About Andrew Pan

If you were born in 2008 like me, you probably grew up watching a lot of TV shows and playing a lot of video games. Avatar: The Last Airbender, Arcane, The Last of Us—the list goes on. But for a long time, I was a consumer only. There was something about creating a story so expansive and meaningful that was out of reach for me.

Then 2020 hit. COVID locked everything down, and 12-year-old me found himself with nothing else to do.

So I began writing. A lot. As you’d probably expect, my early work was about as mature as I was in my preteen years. But I kept on writing, and with every new idea and abandoned project, I got better. My characters became more human. My settings more vivid, my plot lines more coherent.

Fast forward to 2023, and I began work on The City Under the Rain.

A combination of inspirations from Red Rising, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, and Halo, I didn’t really know where the story would go to begin. But as Mark, Brig, and Hunter came to be, the world I was crafting steadily coalesced. Yokai and Bengal made it into the works. Leo and Gepard and the cast of supporting characters rose from the environment and plot I built.

For once, I wasn’t the consumer of a grand, cinematic story that I’d watch on Netflix. Over the course of two years, I created one myself.

When you read The City Under the Rain, you follow two people: Mark Ventenheimer, and me.

And I hope you enjoy the journey as much as I enjoyed the ones I was addicted to as a kid.

Andrew Pan lives in Ridgewood, New Jersey, with his family and dog.