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Surf trip goes awry in new thriller book by local author, ‘Carried Away’

November 4, 2025   ·   0 Comments

By Joshua Drakes, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

For those who are seeking a book that offers some soul-searching and scary thrills, Orangeville author T.J. Derry has you covered with his upcoming novel, Carried Away.

Set amongst the backdrop of Indonesia, we find our protagonist, Cole. Feeling disillusioned with his current life in New York and looking for purpose and direction, he takes a trip to Indonesia to reset and perhaps find new meaning in life.

While there, he grows accustomed to a fun, fast-paced life. Eager to keep the excitement going, he takes a surf trip to a remote location with some friends, only for things to go horrifically wrong. The sea begins to recede, and confusion turns to horror as a tsunami bears down on Cole’s group.

Stranded, injured, and with no immediate help coming, Cole’s world is flipped inside out as a fun surfing trip turns into a harrowing fight for survival. What might have seemed like a mundane, boring life in New York might just become a fond memory in this perilous story of meaning and survival.

Penned by T.J. Derry, he was inspired to write this book because of his constant work travels.

“Sort of the reason that I wrote this book is because, at one point, I was traveling a lot for my job as a filmmaker, and I was tired of looking at the backs of chairs on airplanes,” he said. “I wanted to find a book that I could resonate with, and that I’d be interested in reading. I just couldn’t find anything that felt right, so I thought that it might be an interesting thing to try and write the book.”

He also wanted to write a book that doesn’t have a deeper meaning than what is presented in the plot. He wanted to capture the spirit of adventure and the inner experience the characters go through, and connect with the reader.

Making the transition from filmmaking to writing also proved to be a unique challenge. Derry was forced to restructure his approach to writing. Normally, a filmmaker can describe a scene, and then have actors on camera act it out. For Carried Away, however, there are no actors, just pages, and Derry had to reinvent his writing to describe the scenes he was writing for in vivid detail to paint a picture.

“If I was writing a scene about a car, for example, I would say, exterior day, man drives and talks on the phone, and the lighting, actors, and stuff would fill in the blanks,” he said. “Whereas in a book, you’re talking about the temperature of the air, the smell, that kind of thing. Or maybe the coffee that’s steaming up. And then you have to decide whether the writing will be in first or third person, so that was an adjustment.”

Despite all of this, Derry was able to write a story that should resonate with many readers who might be feeling a little lost in life. He described it as the plight of the westerner, hailing from a safe and stable country, but the routine, structured, and safe nature of life can get to be too much for some people. They start to feel stuck, with nothing interesting in their minds to do.

Derry wanted this book to tell a story that helps put those thoughts into practice, and to remind people that maybe the life they have now might not be so bad, and to cherish it.

Carried Away launches on Nov. 11. Interested readers can find order information on the Carried Away website, readcarriedaway.com.

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