INTERVIEW
DIARIES
(Randall Ingermanson)
The first Author I
thought of to interview for the launch of my website was
Randall Ingermanson. He's been a favorite of mine
for years. I can't tell you how excited I was when he said,
"I'll be happy to do the interview."
Randy Ingermanson is a physicist, writer and speaker who
just moved from San Diego to Vancouver Washington. (Beautiful
part of the world.) In his words, "I like books. I read
'em, write 'em, buy 'em, talk about 'em and occasionally
even sell the critters. I write books about life at the
intersection of Science Avenue and Faith Boulevard because
that's where I live."
His Fiction:
Transgression: A physicist travels back in
time to kill the apostle Paul. (FREE)
Premonition:
Is it better to know the future…or worse?
Retribution:
Good shines brightest in darkest Evil.
Oxygen:
Another NASA blunder? Or…sabotage by an insider?
The Fifth Man:
Will they find life on Mars? Or will it find them?
Double Vision:
Romance and suspense in a high-tech startup company.
His Non-Fiction:
The Snowfake:
How I design my novels and how you can too. (This is worth
a trip to his website)
Getting Published:
From Freshman to Author in about four years.
Writing the Perfect Scene:
Its easier than you think.
Let's get on with the interview…
When did you begin your writing
career and what inspires you to write?
I started writing
in 1988 because I somehow imagined that I could write better
than the authors I was reading. As I quickly learned from
even my most biased fans, (such as my wife), I was wrong.
In fact, I wasn't very good at all. But I was too dumb to
quit writing and I just kept plugging away at it until eventually
my writing got better.
That's what inspired me to write back then. It's now 18
years later and what inspires me now is a good idea. I don't
get many good ideas, but once in a while, one of them will
whack me in the face and then I'll have to write a novel
about it.
What is your biggest struggle
as a writer? How are you working to overcome that struggle?
Money. It's the same struggle that almost all writers face.
I read recently that 98% of all books sell fewer than 5000
copies. And you can't make much money on a book that sells
5000 copies. In fact, 80% of all books sell fewer than 100
copies! That's . . . horrible.
What I'm doing to overcome that pesky money struggle is
to teach myself to market my books on the internet. I love
doing techie internet stuff. And there are people who are
getting obscenely wealthy on the internet. I believe that
most books are marketed so poorly that they reach less than
10% of the readers who would be interested in them.
So I've spent the last couple of years teaching myself how
to sell things "nicely" on the internet. When I say "nicely,"
I mean selling things in a way that doesn't make me feel
like a slimy weasel -- or even a well-washed weasel. I don't
want to be a weasel at all. There are ways to sell in an
unweaselly way, and I've been learning from the experts.
And it's working. In less than 18 months, I've created the
largest electronic newsletter in the world on the subject
of how to write fiction. It's free and I have over 5500
subscribers and I keep hearing nice things about it, so
I don't feel like a weasel yet.
My next step is to apply what I've learned to help raise
sales numbers for my next novel. I know it can be done.
As a writer, have you ever experienced
a blooper? If so, what was it and how did you handle it?
I don't know, and if I did, I'd never admit to it!!! :)
In your fiction, it is obvious
to the reader that your education as a physicist has been
a great contribution to your work. Do you find that your
work as a physicist conflicts with your Christian Faith?
No. I find that it conflicts with some people's Christian
faith, but it doesn't with mine. When I say that, I mean
that it doesn't conflict "unreasonably". Whenever you have
two systems of thought, you are going to have some level
of conflict.
For example, 20th century physics had two major intellectual
developments--quantum mechanics and general relativity.
Quantum mechanics tells you about the world of the very
small. General relativity is Einstein's theory of gravity
and it explains the world of the very big. These are both
extraordinary theories that are undoubtedly correct, and
yet the two theories are in conflict with each other on
a grand scale. I can't go into details here, but quantum
mechanics and general relativity can't both be true. They
are in conflict by a number so huge it's hard to express--much
larger than the famous "google," which is one followed by100
zeroes.
That has disturbed us physicists for a long time, but it
did not cause us to abandon either quantum mechanics or
general relativity. What it has done is to force us to search
for some compromise -- some extension of both theories that
will unite them in a so-called "fiery marriage" (quoting
from a famous physicist). It is possible that the superstring-type
theories will solve the problem. But if not, we physicists
believe with perfect faith that some other theory will solve
it. We believe there is an explanation. We just don't know
what it is, yet.
When you look at the discrepancies between Christianity
and physics, you see some issues that need to be better
understood. But you don't see discrepancies that are as
huge as the one I just noted between quantum mechanics and
general relativity. There is every reason to believe that
those discrepancies can be resolved, even if we don't know
exactly how, yet.
Why did you decide to write the
Transgression series?
That series is really the sequel to the first novel I ever
wrote, which has still not been published. The novel was
rejected by many publishers, including Bethany House, who
gave me three good reasons they couldn't publish it. So
I immediately thought of an idea for a book that would resolve
those three objections. And that book was TRANSGRESSION.
I've been interested in first-century Christianity for a
long time, because that's where it all began, baby. When
I became a Christian, I had a lot of questions about the
intellectual underpinnings of Christianity. If you want
to know whether Christianity is intellectually valid, you
need to look at what it was at the very beginning -- with
Jesus and his little band of men and women who changed the
world. What was it exactly that they believed? Can those
beliefs be defended? That's what I wanted to know when I
joined up with Team Jesus.
How did you become so knowledgeable about Messianic Jews?
I was interested in earliest Christianity, so I started
doing research on the primitive church. And it didn't take
long to realize that the entire church started out Jewish
and was Jewish for quite a long time. There were probably
no Gentile Christians at all for the first ten years or
so. And the majority of the church was still Jewish even
30 or 40 years after the Resurrection.
Given that, when I found out that there was a congregation
of Messianic Jews not far from where I lived in San Diego,
it was pretty easy to go check them out. And I liked what
I saw, so I hung around -- for about the last fifteen years
or so. I learned to read Hebrew at a Messianic Jewish synagogue,
and when I went to visit Israel, it was with a group of
MJs. They're fun people and I like the music.
What was the hardest part of
writing these books? How did you work through those issues?
Just sitting down every day and doing the work. When you
first start writing, churning out even 2 or 3 pages is a
major task. It's kind of hard to put in the time, day after
day, when you know it's going to take many months just to
finish the first draft, and then you've still got to make
it GOOD.
Why did you decide to write The
Bible Code?
There was a book out named THE BIBLE CODE by Michael Drosnin
in 1997 that annoyed me a lot. It was so obviously a hoax,
and yet a lot of people were buying into it. So I investigated
and learned that there were some serious mathematicians
and physicists who believed in a Bible code. Not the whackball
code Drosnin was touting, but something much more sophisticated
and interesting.
So I decided that maybe there could possibly be a real code,
but that Drosnin had muddied the waters so badly that the
world needed a new line of investigation. As it happened,
I had one of those flashes of insights one morning while
eating my Cheerios. I saw that there was a much simpler
way to investigate the Bible code. And it took someone with
exactly my skill set to do the analysis. So I decided to
give it a whirl.
I wrote up some software and began testing it. Before I
had time to finish, the Mount Hermon Christian Writers'
Conference came along, so I put together a proposal and
took it to the conference. A lot of editors were interested,
and I got a number of requests for proposals. I sent them
out, and WaterBrook Press made me an offer -- before I had
even completed the research! To their credit, they told
me they wanted to publish the book, whichever way the answer
came out. All they wanted was my assurance that I had an
answer. So their decision was not contingent on me saying,
"Yes, there are Bible codes," or "No, there are no Bible
codes." That was an honest thing for them to do. They had
no agenda going into the project, just as I had none.
Not long after that, I came to a conclusion that satisfied
me -- no, there is no Bible code, at least none that can
be measured with the precision I quoted. And WaterBrook
published the book under the title WHO WROTE THE BIBLE CODE?
and it did quite well.
The funny thing was that some folks were very upset with
my answer, so naturally they accused me of having an agenda.
What I've learned is that you're never going to please everyone,
so the best thing is to just live up to your own standards
and ignore the slime-throwers. I will also say that some
of the folks who believe in the Bible code have treated
me with respect and I've tried to do the same with them.
I've become friends with a few of them.
Are you a fiction writer who
writes non-fiction, or a non-fiction writer who writes fiction?
Which gives you the most satisfaction?
I'm a novelist who sometimes writes fiction. I much prefer
writing fiction. The line between fiction and non-fiction
isn't all that well defined, anyway. Most fiction has a
non-fiction element. Westerns are about cowboys, who really
exist. Mysteries are about murders, which really happen.
Historicals are about the past, which once really happened.
Romances are about love, which does really happen to real
people. Sci-fi usually has a component of real science in
it. Only fantasies tend to be way far out there, and yet
they still involve the psyche of real characters not too
different from us. So fiction most always has a non-fiction
piece to it.
Conversely, non-fiction is generally improved by using the
techniques of story-telling that we novelists use.
Is your work available in e-book
format? And what do you think of e-publishing, is it the
wave of the future?
My book TRANSGRESSION is available as a free e-book on my
web site. I may do the same with some of my other books,
or at least make them available for a small cost. At the
moment, e-books are still small potatoes. Let's face it
-- even when you buy an e-book, you often print the thing
out, and that costs you more in paper and ink than if you
had got it at the store. A paper book is just more convenient
to read. Maybe that'll change in the future, but for now,
that's the way it is.
E-publishing is great for some things, such as short how-to
books that you want to buy RIGHT NOW. It's not so great
for fiction. I don't know if it'll ever replace paper, but
I wouldn't bet against it.
In this new age of publishing,
authors are more and more responsible for their own marketing.
What one piece of advice would you give them to get their
book noticed?
Create a web site that's NOT ABOUT YOU AND NOT ABOUT YOUR
BOOK. Let's be blunt. Nobody cares about me. Why should
they? There are over six billion people on the planet. What
makes me special? And nobody cares about my book either.
Why should they? There are over a million books available
right now. What makes mine special?
Once you learn to get over yourself, you see immediately
that the one way to people's hearts is through THEIR INTERESTS.
Why do people go online? One of the biggest reasons is to
get information. How do you wash a camel? How do you change
a spark plug? How many quarks are in a proton? If you have
a good, useful web site that caters to a reasonable-sized
group of people, then those people are going to find you.
And once they find you, if they find you've actually written
a novel on the very thing they're interested in . . . well
then, you have a decent chance of earning their undying
love. But you do have to earn it. Nothing's free, not even
love.
For some writers, articles are
easy but books are hard. What one tip would you offer an
article writer, looking to write his/her first book?
Put your articles online. That'll start promoting your work
before you even have a contract for your book. It might
even lead to a contract.
If you can string together half a dozen articles into a
coherent group, then you've got half a book already, and
all you have to do is to flesh it out.
I'm no great expert on this because I don't write articles.
I went straight to writing books.
You maintain a very comprehensive website with new advice
to writers all the time. You publish the Advanced Writing
E-Zine, you do public speaking engagements, you have a large
family, and how do you find the time to write?
You find time for what you want to do. I don't watch TV.
Hardly ever. The last time we watched TV in our house was
in the fall of 2003 or 2004 (I forget exactly), when a big
fire was threatening the entire county of San Diego. Before
that, the last time I watched TV was 9/11/2001.
Most people watch at least 20
hours of TV per week. Of that, how much is really significant?
How much could they do without?
Let me give you a number: 10 hours per week. If you write
for 10 hours per week, you can easily write a novel in a
year. Easily. It might be good or it might be bad, but you'd
have a whole novel written.
What this tells you is that by cutting back hard on TV,
most anyone could find the time to write a novel. It's a
matter of whether you want to or not. Writing a GOOD novel
is a matter of talent and training also.
Thank you so much for taking
the time out of your busy schedule to let me interview you.
You're welcome! Thank YOU!
-- Randy Ingermanson
Publisher, Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine
http://www.AdvancedFictionWriting.com
