Retired Shippensburg University Professor Andrew Carey hosted a book signing for his newly released novel, “Unlocked,” on Feb. 3, in the CUB bookstore. 

In the bookstore, Carey set up many of his new novels at the table for people to look at, purchase and get signed by him. 

He was ready to make conversation, give out knowledge and talk to students about their experience in psychology or even with mental health and counseling and offer some help or knowledge.

Carey explained how his experience teaching not only at SU, but also at many other universities, helped him realize that students need different ways of looking at counseling and development. 

“In my last two years of teaching, I saw students learn more when they were told a story and had something directly explained to them,” Carey said. 

He saw that students had moments of growth through using stories and seeing realistic one-on-one patient and client scenarios. 

Carey started writing “Unlocked” in his last year of teaching and said it took about eight years to write and illustrate it in a way that he would want for students, as well as many others, to utilize it. 

“Unlocked” follows a 21-year-old woman named Isabelle Vasquez, who faces loss and other hardships and goes on to find her true self through authentic relationships and character development. 

The novel plays out over six different counseling sessions that provides counselors, counselors in training and even clients of counselors or psychologists an inside look at how counseling works and how it can help change their lives for the better. 

A main motivation for writing the novel for Carey was that he wished he had a resource like “Unlocked” when he was teaching. He wrote the novel to make a difference in people’s lives, to use with clients for even better counseling sessions, and for use in other counseling, psychology and social work programs. 

It is important to continue to inspire people in and going into psychology, counseling, and other mental health fields, as well as help people understand things on a different level, Carey said. 

Carey was a former co-editor of the Journal of the Pennsylvania Counseling Association and has also published many academic articles, including in the American Counseling Association’s flagship journal. 

He has counseled and taught counseling for over 40 years, with over 30 years being a counseling professor at SU and other universities. 

Carey has presented at counseling conferences regionally, nationally and internationally, along with counseling at university and community counseling centers, private practices, schools, churches and a correctional institution. 

Since leaving his university positions, Carey has had time to do the things he could not fully focus on while he was teaching. This includes mental-health counseling part-time and he co-authored his first novel, “American Roulette,” in October 2023, in collaboration with the Charles Bruce Foundation. Most importantly, he spends most of his time writing and traveling with his wife, Kathy. 

Many other professors who are still on or off campus credit Carey for his hard work and dedication to Counselor Education at SU.

“I’ve witnessed his insistence that counselors-in-training and his professional peers see each client fully, listening to all of their complexity long before diagnostic codes and academic or social labels were ever considered or uttered,” said Kurt Kraus, Professor Emeritus in Counselor Education at SU, whom Carey worked with for more than 20 years. 

“Unlocked” can be found in many locations like Amazon Books, Target, Barnes & Noble and many online book retailers. 

All proceeds from the novel go to the Charles Bruce Foundation, which supports social justice issues along with artists, musicians and writers of many kinds. 

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