The Interview

Randy: Since we're at ICRS, I think it's appropriate to mention Dawn's Light, a Retailer's Choice award finalist. I'm not sure if they've announced them yet, or when that is.

Terri: I think I must not have won because I haven't heard anything about it. (laughs) But I think they announced it yesterday, I could be wrong about that.

Randy: They had the Christy Awards yesterday--no, Saturday, but that's a whole different one. Of course, Night Light, you won that last year.

Terri: Yeah, I did. I have won the Retailer's Choice award before.

Randy: So you know the procedure of being informed?

Terri: Right. They kind of do a press conference, and usually the authors aren't there. We get word back sometimes. (laughs)

Randy: Well, it's great to be nominated a second year in a row.

Terri: Yeah, it is. It really is. It's fun.

Randy: Definitely an honor. I guess in a sense you're famous for creating series, because you've got quite a few of them.

Terri: Yeah, but my latest are not series. They're stand-alones.

Randy: That was one of my questions I was going to lead into, of course, Intervention, with the character Kent being a police detective, it seemed like it'd be pretty easy to spin a series into there if you decided to.

Terri: I could. And I might. I may write a sequel to that, but I'm not going to commit to a series, because I'm kind of tired of series. They wear me out. (laughs)

Randy: Pressure to remember all the details you have to carry over.

Terri: Exactly. And the last series I did was the Restoration series, and it was about this massive global power outage, and I had to learn about the power grid, I had to learn about the financial system, it was just a lot of hard work, and it slowed me down a little bit, so I thought, "If I can just get at this with electricity, and cash and cars that run, I'll be happy." And I'm just going to do one at a time.

Randy: The door is always open, right?

Terri: Yeah. And Double Minds was the book before this, it was stand-alone, too. I like these characters, I may have to do another one with them.

Randy: Reading Intervention, even though it didn't indicate it was, I was thinking, "Yeah, there needs to be a series here. These characters can't just go away." But, you know, you can always give yourself a break if you don't have the pressure of producing the next one in a series.

Terri: That's right.

Randy: I did something in October of 2007 that I've never done before, and that is read a large, multi-novel series, and it happened to be your Newpointe 911. I read all five of them in the one month, back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back, and that was a lot of fun. I guess the only similar thing I've done is watch all three Lord of the Rings in one day.

Terri: In one day? Wow, that's a long day.

Randy: Yeah, we started at 8 in the morning and went till 8 or 9 at night I think, my son and I, on New Year's Day.

Terri: That's a good thing.

Randy: It was the extended ones, so it was twelve hours of that, but it gives a great flow. It wasn't quite the same, because I worked a regular job, but I did read yours in probably about four days apiece, so in about three weeks I read the entire series from start to finish.

Terri: Thanks.

Randy: That was a lot of fun, but my favorite in that series was probably Trial by Fire, and I think that was largely because of the character of Issie, so I wanted to ask you a little bit about creating her, some of the ideas you got, how you came up with her character, because she kind of stood out in that series as a pretty unique character.

Terri: Right. She was just a really fun character because she was so different from the other characters, who were Christian. She was not a Christian, and really wasn't interested in being one, but she had so many problems, you know, she had such a dark past, and she really was attracted to this minister because he cared about her, and he saw her. And so, I think that was one reason I really liked growing her throughout that series. I never really intended to do a book about her, it was just that she appears in book one, and in book two I did a little more with her, and by the time I was ready to write book four, I thought, "We've got to do something with her, people are going to be really upset if she doesn't finally become a Christian and really find happiness." I just really loved her, and I loved putting her in jeopardy because she was such an interesting character.

Randy: So it wasn't really part of the original plan, it just kind of you were forced to do it because she became bigger.

Terri: Yeah, but when you're writing a series you just don't really know what's going to develop and you have to be open to that. I probably didn't plan on that when I was scoping out the series, but it was fun when it happend.

Randy: Related to that, last time they had ICRS in Denver, I interviewed Ted Dekker. Of course, he's rather prolific. The interesting thing to me is (with) music, I usually ask artists how they come about creating their stuff, like whether they do music first, and then add lyrics, or the other way around. With authors, similar to that is the writing style; I know Ted's approach is he plans everything out in his head (about) three novels ahead, it seems like he's got every detail. Other authors kind of don't know what's going to be in the next chapter.

Terri: Well I'm a plotter, I do plot my books out pretty extensively, but I change a lot as I go. Really, I might plot the first third of the book real meticulously, and just kind of have a general plot for the rest of it, and then as I get to the point where I need to start writing the second third, I then really get more detailed with my plot. I kind of call it a revolving plot, I just kind of plot ahead.

Randy: But you're not a slave to it.

Terri: Yeah, I'm not a slave to it.

Randy: And as we've heard with the series, you never know what could be coming in a future book.

Terri: I know, and I change everything. After the first draft, everything changes. If you read one of my first drafts and then read the published book, you wouldn't recognize a lot.

Randy: So, flexibility.

Terri: Right.

Randy: That's great. So, speaking of Intervention, here, your latest one. I got it a few days ago, and I really enjoyed it. Was there anything in particular that really inspired you to address that whole theme of rebellion and addiction and that sort of thing?

Terri: Yeah, I have a daughter who has drug addictions, and we've been on a battle with that for about six years. She's been in treatment for a year now, and I think she's doing really well, but it all came out of that.

Randy: So you really lived that book. Did that make it in a sense tougher to write, or easier to write?

Terri: Well, easier, because I kind of had it in my head. Just so much has happened. So many things have happened, things that I think people need to know about. Like, for instance, when you find out your loved one is on drugs, and they're severely addicted, then immediately you want to do something, but what? You don't know what to do, and I have all these experiences, a lot of failures, a lot of attempts that went wrong, and mistakes that I made, and I just thought, I need to put all this into a book, and maybe other families will read this and not only feel like they're not alone, especially Christian families thinking everybody else has great kids who don't mess up and haven't made mistakes. They just feel so isolated, because there's a lot of shame, you think, "I must be a terrible parent." And I know pastors and missionaries who have children who have done this. I just wanted to put it all into a book and fictionalize it, and hopefully families will see themselves in here, see their children, or their loved ones, and while it might not give them all the information that they might find in a nonfiction book, it might help guide them a little bit, and also just remind them that sometimes our suffering makes us stronger, that God is still there, even when this happens.

Randy: That does explain why it came across as very authentic. I figured you must have known somebody or done a ton of research for it.

Terri: We had an intervention just like this.

Randy: (laughing) Apart from the murders?

Terri: That's right, we didn't have the murders. We had a lady come to our house. She convinced my daughter to go to treatment, and she left. I remember putting her on the plane thinking, "Anything could happen." I'm the mother who went to all these schools. I sat with her the first day to see if she was going to like it in preschool, and I'm the mother who did all these things, and here I am sending my child off with this stranger, but I knew I couldn't take her myself because she was just not going to go with me. We needed a professional.

Randy: It was a little autobiography mixed in there.

Terri: It was very similar. There's a lot. And I don't want to say it's identical to our family. It certainly isn't. I took a lot of liberties, and really paid attention to the story line instead of what really happened in our lives. But yeah, that really came out of our lives. And the desperation, there was one point when my daughter vanished. I had taken her to treatment and she left, and nobody knew where she was. All those emotions are in this book.

Randy: You didn't have to simulate them, just had to remember them.

Terri: I just had to remember how I felt when those things happened when I went looking for her. I didn't look that far, I really found her pretty quickly, so that was fine. She was safe and everything.

Randy: She wasn't kidnapped.

Terri: No, she was fine. But I just remember all that and put it all in there.

Randy: Well, when you don't know, the feelings are going to be the same. You don't know the outcome. I've read books on how to dig in to some of that, like Brandilyn's book.

Terri: Exactly, I was thinking of that when I said that.

Randy: It just struck me, but that's the tougher way to do it, is actually live it.

Terri: Right. You know, you don't get that opportunity very often. Most books I write, I have to research real extensively and just kind of imagine what if. In this book, this is the first one that I've written that I've really pulled a lot out of myself to write.

Randy: Did that cut down your writing time, or did it make you really want to craft it so carefully it didn't really save you any time?

Terri: Well, it took the same amount of time as all my books. I have to say, I did take it through more drafts and more editing than I normally would because I just wanted to get it right. I just so want this one to work.

Randy: i think it does. I'll be reviewing it in conjunction with the interview. Definitely a two thumbs up kind of thing. It had a great impact, I really enjoyed reading it. It's one of those, when you pick up a suspense or a Terri Blackstock book, you expect it to be entertaining, enjoy it, but this one had a lot more, it had that meat in it from personal experience.

Terri: Thank you. And my daughter loved it. I let her read it before the ARCs (Advance Reading Copy) went out, and she said, "Mom, this is the best thing you've written."

Randy: Wow.

Terri: And for her to feel that way, when I really cast addiction in a negative light. But she really thought I nailed it, and she's been very supportive about me talking about it. She said, "I want people to know that God's worked in my life." She has been pretty open about blogging about it and stuff.

Randy: Obviously, hopefully the readers of the book and this interview that know about it will be in prayer for her.

Terri: Yes, I hope so. That would be great.

Randy: Yeah, that would be an excellent thing. We talked a little early about series and how things can kind of take on a life of their own. I read the entire Cape Refuge series, originally it was billed as a trilogy, so I'm thinking maybe the last one there was a later idea, too.

Terri: Well actually, in Newpointe, Line of Duty, I never intended to write that. I had a four book series planned, and then 9/11 happened, and I had named it Newpointe 911, it was so odd. But I was focusing on emergency services, but then I thought, these are the people that were killed in 9/11, the firemen. So I thought, "I've got to do one more book, in honor of September 11th." And then in Cape Refuge I think I meant to do that from the--I may have sold it as a three-book series.

Randy: The publisher billed the first few as "part one of the trilogy," "part two of the trilogy," and then, all of a sudden, it was part four of--now it's a series. (laughs)

Terri: I don't know what happened with that, but I love that series.

Randy: So you were thinking of four right from the beginning?

Terri: I kind of always think of four, all of my series wind up being four.

Randy: So if they bill it as a trilogy, don't believe the publishers?

Terri: (laughing) That's right.

Randy: (laughing) Terri's got another one in mind.

Terri: And we do bring things back by popular demand, too. So people can write and let their opinions be known.

Randy: Right. What sort of writing environment do you prefer? My wife thought of that question last night, we were talking about things to ask. In our house, there's five kids, Amelia's tied for last with her twin brother, but now we're down to mostly two or three at home, but when you grow up with five kids there's a lot of noise and that kind of thing. Some people like that, some like quiet, so what do you prefer?

Terri: I like silence. I have to have several hours a day of silence, and I always wrote during school hours while my kids were coming up, and I still kind of do that now. By three o' clock I'm usually kind of ready to take a break. Now that my kids are out of the house, I do write some at night if I feel like it, but I have to have absolute silence. It doesn't really matter as much where I write. I have a really nice office but I rarely write there. I use my laptop, I write in the kitchen or in the living room.

Randy: Is it usually at home though?

Terri: Well sometimes I'll get in my car and I go park somewhere, which I know is so bizarre, I don't know what it is, but I like sitting in my car somewhere where I can see woods or forest.

Randy: Do you ever go on a location that would fit the setting of the book to write?

Terri: I often do. For Cape Refuge I went to Tybee Island, Georgia and sort of modeled that island after Tybee Island. I spent some time there.

Randy: Did you write there or just research?

Terri: I just researched, then went home to write. It would have been really distracting to try to write there.

Terri: Writers like James Scott Bell, do you know him?

Randy: Not personally.

Terri: Oh, he's a good suspense writer. He does a lot of his writing at Starbucks. (laughing) It's weird, it's different.

Randy: Got to find a place that works, right? I have to admit I got fooled by your website yesterday. I was just browsing, getting some ideas for the interview, and I saw the All About the Story contest, and I thought, "Hey, I could enter my novel." And then I saw November, "OK, there's plenty of time." Then I saw it was 2008.

Terri: I hate that. Maybe they'll do it again this year.

Randy: Yeah, I missed it by a year. But the one thing that really jumped out at me, that was kind of depressing actually, the dozen finalists when I went to the Zondervan site, ten of them were women, which is great, except that I'm a guy, and one was a co-author, so there's really only one stand-alone male in the top twelve.

Terri: I think that probably had more to do with the number of submissions being from women, because Zondervan publishes a lot of men.

Randy: Yeah. So my question is, do you have a theory, or why do you think women right now seem to dominate the Christian fiction market? There's a few exceptions, like Ted Dekker, but I mean I was going through the Christy awards, and the first eighteen I looked at, sixteen were women.

Terri: Right. I think that's because you've got a contemporary romance category, you've got historical romance, you've got romantic suspense, so many of these genres are tied to romance, so those are usually the women that right those. And then there's like a visionary and suspense, all three of those suspense finalists were men.

Randy: Yeah. I did notice that.

Terri: Visionary, futuristic, those are usually men.

Randy: Guys like those better. Women like the more historical ones.

Terri: Yeah. And I think our buyers are primarily women, although they buy the books for their husbands. I was at the Southern Baptist Convention signing books a couple weeks ago, and more men came up than women.

Randy: So I'm not the only guy who reads still.

Terri: No, there were a lot. I was really excited.

Randy: That's good to hear. But yeah, I was just thinking in terms of books that I've been reviewing, again, other than Ted Dekker, there's obviously been a few other exceptions, but--

Terri: Well you should read Jim Bell, James Scott Bell. He's really good and he writes suspense. He's an attorney.

Randy: Okay, great. I really enjoyed--oh what's his name, it's a really unique name...Ethol or something...

Terri: Athol Dickson. He's wonderful.

Randy: Yeah, love his stuff.

Terri: And also Randy Singer.

Randy: I've heard of him. Actually, he's out here right now.

Terri: He is here, I've seen him all over the place.

Randy: So there still is hope for male authors. (laughs)

Terri: There is, yeah. And Randy Alcorn, there are a lot of men doing really well.

Randy: It is interesting to look at the numbers sometimes and see the domination. I was wondering if part of it was that women just do more reading, but you're saying a lot of them are buying it for their husbands, so I guess it's not just that.

Terri: I think that's true. And you know with our books, they get passed around so many times, and I'd love to see a study on how many times one book is read by different people.

Randy: The way I found out about you was through a couple women I work with that passed off some books to me. They were avid fans, they were like, "Hey, you gotta check out Terri Blackstock!" That's how I discovered it. That was probably around 2007. When did Cape Refuge come out?

Terri: It's been about four years ago.

Randy: So was it before Newpointe when it started?

Terri: No, it was after.

Randy: OK. So I think I started with the Newpointe ones. Anyway, in the last few years, I've definitely enjoyed them. Speaking of reading, do you have much time to do some reading yourself?

Terri: I love to read, and I hope we have a big library in heaven. (laughs) I just don't have a lot of time. I tend to read mostly when I'm traveling. It depends on what stage I'm at in a novel. Really, when I get to that last final draft, I really need to read something literary to kind of make sure that my language and prose are creative and artistic, because I'm more of a commercial writer, I work a little harder at that part. I kind of develop the voice of whatever I'm reading, so that's a problem, so I have to make sure I'm not reading a historical book while writing suspense.

Randy: Who are some of your favorite authors when you do have time to read?

Terri: Brandilyn (Collins) is and Jim Bell, and Dean Koontz, outside of Christian fiction I love him.

Randy: His last couple have been pretty spiritual, books like The Good Guy, The Husband. I thought The Husband was just tremendous. You can see kind of a spiritual progression from ten, fifteen years ago to where he's writing now.

Terri: Yeah, he really puts a lot of imagery in.

Randy: Ted Dekker said Dean Koontz is his favorite, too.

Terri: Oh really? Yeah, I can see a lot of his influence in Ted's work.

Randy: Have you had a chance to read quite a few of Ted's?

Terri: I've read a few. He's really good.

Randy: Have you read BoneMan's Daughters?

Terri: No, and everybody tells me I need to.

Randy: It's powerful.

Terri: That's one thing I'm going to have to put on my list.

Randy: Like I said, I started off doing more music reviews and interviews, and it seems like a lot of artists in that area are looking to get some Christian market success and maybe break into the mainstream. You kind of reversed that. So tell us a little bit about that.

Terri: I did. My book that's out right now, Double Minds, is sort of about that. It's about a songwriter in Nashville. That's been a hard thing because I came from mainstream, from general market, and started writing Christian fiction because I just had a spiritual awakening and I felt like the Lord really didn't want me writing what I was writing. So I came to the Christian market. You know, I still have that double-mindedness sometimes that James talks about in the Bible. Because sometimes I feel that pull to write so much so that I'll make a certain amount of money while I'm putting my kids through school or something, and then there's that other part that I know that's not why I'm here. I know God has me writing for a reason and he has specific people that he wants to read what I'm writing. And He's worked his magic through these books to speak to these people. So there is that double-mindedness that I wanted to really explore in that character in Double Minds and have her kind of going through some of the stuff I went through when I switched.

Randy: So a little bit like this one, where you draw on some personal emotions.

Terri: Yeah, I guess I do draw on something like that in every book, but yeah, that's where that came from, because I did it backward, to the world. They all think, "Why would you go to a smaller market?" And I was successful, but I just really wanted to serve God, and I was doing just the opposite, what I was writing before.

Randy: How many years were you published?

Terri: Thirteen years and I had thirty-two books published in that market, and they were graphic. I started out thinking I was only going to write clean stuff, and then in the interest of selling more books, I started just including a little more and a little more, and finally my compromises added up, and I was just like everybody else.

Randy: Kind of had an awakening?

Terri: I did. I literally got down on my knees and said, "Lord, I don't want to write another thing that doesn't glorify You." And so I changed. I really thought that I might not have a career. I thought, "What publisher's going to want to publish me after this?" But God just loves that. He loves to do stuff with you when you're covered with mud.

Randy: Do you know the other parallel person, Francine Rivers, who was kind of the first to go that direction?

Terri: Yes, in fact I knew her in that market. We met years ago when we were both starting out.

Randy: Took the same journey.

Terri: She did, and I didn't even know about her when I began thinking about this. I didn't know if there was a market. I just didn't know anything. I decided to write suspense when I got into this market, because I wanted to really make a clean break with romance, although I could have written really good, Christian romance, and that would have been fine, but I was really reading suspense.

Randy: So is that something that you foresee in the future that you want to keep on writing suspense?

Terri: Yeah, as long as I can. It takes a certain amount of mental acuity because you have to write clues and really plan things out, and I guess if at some point I can't do that anymore I'll have to quit.

Randy: (laughing) Go back to romance.

Terri: Yeah, I'll go back to women's fiction, or gentler stories.

Randy: Just in closing, I know you've got some stuff on your website, but do you have any advice to aspiring writers that you would give, considering you've had so many years of experience by now?

Terri: The best piece of advice anyone ever gave me was don't get it right, get it written, because we start over so many times, we think, "Oh, it's got to be perfect, chapter one's not perfect, I can't move on to chapter two." And I say, just write it. Just get it down. The first draft is to me, the hardest part and the most important, and then you go back and you get artistic and creative and start really fleshing it out. The second draft is the most fun to me. (laughs)

Randy: Typically, do you have an approximate idea of how many drafts you usually do?

Terri: I have been known to do fifteen. If I had all the time in the world, I'd probably do fifteen or twenty, and really I just keep doing it until I run out of time.

Randy: Do you work on more than one book simultaneously?

Terri: No. I finish one before I start another one, but inevitably, the one before will come back for edits or something, and I'll have to stop and go back to it.

Randy: You kind of like to focus on one?

Terri: Yeah, but I'm only composing one at a time.

Randy: I remember Ted saying, when I talked to him, he says, "Right now, I've got three done in my head that I haven't had time to write yet."

Terri: (laughing) He probably does. He just takes dictation.

Randy: Yeah, I wonder, how do you keep them straight? Well, everyone has different approaches, so it's interesting to see each one. Thanks a lot, that's all the questions I have.