It’s Randy Ingermanson, and he’s the featured author this month for the Christian Science Fiction and Fantasy blog tour. Specifically, the tour is focusing on his book Double Vision.
You can find more great links to this book by going to Bethany House directly. For now, I’m going to tease readers with his great first sentence:
Keryn Wills was in the shower when she figured out how to kill Josh Trenton.
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His prose is active and vivid and quick. His dialogue drives the narrative so much that it feels like reading drama at times—more importantly, his dialogue is good.
He has a knack for approximating the way people talk without actually making his characters sound like drivelling idiots. (Have you ever typed up a transcription of someone’s conversation? Try it sometime. You’ll need to do a lot of editing to turn it into believable dialogue.)
Finally, he’s a master of short, punchy sentences:
Dillon’s heart was thumping very hard in his chest. He had a chance to work on something extraordinary. It would save the company. It would keep his friends employed. And it would save Grant’s investment. If he could make the device work.
In that excerpt, not only does Ingermanson drive the prose forward with a series of simple parallel sentences (repeating the structure “It would… It would… And it would…”), he socks it to the reader with a final fragment, so short and punchy it isn’t even a fully completed thought. I love it.
If that’s not enough to convince you to check out Randy Ingermanson and Double Vision, go to his website. You’ll find a treasure trove of free writer’s resources:
- The Snowflake Method—essential thoughts for any aspiring novelist.
- The Advanced Fiction Ezine—practical advice about the mechanics of storytelling.
- The Mad Genius Writer Ezine—one of my favorite web resources on marketing
Other folks on the tour: Nissa Annakindt Wayne Thomas Batson Jim Black Grace Bridges Jackie Castle Valerie Comer Karri Compton CSFF Blog Tour Gene Curtis D. G. D. Davidson Janey DeMeo Tessa Edwards April Erwin Kameron M. Franklin Linda Gilmore Beth Goddard Marcus Goodyear Andrea Graham Leathel Grody Katie Hart Sherrie Hibbs Sharon Hinck Christopher Hopper Jason Joyner Kait Karen Tina Kulesa Kevin Lucia and The Bookshelf Reviews 2.0 - The Compendium Rachel Marks Shannon McNear Rebecca LuElla Miller Nicole Eve Nielsen John W. Otte John Ottinger Robin Parrish Rachelle Cheryl Russel Hanna Sandvig Mirtika Schultz James Somers Steve Trower Speculative Faith Daniel I. Weaver
