Who is vc andrews

While she was experimenting with actual personal interaction, her relationship with readers was growing more confident, even as she branched out from the Dollanganger family. There was the insane, gripping child-rape novel, My Sweet Audrina , which was published in If Flowers in the Attic was inspired by a story Andrews had heard as young person, Heaven and the subsequent Casteel series derived from a memoir purchased for Andrews to adapt as fiction. According to Patty, Humphrey Evans came across a woman's true account of being sold by her father.

According to Joan Andrews, Virginia's devotion to writing Heaven and the sequel, Dark Angel , contributed to her death. Bill Andrews — Virginia's brother and Joan's husband —"even went to the Edgar Cayce Institute there in Virginia Beach and researched what could be done holistically, she so wanted to keep her strength up to continue writing," wrote Joan. Andrews confided to Patty that she was sick.

In the Faces of Fear interview, Andrews had complained that she wanted to "branch out" from the children-in-jeopardy genre she had created.

But, she said, "I am supposed to stay in this niche, whatever it is, because there is so much money in it. I mean, I have tapped a gold mine and they don't want to let go of it.

Indeed, they did not. Andrews died on Dec. Andrew and Diane Neiderman live in a mid-century modern home in a quiet neighborhood in Palm Springs. His office, lined with wall-to-wall bookshelves, is dominated by a large desk.

Neiderman was born in Brooklyn, but his family moved to the Catskills in upstate New York when he was a small child. He directed school plays, coached wrestling, and taught summer school. A young teacher, he soon married a student named Diane Wilson. The couple have been together for 50 years, live in Palm Springs and in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, and have two adult children and three grandchildren.

He is 73, and white-haired with a neatly trimmed beard. Before the move to California, while Neiderman was a full-time teacher, he was always writing. Neiderman's determination began to pay off in the '80s, when he began regularly releasing horror novels.

His biggest success under his own name is The Devil's Advocate , which was published in and adapted into a riotous movie co-starring Keanu Reeves and a particularly scream-y Al Pacino as Satan.

Ann Patty was Neiderman's editor; Anita Diamant was his agent. He had just gotten a book contract that was enough money to stop teaching and move his family to Los Angeles when Diamant called him about taking over the writing of Garden of Shadows , the Flowers in the Attic prequel. According to Neiderman, Patty "thought she was going to write the books.

She couldn't write one word. Patty said that for legal reasons, she can't comment on anything that happened after Andrews died. But she did say this bit on the record: "When it became clear that someone else would need to be brought in, the agent wanted it to be Andy.

So that's who it became. That maybe or maybe not would have been my choice. Neiderman said that Diamant had asked him to audition to try to take over for Andrews when she was close to death. He had read all of her books, and sent in a sample mimicking her style — but didn't think anything would actually come of it. Joan Andrews said that Virginia had read one of Neiderman's novels, 's Pin , and "she liked his writing style.

Andrews is not the first writer to continue to produce new works after death. Parker, who died in , but whose characters live on, written by multiple ghostwriters. And then there are series like Nancy Drew, which are entirely written by collections of writers-for-hire under one pen name.

But the Neiderman-as-Andrews arrangement is different in that 27 years after embarking on writing his first V. Andrews books, he is still the sole ghostwriter writing them. If fans had heard that Andrews had died, and thought to wonder how it was that her books continued to come out, those questions did not affect the sales of the posthumous books.

In Neiderman's contracts, he agreed not to disclose that he was now the author. It was during that three-book contract that Pocket finally acknowledged within the books what should have been obvious enough. In 's Dawn , which kicked off a brand-new series the Cutler series, for those keeping track , a vaguely worded letter from the Andrews family was included which read, in part: "Beginning with the final books in the Casteel series we have been working closely with a carefully selected writer to organize and complete Virginia's stories and to expand upon them by creating additional novels inspired by her wonderful storytelling genius.

Andrews novels will be published in the coming years and we hope they continue to mean as much to you as ever. As Weinman put it, "Looking back, just the thought that you could hide that she had died — it's just ridiculous. It had pretty much worked, though.

Additionally, being hazy about how much writing Andrews had left behind — almost none, in truth — had also worked well for several years. A New York Times story quotes the managing director of Harper Collins saying that had he published Dawn , he would have put Neiderman's name on the cover because "in English law you can't say a book is written by somebody who didn't write it.

In success, Vanda LLC faced another hurdle. The IRS auditor who oversaw the Andrews estate was one day browsing in a bookstore and noticed that a V.

Andrews novel that had not been a part of the taxed estate was among the author's books. She found out about the ghostwriting, and decided that the name "V.

Andrews" should have been an asset on which the family had paid taxes. She assessed the family taxes and penalties; they sued to get it back. The lawsuit took place over two years in the early '90s, and the family did end up getting some money back from the IRS. But during the depositions for the lawsuit, the machinations behind V. Andrews Inc. Especially the deterioration of Ann Patty and Neiderman's working relationship.

In Neiderman's deposition, he said, "money was demanded of me from [Patty] for her participation in the process… I mean, what you have here is a situation where the person who judges my work wants to participate in doing it and be paid for it, so it's kind of — I'm kind of squeezed, if you can understand that.

But Andrews' estate attorney, Charles Payne, was not happy; he wrote a letter to Neiderman accusing him of breach of contract for subcontracting part of the work. Reached by telephone, Payne, who is 74, said he can't talk about V.

Andrews, her family, or her estate because of attorney—client privilege though he has not represented them for many years.

But when asked specifically about Neiderman and Patty, he said, "He was being held up. He did not do that voluntarily. I wanted to put a stop to that because the more she demanded of him, the more he demanded of us. The first book is a psychodrama centers on the Dollanger family whose head of the family dies in an accident which leaves the mother and her four children financially helpless. The mother, Corrine, ask her mother to provide them shelter which she does only on the condition that her children were to stay hidden in an attic away from their grandfather who did not approve her marriage with her distant uncle.

The story revolves around the four children who spend year after year stuck in attic waiting for their mother to free them but only to meet deceit and tragic fate in the end. The book was adapted into a film in The sequels, Petals on the Wind in the Dollanger series, continue the story subsequent to the escape of the children.

The Dollanger series, although successful, earned the status of highly controversial books for its disturbing sexual themes. The theme of consensual incest had it banned from many libraries. She was of the view that she only finishes those books that hold her interesting long enough and kept her guessing till the end. There were what I call VC-isms — she had her own way of describing things. To be able to see it, visualise it, understand it, is part of what makes VC Andrews so powerful.

Garden of Shadows was another hit and Neiderman went on writing Andrews novels. It was only in , when the Andrews estate sued the Internal Revenue Service over taxes and Neiderman was a major witness, that it became clear to her fans for the first time that he was now Andrews.

In each, the protagonist overcame the adversities visited upon her or him and, at the end of the novel, faced a hopeful future. A question mark remains over how much of the content is based on what she left behind. For now, Neiderman is writing three VC Andrews books a year. I love those premises and from there you go on. Topics Books Romance books Fiction Publishing features.