Posted July 4, 2025
Alan Orloff is an award-winning mystery, horror and thriller author whose 13 novels include two for young adults, his latest being Driving the Bugmobile (2025, Level Best Books). His awards include an Anthony, an Agatha, a Derringer and two Thriller Awards. He has also been a finalist for the detective-fiction Shamus Award.
Born in Washington D.C. and raised in Maryland, he graduated from the University of Maryland with a mechanical engineering degree, later earning his Master of Business Administration degree at MIT/Sloan. He has worked many different jobs and careers, from supervising nuclear-submarine assembly workers to doing market research and producing newsletters on waste reduction and recycling.
In 2010, he published his first mystery novel (for adults), nominated for an Agatha Award. Eleven years later, his first young-adult novel I Play One on TV won the 2021 Agatha Award for Best Children/Young Adult Fiction and the Anthony Award for Best Young Adult Novel. He has also written more than 60 short stories for periodicals ranging from Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine to Best New England Crime Stories.
He has two adult children who have served as inspiration throughout the years, and he now lives with his wife in South Florida, where the examples of hijinks are endless.
He can be found at https://alanorloff.com/, https://www.facebook.com/alanorloff, https://www.instagram.com/alanorloff/ and @alanorloff.bsky.social.
Q: You clearly love to write mystery/thrillers/horror. Can you tell us why?
A: Those seem to be the genres I gravitate to, in both my reading and my writing. I like stories of good vs. evil (hint: in my books, the good wins!), and I like putting my characters in dire straits with high stakes and watching them use their wits to extricate themselves (while saving the day!). As a teen, I started reading science fiction and horror, with crime fiction soon to follow. I guess those preferences stuck.
Q: You’ve said that you and a school friend took a stab at writing a novel that you never quite finished in sixth grade. It gave you a taste for writing that you pursued with a passion in later life.
A: It wasn’t a school assignment, merely a summertime diversion allowing us to stay inside and enjoy some air conditioning, if I recall. We set out to write a sequel to War of the Worlds. Wrote about six pages before we got antsy and went outside to play ball. But for those sixty minutes or so, my friend and I escaped into another world, and that urge, fleeting as it was, stayed with me, remaining dormant until it awoke decades (decades!) later.
Q: You’ve divided your time between young-adult and adult novels. Please tell us why, and talk about the pros and cons of changing off between two target audiences.
A: Ideas of all stripes come to me, all day, every day. I can’t control what they are or where they come from. Some are for adult novels, some are more suited to young-adult (YA) fiction. If the idea is good enough, I’ll write it no matter what genre/sub-genre it is or who the audience might be. While most of my writing is crime fiction, I’ve written other things, too. In fact, I’d describe Driving the Bugmobile as YA coming-of-age, with nary a murder involved!
It can be difficult switching back and forth from adult to YA. With each passing moment, I’m getting farther and farther away from that young-adult demographic (ha!). I was fortunate to have raised two boys, so I have that knowledge to draw from. And I rely on some age-appropriate beta readers, too.
Q: It takes a certain type of individual to successfully indulge in young-adult writing. How would you describe this type, and did your own journey have anything to do with what you were like (or what you got up to) as a teen?
A: The teenage years were formative for many (most?) people, so it’s not difficult for me to be able to draw upon those memories when writing YA fiction. A lot of emotion, a lot of “firsts,” a lot of uncomfortable encounters trying to fit in with peer groups. As a kid/teen, I couldn’t learn to swim no matter how many lessons I took. So, this became a main plot point in Driving the Bugmobile. As I wrote the first scene, I could actually “taste” the chlorine up my nose (not a pleasant experience) and feel the shame of failure, so it wasn’t too hard to describe those feelings accurately. A side note: about ten years ago, I decided to learn how to swim (for real). Now, I swim for exercise!
Q: You’ve described your creative process as writing a vague outline, creating short character profiles, conducting research and then writing up to 2,000 words a day until you hit revising-and-editing stage. Can you expand on this?
A: After I come up with a viable idea, I take about a week developing an outline and sketching in some of the main characters. Then, knowing when I want to have the first draft finished, I’ll work backwards and calculate my daily quota. I generally write five days a week (and use the weekends to catch up, if necessary). When I write, I don’t go back and edit. I just plow forward (BICFOK—butt in chair, fingers on keyboard). If I change a character name in the third chapter, and again in the ninth, I don’t go back and change them. If I were to give this raw manuscript to somebody, they’d see the same character with three different names and think I was losing my tenuous grip on reality! (Don’t worry, I fix it all before I actually send it to beta readers.) If I hit my daily quota and the writing is a slog, sometimes I’ll get up in the middle of a sentence. This way works for me, but every writer has to develop a system that works for them.
Q: You have a special talent for infusing your work with humor to which teens can relate. What insights can you offer on this?
A: I find consuming content (books, TV shows, movies) that doesn’t contain humor to be tedious and unappealing. There are so many humorous situations in real life that I feel it’s almost a requirement for fiction to be infused with it, too. I look for opportunities to inject humor in my work wherever possible (without messing up the tone and flow of the story—it has to be organic and fitting). There’s a lot of humor in Driving the Bugmobile because I think teenagers appreciate humor more than most jaded adults do.
– Pam Withers