Author Q&A: Harrison Demchick, “The Listeners”

Q&A Excerpt:Why did you write The Listeners?Originally, I wrote The Listeners for an independent study my senior semester at Oberlin College. Of course, at the time, it wasn’t called The Listeners, and it wasn’t a novel. Ashes, Ashes was a series of interconnected short stories, and I wrote it because the idea of such a story cycle fascinated me. I wanted a scenario that would affect numerous characters in numerous ways, and that’s where the quarantine came from, and ultimately the Listeners as well. This was seven and a half years ago.I became deeply invested in the characters, particularly Daniel Raymond. So I kept pursuing the story, turning Daniel’s story into a screenplay, and then adapting the whole thing into a novel. It has been, for the better part of a decade, a story that needed to be told one way or another.To read the full Q&A, click here: writeonline.com