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"There's a secret feeling that every marathon finisher knows when they finally cross that finish line for the first time. You're never quite the same person; you're better… It's the same with getting published…"
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The persistence and stamina of author Christopher Bonn Jonnes will pay off in April 2000 when his first novel Wake Up Dead is published by Salvo Press.
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 RoseDog: Tell us a bit about yourself Christopher:
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| Christopher Bonn Jonnes: I'm a forty-two-year-old, life-long Minnesotan with a lovely wife and three children, ages ten to twenty-four. I'm a VP, part owner, and twenty-seven-year veteran of American Polywater Corp., an industrial chemical manufacturer. My passions include motorcycles, guitar, softball, volleyball, running (3:06 marathon best), horses, reading, and writing. I aced high school with special honors at seventeen and immediately became a father and went to work—no college. I do a lot of writing at work—newsletters, memos, lit, policy, etc.—which helps hone the skills. I wrote my first book at age eight. It was entitled Chris Jonnes - The First Six Years. I commissioned my little sister (the "artist" of the family) to illustrate it. I tried a novel at age twelve, but never got past the first paragraph. My 11th grade English teacher slipped a story I wrote into the school's creative writing publication, but I never got a copy. I didn't try fiction again until age thirty. My wife "caught" me writing in the middle of the night and I had to admit that I was planning to write a novel. She laughed, just as she had when told I'd run a marathon. She's a believer now. |
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RD: What were the greatest challenges you faced in getting published for the first time and how did you meet them?
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| CBJ: It's a near miracle that I got published, and aspiring writers should take heart because I represent hope. It's very difficult for first-time writers to get published, but the odds were especially long in my case. I'm essentially a self-taught writer, with no credits, no name, and no contact—a complete outsider. I have a high school education, and never took a single writing class in my life other than English in public schools; no writers' conferences, no book clubs, no reading groups. I'm not a professor. I don't work for a newspaper. I don't have a fellowship. I don't even have a library card. What I did do was have literate, book-loving parents who raised me with an innate feel for a good sentence. I supplemented that with many hours nose-deep in my Strunk & White, dictionary, and thesaurus. I rewrote Wake Up Dead one hundred times, at least. I splurged for a professional edit, and followed the advice. I shared the book with my mother, who provided invaluable feedback. It was her faith in the book that urged me to press on when the prospects looked bleak and the thought of another rewrite made me nauseous. When the book was done and squeeky tight, I got a Writers Market and went agent hunting. I made a list of thirty targets and, after twenty-nine form rejection letters (and probably no readings) I included some of the rave quotes from my editor in query #30. So I got an agent and ...nothing happened—form rejections from six publishers in two years (and probably no readings). I fired the agent. About to surrender, I submitted the manuscript to a national fiction contest and...won publication! Someone finally read it. It took about three years to write it, and three more to sell it. I compare writing a book to running a marathon. Both take a lot of time and training. Both are painful and pit you against the needs of your family. Both are a supreme test of will and mind over matter. But while there are similarities, I think writing is the more difficult of the two. It takes more talent. It takes more time. It's lonelier (you can run with others). It's more difficult to chart your progress (no stopwatch). And when you finally finish, there aren't throngs of friends, family, and complete strangers cheering your accomplishment. Often the real frustration begins when the writing ends—trying to get published. Generally the first thing that happens is you discover that you really aren't done; another rewrite is required. No one ever walks up after you cross the finish line of a marathon and says, "Oh, I think you need to run another ten miles or so." And, of course, there are the critics. No one has ever criticized one of my runs. One aspect of writing Wake Up Dead that I struggled with is that no matter how many times I read it, I could never read it from start to finish without already knowing the story. Therefore, it's very difficult to know whether the readers are as surprised as you want them to be at various points, or confused, or whether a plot twist—or the whole tale—is too obvious. It's impossible to be objective. I'm sure that's something that comes with experience, but I found myself asking each person who read the story early on whether they saw the end coming. None did, luckily. Another issue was choosing the target audience and genre. I didn't write a story to fit a genre; I wrote the story I had and left it to the publisher to peg the market. His judgment is excellent. Although it's not a traditional detective story/murder mystery, it'll have great cross-over appeal to mystery fans and to sci-fi fans because of its dream-the-future aspect. At its heart, though, it's an intriguing suspense novel. |
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RD: What is the greatest change in your personal life that being a published writer has made, or is likely to make?
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| CBJ: I was about as ready to assume a public role as a published author as Ted Kazinski was to come out of his cabin. I love writing, in part, because it's a solitary endeavor. I'm a low profile type. I told no one other than closest family I was even writing. The publication of Wake Up Dead will be a complete surprise to most. The prospect of doing signings is unnerving. I'd rather wrestle a bear. There were times that I wished I'd never written the book. I stared at the book contract a long time before signing it. That's when the reality of what I was committing myself to sank in. We need to be careful what we wish for; sometimes it comes true. Now, as I plan what I'll say or do at booksignings, I keep telling myself to just be myself, but that's what used to get me sent to the principal's office, so I haven't figured that out yet. The big change publication has caused is that it has forced me out of the cave and into the world of book marketing, which my publisher never misled me on: it's a go-out-there-and-do-it-on-your-own affair for the first-time author. And it's been worth it. There's a secret feeling that every marathon finisher knows when they finally cross that finish line for the first time. You're never quite the same person; you're better—at least in your mind. It's the same with getting published, when you hold your own book in your hands for the first time. We all have egos. When a professional publisher stakes money on your book, it feels good. It's personal validation. |
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RD: What is the most important thing you want to see readers get out of your book?
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| CBJ: Wake Up Dead is not literary fiction. It won't change your life. It's about an elderly research scientist who discovers he has the ability to dream the future—a concept delivered in the book with more believability than can be conveyed in a few sentences here. Essentially he determines that in the same way REM (rapid eye movement) dreams help synthesize the previous day's major events for the brain, non-REM dreams synthesize the next day's events. These dreams are working well for him, affording the foreknowledge needed to amass a fortune in gambling and investing—and the magic necessary to win the affection of a beautiful young woman. But then he starts dreaming his own death. Knowing what will happen, he's able to avoid it by taking actions different than those in his dreams. So the future can be changed. Unfortunately, the dreams persist and become more frequent. Each death dream is different: crashes, explosions, fires, shootings, falls, stabbings, etc. It begins to look as though his death is imminent. There's one common component in each dream, however, the presence in each death scene of a complete stranger. The scientist seems bonded in death with this individual, whom he tracks down in real life and hires as a research subject so he can study and solve the enigmatic link between them. This stranger is the unlikely hero. The story follows their attempts to break the fatal bond between them. And there are surprises. It's a tightly-written, fast-paced suspense novel with a very unique and creative plot, and a surprising, satisfying ending. I literally dreamt this story. I said "wow" and jumped out of bed and jotted it down before it disappeared like dreams usually do. I just want readers to say "wow." |
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RD: Have you found a routine or specific conditions in which you find it most productive to work?
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| CBJ: I work sixty-hour weeks at my day job and then try to wedge writing between home obligations and other hobbies. This is no different than most writers, and my solutions were not unique: commitment, sacrifice, late nights, and coffee. |
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RD: The desert island question: choose one book title and one electronic device and tell us why.
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| CBJ: Robinson Crusoe, Swiss Family Robinson, and Lord of the Flies all come to mind, but I'm practical, so I'd pack a copy of the Encyclopedia Britannica, not for reading, but to smash open coconuts. As for an electronic device, I'm a writer, so I'd need a word processor to capture my new bestseller, 1001 Ways to Serve Coconut. |
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RD: If you were able to offer only one piece of advice to writers trying to get published for the first time, what would you say and how do you relate it to your own experience?
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| CBJ: There's the obvious mantra of write and rewrite, and the importance of finding a trusted someone to read your work and provide honest, quality feedback, but the most specific advice I can give—at least for book-length fiction wannabes—is to pick up a copy of How To Write A Damn Good Novel by James N. Frey. It's a blueprint for building a book. I studied it, used the advice, and got published. |
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RD: When your book officially comes out in April, how will you celebrate getting published for the first time?
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| CBJ: At my first signing I plan on introducing my parents and then reminding them and explaining to the crowd how, as a young man, I had resisted their gentle and well-intentioned urgings to further my education, because I felt that I already knew everything. I will thank them for their nurturing, and then publicly declare—as I stand before them a successful, published author: "I told you so." |
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End
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