Athol Dickson writes these beautifully crafted suspenseful novels with a touch of the magical. I really love his work. So why isn’t he a best-selling author?
His musings are posted at the blog Novel Rocket this week, and he had some interesting words to say. For one thing, he’s a writer because he loves to write. He doesn’t want to do marketing. He wants to work at his own speed. He also doesn’t want to crank out novels three or four per year, preferring to carefully hone his craft.
He talks about his new novel, The Opposite of Art:
“The Opposite of Art is a story about an artist who drowns, sees something he can’t begin to imagine, and comes back to life with a compulsion to paint that thing, even if it kills him. It’s a story, not a sermon or a parable, because I tend to think that’s what a novel ought to be.”
I wonder whether he would see more success if he wrote deliberately for non-Christians, who are more tolerant of weird magical things happening here and there. In any case, I’m looking forward to reading this book.
http://www.novelrocket.com/2011/09/why-my-novel-will-not-sell.html