Beach author T.J. Derry’s book Carried Away to be released today

By JESSICA SHACKLETON

Your newest dramatic beach read will be available this week. Local filmmaker, television ad creator and now author T.J. Derry’s first novel, Carried Away, is being released on Tuesday, Nov. 11.

Derry said he came up with the idea for the book while he was travelling and became tired of staring at screens and the backs of seats.

“I was looking for a book to read, but nothing was really hitting me, so I thought to myself, maybe that book I want to read doesn’t exist, so, as an experiment, I thought maybe I would try to write it,” he said. “Which is pretty much what led me to get started with it.”

Derry said he considers authors to be incredibly talented geniuses and he had to convince himself that he could actually write a book.

“I don’t have a process, is my process. I would just open the laptop and read what I wrote,” he said. “The more you stop procrastinating and actually do something, that’s 90 per cent of it. A lot of it is a tennis match in your mind. Just open the thing up and try; maybe something will happen.”

It took more than six and a half years for Derry to finish the story. He said that while the COVID-19 pandemic may have helped some people with productivity, it slowed him down.

Now, he said, having Carried Away ready for people to read after all that time is a special feeling.

“There’s a little bit of trepidation at first because you’re putting yourself out there. In TV ads, it was other people’s work, but in this case, it’s all about what you wrote and what you’re putting out there. It’s liable to be criticized, so after the first couple of reviews, I felt better,” said Derry. 

In October, Derry was looking for unique and cheap ways to promote Carried Away.

“How do you advertise without paying for big billboards? The idea of the Little Free Library came up because it’s really popular, especially in Toronto. We originally started by dropping unreleased copies in the boxes with surfboard-shaped bookmarks. We filmed a lot of dropping them off and doing a treasure hunt,” he said.

As they were working on that, Derry had another idea to take it a step further and build a box based on the theme of the book. This led to a custom-built beach hut Little Free Library on the Boardwalk at Woodbine Beach. 

Derry put unreleased copies of the book, a notebook, and a message in a bottle. It asked people to write something about what makes their life meaningful.

“The amount of people who were not just open to this but wanted to write and tell us things that were personal or things that have affected them in their lives was honestly overwhelming. We probably heard from 50 people. I have pages and pages of that journal filled with people’s biggest fears, hopes, and dreams,” said Derry.

“It was just an incredible thing that made me feel like there’s something about the cultural moment right now that people really need that outlet right now.”

Derry has lived around both Spruce Hill Road and Queen Street East, and Coxwell and Queen in the Beach.

He said he has learned a lot about how much work it takes to be a writer throughout the process of creating Carried Away. He says it wasn’t always easy to write the book, but it was worth it.

“If you’re going to commit to something of this size, just make sure it’s something you really want to do. A lot of the writing was done while travelling, so that gave me something to focus on,” he said.

“Even when I thought I was done with the first manuscript, I was 12 iterations away from it being finished, so it takes a lot out of you,” he said. “If you want it enough, you’ll figure out a way to do it. You can do it; there’s nothing special about me.”

Carried Away is “your next adventure, no passport required,” and the story follows character Cole’s unexpected encounter with a tsunami on a surf trip to Indonesia. Readers can expect rich scenery and a survivor-thriller experience. The first half even feels like a fun vacation.

“If you want to go on an adventure and see life through a little more of a clear lens, this would be the book for you because it allows you to exogenously go through something most people will never go through,” said Derry. “It reflects to you what you have to be grateful for, the meaning of your life, and all of the things in your world that we shouldn’t take for granted because they can be stripped away in the time it takes for a wave to hit.”

Carried Away is being officially released today, Nov. 11, and is available at most book stores. To learn more, please visit: https://www.readcarriedaway.com/