Occupation Novelist Name V. Andrews | Role Novelist | |
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Born Cleo Virginia AndrewsJune 6, 1923Portsmouth, Virginia, U.S. ( 1923-06-06 ) Genre Gothic horrorFamily saga Movies Flowers in the Attic, Petals on the Wind, Rain Parents Lillian Lilnora Parker Andrews, William Henry Andrews Books Flowers in the Attic, Petals on the Wind, Garden of Shadows, If There Be Thorns, Seeds of Yesterday Similar People Andrew Neiderman, Jeffrey Bloom, Ellen Burstyn, Deborah Chow, Kayla Alpert | ||
V c andrews ghost writer andrew neiderman part 1
Cleo Virginia Andrews (June 6, 1923 – December 19, 1986), better known as V. C. Andrews or Virginia C. Andrews, was an American novelist. She was born in Portsmouth, Virginia. Andrews died of breast cancer at the age of 63.
Contents
- V c andrews ghost writer andrew neiderman part 1
- V c andrews ghost writer andrew neiderman part 2
- Life
- Stand alone works
- Short stories ghost written by Neiderman inspired by Andrews artwork
- Film adaptations
- References
Andrews' novels combine Gothic horror and family saga, revolving around family secrets and forbidden love (frequently involving themes of consensual incest, most often between siblings), and they often include a rags-to-riches story. Her best-known novel is the bestseller Flowers in the Attic (1979), a tale of four children locked in the attic of a wealthy Virginia family for over three years by their estranged pious grandmother.
Her novels were so successful that after her death her estate hired a ghost writer, Andrew Neiderman, to write more stories to be published under her name. In assessing a deficiency in her estate tax returns, the Internal Revenue Service argued (successfully) that Virginia Andrews's name was a valuable commercial asset, the value of which should be included in her gross estate.
Her novels have been translated into Czech, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Dutch, Japanese, Korean, Turkish, Greek, Finnish, Hungarian, Swedish, Polish, Portuguese, Lithuanian, Chinese, Russian and Hebrew .
V c andrews ghost writer andrew neiderman part 2
Life
Andrews was born in Portsmouth, Virginia, the youngest child and only daughter of the Andrews family. She grew up attending Southern Baptist and Methodist Churches. As a teenager, Andrews suffered a fall from a school stairwell, resulting in severe back injuries. The subsequent surgery to correct these injuries resulted in Andrews’s suffering from crippling arthritis that required her to use crutches and a wheelchair for much of her life. However, Andrews, who had always shown promise as an artist, was able to complete a four-year correspondence course from her home and soon became a successful commercial artist, illustrator, and portrait painter.
Later in life, Andrews turned to writing. Her first novel, titled Gods of Green Mountain, was a science fiction effort that remained unpublished during her lifetime but was released as an e-book in 2004. In 1975, Andrews completed a manuscript for a novel she called Flowers In The Attic. The novel was returned with the suggestion that she "spice up" and expand the story. In later interviews, Andrews claims to have made the necessary revisions in a single night. The novel, published in 1979, was an instant popular success, reaching the top of the bestseller lists in only two weeks. Every year thereafter until her death, Andrews published a new novel, each publication earning Andrews larger advances and a growing popular readership.
"I think I tell a whopping good story. And I don't drift away from it a great deal into descriptive material", she stated in Faces of Fear in 1985. "When I read, if a book doesn't hold my interest about what's going to happen next, I put it down and don't finish it. So I'm not going to let anybody put one of my books down and not finish it. My stuff is a very fast read."
Andrews died of breast cancer on December 19, 1986, in Virginia Beach, Virginia. After her death, her family hired a ghostwriter, Andrew Neiderman, to finish the manuscripts she had started. He would complete the next two novels, Garden of Shadows and Fallen Hearts, and they were published soon after. These two novels are considered the last to bear the "V.C. Andrews" name and to be almost completely written by Andrews herself.