Today on my blog, I’m interviewing Randy Ingermanson. He was one of my first mentor teacher’s at Mount Hermon Writer’s Conference in 2010. Wonderful writer, wonderful teacher. (I’d put an exclamation point here, but he taught me better). Welcome Randy.
First off, can you tell us about your most recent book or project?
My most recently published book is a nonfiction book on how to write fiction: HOW TO WRITE A DYNAMITE SCENE USING THE SNOWFLAKE METHOD.
Here’s a link to the book page on my website:
I’m currently working on a series of novels about the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. The title of the series will be CROWN OF THORNS and the publication date for Book 1 in the series will be (I hope) next year. But I can’t nail it down any further than that.
I actually have your Snowflake Method book. If any of my readers want to be writers, I suggest you get Randy’s book. His Snowflake Method has really helped me with structure.
What three things about you might surprise your readers?
I’d be surprised if anything could surprise my readers, but here are some facts about me that make me different from most authors:
1) I have a PhD in theoretical physics from UC Berkeley and graduated in 1987 in the same class with Saul Perlmutter, who went on to win the Nobel Prize in physics in 2011.
2) I write fiction “at the intersection of Science Avenue and Faith Boulevard”.
3) I have worked on archaeological digs on Mount Zion (in Jerusalem) and in Magdala (by the Sea of Galilee, the hometown of Mary Magdalene) and I write novels set in first-century Israel.
Fascinating. That last one certainly surprised me. What is your most difficult writing obstacle and how do you overcome it?
Like most people, I don’t have enough hours in the day. I do a lot of things, and those tend to crowd out my writing.
To overcome that, I’ve had to prune some of the most-loved things in my life. I used to teach at writing conferences several times a year. (Which is how I met you, Jennifer, years ago at the Mount Hermon conference.) I loved teaching. But I realized that I was spending more time teaching ABOUT writing than I was spending ACTUALLY writing. So with great reluctance, I took a sabbatical a few years ago from teaching. This is temporary. But for now, I don’t teach; I write. I was also on the Executive Board for ACFW (American Christian Fiction Writers) for more than 11 years. I loved ACFW and spent a lot of time helping build the organization. But it was crowding out my writing time. So I stepped down a couple of years ago. And there is one more thing I hope to prune in the next year, but I won’t talk about that until I do it.
I’m now spending more time writing, and by this time next year, I hope to release my first novel since 2004. That’s been a long gap, but I hope the wait will be worth it for my fans. I’m a better writer than I used to be, and my test readers think this will be something special. A year from now, I’ll know if they’re right.
Last question. What are your summer reading recommendations and why?
That’s a tough question because different people like different things. I can’t say what would be a good read for other people, but I can tell you what I’m reading right now.
I recently came across an author named Mark Giminez, who is an author and lawyer. A lot of people are comparing him to John Grisham. Over the years, I’ve heard a lot of authors compared to Grisham, and my response has always been, “Yeah, right.”
But in this case, I think the comparison is a good one. I like legal thrillers, and Mark Giminez is (in my opinion) a better read than John Grisham.
If you haven’t heard of Mark, you can start with his book THE COLOR OF LAW, about a wealthy, self-centered, complete jerk of a lawyer who is asked to defend an indigent client—an African-American hooker who’s accused of murdering a US Senator’s son. The murder weapon is a gun, registered to the hooker, with her fingerprints on it. Our protagonist, the lawyer, does not want this case, but he is manipulated into taking it against his will. He is certain his client is guilty. But he has some shred of decency in him, and when he discovers the hooker has a 9-year-old daughter the same age as his own daughter, he takes the kid in because she has nobody to take care of her. And … he begins to rediscover the soul he used to have. Which is good, because the whole world thinks his client is low-life scum, and that he is even lower-life scum for defending her. And one of the people most angry at him is his own wife.
Be aware that this book has a number of naughty people doing naughty things and saying naughty words. If naughty words and actions offend you, this book is not for you. I liked it, and I’ve been chain-smoking Mark’s other books this summer. I just started a new one this afternoon.
Randy Ingermanson has a PhD in physics and is the author of CITY OF GOD, a series of time-travel novels set in first-century Jerusalem. He has worked on an archaeological dig on Mount Zion in Jerusalem, excavating the palace of a wealthy Jewish aristocrat who lived and died in the first century. He writes about science, history, philosophy, religion, and archaeology. His website is at http://Ingermanson.com
