the warnings are too difficult for you, I actually have a summary on my content guidance page. So if you go to my content guidance page on my website, it tells you at the top kind of some of the triggers that might be in there.

If you decide that the prologue seems a little too intense for you, can scroll all the way to the bottom and there's a prologue summary. Or you could just like skip some of the graphic details of what happens and then just go to chapter one.

Tina Koutras (33:20)
The coles notes.

Maddie Rose Andry (33:22)
Yeah, like it's like a little cliff note. All right, so you can can you can skip it if you want. But it is it is modern day. But we do kind of go back and forth. We go back into when Templar Knights existed. We go back into ancient Greece. We go, back into some ancient times in France. And so that has to do with the characters developments and and what Mortal End is really all about.

and so, yeah, I mean, I feel like the creation of her, the vampire queen, her name is Sade, her, creation is really intense and it's, that's the curse that kind of starts this ripple effect, that really creates this cursed and fated universe.

Tina Koutras (34:00)
that's a very different take most vampires kind of linger in, the Christian faith a little. So I find that very interesting. That's amazing.

Maddie Rose Andry (34:07)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah,

so I read a lot of different mythologies. So we're going to have some ancient Egypt mythologies. We're going to have some ancient Greece mythologies, some Spartan type things in there. There's Templar Knights. There's a little bit of Christianity in there, but that's only with some of my vampires. I have an ancient Viking vampire that's in there. His name is Aiden. You learn a little bit about him. You learn a lot more about him in the book 2

So yeah, it's a very diverse cast of like what their backstories are and where they came from and how old they are and it's well planned out.

Tina Koutras (34:45)
So, how did you research? what types of research did you do to dive into the history?

Maddie Rose Andry (34:51)
Well, I think for me, just with my literature degree, again, I I studied Shakespeare, but right along with Shakespeare, I had to study the times of Shakespeare. So Emile, you'll find he was turned in the 1500s. So he's a descendant from England around the time of King Henry VIII. And so that really ties into some of that timeframe and things like that.

Tina Koutras (35:11)
And did any of your characters kind of take you by surprise while you were writing them?

Maddie Rose Andry (35:16)
They take me by surprise. Not really. No. Like it's yes and no. The conversations come up, they talk in my head. it's really funny when you're like, I don't know what it is, but it's like it comes to me when I'm brushing my teeth or when it's not convenient.

Tina Koutras (35:33)
When your notebook's on the other side of the room.

Maddie Rose Andry (35:35)
Yeah, where it's like,

I can't do talk to text because I have a toothbrush in my mouth. And I think it's because my mind is wandering then and it's like, I'm drifting off into the mystical. I know where the series is going. I know how the series ends. know I actually have all of the series pretty mapped out now. Do I know what the characters are going to do or the actions that are going to get me there? Not really.

those conversations kind of come up as I go. But I do have these weird conversations that were like pop up in my head. I'm like, I got to write that down. I have no idea where it's going, but I have to write it down because it's going to happen. And then as I started to write, then I'm like, that's where that conversation goes.

Tina Koutras (36:10)
it's there.

That's awesome. That's so fantastic. And it's so true.

Maddie Rose Andry (36:18)
Yes. And it's fun.

Yeah, it's just the way it

is, right? And so do they surprise me? No, but do I let them kind of wander into their own organic evolution? Absolutely. Yeah.

Tina Koutras (36:35)
Well said.

So you describe Mortal End as an opera. What inspired the choice of term?

Maddie Rose Andry (36:42)
So I kind of already let you in on the fact that I'm dramatic at times. as I've told you, my male main character is British and there are times I'll just slip into a British accent around the house and I'll just stay in character for like a week or two and drives my family completely nuts. So I do, I'll do method writing at times, but the opera for me just kind of highlights the Gothic realm, right?

Tina Koutras (36:58)
you

Maddie Rose Andry (37:08)
Gothic is dramatic. I think about any Dracula movie you've ever seen, seriously, like any of it. It is dark and it's broody and it's the music, right, is just so palpable. And so that's really what this is. mean, operas are romantic and devastating. And so it kind of takes you back to the cherry blossom, right? Beauty and violence, death and rebirth.

Tina Koutras (37:13)
you

Maddie Rose Andry (37:33)
All of that is in there and operas are extravagant and they're theatrical. And I think with the way that I write, some of the reviews that I get are that people were able to actually visualize what was happening. Like it was playing in their head as they were reading. And so that's where opera really comes in for me is that it is this grand emotional roller coaster filled with massive feelings and

heart breaking grief and death and rebirth and empowerment, unconditional love and the ability to rise up. I've had one of my street teams members tell me that she felt like she was holding her breath and riding a roller coaster and waiting for me to rip the rug out from underneath her.

Tina Koutras (38:17)
That's an awesome description.

Maddie Rose Andry (38:20)
And then after

she finished the book, she messaged me and said, you owe me a mattress and wine. And I was like, why? She goes, because I'm not coming up from this cliff you've tossed me off of until you give me book two.

Tina Koutras (38:26)
Yeah

You

Maddie Rose Andry (38:34)
So I think that kind of sums up why an opera of cursing vampires.

Tina Koutras (38:42)
So that brings us to our next question. Your vampires are layered, both cursed and fated. What went into creating their mythology? You kind of touched on that, I guess. But explain the cursed and fated.

Maddie Rose Andry (38:48)
Yeah.

So there are brand new elements around my vampires and there are old elements around my vampires, right? I re-vamped the vamp. And we talked, I talked a little bit about them, know, vampires not having souls. Well, they do in mortal end. And a lot of this really, the cursed and fated theme really comes from the fact that

This is mirroring more of my own human journey and what I've watched other people go through. And so there are moments in our lives that are really painful. And that's the curse, right? We go through these really painful moments that are like, we want them to just go away. They're so devastating. feel like they make us feel like we're going to break. And we wonder sometimes if we are going to break.

So really the layers of the cursed and fated is a reflection of the human journey. And we do have these moments in our lives that are really painful and we break down with grief, we break down with despair. It feels like, you know, it is going to like, why us write that question? Why us? Why me? And that's the curse. Right. And I feel like there's this path to our grand destiny, which is our fate.

Right? So our fate, if we learn to mine and dig into those challenges that we go through that are painful, that bring up despair, that bring up grief, that's all about loss, it's all about heartbreak. If we can kind of look at it from a different perspective and see that it is a challenge that gives us an opportunity to rise and get onto the path that we're meant to be on, that's the fate. So this curse brings on this fate that

really can make us into this resilient, fabulous human being that we wouldn't have been without the curse, right? So that's the curse and the fated and that's why they're layered because we all go through suffering. It's inevitable. It's part of the human journey. We suffer, we go through loss, we go through pain and it does feel cursed, right?

Why me? Especially if it happens over and over and over and over again from my own human experience. There were many moments when I was like, again, really? I haven't been through enough? Why is there more? And so there were times where it's like, okay, I feel really, really cursed right now. But then when I really got to reflect back on some of the things and focus more on what did I learn? What did I gain from that? How did that make me a better person? How did that make me a more resilient person? How did I rise to that adversity?

Tina Koutras (41:07)
Yeah.

Maddie Rose Andry (41:27)
How did I overcome? I can look back at my childhood and there's nine out of 10 A score things that I can say yes to. I would not change anything that I've been through because I would not be the person I am today without it. And I actually really like me.

Tina Koutras (41:44)
That's amazing and it's awesome and to hear you say it too, because we don't say it enough, do we?

Maddie Rose Andry (41:46)
you

No, no,

like I love to hear somebody say, I'm awesome. I'm amazing. I love myself. And we get told that that's arrogant when really it's just should be truth. It should be truth. We should get to say, I love me. I love myself. I'm an amazing person. I'm good at that. Because really for me, I think that's humility. It's not arrogance. When you can do something and you do it well and you share that gift with the world.

then you're helping others. And when you can live in that place and say, this is my strength and I'm going to live in my power, instead of trying to suppress my power and just, I'm going to be tiny and little, then you're depriving the world of your gifts. Don't do that. Don't do that. You go out and you shine and you be big and you be bright and you do you because you don't know the impact that you're going to have on somebody else. Right. You don't know what your gifts are going to do and how you might change somebody else's life.

You go do that. You should go do that. And that for me is humility. And if you really look into the concept around Buddhism, they talk about humility being this tree that's riddled with fruit and the branches are low hanging because the tree knows, I have all of these resources for you to survive and sustain yourself for. And I'm going to put it down so that you can reach it and you can access it and you can get it because I know that I have that to offer. And that is humility.

to know, hey, I'm this wonderful, beautiful, amazing person who can empower others, and I'm going to give access to the world for that. That's what that's about.

Tina Koutras (43:22)
Yo, I'm in

trouble, you're gonna make me cry.

Maddie Rose Andry (43:25)
I'm known to do that. I try not to, but like one of my superpowers, I feel like one of my superpowers is lifting people up. I want to empower people. I want people to know that no matter what you've been through, whatever it is that you have, it is beautiful. Your scars, everything you've been through, it is beautiful. And that's what I got from that cherry blossom tree. It was all riddled and arthritic. And I mean, but it was still so stunning, so beautiful the way it was hanging onto life.

and giving us flowers and giving us something amazing to look at, even though it looked tortured. And I was like, that is what human experience is all about. We are tortured and we are broken and yet we are still beautiful. And I freaking love it.

Tina Koutras (44:07)
you

Maddie Rose Andry (44:08)
I love it.

So that's my vampires, cursed and fated.

Tina Koutras (44:09)
I'm speechless.

I'm sorry.

Maddie Rose Andry (44:12)
And that's my vampires, cursed and fated. They're cursed and fated

and they have souls because I want them to reflect. I want them to reflect humans, right? And they're different because their souls are what give them their power. So the more powerful the soul, the more powerful the vampire. I just, yeah, so it's different.

Tina Koutras (44:34)
Okay. Deep breath. Okay. So do you have a favorite vampire moment or interaction without any spoilers if you can, that's especially memorable for you of your writing?

Maddie Rose Andry (44:35)
Yeah, we were just...

Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, my moment is my moment with Phenice. The moment that I wrote her transformation, when she had her mortal end. If you haven't figured it out, that's what the title is.

a little bit of that morbid sense of humor coming in. She dies. She dies. So the yeah, the moment where she has her mortal end, like literally under the cherry blossom tree. That's what the covers she has her mortal end under the cherry blossom tree. That's that's my moment. That's like

Tina Koutras (45:19)
It's not much of a spoiler if it's like right

on the front cover.

Maddie Rose Andry (45:22)
It's right on the cover. It's fine. And it happens really early

in the book. So we're not spoiling anything. It even tells you on the back that she gets turned into a vampire. That's my moment. That's my moment when I got to die and be reborn with her under the tree. That's my moment. That moment still for me, it's ingrained in my soul.

that experience of getting to see that all of the things that tree, that tree is so scarred and it is so riddled with knots. And like when I say arthritic, it looks arthritic. And there, it just, there are so many wounds and places where you see that they've trimmed it and it's healed over and it's scarred over. And it's just, it looks so brokenly beautiful.

And that was my moment when I wrote that and I was like, I'm taking this woman who's so closed off because she's so terrified to love and I'm breaking her more and transforming her so that hopefully she can thrive. And that was my moment when I realized underneath that tree that like, no matter what we've been through, no matter what scars we have, no matter the pain that's still left to come our way.

We have a choice. We have a choice whether it defines us and breaks us or whether we have a choice to learn from it and evolve and be stronger because of it. And that's my vampire moment.

Tina Koutras (46:53)
Okay. Every one of your answers just like resonates so loudly for me. It's amazing.

Maddie Rose Andry (47:02)
Okay. I love that.

mean, that's, that's those are the, not everybody's going to love my book. It's not going to fit for everybody, but that's, are the people I'm writing for the people who are going to be able to connect with her experience. there's an amazing quote that says art is made to comfort the disturbed and to disturb the comforted. That is my goal. It's on, my website. Like the people who have been disturbed, their life has been.

painful, it's been hard. I write to comfort them. And then the people who are going to read my book, who are going to find my book disturbing, it's because they need to be disturbed. They've gotten too comfortable. And it's okay. I'm okay with it. And they'll probably hate me for it.

Tina Koutras (47:47)
And that's okay.

Maddie Rose Andry (47:48)
And I'm okay with it because they have the right. They have that right. Everybody has the right to love or hate whatever they want to. And I'm okay. I'm good with it.

Tina Koutras (47:58)
Okay, so vampires are iconic in romance. Why do you think that they remain so timeless?

Maddie Rose Andry (48:06)
vampires, think, again, they're timeless because I really do kind of, it kind of goes back to that fear of death that I think humans have. I've watched so many people struggle with the fear of losing their loved ones. It's interesting towards the end, the person who's actually passing away is the person who's usually at peace. It's the people around them who are hurting.

because they're the ones that are being left behind and they're the ones that are going to have to grieve and we don't really know how to grieve. We don't get taught and it's a skill that you have to learn. And so I think vampires are timeless because it helps us cope with that fear and that fear can be really debilitating for a lot of people.

And so I feel like that's why they just keep resurfacing. And so that's really one of the reasons why in Mortal End, I write about vampires that do have a soul. I want them to reflect the human journey so that I can provide comfort to more people because they're more identifiable.

Tina Koutras (49:11)
Okay. And how do you make your Immortal cast feel fresh and unique for today's readers? I think you've talked a little bit about the changes that you've made, just the soul by itself.

Maddie Rose Andry (49:20)
Yeah, I mean...

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So the journey into becoming a vampire in my cursed and fated universe is not like any other, you like, you bite them, then you have to drink their blood, right? And as you're dying and their blood takes over, et cetera, et cetera. Like we've read that so many times. My journey without giving you like a whole lot of spoilers is

Tina Koutras (49:42)
Mm-hmm.

Maddie Rose Andry (49:50)
The process actually makes the human body immortal. And then the immortal soul then merges with the human body because now it has a place that it doesn't have to vacate anymore because the body's gonna live forever. Therefore the soul can stay. And so the process and the mortality in the book with vampires is the regaining of all of your past incarnations.

Yeah. So it's the concept of reincarnation and vampirism merging. Yeah. And so that's what I mean by the more powerful the soul, the more lives you've lived. So we talk about old souls, right? So you've got an older soul that's been reincarnated over and over and over again, the more powerful, the more power potential you have as a vampire. And so that's part of the...

Tina Koutras (50:37)
Okay, I'm so excited for this book.

Maddie Rose Andry (50:41)
There's some spirituality type concepts in there, right? Because again, when we talk about our fear of death, we're scared of death because we don't know where we go, right? We don't know what happens after we die. Like we have religious ideas, but really at the end of the day, are we positive? And so I think that's why people are drawn towards vampires and things like that. And so for me, it was just a natural fit that you tie in reincarnation with immortality and being a vampire.

and then, you know, it's, fun and it's different and it's new. And, I really, really enjoy this getting to kind of go back and relive this past life regression. And that's what I mean by yes, it takes place in modern day. It doesn't stay there.

Tina Koutras (51:22)
Yeah,

but does it?

Maddie Rose Andry (51:25)
That doesn't really. So

we get, but we get to cross space and time a little bit. And then you throw in the element of a soulmate. Well, if you've lived past lives and this is one soul that's been your soulmate forever, then that means you've crossed lives with each other in past lives. And so that gets visited in the book. It's a lot of

Tina Koutras (51:47)
Okay, so I was just about to ask that with regards to the Romantacy tropes and you talked a little bit about your found families. But what types of tropes do you find in your book?

Maddie Rose Andry (51:58)
Yeah.

So much. Let's see. We've got found family, we've got soulmates, we've got feminine rage, morally grey characters. Definitely morally grey characters because I feel like that's a little bit more authentic to humans. We tend to... Depends, you know? Like, I abide by the rules unless somebody hurts my kids.

Tina Koutras (52:22)
That laugh. There was this little danger in that laugh.

Maddie Rose Andry (52:26)
Yeah,

yeah, that was the little bit of the maniacal mother bear laugh that comes out like you mess with my kids, you might get a whole different version of Maddie. So like that's where the morally gray comes out. Like I was laughing because it's like, do I turn morally gray when my kids are involved or do I just go straight morally black? Let's I don't know. That's a question there. And so yeah, like there's there's that. my gosh, there's so many. There's so many.

Tina Koutras (52:37)
Yeah.

Maddie Rose Andry (52:52)
My street team is going to yell at me because they got this by heart.

So soulmates, fated mates, gods, demons, and goddesses, and time travel, epic world building. There's so much. Definitely epic world building. And the romance is a huge, huge part in the book. And so I know.

Tina Koutras (53:11)
So is it,

what kind of romance is it? Enemies to lovers or found friends or?

Maddie Rose Andry (53:14)
Yeah.

So with my soulmate, it's definitely an instant chemistry kind of thing with a slow burn kind of thing going on. Because again, my main character is a psychiatrist and Emile starts off as a vampire and their paths cross. And there's definitely instant chemistry. Them coming together takes a little bit of time. And it's fun. It's fun. I love.

Tina Koutras (53:25)
Okay.

You

Maddie Rose Andry (53:43)
I love writing romance because I'm a relationships coach and I work with married couples or just couples, period. They don't have to necessarily be married, but I work with intimate relationships and so getting to write romance is so, so much fun.

Tina Koutras (53:58)
Okay, so this is one of my favorite questions. If you could find yourself in mortal end for just one day, what would you do?

Maddie Rose Andry (54:02)
Mm-hmm.

goodness, I would take all the powers. them all. So, that's one of the things that's different about my vampires too, is they actually have the ability to have, some of them have elemental powers. powers over like earth, fire, air, that kind of stuff. And some of them have psychological powers. So powers over emotions or the ability to see visions or the ability to absorb knowledge from touch, those kinds of things.

I would just, I would just want them all. Just give them all to me. I want them all. Because, I mean, how much fun would that be?

Tina Koutras (54:42)
Okay, so let's talk a little bit more about Maddie's process with your writing. what does your writing routine look like?

Maddie Rose Andry (54:49)
Oh, so I am very much a creative vampire. So my brain really is super active from about 11 a.m. noon. And then I will go completely berserk with writing, doing whatever for quite a long time until my husband or somebody in my family is like.

Tina Koutras (55:18)
Go to bed.

Maddie Rose Andry (55:18)
Are you eat? You gonna do something? Like, you've been up here forever?

And I'm like, oh, it's not been that long. And they're like, it's been eight hours. And I'm like, oh, okay. So I really do, I do travel into the mystical when I'm like, when I'm making these worlds, like I'm there. So, and then I kind of forget about the rest of the world around me a little bit.

I'll write even up until like three o'clock in the morning sometimes. Like it's, and it's weird. Like some of the, a lot of, some of the things that really came to me for mortal end came to me in dreams. Like I would wake up in the middle of the night and be like, oh, and just start writing and whatever. And that still happens. I'll wake up and I'm like, there's this conversation in my head and I sleep with my iPad right beside, you know, right over to the bed so that if I wake up in the middle of the night and you know, somebody's talking to me.

Like, it's almost like it's a mental health condition.

there are whisperings, sweet nothings in my ear and I wake up and I'm like, I got to do this. I have to answer them. It has to be done. yeah, so it's, it's, you know, mid late morning throughout the day, all the way through the early morning.

Tina Koutras (56:16)
I have to, I have to answer them.

Wow. So coffee or tea, have to ask that one. Tea.

Maddie Rose Andry (56:30)
Yeah.

Tea, tea, yeah, all kinds of tea. So I start with,

yeah, I usually start with a black tea latte of some kind with soy milk. And then I'll switch to sometimes a matcha that then gravitates to like a green tea of some kind. And then, I don't know if you've ever heard of twig tea, but it's really good for you. And then I'll drink some of that. And then it's really earthy and roasty.

Tina Koutras (56:54)
Mmm.

Maddie Rose Andry (56:58)
And then I'll drink some of that and then I'll switch to, you can see there's a kettle sitting right behind me. And then I'll switch to herbal tea, which is what I've been sipping on through this interview. As it gets later during the night, because I'm like, I'm going to try to sleep at some point, which never happens. When I say I'm I'm sorry.

Say that I'm sleep deprived. A lot of it is because either Aiden or Avery or Mora or Eden or, know, Dante or some of these characters are talking to me. Chrysos, who's my demonic god, he's a shape-shifting demonic god who's in the book. Somebody's talking to me and I'm, so I don't sleep. They keep me awake. So, I attempt to not have caffeine later in the day so that I could have the illusion that I might go to bed, but it doesn't usually happen.

Tina Koutras (57:33)
You

Okay, so this is the question I've been waiting for. Are you a plotter or a pantser

Maddie Rose Andry (57:47)
I am absolutely 1000 % a plotter

I will say my street team has, like, I have members of my street team who have reread my book quite a few times already. Because there are, I like to, I hide eggs throughout the book. I foreshadow a lot. And it's gonna crack me up when people get their hands on book 2 because they're gonna be like, I have to go back and read. I gotta, like, they're gonna be like juggling back and forth.

Tina Koutras (58:09)
Read one, read two.

Maddie Rose Andry (58:12)
Because like I said,

book two is a parallel novel told from Emile's point of view. So the timeline overlaps book one. And so I will probably put together a tandem read that will end up on my website for people so that if they want to do, I know some people like to do tandem reads. I'll probably have a document up there for people like read this chapter in Mortal End and then read this chapter in book two. I thought I know the title of that I won't say.

Tina Koutras (58:37)
haha

Maddie Rose Andry (58:38)
Not yet.

and things that are happening in book two, there are eggs planted in book one. There's also usually eggs planted in artwork. There are eggs planted in the music that I play on my Instagram. There are things planted through the images on my videos and Instagram.

Tina Koutras (58:52)
everywhere.

That's awesome.

Maddie Rose Andry (58:56)
So there

are little hints everywhere. So I feel like sometimes like the wizard behind the curtain.

Tina Koutras (59:02)
Well, you kind of are.

Maddie Rose Andry (59:04)
So it's like, always like, by my personal assistant, Laura, she's doing, like alpha reads or whatever, she'll read something now. And we work on a document when I get these big eyeball emojis, like I know from her, that's she's like, this is an egg. Like, I know that means something. She's read enough of it now that she's figured out that she's like, that isn't an insignificant detail.

Tina Koutras (59:18)
I failed.

Okay, I'll know to keep my eyes open for it. So you just kind of alluded to this one, but do you have any kind of quirky writing habits? You mentioned music. So let's go.

Maddie Rose Andry (59:24)
Yeah, it's fun. I like doing it.

Yes, music is

music is always on. So when I'm in a scene and I'm writing a scene, especially like when I get into the intimate scenes and I'm wanting to feel whatever it is that I'm wanting to feel, I will find the music that will invoke that emotion. if it's something that's going to make me want to cry or whatever. And I do the same thing with art.

So, because again, I have my minor in fine arts and so I also draw. I've also already kind of drawn the cover for the second one, for the second book, but I'm too scared to put my artwork out there. I'm not as scared with my writing as I am with my own art. I don't know. I'm just, there's some fear in there. So I don't know. I don't know. We'll see. But.

Tina Koutras (1:00:20)
Don't forget about

the low hanging fruit tree, remember?

Maddie Rose Andry (1:00:22)
I know, I know, but I do

have an amazing artist that I work with. And so I might just let her see it and like, be like, what do you think? But when I'm writing, will maybe try to find a piece of art that inspires me for the emotion and then have that up, cause I have two screens. So then I'll have that up on like one screen And then I'll play music and

just trying to invoke. again, people who follow me on Instagram will notice that my reels and things that I make, like they invoke emotion because that's just how I, that's how I write. And that's what I do. And so when I say that I really do that for like the intimate scenes, I'll have, when you kept saying, make sure you have headphones, I'm like, my earbuds are always in my pocket. When I got my recap last year from like my Apple music,

I listen to music 75 % of the year. So it's like, it's always on because I was writing all the time. it's, for me, the intimate scenes are so palpable because I don't know if you guys, if you know this, but like for relationships, there are three topics that are the no talk topics that relationships usually get hung up on and it's money.

It's parenting and it's sex. That they're really uncomfortable and it's very taboo. And it's usually what causes the most discord in relationships. And so in my life, I talk about sex every day. So we do a lot of hormone management in our medical practice too. So I also talk about sex because of that, because we're putting people's hormones back and their sex drives go up and all this other stuff. So I talk about sex a lot, like just in my profession.

whether it's because I'm dealing with a couple or I'm dealing with somebody's hormones or whatever it is, like sex gets brought up on a regular basis. So one of my goals, even in my romance novels, is that sex is extremely taboo. Like it's very taboo. It makes a lot of people uncomfortable. And so that's why for me, my romance is open door. And the physical of what's happening is visceral.

or graphic, pick your word, I don't care, is very descriptive. And the emotions that go along with it are also very descriptive. Like what are you feeling emotionally? What's going on? Is there a connection? Is there this, is there that? And so I have been told there's a bonus scene at the end of my book that is an intimate scene of Emile and Phenice, which are my two main characters. And I have a few of my street team who've said they've read it like 15 times.

Yeah

So apparently I do a good job with those. When I write the first book, Super Spicy, mean, compared to what I read, there's more world building. But I also like series where the spice goes up, right? I wasn't gonna do like bang right out the door, because where do you go?

Tina Koutras (1:03:09)
Control expectations, come on.

Maddie Rose Andry (1:03:11)
I have to, right? It's one

of the things that you do is you got to manage expectations. So I would probably rate it anywhere between one and three, depending on what chili peppers, depending on what you normally read, right? Like if you've been reading like Chantelle Tessier, the Lord Series, you're probably gonna find my book a one. If that's not like where you gravitate towards, I would say for me personally, just based on what I read, I would rate it a two.

especially if you want to include the bonus scene. The bonus scene is, it's spicy.

Tina Koutras (1:03:46)
I love

it.

Maddie Rose Andry (1:03:48)
So yeah, that's some of my quirkiness. Again, I like to work in real world type things and that's one of the ways that I do it. I'd like to take the taboo out of our sexuality.

Tina Koutras (1:03:58)
And it needs to happen, I think, to some degree. Sometimes, you know, time and place, Especially when you're reading, you can definitely choose your own adventure for. Exactly. So since Mortal End is your debut, what is it like to step into the world of publishing?

Maddie Rose Andry (1:04:00)
I think so. Yeah.

Yeah.

Why not? Yeah, why not? Why not? Like, why not?

Mm-hmm.

exhausting. It's exhausting. I mean, I read about 200 books a year on top of what I do, writing, and I feel like for me, we should be nicer.

Tina Koutras (1:04:33)
Okay, wait, wait,

did you just say you read 200 books a year plus you have written an entire book? Yeah, you edited the old version and then you wrote the new. Okay. And then you wrote the sequel and 200 books a year. Wow.

Maddie Rose Andry (1:04:40)
written two books.

I rewrote it. Yeah. Yeah.

actually read 220

books in 2024.

Tina Koutras (1:04:56)
How do you manage that in time? Because you have a full-time job.

Maddie Rose Andry (1:05:00)
Well, so I don't have a full-time job. So yeah, don't work 40 hours a week. So when you do what I do, I see patients two days a week. The burnout factor for what I do with the type of people that I work with is really, really high. Anybody who works in psychology, any kind. I see my own therapist.

Tina Koutras (1:05:03)
Okay, I feel better now.

Okay.

Maddie Rose Andry (1:05:23)
And I've had a lot of lectures from my own therapist who I love and adore who he's like, it's Maddie, it's not days and it's not hours. It's how many people have you seen?

Tina Koutras (1:05:32)
Okay.

Maddie Rose Andry (1:05:33)
And he tells me, so it's like, I'm doing two days a week. He goes, how many people did you see a day? And I was like, I saw 11. And he's like, no, no, And so I've cut back quite a bit because I was pretty much worked those two days. then like the day after, because I work them two days in a row, I was pretty much catatonic for that day after. Like the recovery was just steep. The recovery is still kind of steep because I hold space for people as they

are processing their heaviest emotions, right? Like some of their most challenging moments in their lives, I'm holding space for them to work through and, you know, redo some of that stuff. it's, no matter how much I've gotten good at flexing those muscles of detachment, it's still heavy. It's heavy.

Tina Koutras (1:06:04)
Yeah.

Yeah, for sure.

Maddie Rose Andry (1:06:25)
So two days a week and then I do write five days a week.

Tina Koutras (1:06:30)
Okay, that was part of my question because it's trying to create a balance between what you read and what you write. I find a struggle sometimes.

Maddie Rose Andry (1:06:40)
I do not read fantasy. So I stick in the dark romance. I love fantasy. Don't get me wrong. There are so many books that are fantasy that are on my TBR. But I do, when I'm actively writing, because I write in the fantasy world and I'm creating that mystical world, I cannot read fantasy. I can't. It's like my brain short circuits. Like if I don't come back into reality in some fashion.

My brain's like...

Tina Koutras (1:07:09)
Hehehehehe

Maddie Rose Andry (1:07:11)
So,

like that's why I'm like, Chantelle Tessier, like the Lord series, or I've been on a Reena Kitt, Reena Kitt kick lately. So I've been reading some of her stuff because they're modern day real humans. There's no magical powers. There's no epic world building there. I mean, yes, do they build like a social like platform? Like, yeah, like in the Lord series, like Chantelle Tessier builds like a.

Tina Koutras (1:07:35)
circle yet.

Maddie Rose Andry (1:07:40)
you know, the top 1 % type social structure. So there's world building in that aspect, but it all takes place in like the world, right? Like nobody has fire magic or there's no dragons and there's no flying creatures and there are no gods or demons. Like that's my reality check. yeah, like so I do. And it's my meditative space. since I was a kid, escapism is my way to...

Tina Koutras (1:07:48)
Yeah.

you

Maddie Rose Andry (1:08:07)
check out from whatever's on my to-do list that I didn't get done that day.

Tina Koutras (1:08:11)
So,

Maddie Rose Andry (1:08:11)
So

yeah, diving into the publishing world has been.

Tina Koutras (1:08:15)
yeah, I forgot that that was the question. Okay.

Maddie Rose Andry (1:08:17)
That was the question. We totally got sidetracked. I'm bringing us back. I'm bringing this

back. This is why I'm a plotter. I don't have ADD tendencies. I'll bring this back. But yeah, diving into the publishing world has been a steep learning curve. But I like to dive in and educate myself. I have found a network of people. I found an artist that I absolutely love. I found an editor that I absolutely love. I have found a personal assistant.

who I swear we share the same brain half the time. I mean, probably like 85 % of the time, we will actually be texting each other the exact same thing at the exact same time, or we'll be on the phone together and we'll say the same thing almost at the exact same time. So just finding that tribe, like anybody who's going to dive into publishing, like finding your tribe is huge. I highly recommend that nobody ever tried to do this by themselves.

If you can manage to get a personal assistant, please do. If you can work on building your street team, please do. Because those are the people when you have a hard day, they're there to cheer you on. They're there to lift you up. And if you don't have those people, and I have that in my editor and I have that in my personal assistant and I have that in my street team, there have been many days I'm like, I'm done. I don't want to do this.

Tina Koutras (1:09:29)
Yeah.

Maddie Rose Andry (1:09:41)
And they're like, absolutely not. Like you said, that low hanging fruit, absolutely not. You're gonna do that. And we're all here because what you wrote changed my life. And so I'm like, okay, I'll keep doing it. And ow, it hurts.

Tina Koutras (1:09:55)
Yeah

They got you.

Maddie Rose Andry (1:09:56)
Yes,

they do. They've got me. That mattress and the wine.

Tina Koutras (1:10:01)
So what can you tell us about book two, if anything at all?

Maddie Rose Andry (1:10:05)
I can tell you some things about book 2

I can tell you some things. book 2 So like I said, it's from Emil's point of view, right? So we're go into a brush head. So quite fun. And I really did get stuck like this for almost two weeks until my 11 year old was like, mom, can you please just talk like you? And then I tried and I couldn't.

Tina Koutras (1:10:15)
You

hahahaha

Maddie Rose Andry (1:10:27)
was like my

brain got stuck. So, Emile Gannon is our MMC and book one, so, Mortal End is a single point of view told from Phenice Dr. Phenice Jones. And so much happens in the background that Phenice isn't privy to. She doesn't know about it. And Emil has been a vampire for a very long time and book two had to happen.

It was like knocking on my door. He's like, you got to tell my story. You got to tell my story. You got to tell my story. so my book three has already been started because originally that was going to be book two. And Emile was just like, no woman, you got to tell my story. Let me out. You got to tell it. And so I decided like, yeah, like I had to listen. Like the muses were screaming at me and I had to listen. so book two is.

Tina Koutras (1:11:05)
Let me out!

Maddie Rose Andry (1:11:17)
So much fun. It's told from his point of view. It's a two part book. So it has a part one and a part two, which is different from book one. Part one is the parallel to book one. We do have a time jump that happens where the Japanese kind of summarizes a time period and then we kind of get to our end. In part two, of book two.

Emil feels in all the gaps of things that were happening, because nothing big was happening for her during that time until the end. But for Emil there was a lot going on. So, yeah, so we get to learn a little bit more about him. And we also get to learn more about his cast of vampires. So again, that's Eden and Amora and Dante and Avery and Aiden.

Tina Koutras (1:11:52)
I love that, that's awesome.

Maddie Rose Andry (1:12:05)
And those are the vampires that are kind of his clan of vampires that he's been with for, hundreds of years. And they get mentioned. We learn little bits and pieces of them in book one, but we don't get to learn a whole lot about them because again, it's being told from Phenice's point of view. In book two, when we get to learn more about them and more about the vampire world and the cursed and fated, then we get to dive in and get to learn a little bit more about them. So it's a lot of fun.

Tina Koutras (1:12:31)
Okay, so next question is a fun one too, if the movie cast had to be laid out, did you have anybody in mind?

Maddie Rose Andry (1:12:42)
Oh, this is such a hard question because actually I do want it to be turned into some film, something or other. Like I'm actually already in the process of working on trying to figure out how to make that happen. And it took me so much work and so many hours to pull these characters that I saw in my head and generate them into artwork. Because I have character art for all of them. It was so...

Tina Koutras (1:12:48)
Mm-hmm.

I saw it's beautiful.

Maddie Rose Andry (1:13:08)
Thank you. It was so much work that like they don't look like anybody. Because they are so real in here. And so I don't really have anybody. And so it actually almost makes me kind of panic a little bit that I would have to like hand these precious children over to some actor or actress.

to portray them. And so no, like I don't have any actor or actress in my head for any of them. And I've actively tried to look and be like, who would it be? I think as it goes live and it's out in the world, I think readers will have ideas of who they are. And that will give me some influence because I've had a lot of reviews that have come back and they're like, I can so see this in film. I can so see this in film.

Tina Koutras (1:13:52)
Mm-hmm.

Maddie Rose Andry (1:14:00)
I can see it playing out in my head because again, my writing is very descriptive and so I do very much want to do that. And yeah, but no, I can't.

Tina Koutras (1:14:11)
that'll be half the fun. think I remember when Anne Rice saw Tom Cruise at first she's like mm-hmm and then he took the character she's that's my Lestat. Do you remember that?

Maddie Rose Andry (1:14:21)
Yeah, yeah, so

Anne Rice was a huge influence for me. And I never even mentioned her, so I think that that's lovely. Like, I feel like my writing's similar in a way, just because is, hers was so dark and emotional. But yeah, uh-huh. Like, would say, I would say yeah, until somebody can show it to me.

Tina Koutras (1:14:38)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah,

be that.

Maddie Rose Andry (1:14:43)
And so that's where I'm probably

like some of my readers might be able to be like, this person And yeah, and actors and actresses, like you've only seen them in the roles that they've done, but it's like, if they were to read it, like, could they do it? Like you've seen like Henry Cavall like go from the Witcher to Superman and you're like, you can do that. So yeah, like who knows, who knows? So that's exciting. I know one of the things that you talked about too is like the cinematic.

Tina Koutras (1:14:53)
That's right.

Yeah.

That's right.

Maddie Rose Andry (1:15:11)
feel. And for me, it will be it would be dark and foreboding and moody, but it has to have a modern edge. And because it's both, the book is both. And so I kind of see it as when, because we're going to manifest this, when it makes it to film, it's going to be something that's going to give

Tina Koutras (1:15:12)
Mm-hmm.

Maddie Rose Andry (1:15:36)
it's going to be a re-birthing of the Gothic era, bringing it back to life. I would love that.

Tina Koutras (1:15:41)
That is a

fantastic ambition. I love that.

Maddie Rose Andry (1:15:45)
I miss it. I miss the Gothic era. It has to come back. Like it's just such a dramatic piece of our history as far as literature and the drama world. Like we need it back. I don't even know if you know this. Most people don't know this, but Gothic literature actually paved the way for psychiatric medicine. Yeah.

Tina Koutras (1:15:46)
It needs to come back.

I agree.

What? Okay,

elaborate.

Maddie Rose Andry (1:16:14)
Yeah.

So when they first started kind of writing about Gothic literature, some of the Gothic literature first started coming into play. And these authors started writing about more of these dark, moody type emotions that nobody wanted to talk about because it was taboo to talk about those things. And you didn't talk about those darker emotions or those personas that you didn't like because it wasn't polite to do that in society. And so they started doing that. And

When that happened, people could really relate to those darker elements that was within themselves. And that's really when people started saying, like, I have that, I have that too, or I have that too. So they started normalizing the shadow self. And when the shadow self started getting normalized, these darker emotions, again, everybody has, but they were ignoring it because again, you don't do that in polite society. You don't cry in front of people. When they started doing that and bringing out that and making that okay,

psychiatric medicine followed not far behind. Became more acceptable. Yeah. So, yeah, so we're back to Gothic medicine, right? Like the healing through the arts. There's so much healing in art, so much healing. if you've ever walked through an art gallery and something moves you or heals your heart, like again, like just the art of nature, like what that cherry blossom tree did for me when I wrote the scene.

Tina Koutras (1:17:09)
incredible. And we're learning stuff still.

Maddie Rose Andry (1:17:30)
Like there was so much healing in all of the beauty that's around us, whether it's in nature or something that an artist created or something that a writer wrote or something that a musician created or, you know, even like DJs taking and mashing up different songs. Like I've heard some of the most crazy, amazing DJ pieces where they've mashed up different things. And I'm just like, man, oh, just earth shattering. So just the things that people can create just, oh, just chills.

Tina Koutras (1:17:56)
So I have

to ask, do you have an image of that tree on your Instagram?

Maddie Rose Andry (1:18:01)
I do, I

do, I do, do. Yeah, like if you want afterwards, I can share it with you. can send you some of the reels that I've made of the cherry blossom tree. I actually have one where I found a TikTok video where somebody was actually there and she made a video. so her TikTok handle is still on the video because obviously I wanted to give her credit for making the video. But yeah, I actually remixed her video.

Tina Koutras (1:18:07)
I'd love to see that.

Mm-hmm.

Maddie Rose Andry (1:18:27)
into one of my reels and did some writing over the top of it. But yeah, I'll share that with you because in her video, what I love over some of the images that you can find, you can see the wires and you can see the stilts and you can see, and you can't really see it in the background, but the Willamette River is actually rushing behind. Like, so the sound of the river behind, it's just mesmerizing. That's so amazing.

Tina Koutras (1:18:48)
Glorious. Amazing.

Okay, so it's time for our rapid fire bonus question round. So just a little quick fun, favourite gothic romance or vampire novel of all time.

Maddie Rose Andry (1:18:55)
Okay.

Dracula, without question. Love it. And then favorite romance book is Pride and Prejudice, without question.

Tina Koutras (1:19:04)
Okay?

Okay,

what's harder to write romance scenes or creating worlds full of magic and lore?

Maddie Rose Andry (1:19:15)
I actually enjoy both of them. I don't find them difficult. I think because I live kind of in this like, I live in a Maddie bubble. Like so I do, I live in a Maddie bubble. It's an interesting place to be. And so yeah, I'm kind of halfway in the mystical anyway, most of the time. So yeah, I love the world building. I love my imagination. I love being there. And then I find relationships so just...

Amazing. Like I love working with relationships. I love building relationships. Everything that we do is around relationships, whether it's parent, child, husband, wife, intimate, domestic partners, whatever it is, or it's professional, right? So you're coworkers, or your friends, or your acquaintances, whatever we do, it's all about relationships. And so I absolutely love, I love that. So yeah,

I can't say I find one harder than the other. I have so much fun. And one of the things is when I get to write them and then I laugh out loud. you know, I get emotional as I'm writing it. Like I do exude a lot of emotions as I'm writing. I emote, yeah, like it's just, it's there. It's palpable even for me. I even, before we even started our interview, one of my street team members is building something and she was asking for quotes.

Tina Koutras (1:20:23)
believe that.

Maddie Rose Andry (1:20:34)
and one of the other street teams put a quote in there and I started laughing really hard. I was like, I wrote that.

Tina Koutras (1:20:39)
Yeah

you

Maddie Rose Andry (1:20:41)
best thing ever like I was like that's really good and then I was like I wrote that okay that's awesome

Tina Koutras (1:20:43)
you

Ha ha ha!

Maddie Rose Andry (1:20:47)
I've already moved on. I've moved on. I'm writing book three. I forget. They're like, oh my gosh, this is my favorite quote. I'm so glad, but yeah.

Tina Koutras (1:20:49)
you

Okay. So the next one is a little bit different. So vampires, witches, or werewolves, what's your ultimate supernatural creature? You wrote about vampires. So let's see. Yes, for sure.

Maddie Rose Andry (1:21:10)
vampires, vampires,

I, but I, know, honestly, I like them all. I won't spill any beans or anything, but like, well, we'll be visiting many things in the future. Yay.

Tina Koutras (1:21:22)
Nice! Okay.

And what fantasy item would you steal if no one could stop you?

Maddie Rose Andry (1:21:30)
with a sorcerer's stone.

Tina Koutras (1:21:31)
Okay, fair enough. Fast and easy.

Maddie Rose Andry (1:21:33)
I mean, who wouldn't want

to? I mean, sorcerer stuff. Yeah. Yeah.

Tina Koutras (1:21:37)
Okay,

so I have to ask, your daughters just as mystical as you or are you on your own?

Maddie Rose Andry (1:21:46)
Oh yeah.

No, my whole family's dramatic. Like when I start talking a British accent, my husband will join in. And then my 11 year old is getting quite good at it. My 13 year old is very good with the Southern accent. So she'll talk in a Southern accent when we do those. But no, we're all ridiculous. I'm pretty sure that my 11 year old came from whatever planet.

Tina Koutras (1:21:54)
nice.

It sounds very fun.

Maddie Rose Andry (1:22:12)
whatever universe where all the rainbows, all the unicorn, all the glitter, all the sparkles, all the fairy dust. I'm pretty sure that's where she came from. My 13 year old is very dark and broody. They're like polar opposites.

Tina Koutras (1:22:21)
That's beautiful.

13.

Maddie Rose Andry (1:22:31)
It's my version kid!

Tina Koutras (1:22:33)
You

Maddie Rose Andry (1:22:35)
She's very dramatic. She will literally throw herself on the floor and be like, you're killing me, I'm dying. So no, we have a very dramatic, very dramatic family.

Tina Koutras (1:22:47)
It sounds like a lot of fun.

Maddie Rose Andry (1:22:47)
It's quite entertaining.

It really, it really is. We're ridiculous.

Tina Koutras (1:22:52)
So,

Paul asked me to ask, do you scented candles while writing?

Maddie Rose Andry (1:22:59)
I actually don't use candles, but I do use a oil diffuser when I do that. then, yeah, so there's usually an oil diffuser going on. And I will use scents based off of, you know, like how when somebody's like, this character smells like this or that character smells like that, I will make a blend of whatever essential oil that I'm dealing with with.

Tina Koutras (1:23:14)
Mm-hmm.

Maddie Rose Andry (1:23:21)
my characters. So like if I'm in like Emil's head and what he smells like, then that's usually what's in my oil diffuser. So when I talk about method...

Tina Koutras (1:23:31)
That's part of it.

Maddie Rose Andry (1:23:33)
Like I really do immerse myself in this whole world.

Tina Koutras (1:23:37)
That's the way to do it. You get so much more out of it that way.

Maddie Rose Andry (1:23:40)
I mean, yeah, like I get so lost in it. mean, yeah, but it's fun. I have fun.

Tina Koutras (1:23:49)
It definitely sounds like you do. Have you ever played Dungeons and Dragons?

Maddie Rose Andry (1:23:53)
I have not. I have not. Surprisingly, no. But I will say when you talked about the plotters or the pantzers and then, you know, there's these like games. I've never been a big video game person but my husband got me into the Nintendo Switch Zelda game. Breath of the Wild. And I played that with a clipboard and paper.

And my husband's a pantser and he would be wandering and I'm like, that's not where you go. This is what we're doing.

If you could actually believe that Zelda Breath of the Wild could be a form of marriage therapy, you better believe it.

Tina Koutras (1:24:26)
I'll have to keep that in mind.

Maddie Rose Andry (1:24:28)
Really? We learned so much about each other and how our differences did not vibe well at all. I was like, stay on task. And he's like, I want to do this. And I was like, no.

Tina Koutras (1:24:39)
That's me and

my husband in reverse.

Maddie Rose Andry (1:24:43)
It was

so funny. He was like, I've never seen anybody play video games with a clipboard and paper. I was like, well, now you have.

Tina Koutras (1:24:51)
And so last but not least, where can people find you and would you like to show us your book?

Maddie Rose Andry (1:24:52)
You

Yeah, I mean, have I have like flashed it a few times. So she's so pretty. And look, I did match my shirt does have the cover on it. But so it's going to be on Amazon. You're putting it in your store, too, aren't you? Yes. Yes. So it's the paperback's not available on Amazon yet either, but it is on Barnes and Nobles. And.

Tina Koutras (1:25:04)
You match.

We are indeed. We have to wait for it to be released, but yes.

Maddie Rose Andry (1:25:21)
Yeah, the e-book's gonna be there. You can find me on Instagram. I try to reply to everybody. So I do like to interact with my readers. I actually love it. Relationships. Yeah, I try to be. thank you. My handle is author, Maddie Rose-Andry. So just at author, Maddie Rose-Andry. And my website is Maddie Rose-Andry. So it's just my name.

Tina Koutras (1:25:32)
And you were pretty quick. I was so excited when you responded. So what's your handle?

It makes it easy.

Maddie Rose Andry (1:25:48)
so www.

yeah, Maddie Rose, andry.com. I'm the only one, I'm the only Maddie Rose, andry anywhere. Yeah. It makes it really easy to stalk me. Please not in a weird way. Like I'm okay. If it's not, it's not a weird way. that's, that's actually, that's one of the tropes in the book.

Tina Koutras (1:25:54)
That makes it easy.

Maddie Rose Andry (1:26:07)
possessive MMC my street team is gonna be so disappointed in me but yeah so my website is my name and yeah my so is my just author and Instagram is where I'm usually at like that's my social media of choice and then I have a good reads page and I have an Amazon author page so I'm pretty much sprinkled

Tina Koutras (1:26:09)
You

You do.

You're there. I can honestly say that I had no idea we were going to blow through two hours in such an absolutely stellar way. That was so much fun and I really enjoyed talking with you tonight.

Maddie Rose Andry (1:26:32)
Yeah.

Thank you.

Thank you so much. I really enjoyed talking with you, Tina. I'm honored. Thank you so much for reaching out to me and wanting to help promote this book because it's a birthing process. This whole publishing and being an indie author, it's been kind of bittersweet. It's like watching kids grow up and setting them into the world.

knowing that this is coming out and I've moved on to the next book and then the book after that. The woman I was when I wrote Mortal End doesn't exist anymore. She's gone. And there's some grief in that. And I'm also really excited about where I get to evolve and who I get to be as I write book three, because I'm also no longer the woman who wrote book two.

Tina Koutras (1:27:33)
and perhaps achieve your own immortality.

Maddie Rose Andry (1:27:36)
Yeah, well, and that's kind of one of the things that I talked about, right? Is like, even though she's gone, she gets to be immortalized in the pages of Mortal End. So, which is fun because it's a vampire book.

Tina Koutras (1:27:47)
Yeah, I love it. I absolutely love it. So thank you so much. And when book two does come out, maybe we can chat again.

Maddie Rose Andry (1:27:49)
Yeah. Well, thank you so much.

I would absolutely love that.

Tina Koutras (1:27:58)
Me too. Okay, so thank you so much and to everybody you now have how to find Maddie and what to look forward. so this will be likely airing on the 17th, so your book will have been out for a few days, but it does come out on the 11th. And I know because it's like literally written on my calendar in front of me. So.

Maddie Rose Andry (1:28:15)
Yeah. Yeah.

Tina Koutras (1:28:21)
Now you know where to find

her and what to expect. Thank you so much.

Maddie Rose Andry (1:28:24)
Thank you.

You can find book 1: Mortal End here