Blunt Words, Adventures and A Middle Finger

Andi (Andrea) Corwin, An Author to Remember

Vanity Fair, May 2048, Martin Sands

I just finished reading the August 2047 piece by Georgia Brown, of Literary Biographies:

Andi (Andrea) Corwin was a prolific author; she credited her gift to the many letters her father wrote to friends and to her, using paper placemats from the restaurants where he lunched. Andi Corwin’s daughter, KL, agreed to talk to me about her famous mother.

“Your mom had arthritis in her later years, didn’t she?” I asked her.

“I have it too.” (She shows me some enlarged knuckles). “It was awful after she reached 88; then she dictated into her iPhone, but...” she chuckles.

“What’s making you chuckle?”

“When smartphones came out, her texts were legendary. Her iPhone recalibrated her Midwest accent, turning her responses into nonsensical gibberish. She used to say, ‘Life is short; who has time to proofread texts before hitting send? Figure it out!’ In the end, Mom blamed it on her constant use of the middle finger." (She demonstrated by sticking her middle finger up.)

“I’ve heard many stories…”

Laughing, she said: “She overdid it, sure. Mom was impatient, with no tolerance for mean or ignorant people, or bad drivers. At 92, she agreed to hire a driver; then couldn't resist telling him to speed up, while he urged her not to give the finger to other drivers. My brother and I discovered that in high school, her nickname was Cassius Clay - because she stood up to the bullies. We miss hearing her and our uncles laughing as they told family stories; they all had a strange sense of humor. Mom spouted blunt opinions but never meant to offend.”

“Yes; from reading all her Letters to the Editor, it is clear that she minced no words and kept quite busy giving the community her opinions.”

“Mom was retired from the government and civic-minded. I remember her being annoyed that so many climbers had to be rescued on Mount Rainier. Her letter to the Editors said that climbers should pay a substantial deposit, to be set aside if they needed rescuing. She didn't like that taxpayers footed the bill for the rescues. Years after the newspaper stopped printing its paper version, she became friends with one of the editors that managed the Letters section."

"The movie is generating a new buzz about her."

"When she was young, she had no interest in reading the classics. In middle school, she devoured Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan and John Carter series, reading a book per night. Stephen King, Peter Straub, and Dean Koontz were her favorite horror novelists. Science fiction and horror consumed her. She watched Star Trek, The Twilight Zone, and The Outer Limits on television. As kids, she and her friends went to double features for movies like Premature Burial, Mothra, vs. Godzilla, and so many others. Her secret dreams were to travel to Africa, find where Tarzan had lived, speak to the elephants and gorillas, and, one day, leave planet Earth in a rocket ship.” Laughing again, she added, “She didn’t find Tarzan, but in adulthood, she traveled to East Africa frequently, photographing and writing about the animals and landscape. Once, I asked her if she would apply to go to space on one of Elon Musk's spaceships. Her middle finger shot up, and she replied: Absolutely fucking no."

"Why do you think she answered like that?"

"I asked her that, and she said she detested racists and would not have gone on Elon Musk’s spaceship for a billion dollars.”

- Georgia Brown

Samuel Livingstone, an infamous horror writer, recounted his time with her in the London Weekly Journal’s December 2035 issue:

Buckle up and prepare for Ms. Corwin’s unusual perspectives in her horror stories. She loved going to the movie theater with me when a new horror movie was playing. On numerous occasions, I squealed like a little kid, covering my eyes, while she laughed maniacally. She thought scary movies were stupid, not scary.

Her classic short story, Belgreth Is Real, begins: I’m here to tell you how the story of Dracula came to be. The entire premise stems from my travels and the stories I learned along the way. The author Bram Stoker attended the same college as I. He studied and earned his BA, then paid to have it promoted to an MA. Too lazy to actually earn it, he bought it because he was allowed to. Good for him; I have no jealousy. I beat him at everything and didn’t feel the need to boast about anything. 

In the story, Herbert describes a huge, horrifying creature that he and his Uncle Brewster encounter, and that he writes about in his journal. Stoker breaks into Herbert’s apartment, steals all of his journals, and uses Herbert’s entries to create the story of Dracula. Herbert publicly calls him out as a liar and a thief. Belgreth suddenly appears and is ready to attack Stoker, but Herbert intervenes.

When I asked how she came up with this idea for the story about Bram Stoker, she said that the creature Belgreth appeared in her mind, and she was immediately led to write about a famous author who was really a liar and had stolen another’s idea and gained fame. She didn’t give Stoker credit for creating a legendary creature or for writing Dracula. She said it didn’t matter, since in her story, he stole the idea. Belgreth’s anger at Stoker for threatening Herbert represents right from wrong; good vs evil.

- Samuel Livingstone

Owen King, Stephen King’s son, optioned Ms. Corwin’s short story, Uneeda, and it became a high-grossing two-hour-long movie. The Nabisco Uneeda Biscuit Boy letter opener is the center of her horror story. Andi gives the letter opener a multi-layered identity and human feelings. The letter opener feels abandoned by its new owner, Sloane, and is jealous of Sloane’s friends. Uneeda seeks revenge for its neglect and lack of appreciation.

“Martin, I would have been a fool not to jump on obtaining the rights to make it into a movie,” King told me when I sat down with him, preparing for this Vanity Fair article. “A letter opener, forgotten under couch cushions, manages to stab a man to death. In what world does that happen? It’s like a Twilight Zone episode.”

Andi did not live to see the movie’s release. However, no fool with money and negotiations, she ensured the maximum profits from the book and movie were added to her already well-funded endowments and were regularly distributed to her favorite charities and relatives. Near the end, she remarked that only greedy younger acquaintances visited, usually wanting something. If she were still alive, I imagine there would be a book about it.

Upon her mother’s death, Ms. Corwin’s daughter, KL, inherited Uneeda. Unlike her mother, she is not a fan of horror stories or movies. Showing me a photo of the opener, she said that she immediately rented a second bank deposit box. She took no chances of becoming an object of Uneeda's misaligned rage. "Once alone in the vault, I wrapped it in one of Mom's hankies and whispered an apology," she said. She then told me how she penned a note asking for understanding, laid it on top of the letter opener, and locked the box. She claims she heard whispers as she ran out of the vault, the bank clerk following.

Andi was a tomboy in childhood, climbing trees, riding horses, sledding, and ice skating. She led an adventurous life; in high school, she and a friend went to an FBI office to ask about jobs. They were told that they could be employed as file clerks; few women were field agents in those years. Her mother put an end to that idea, afraid her only daughter would be murdered in a big city. At one point, Andi thought of becoming an interpreter at the UN. Rather than pursuing formal studies, Ms. Corwin traveled the world, observing and researching to satisfy her own curiosity. She held several careers while raising a family and moving around, then finally settled south of Seattle in Washington state.

Many of her poems were inspired by the photos she took on trips and daily walks. She was thrilled she had an ever-present, portable encyclopedia in her smartphone. Its battery was always running low as she was constantly Googling for answers.

Her poetry group called her the minimalist, and nature haikus were truly Ms. Corwin’s specialty, accompanied by her photos. She saw nature in a way that others miss, noticing tiny details. Many of her photos show birds that posed for her to snap a photo, and she once captured a tiny frog sleeping inside a rose bloom.

Her early writings had great promise, but numerous initial rejection letters said that she was telling, not showing. Finally, when the showing outpaced the telling, her vivid scenes transported readers, and they begged for more. Her succinct writing style of carefully placed words, wasting none just to fill a page, became a study unit in literature classes. She was quoted as saying, “If I can answer you with two specific words, why in the world would I waste my breath and your time by answering with a paragraph?”

Ebby's Misfits is her most well-known novel, set in Tacoma, Washington. The adventure-dystopian novel was drafted in 2016 and published in 2027. Its sequel was published in early 2029. Rave reviews on the adventure series had people clamoring. Her books have strong heroines who fight for justice and the underdogs, giving readers happy or ambiguous endings.

Andi's haiku of an Anna’s Hummingbird is reflective of the colors mixed in her words and her photo in Mr. Anna's:

Anna’s Hummingbird,

your scarlet colors flashing

in palmate maple.

An ambivert – the life of the party among those she knew well, but shy when she didn’t know the group, she was expert at reading the room. She earned a 3rd degree black belt, teaching combat karate and mentoring students, and emanated a warrior’s aura. In her elder years, Andi stated: “I’ve earned the right to say what I think and not worry what people think of me.”

Many of her characters and their personalities were composites of people Andi knew, but she ensured that no one could guess which person each character was based on. No hurt feelings could be attributed to her, only mystique and wonder. Many tried to guess, and she laughed uproariously, calling them fallible and stupid, launching into a diatribe of why. It is suspected, given her distaste for scholarly discussions about what an author meant by often-quoted famous lines, that she deliberately created situations for intense discussions to ensue.

In our interview, KL, also private, said, “Readers thought that most of her angry poetry had actually happened to her, but it was only slightly based on fact; she twisted and rotated it, exaggerated it, or withheld, all meant to conceal the complete truth within the piece. Have you read her books under the pen name?”

“Are you a fan of your mother’s smut novels?” I had to ask since she brought up the pen name, but I never got an answer. Her daughter leaned in and said in a soft voice: "Mom was cremated, and a tree was planted with her ashes in a private place, per her request. If her pen name is exposed, she will rip the tree’s roots apart. Her temper is infamous, so we must protect the innocent by keeping quiet. We don't want to rile her up, even in death." She winked at me as she laughed. I am not allowed to state the pen name, and the publishers will lose all rights if they do.

It was important to her that I include a tribute poem Andi wrote for her brother, Scott, upon his untimely death:

As I leave the city condo where we met, I’m doubly sworn to secrecy. Just know that somewhere, a tree with a writer’s ashes embedded in its roots might someday have a book written on paper made from its body. With my duly sworn oath of secrecy, a part of me waits for a phone call that will say there are newly discovered manuscripts locked in a bank safety deposit box, just like Uneeda.

Copyright © 7/22/2026 by Andrea O. Corwin