Charlene Baumbich, Elder Wisdom
Charlene Baumbich grew up in the Chicago suburbs, swapping stories with her family around the dinner table, learning that "stories are good medicine," she says. Now, at 59, her abilities as a storyteller come to the forefront in the Dearest Dorothy series of novels, full of hilarious tales about an 87-year-old woman and Illinois small-town life. It's a series that came about, Baumbich will tell you, because of a single question.
Baumbich had carved out a career for herself as a speaker, a seasoned periodicals freelancer, a compilation contributor and the author of six nonfiction books. Then her life took a turn. In 1998, Baumbich's father, her godmother and her last older mentor friend—the real Dorothy who inspired the fictional character—died over a five-week period. "I was devastated," Baumbich remembers. It was about that time that her Guideposts editor, Terri Castillo, called to pose a question: often overlooked as readers of faith fiction, seniors constitute a large proportion of the Guideposts audience. Did Baumbich have any ideas for a novel about senior citizens?
"Here I was in the throes of terrible grief, in the wake of the loss of three older people who had so affected my life, and I hear this question!" Baumbich says. "I didn't have a clue about writing fiction, but I am a person with more guts than brains. So I picked up the phone and started talking to her about Dorothy."
Baumbich's first two novels, Dearest Dorothy, Are We There Yet? and Dearest Dorothy, Slow Down, You're Wearing Us Out! sold 35,311 sets through the Guideposts direct-mail program in 2002, according to senior editor Elizabeth Gold.
Carolyn Carlson, executive editor at Viking Penguin, read the books, loved them and licensed the trade rights in 2002. Since their release from Penguin in February, the first book has gone through five printings (more than 50,000 copies in print) and the second has gone through four printings (more than 40,000 in print), according to Carlson. "People respond to her wonderful ability to create engaging characters, to dramatize so well the ordinary events of life that are often extraordinary, and they pick up on her humorous, spiritual and feisty approach to life," Carlson says.
Carlson calls Baumbich a "fabulous promoter," with a platform as a lecturer and a "marvelous" Web site (www.welcometopartonville.com) that provides a virtual visit to Dorothy's hometown and will soon offer readers' guides. She also has "great interaction with her readers" via her e-mail newsletter, the Twinklegram. Promotion for the first two books included radio, television, Chicago-area print interviews, a 14-city/21-event tour and dinner at Borders headquarters with buyers, according to Zaidee Rose, publicist at Viking Penguin. The publishing house did postcard mailings; advertised in CBA catalogues, Book Page and PW Daily; and did co-op ads with independents, CBA stores and chains.
Promotion for the third book in the series, Dearest Dorothy, Help! I've Lost Myself (Aug.), will include a 12-city tour. Baumbich will participate in the Southeastern Booksellers Association meeting in Atlanta and the Midwest Literary Festival in Aurora, Ill.
Currently, Viking Penguin has five books under contract in the series, as well as a nonfiction title based on one of Baumbich's most requested keynote topics, "Don't Miss Your Life," in which she challenges her audience to build a "memory portfolio" and encourages them to laugh, play and "hold close the goodness in life that surrounds them." Baumbich will have some help continuing the series: "I feel the real Dorothy's hand on my shoulder when I'm writing," she says. —Cindy Crosby
Tim Downs
, Bug Man
Tim Downs and his books are a surprise to readers and an industry who believe they've seen it all when it comes to evangelical Christian fiction. Downs's protagonist is a criminal investigator who relies on maggots and other insects to provide clues about how and when a murder victim died. And the character's Christian faith comes into play more obliquely than is usual in the category's many eschatological fantasies and tales of true, selfless love in some long-ago era.
"Tim doesn't preach, he just tells an amazing story," says Jenny Baumgartner, acquisitions and development editor for WestBow Press, the Thomas Nelson imprint that just signed Downs for three novels, to be published annually beginning in January 2006. Downs's current publisher, Howard Publishing, unveiled his second novel, Chop Shop,in July, after releasing Shoofly Pie last year to critical acclaim. "What you find in his books are a lot more ethics and philosophy, written from a Christian point of view," Baumgartner adds. "He's wonderfully unique."
Or at least highly unusual, considering whence he's come and where he seems to be going. The former art student began his professional life penning a Universal Press comic strip about 20-something guys, an extension of what began as a hobby project for his college newspaper at Indiana University. For the past two decades, Downs has been a full-time staffer for Campus Crusade for Christ, specializing in presenting seminars on marriage and parenting. But he continued to look for new creative outlets and had long considered writing. Just as in his comic strip, "It's all dialogue and storytelling," he told himself.
Then, several years ago, Downs read an article in a science magazine about forensic entomologists, and his future writing career came together. He saw crime writing, with its heritage of compelling plots and characters, as a promising genre. "It seemed like every kind of crime writing had been done," Downs recalls, "but this article made it clear that FEs are outsiders. They're people who are eccentric, who have fantastic memories and don't mind spending the day peering through a microscope. And they make a great 'outsider' that you can drop into a crime story."
Downs attended something called "Maggot School," a two-day seminar operated by a veteran FE in central Indiana for coroners and criminal investigators, where Downs learned to grit his teeth while picking through pig cadavers for insects. Forensic entomology is based on the biological inevitability that, when an animal or human dies, insects, especially flies, feed on the decomposing flesh. FEs understand the life cycles of these insects and the effect they have on a body, and can thus determine with great precision the time of death.
Thus was born "The Bug Man," Nick Polchak, the FE who is the main character in Shoofly Pie and Chop Shop. The first book sold about 12,000 copies, according to Baumgartner, who gives part of the credit to the merchandising impact of the bright yellow, bug-laden jacket art. A serendipitous development was that over the past few years forensic science has become a pop-culture phenomenon, largely because of the CSI television shows.
Downs's first book for Westbow, tentatively titled Plague Maker, will feature two new protagonists (and maybe a cameo for Polchak).
"The FE in my books has a purely clinical view of death—until he loses someone very close to him, and then he has to consider the inadequacy of his worldview," says the 49-year-old Downs, who lives near Raleigh, N.C., with his wife, Joy, and their three kids. "I just try to pick some slice of his worldview and show how faith helps." —Dale Buss
Karen Kingsbury,
Born to Write
Karen Kingsbury knew she wanted to be a writer from the time she was five years old. "I knew I wanted to be a writer the way other children know they want to dance or play sports," Kingsbury says. "It was something I was born with." She earned her journalism degree and interned at the Los Angeles Times before working the locker room beat as a sports reporter for the Los Angeles Daily News.
Kingsbury's locker-room reprieve came when she was assigned to write features for the Sunday edition, stories that routinely wound up on the front page of the paper. "My editors really liked my storytelling ability," Kingsbury says. "I had one editor that used to say, 'If the story needs tears, Kingsbury needs to write it.' "
It was one such story that eventually gave Kingsbury the breakthrough she had been waiting for. Her first story on the new job was about a high school girl killed by her best friends, a story that she broke in the Daily News and eventually sold to People. The story appeared in People the same month her first child was born.
Only days before her maternity leave was due to end, Kingsbury received a call from a New York agent offering her a book deal. The advance she got for the story, called Missy's Murder, was three times her annual salary.
Kingsbury resigned from the paper the next day and hasn't worked a day outside her home since then. Following her first book, she wrote three other true-crime titles, all published by Dell. One of them, titled Deadly Pretender, was made into a CBS-TV movie, Every Woman's Dream.
Later, Kingsbury moved to writing novels. "My experience as a journalist helped prepare me for life as a novelist," Kingsbury says. "Even as a reporter, I would specialize in the emotional story, the type that you couldn't put down and that made you cry." But the kinds of stories she wanted to tell were not welcome in the mainstream market at the time, so her attention shifted to the growing evangelical Christian fiction market.
To call Kingsbury a prolific writer is an understatement. In only a dozen years, she has written 41 books and has 14 more under contract with three separate publishers: Tyndale House, Zondervan and Warner Faith. Asked about her prodigious output, Kingsbury tells PW: "I am a very fast writer, usually generating 10,000 to as many as 20,000 words a day. Writing is like a downloading process for me; I am simply a transcriber of the story as it comes to me."
Kingsbury's titles have sold a total of more than two million copies and she is poised to reenter the mainstream market next spring with A Thousand Tomorrows, from Warner Faith's new general-market crossover imprint, Center Street. Since signing with Warner in 2001, the house has released six of her titles, selling more than 300,000 copies. Her latest book with the publisher is called Sarah's Song, the third title in what has come to be known as the Red Gloves series, named after the gift that changes hands in the series' first book, Gideon's Gift.
The movie rights to Gideon's Gift have been optioned by a major Hollywood studio, and $100 million has been budgeted for the planned Christmas 2005 movie release, according to Kingsbury. The series has sold well into six figures to date, and the fourth and final title in the series, Hannah's Hope, is set for publication in fall 2005.
Meanwhile, promotional plans for Sarah's Song call for print ads in Christian and mainstream trade and consumer magazines, including People and Real Simple; retailer catalogue advertising; end-cap merchandising kits; a 10-city radio satellite tour; and a local author tour.
With an initial printing of 80,000 copies and "a significant figure" earmarked for marketing the title, Warner Faith is supporting Sarah's Song and Kingsbury with money and muscle. "We think Karen is set to break into the mainstream fiction market in a major way," says Rolf Zettersten, Warner Faith publisher. "We are prepared to commit the resources necessary to make that happen." —Sean Fowlds
Jamie Langston Turner
, Outside Looking In
If there's one element that sets Jamie Langston Turner's novels apart from the typical CBA fare, it's the spiritual state of the primary viewpoint character—which in some cases is a sad state, indeed. Known for placing non-Christians, or brand-new Christians, in the role of protagonist, Turner believes that device helps her avoid the pitfall of writing a "didactic book, where all the pieces fit neatly into place." Instead, her main characters stand at the edges of the faith, asking hard questions and making insightful observations that those who are entrenched on the inside often miss. Her fifth novel, No Dark Valley, an August release from Bethany House, features two such characters.
"A way to infuse a story with more conflict is to make the viewpoint character a non-believer who is looking in on this subculture," Turner tells PW. "As Christians, we must look weird to the world sometimes, and it would help Christian readers to see how we come across. Sometimes that's good, and a lot of times that's not so good." Turner's characters, for example, are likely to comment on the often odd language used in hymns and on Christian jargon—and to dread that inevitable moment when they hear, "Are you saved?"
A professor of literature and creative writing at Bob Jones University in Greenville, S.C., Turner has lived in the South most of her life, and that region, along with some of its colorful characters, figures prominently in her books. The first, Suncatchers, was published in 1995. One of her editors liked her short stories so much that he encouraged her to try writing a novel. That first effort was immediately accepted by Thomas Nelson. But the glut of Christian fiction at the time prompted Nelson to scale back its fiction line, so Turner shopped her second manuscript around to several CBA publishers—all but one of whom deemed it, in so many words, too literary for CBA and too spiritual for ABA. Bethany House was the exception, and Some Wildflower in My Heart has proven to be Turner's top-selling title. In 2001, her third book, By the Light of a Thousand Stars, was a Christy Award finalist in contemporary fiction, and in 2002 she took top Christy honors in that category for A Garden to Keep.
A self-described "poky writer," Turner spent the summer working on her sixth novel but does not expect it to be published until 2006. "I don't churn out books as fast as a lot of authors do, because I'm not ready to give up teaching," she says. "In many ways, teaching feeds my writing, and my writing feeds my teaching." Her own favorite read for several years now has been Leif Enger's Peace Like a River. "That is what I consider good Christian fiction—something that has an engaging story, a story line that is unpredictable and yet seems inevitably right, and characters that surprise you at every turn and yet do what is appropriate for that book," Turner says. "You don't get the feeling that the writer is trying to make a point. The point arises very naturally out of the story. That's what I aspire to write—books that do just that." —Marcia Ford
