In looking through my prior interviews, I saw that dates to years ago, and I wondered if my answers had changed. I don't think so. Do you?
Reflecting back, what do you see as most significant to your publication journey?
Many people may not know that I started on this road to writing to craft a book about my experiences following the death of my wife. After the publication of The Tender Scar, I struggled through four years/four novels/forty rejections before I gave up the idea of writing fiction. But through circumstances that only God could put in place, I received representation, got my first fiction contract, and got back to work.
How do your faith and spiritual life play into the picture and affect your storytelling?
My books reflect my own relationship with God—sometimes my faith is weak, sometimes I stumble, but He’s always there to set my feet back on the path, to bear me up in tough times. I want people to realize that, although God doesn’t cause bad things to happen, He can use even the worst of them to strengthen our faith and our witness.
Who/What spurs you to write? Where do your story and character ideas come from?
My ideas come from two factors—the things I see around me and the question Alton Gansky taught me to ask: “What if?” For example, my current novel began when another doctor at the medical school and I were talking about a resident who faced down a gunman in the emergency room. Then I asked, “What if the gunman was a member of a drug cartel?” The plot grew from there.
I’ll start with an idea of what I want to convey. Then I populate the story with characters who sometimes surprise me because they don’t behave the way I think they should. Finally, I determine a beginning, a twist in the middle (and maybe a few others along the way), and an ending that, as Jim Bell puts it, is a “knockout. “