Source: Contemporary Authors, Volume 97-100, editor Frances C. Locher, Gale Research Company (Detroit, MI, ©1981).

PERSONAL: Born on the sixth of June in Portsmouth, Va.; daughter of William Henry (in tool and die) and Lillian Lilnora (a telephone operator; maiden name, Parker) Andrews. Education: Educated in Portsmouth, Va. Home Address: 5628 Michael Lane, Portsmouth, Va. 23703. Agent: Anita Diamant, The Writers' Workshop, 51 East 42nd St., New York, N.Y. 10017. (NOTE: Please do not write to these addresses - they are no longer current.)

CAREER: Writer. Formerly worked as a fashion illustrator, commercial artist, portrait artist, and gallery exhibitor.

WRITINGS---Novels: Flowers in the Attic, Pocket Books, 1979; Petals on the Wind, Pocket Books, 1980.

WORK IN PROGRESS: The third book in the trilogy begun with Flowers in the Attic; a novel based in thirteenth-century France.

SIDELIGHTS: A tale of child abuse and incest, V. C. Andrews's Flowers in the Attic rocketed to the Best-Sellers List only two weeks after it was published. Flowers in the Attic is the story of the four Dollanganger children. The offspring of an incestuous union, the children are locked up in an attic because if their grandfather learns of their existence, he will cut their mother out of his will. Forgotten by their unfeeling mother, physically beaten by their sadistic grandmother, the children turn to each other for love. In the sequel, Petals on the Wind, the children finally escape from the attic and are able to wreak revenge on their mother and grandmother.

According to a publicity release, when Andrews is working on a novel she becomes completely absorbed in what she is doing. Often she will work through the night. She so empathizes with her characters that if one dies, she is grief-stricken. Another of her quirks is to hang a mirror behind her typewriter so that she can "then project better." Andrews told CA: "When I was a child I thought it boring to be only me for a whole lifetime, and so I thought the perfect thing for me to be would be an actress who would play many parts, and be many people. Since life often has a way of diverting you from your chosen path, I became an artist, and was still unsatisfied, for an artist is an artist, dong the same thing every day. then I began to write, and discovered to my delight, in writing of my characters, I assumed their bodies and their minds, and literally, I became what they were, and so in a way, when I write, I am on stage, speaking the lines, directing, producing, etc.

"It takes about fifty pages before I can begin to really identify with my characters, so they do take me up and out of myself to such a degree my own life becomes secondary. As in Flowers in the Attic, the situation was not pleasant, but there is no beauty without ugliness, and no enjoyment without suffering, we have to have the shade in order to see the light, and that is all I do in a story, put my characters in the shade--and try before the ending, to have them in the sunlight.

"I have my own philosophy, my own belief in reincarnation, sustained by many psychic experiences. With the people I am closest to, I can transmit by ESP messages such as articles I want purchased before the 'receiver' comes home from the shopping center. It is my belief anyone can do what they want, but only when they want it so badly nothing else will do.

"My novels are also based on dreams, and situation taken from my own life, in which I change the pattern so that what might have happened, actually does happen--and therein lies the tale."

AVOCATIONAL INTERESTS: Ballet, classical music, bridge, chess, astrology (for personality profiles, not predictions).

BIOGRAPHICAL/CRITICAL SOURCES: Washington Post Book World, November 4, 1979.

Full text © 1981 Gale Research Company