Athol Dickson: A Craftsman of the Written Word

            On my previous posting, I reviewed LOST MISSION, a fine suspense novel by critically acclaimed author Athol Dickson.  For those of you who are not yet familiar with Athol, I would like to give some background about him and his work.  I also had an opportunity to ask Athol about the job of being an author and some questions about LOST MISSION. 

        Athol Dickson grew up in Texas, where he worked a variety of jobs before becoming a architect.  It was while he was still practicing architecture that he wrote his first two novels. After the release of a best-selling memoir, THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MOSES, Athol left architecture to become a full-time author.

        Two of his novels, RIVER RISING (2006) and THE CURE (2008) won the Christy award for best suspense novel.  His novel WINTERHAVEN was a 2009 finalist in the Christy awards and was named one of the Best Ten for 2008 by Christian Fiction Review. The novels of Athol Dickson have received numerous other accolades from other literary groups and have ended up on many top ten lists. Consistently acclaimed by critics, Athol Dickson is certainly one of the finest novelists of our time.

          You can find much more information about Athol Dickson at his website .  So without further ado, I'd like to present some questions that I had for Athol and his answers:

           Many of the readers have recently participated in or have followed the National Novel Writing Month challenge. What is your take on an event such as  NaNo? How long does it typically take for you to write your a novel until it is ready for you to submit to your publisher?

        I don’t know much about the National Novel Writing Month challenge, but I’m all for anything that encourages writers.  I usually take from two to four months to work up a plot, and another four or five months to put a fairly well polished draft together. Then the back and forth with editors takes another four months or more. A complete novel, from raw idea to final draft, takes about a year.

            One thing I see discussed on many of the blogs is getting an agent or finding a publisher. What are your best suggestions for a new author who has something that they feel is ready to find an agent or publisher? Any special words of encouragement that you can give these new authors?

          The best advice I have is don’t be afraid to tell a unique story, and never stop improving your craft. Blogs and websites and social media are useful to convince a publisher you’ll help with marketing, but an intriguing story coupled with excellent craftsmanship is what gets most people published. Every agent and acquisition editor’s dream is to open their mail and find a manuscript there that draws them in so completely they forget they are publishing professionals for a while, and just sit there and read. You want to be that good. You want to turn agents and editors into just plain readers. If you can do that, you will certainly be published.

 Writing is now your primary work, correct? Do you have a particular writing schedule that you follow? When writing a novel do you have any particular methodology that you use that works best for you?

Yes, I write full time.

My schedule is pretty similar to most peoples’ who have jobs, except I work at home, so I get to wear a robe and slippers until lunch time. I usually work from about 7:00 in the morning until noon, then break for lunch and a nap (another perk of working at home), then I go back to work until about 6:00 in the evening.

I tried writing by the seat of my pants one time, and ended up having to re-write most of the novel because I got stuck without a satisfying ending. So now I outline. I brainstorm with myself (which is very hard) for several weeks to several months, struggling to come up with an intriguing storyline. I spend a long time on that because without a great story at the core, nothing else matters. When I’m confident in the story, I write an outline, which is really a list of scenes. When that’s done I begin the first draft. I average 1,000 to 1,500 words per day on the first draft, but it’s very rough when it’s done, so I go back over it at least twice before sending it to the developmental editor. He usually suggests some fairly major changes, which I almost always agree with, so I spend another month or two on yet another re-write. Then I send it to the line editor, who suggests still more changes, sometimes big ones, so I do another re-write. After that there are usually two more passes through the novel, but those are mainly about the grammar and punctuation.

 Now with several book successes behind you, has the job of writing become easier for you? How much active promoting do you do personally? What do you learn from book signings and occasions where you meet your reading public?

          No, it’s not easier. Every time I sit down to start another novel, it’s as if I’ve never written one before. Experience hasn’t provided me with a formula or routine. If I was a sculptor I think I’d say every block of raw marble is completely different, and must be approached on its own terms. That’s how my stories are.

        I do a little public speaking, and I blog when I can, and I’m on Facebook. I enjoy promoting my work, actually, because in fact it’s more about getting to know interesting new people, and keeping in touch with readers, who become my friends. I love to do readings if I can be sure of a decent sized crowd, because I get to see readers’ reactions, and talk with them about the story afterwards. That’s a rare opportunity for novelists. Unlike a screenwriter or a playwright, we seldom get to watch our audience. So readings are great. But I don’t do booksignings. Too few people come.

 Who is your primary audience? What has been some of the response you have received from readers?

         Honestly, I don’t think I could tell you who my typical reader is. They seem to be split pretty evenly between men and women. I seem to have both young and elderly readers. Basically, I just write stories I would want to read myself, and hope for the best, readership-wise.

         So far the response from readers has been almost universally positive. Some of my well-established author friends tell me about getting letters from blue haired church lady types who take them to task for doctrinal infractions or naughty words or whatever, but I never get those kinds of letters. Some people do say my novels start a little slow. I think that’s because the books are sold as suspense novels for want of a more accurate label, so people who aren’t familiar with my work will open them thinking they’ll take off like a rocket, but my stories are intended to be read slowly and carefully. Almost always though, the same readers will go on to say by the time they got a few chapters in, they were completely hooked and couldn’t put it down.

 LOST MISSION deals with people from differing backgrounds. As I was reading I felt closer to the Hispanic characters—they seemed more vivid and real to me—was that intentional?

Well, the two characters who mostly get it right in LOST MISSION are from Spain and Mexico, and they were the main protagonists, so I can see why you might identify most with them.

 The settings seemed like very real places and yet the place names were not. Did you model the locales in this novel on actual places? Why didn’t you use actual place names as your settings? Rincon de Delores seemed very real as I read about it. Is it a place that really exists or is it based on a place where you’ve been?

             All the settings are amalgamations of many places I have visited. Rincon de Dolores is a combination of San Miguel de Allende and a lovely village in Jalisco called El Tuito, which I have been to many times. The mission is based on several actual missions I’ve visited in California, including San Juan Capistrano, San Diego, and San Juan Bautista. Blanco Beach is very loosely based on Laguna Beach. Wilson City is a combination of many small farming towns in Imperial County in far southern California. The canyon road between Blanco Beach and Wilson City is based on the Ortega Highway between San Juan Capistrano and Lake Elsinore.

            I didn’t use actual place names because the settings don’t exist as I describe them. Laguna Beach is several hours away from Imperial County, for example, not a half hour drive as LOST MISSION describes the canyon road between Blanco Beach and Wilson City.

This book could have easily just focused on the historical story of Fray Alejandro and the Spanish Mission and been an interesting story.  Did you at any point think about just writing a historical novel? What inspired the idea of moving back and forth between the centuries as you have done here?

            I might write a straightforward historical novel someday. I do have one in mind. But in this case, I wanted to tell parallel stories, moving back and forth between the past and present, because I wanted readers to get a sense of humanity’s true condition in time, the fact that people are the same through the centuries, that there is no real progress being made except on an individual level, that we repeat the same mistakes, and make the same courageous choices and the human race continues in a desperate struggle, just as it always has since the first man and woman ate forbidden fruit. So on one level, LOST MISSION is about the importance of remaining objective about life, not getting so caught up in the moment that we forget our place in the cosmic scheme of things. I felt I needed a story that spanned at least two centuries to get that idea across.

 The story deals with Christians from different denominations, but the churches have failed in what they should have been doing. I sensed that the message here is the responsibility of bringing Christ to the unsaved is the job of the individual more than the organized church. Were you suggesting that the organization that we have known as “the church” has fallen short in its mission throughout history?

            Absolutely we have fallen short. Just look at the moral state of America today. In LOST MISSION, Lupe thinks of us as a nation of pagans who are badly in need of a revival of faith, and it’s very hard to argue otherwise from the facts on the ground. But I don’t think we can blame some entity called “the church.” Christian people are the church. If the church falls short, that can only mean Christians have fallen short. So yes, you’re right to say LOST MISSION deals with the responsibility of the individual. Many of my Christian friends seem to think we can blame America’s moral decline on other people outside the church. I think it’s completely our fault.

 You create very vivid images in LOST MISSION—I was vividly seeing everything that I was reading on the pages. I thought it was very cinematic.  Have there been any movie offers for this book or any of your others?   There have been some very successful movies in the past years that have been backed by Christian organizations—any interest on that front?

         I’m glad you had that kind of experience with LOST MISSION. I work hard to make the people and settings come alive.

        Some people wanted to make a movie based on my first novel. It got into pre-production, we were scouting locations with a director and working on the screenplay, then one of the producers stole a lot of money from the production company. That left a sour taste in my mouth about the whole motion picture thing. I’m not interested in doing business in that world. If they came along with a lot of cash up front or a percentage of the gross, I’d consider it, but that’s not going to happen. You have to be a Michael Crichton to get that kind of deal. Everybody else in that business just gets ripped off on the back end as far as I can tell. Maybe that’s not true for some of these recent pictures backed by Christians, but the producer who stole from that first production company was supposedly a Christian, and the worst experiences I’ve had in business have almost all been perpetrated by so-called Christians, so I don’t think that’s any guarantee of honesty or fair dealing.

 What projects do you have coming up in the future?

              I’m always working on a novel. There’s one already in the pipeline with my publisher, which should come out in late 2010. It’s about a boy who escapes from a kidnapper and struggles to get home, and a father who will sacrifice everything to save his son. I’m working on another for 2011 about a world famous artist who is consumed with a desire to paint the face of God.

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          I want to express my sincere thanks to Athol Dickson for taking the time to do this interview with me. With Christmas coming up you may want to add some of these fine novels for the readers on your gift list. And don't forget to include yourself by adding some or all of these titles to your home library.  You will want to visit Athol's blog for some more of what he has to say.  His books are availble at Amazon and many other booksellers.

     Be sure to leave a comment.  Have you read any of Athol Dickson's novels?  What did you think of them?  If you haven't read any yet, do you think you might in the future?

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LOST MISSION: A Review

        Prior to beginning my blog in September of 2009, I was only marginally aware of Christian literature.  I was certainly familiar with the LEFT BEHIND series and I knew about C.S. Lewis and Tolkein, but I had never read much fiction that was filed under the Christian label.  After coming across a number of blogs by Christian writers and those others who are associated with Christian authors I started getting my education about Christian fiction.

            Recently I read LOST MISSION by Athol Dickson and the book blew me away. Here was a book that dealt with tough issues and made me think.  The focus is not overt in-your-face Bible thumping or theological analysis.  This book is good story telling with well-drawn realistic characters who will stay with you. Before I started reading the book I had seen Dickson compared to one of my favorite authors, Flannery O'Conner.  I can certainly see that comparison, as well as the elements of  magical realism that often crop up in the story.  Athol Dickson also effectively surprises the reader with a juxtapositon of characters and cultures that creates a dramatic tension and drives the suspense of the story.

          LOST MISSION actually deals with two parallelling main story lines that span two centuries.  The first concerns Spaniards who enter into what is later to become California in order to establish a mission.  This story centers around Fray Alejandro, a Franciscan friar who finds himself torn between his obeisance to his church and his faithfulness to his real mission to show compassion to the indigenous pagan tribes whom he is trying to reach.  He becomes tormented by his assigned task to complete a painting of the crucifixion for the church sanctuary.

            Over two hundred years later, this unfinished painting ends up in the hands of Lupe de la Garza, a poor shopkeeper in a small town in Mexico. She becomes convinced through what she sees in magazines and on television that the United States is a pagan nation that needs to be saved.  With Fray Alejandro's unfinished painting as the only possession that she carries, she travels the route of the illegal immigrants to make her way to Southern California.  Here she becomes involved with an assortment of fascinating and tragic characters who all become affected by Fray Alejandro and his unfinshed painting.

             In the book we meet a Mexican man who has illegally gone north to make a better life for his family, a minister who feels called to help those in the barrio but becomes misguided in his love for a woman, and an immensely wealthy man whose vengefully grandiose plans lead to horrifying consequences.  The book is filled with fateful romance, suspenseful action, and an apocalypic climax.

           I was somewhat confused as the story started, but  I was quickly hooked as I began to understand what was happening.  Also there was the initial distraction of the author's intrusion into the story.  Each chapter begins with Fray Alejandro's story in the late 1700's, then transitions into present time where most of the chapters take place.  This transition is achieved in the author's voice which distracted me at first, but after the second chapter I became used to this technique and actually Dickson uses the technique so skillfully that I rather liked it.  I'm not sure how these transitions could have been done better.

        Athol Dickson is a masterful writer.  The way he creates his characters allows the reader to become very close to all of them, especially Lupe and Alejandro--I absolutely fell in love with their simple faith and their desire to do what is right. The sense of place is vivid.  Dickson created places I could see clearly in my mind and I felt as though they were places where I had been before. The story is creative, striking, and imaginative.  The entire concept of the way the stories distanced centuries apart were woven together was ingenious and despite what could be construed as coincidence, I found to be acceptably believable.

         The story is rooted in history, but with issues that are relevant to us today. These characters have stories much like those I read about in the paper and hear about on the news.  There is some thought-provoking controversy that may make you rethink some of your previously held notions. The book will entertain you, but will also stay with you long after you have finished reading it.

          I would strongly recommend LOST MISSION to consider for any of the serious readers on your Christmas list.  There is nothing offensive that would make this book inappropriate for mature younger readers.  Also, non-Christians could find this to be very good reading and to relegate the novel strictly to the Christian fiction section is doing it a great injustice.  And by all means, don't forget to pick up a copy of LOST MISSION for yourself.  If you haven't read anything by Athol Dickson before, you, like me, may be looking forward to reading another one of his highly acclaimed novels.

          Be sure to read my interview with Athol Dickson in this blog tomorrow.  I asked him some of the things that came to my mind about LOST MISSION as well as other questions about writing.

LOST MISSION
Product Details

Howard Books, September 2009
Trade Paperback, 368 pages
ISBN-10: 1416583475
ISBN-13: 9781416583479

Cleaning Up After the Party's Over

          Thanksgiving has always been at our house in the past twelve years.  We've got a reasonable amount of space and I guess I whip up a pretty fair feast.  Everybody keeps coming back at least.  There's always a big build-up as my wife, her sister, and I clean, buy the food, and bring in the extra tables and chairs from the garage.  Then the day comes and my wife and I are busy in the morning peeling, chopping, and cooking until the guests arrive.  With a flurry of platters and casseroles set out, everyone fills their plates and before I know it, everybody's done, sated, and happy.  My sister-in-law, Maria, cleans the kitchen afterwards to my great delight and the next day I put away the extra tables and chairs.  Everything goes smooth as clockwork.

       Not so NaNo.  During the month of November it was like fixing dinner on the fly. This is what would be like if someone had to keep running to the store for ingredients as I cooked and everybody was moving furniture and bustling about the kitchen and house. It was near chaos.  I was improvising as I went along and now I have this 50,000 word plus novel, except it's still not a complete novel.  I forgot to put one of the casseroles in the oven and I still have all of the ingredients for the pie I never fixed.

        What I'm saying is I finished the 50,000 but I have not finished my novel.  There's a lot I need to clean up still and a lot that I left out that still needs to be added.  In the rush to cross the finishline I forgot some important plot points that now I will have to go back and add in.  I haven't looked at my "novel", A DESERT PLACE, since I wrapped things up last Sunday.  I doubt whether I will tackle it again until after the holidays.

        So I am designating my January to be NaNoFixMo--National Novel Fixing Month. I know I'm not alone in this from what I've been reading from others.   I need to go back and read what I did.  I'm sure I've forgotten much of it already, although the gist of the story is firm in my head.  Then I need to diagram and map out some points that are still problematic.  I'd say by the time I am finished I will end up with no less than 80,000 words and whether I finish in January may be wishful thinking.

          Many of you are probably much more experienced than I in this novel game so I am wondering how long do you think it will take you to have a finished product from what you started in NaNo?  Those of you who just started and didn't reach the 50,000 are you still working on your project or do you plan to later?  How many are just going to trash it or shelve it for some future time.

          How about non-NaNo'ers?  Do you have any projects that you were gung ho about then just stopped working on?  I've seen some houses like that around where I live.  I suppose they probably met a financial roadblock that has put their project on hold, but I've known people who undertake a big project and then quit not because of lack of money, but because of something else.  What causes you to stop a project?  Loss of interest?  Realization that it was too much for you?  Frustration?   Anger?

           Often we enter into a project with just a dream and no plan to achieve it.  Entering NaNo I had a vague plan, but that was my intent.  Now I see the importance of plotting out the story, developing the characters, and having a clear sense of time and place.  It was fun jumping into it blindly and I think in the end it will be rewarding for me.  Do I think that's the best way to write a novel?  I don't know yet.  I'll have to keep going and see where I end up.  What about you--what do you think is the best approach?

         And while I'm on the topic of novels and outstanding novelists, make sure you're with me for the next two days.  Tomorrow (Tuesday 12/8) I will be reviewing LOST MISSION, the recent novel by award-winning novelist Athol Dickson.  This will be followed by an interview with Athol Dickson on Wednesday (12/9).   Mr. Dickson had some very interesting things to say about writing novels and about his book LOST MISSION.  I hope you will come back for both of these.

It's Beginning to Look Like Christmas

          The Christmas decorations are up in the neighborhood and Santa's at the mall.  I was in a local mall the other morning and Santa wasn't very busy and neither were the stores.  Granted it was midweek and somewhat early in the day--but hopefully that's not a bad sign. I don't plan to do any shopping this year. But the last few years I haven't shopped like I used to. It's not that I'm a scrooge or anything.  Well, maybe I am when it comes to shopping.

          It just doesn't feel very Christmasy yet to me.  We're not putting up a tree for the second year in a row.  My wife put up the wreaths on the door and the Christmas candle centerpiece on the table, but we still haven't gotten all of the dancing Santas out on display.  The snowman figure is out though, but he stays out all year like the angels on our fireplace mantle. So Christmas is gradually enveloping our home, but in a way it never totally leaves.

          Some of the blogs are starting to get in the Christmas spirit and mine has been no exception. This past week's debate topic was a hot one:  Christmas trees--real or fake?  I was surprised by the general consensus that fake was the way most of us go now.  I thought for sure I would be alone in that department but seems like we all have similar ideas about the fake trees. Idealistically speaking most of us probably dream of a white Christmas and a real tree, but in the real practical world it's fake trees and no precipitation.  Personally this year I'm dreaming of 70 degrees and sunny from December 16 until January 2.  After that I don't care too much.

       This Thursday I guess I'll stick to another holly jolly debate topic and keep it all light. Tomorrow I will be discussing the importance of spiritual community.  How important is it for believers to be a part of a church body?  On Monday I'll be pondering some final NaNo thoughts and looking at where the novels go from here.  Also for the sake of the non-NaNo'ers, I'll be looking at projects in life and how we follow through with them.  Then on Friday I'll have another mystery and like yesterday it won't necessarily be scary, just something to think about.

           Tuesday and Wednesday are days that I am particularly excited about this week.  On Tuesday I am going to be reviewing a novel that I just finished reading.  The book is LOST MISSION by acclaimed author Athol Dickson.  Then on Wednesday I'll be posting my interview with the author Athol Dickson.  So I hope you will definitely be here to see what Mr. Dickson has to say about his new book and writing in general.

           In the weeks to come I know some of the blogs may be taking time off or be sporadic in their postings and I can certainly understand why.  I hope that I can continue to post everyday, but if some days it doesn't happen I know you'll understand.  But this coming week I'll be here and it should be good.

           How about you?  Are the holidays going to be affecting your blog schedule?  Are you going to be reading the blog posts as much as you do now?  How are you celebrating the holidays this year?  How do you think the current economy is going to be affecting everyone's Christmas?

       I'm hoping for the best for us all.  I may be a scrooge about shopping, but I take seeing friends and family pretty darn serious.  That's what I like best about the Christmas season.