T.J. Derry is the author of the new novel Carried Away. He is also a director, cinematographer, and photographer.
Q: What inspired you to write Carried Away, and how did you create your character Cole?
A: I couldn’t find anything that felt like it was going to give me the vicarious experience I was after. There’s no shortage of great books out there, but I wanted something that made me feel like I was living it—something raw, unpredictable, and a little dangerous. I just wanted a story that would pull me in, that offered a window into an unbelievable experience, good or bad.
I’ve always been drawn to the ocean, to travel, to that line between beauty and danger where nature stops caring about your plans. I’ve surfed, I’ve owned sailboats, I’ve chased adventure—and I’ve definitely taken a few unnecessary risks.
So when the idea of a tsunami story showed up, it felt like the universe saying, go for it—even though I was utterly convinced I could never write a decent book.
Ultimately, I couldn’t find what I wanted to read, so I started writing it.
Cole kind of snuck up on me. The first traces of him appeared during a sketchy cab ride through the Nicaraguan night—I was anxious, typing into my phone’s notepad, a sort of last recounting of the moments leading up to how I might end up in a smoldering pile of rubble in the jungle. Somehow that entry wound up becoming the first few pages of what’s now Chapter Two.
Once I realized the story had to be told in the first person, he started talking—and unfortunately (or fortunately), he sounded a lot like me. The good, the bad, the neuroticism. He’s not me, but I recognize the guy.
Q: What impact did your background in filmmaking have on the writing of the novel?
A: It’s tough to know exactly where filmmaking ends and the written stuff begins. They’ve always felt like the same job to me—just trying to get something across without wrecking it in the process.
I’ve always leaned toward the idea of using the minimum necessary force to tell a story. In film, that might mean holding on a wide shot when conventional wisdom would dictate that you cut to a closeup.
Sometimes you have to let the actors breathe, let the scene breathe. Skip the gimmicky shots and the fancy camera moves unless they’re driving the emotion or helping the tone. A lot of the time, they just get in the way or confuse the audience.
It’s kind of like Jiro the sushi chef—find good ingredients and stop fussing. Don’t try to bend the thing to your will. Let it be what it is and simply enhance it by focusing on its strength.
I think writing’s the same. You fight the urge to over-describe, to flex vocabulary, to underline the obvious. You let the moment hang. You let the reader fill the silence—their imagination’s the most powerful tool of all.
Q: The novel is set off the coast of Sumatra--how important is setting to you in your writing?
A: I’ve never been great at blending the unrealistic too casually. If the story doesn’t feel believable, I check out. My best friend Hayden always jokes that I think movies are documentaries—and he’s not entirely wrong. I’ve just got a hard time suspending disbelief when things don’t add up. Plausibility, to me, is one of the pillars of storytelling.
That’s part of why I landed on Sumatra. Geographically, it has those atolls and little unnamed islands scattered around the larger ones—places where it would actually make sense for the guys to end up after a catastrophe. It could handle the story’s extremes without breaking that thread of believability. And the place already feels cinematic—wild, remote, unpredictable—but still real.
There’s a kind of mystery to an ecosystem that’s full of the unknown: the animals, the fish, the creatures nobody ever sees. It gave the story this textured, slightly primal backdrop—and since the characters aren’t from a tropical climate, they’re as disoriented by it as the reader. You know, familiar people dropped into an unfamiliar place… there’s tension there. Beautiful, and a little terrifying.
Q: Did you know how the novel would end before you started writing it, or did you make many changes along the way?
A: Honestly, I was more surprised that I was actually getting somewhere with it. I don’t really think of myself as a novelist—or as someone capable of writing a book, to be honest. I just kept showing up to see what would happen next. Every time the story moved forward, it felt like I’d gotten lucky somehow, and I was just waiting for the luck to run out.
As I went, I kept sketching little outlines to see what might make for a solid third act—just trying to land the thing without over-engineering it. I’ve never been much for long, drawn-out endings that try to tie every thread in a bow.
In cinema, that kind of thing drives me crazy. You know that feeling when you’re sitting in a theatre, just waiting for the credits to roll because the film’s already wrapped emotionally, but the director hasn’t realized it yet? Yeah—that.
I knew how it would end in broad strokes, but the details found me on the page. Some of the best turns came from just following where a character wanted to go, or how a resolution might naturally manifest in the Newtonian world—action and reaction, nothing more mystical than that. I left a lot of it up to the moment.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: Right now I’m mostly focused on the promo and publicity for Carried Away. I finished the companion journal not long ago, which felt like closing the creative loop on the whole thing. So at the moment, it’s less about chasing a new idea and more about getting this one out into the world—talking about it, showing up, trying not to overthink it.
I’m still doing some film work on the side, trying to keep that part of my brain from getting rusty. As for what’s next… no clue. I guess we’ll see how this release goes and go from there. For now, I’m just taking a breath and letting things settle before the next idea shows up uninvited.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: The companion journal I mentioned runs alongside the book—Polaroids, sketches, notes, fragments, little offshoots of thought. You can access it through the QR codes in the novel if you want to go a bit deeper.
Carried Away is such an adventure, and Cole kind of keeps adding to the thing—like a way to hold onto the memories and moments. It became a way to slip further into his world for the reader—thoughts and confessions, ideas, and pieces that didn’t quite fit into the main story but still belonged to it. It’s a quiet extension of the book’s world—a place where the story keeps breathing after the last page.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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