Peter Hogenkamp Interview Part 2

Welcome everyone to another great week of the Writer's Revolution.  I am your host, the author of The Phoenix Blade, Andrew Hess.  My guest this week is author and doctor Peter Hogenkamp

If you were stranded on a desert island, what three items would you bring (excluding family, laptop, or writing utensils)?

PH:  Swiss Army knife, sunglasses and a case of Corona (it’s all I have at home anyway.)

We find out the world is going to end tomorrow.  How do you live your last day?

PH:  Climb Everest.

If we were to make a movie of your life.  Who would play the part of you?

PH:  That’s almost unfairly difficult, Andrew. But I am a good sport if nothing else, and I appreciate this opportunity, so I will play along. Since Homer Simpson is animated, I will go with Ty Burrell, the guy who plays Phil Dunphy on Modern Family. I am flattering myself, as he’s funnier than I am, but my kids see the resemblance in the many ways.

Haha, I like to make the questions interesting, fun, but difficult.  Ty Burrell is very funny and I love the Phil Dunphy character as well.

Okay, crystal ball time.  Where do you see yourself in 5-10 years?

PH:  Living in central VT still, practicing medicine a little less (don’t let my wife see this) and writing a little more. The Jesuit thriller series is going to be five books long, and I want to finish that series and write a few stand-alone novels as well. (And I love to travel and I have lots of hobbies.)

Do you have any questions for me?

PH:  I usually ask the same question in these circumstances, because I believe that our favorite books speak volumes (pun intended) about who we really are. Therefore: What are your top five books of all time?

Hmm, my top five books of all time.  It’s a bit difficult to narrow down, but I’ll give it a shot. 

The Poe Reader, by Edgar Allen Poe.  It’s the complete works of Edgar Allen Poe and he is my all time favorite author.

Four Blind Mice, by James Patterson.  It was one of the most intricate books in the Alex Cross series.

The War of Art, by Steven Pressfield.  It is a short book but provides focus for authors and artists to strive to be more than just someone going through the motions.

Indian in the Cupboard, by Lynne Reid Banks.  It was my favorite book growing up as a kid.  I know most people would figure Harry Potter of Hunger Games to fit in here, but Indian in the Cupboard was the first book that I was really able to get into.

The Phoenix Blade, by Andrew Hess.  I know it’s my own book, but I have read it about twenty times or more between editing, planning the rest of the book series, or just reading for the fun of it.

Where can our readers find you?

PH:  Thanks for asking. My author website is http://www.peterhogenkamp.com My blog is http://www.phogenkampVT.blogspot.com I can be tweeted at on https://twitter.com/phogenkampVT  Facebook is http://www.facebook.com/peter.hogenkamp.3

Any final words for our readers?

PH:  If you put stories down on paper, you are a writer—and don’t let anyone convince you otherwise. What you do with those stories is a huge topic of discussion these days, but writing will always be about the very intimate act of expressing yourself in words. I think a writer should focus on improving his or her craft, as opposed to concentrating on the vehicle carrying the final product. In the end, it is good content that rules the day.

Peter Hogenkamp Interview Part 1

Welcome everyone to another great week of the Writer's Revolution.  I am your host, the author of The Phoenix Blade, Andrew Hess.  My guest this week is author and doctor Peter Hogenkamp

Let’s get to know you a little more.  Describe yourself in a hundred words or less.

PH:  In order: Husband. Father. Doctor. Writer. Son. Brother. Friend. Recreational Athlete. Limited User of Adjectives. (Let’s not even mention adverbs.)

You said you are currently a practicing physician.  What made you decide to become a doctor?  How long have you been practicing for?

PH:  I wanted to go to school for creative writing but my late father ‘recommended’ I do something else and write later in life when I had figured things out some. (Good advice, Dad Thanks.) So I went off to Holy Cross College as a physics major, switched to math, and then to Chemistry. My first job was as a chemistry teacher in Salzburg, Austria. I didn’t even apply to medical school until two years after I had graduated from college. I have been practicing for 17 years.

Seventeen years is a long time to be practicing medicine.  So, what inspired you to write?

PH: Reading. The more I read, the more I wanted to create my own stories. When I read my first thriller, an old copy of Alistair MacLean’s Fear is the Key.   It was given to me by my mom’s friend when I was ten-years-old.  I knew I wanted to write thrillers.

I feel thrillers and mysteries are the most intense stories to read.  They really capture the reader’s attention.  Now as I understand, you have a thriller series you’re working on.  Tell us more about it.

PH:   Absolution is the first installment of the Jesuit thriller series. In a sentence, Absolution is the story of what happens when you thrust an intelligent, peaceful man into a cesspool of violence and moral turpitude from which there is no escape.

This sounds good so far.  You already have my attention.  How did you come up with the story?

PH:  The book is built around the main character, Marco Venetti, S.J., a Jesuit priest from Monterosso al Mare, Italy. Once I had finished creating Marco, my next step was to force him to act in a manner that was alien to his training, disposition and experience. I like 007 as much as the next guy, but let’s face it: he’s 007, he’s supposed to kill bad guys. I thought it would be interesting to replace James Bond with his opposite—a Jesuit priest. There was only the matter of how to do this in a plausible way—it struck me one day as I was hiking with my dog—and I was set. The book came very easily after that.

I like books better when they have more of a realistic or plausible feel to them.  I want to know more about Marco.  Tell me about him.  Who is he, what makes him special to you?

PH:  Marco Venetti is a Jesuit priest from the Cinque Terre region of Italy, along the Ligurian Coast. Like many Jesuits, Marco is an intelligent and complex man, but he is somewhat frustrated as well, a frustration the reader can feel even as the story opens in the airless confessional of Marco’s 800-year-old church. Some of his frustration stems from his position as pastor of a dying parish, yes, but his struggles to stay celibate in a non-celibate world don’t help. And the woman he left to enter the seminary is never far from his mind. I suppose that my boyhood love of Indiana Jones played a role in the formation of Marco’s character, and there is some of that archeology professor turned action figure in Marco, but with an added dimension: Marco’s internal conflict about using violence to problem solve that Indiana never had.

Now as I understand, you signed with a literary agency.  How did this come about?

PH:  It was my goal from the very day I finished my first ms. I will never forget getting a positive response (from Josh Getzler) to my very first query letter and thinking, ‘What’s so hard about this?’ Well, I learned the hard way that getting an agent is hard—really hard. Josh quickly turned down my partial ms, and rejections were a weekly if not daily occurrence for months. But there were enough positive responses and nice comments along the way to keep me going. After about a year, I came to the conclusion that my book—although very good—was not good enough to overcome the long odds of gaining representation from a reputable agent. So I shelved it (literally, it’s on my shelf, gathering dust) and moved on to a new idea. But it was apparent to me that I was not back at square one. I had learned much, both in the process of writing and querying, and I realized that I was starting from square 30 or so.

I had much better luck with the next ms, garnering over twenty requests for the full ms. But I still couldn’t break through, until a very savvy agent recommended a number of changes that made immediate sense to me. The irony of the situation is that when I sent her the revised ms six months later she never got back to me. But I didn’t care at that point because the revised ms was well received, ultimately scoring six requests for representation. I could have held out for two more as well, but I got a call from Liz Kracht of Kimberely Cameron & Associates that convinced me I had found my agent.

I agree it is a long process to find an agent, and most people don’t get representation.  Congrats on being one of the lucky ones.  It shows that hard work and determination pays off.

Who has been your greatest writing inspiration?

PH:  Daniel Silva. If you haven’t read a Daniel Silva novel, go straight to your local bookstore. Daniel’s The Kill Artist is the first book in his Gabriel Allon series. I challenge you to read this book and abstain from getting the next book in the series as soon as you finish. What makes the series is the main character: Gabriel Allon, an art-restorer turned assassin. I love the paradox, and I credit Allon for planting the seeds of Marco Venetti in my head. 

Week 9 Preview: Peter Hogenkamp

Welcome everyone to another great week of the Writer's Revolution.  I am your host, the author of The Phoenix Blade, Andrew Hess.  My guest this week is author and doctor Peter Hogenkamp.  Read his journey listed below in his own words.

I read my first thriller, an old paperback copy of Alistair MacLean'sFear is the Key, when I was ten years old, and I have been hooked on the genre ever since. A few years later, in the summer before I began high school, I decided to try my hand at writing a thriller and I finished a good hundred pages before depositing it into the bottom drawer of my bureau. It would make a good story to say that I discovered the manuscript thirty years later, polished it up, and attracted dozens of literary agents with its magnetic power, but the truth is I have no idea what became of the notebook—I recall it was dark green—in which I scrawled a story about a maverick MI5 agent trying to save the world from a warped genius armed to the teeth with nuclear missiles.

I didn't write another word—of fiction, that is—for twenty-five years, mistakenly thinking that the writing bug had been eradicated from my system. But it hadn't been, and on a Saturday night ten autumns ago I picked up the pencil again and started writing novel number two, which I later titled The Lazarus Manuscript. It took me three years and a gross of Dixon Ticonderogas to complete the book, and several more to query the project, revise it, re-query, re-revise and query a third time. My lovely (and did I mention supportive?) wife Lisa, assuredly thought I was having an early mid-life crisis, but smartly concluded that a few writer's conferences and twelve dozen pencils were cheaper than a BMW convertible.

I still maintain the manuscript wasn't half-bad, and I almost hooked a literary agent with it—but in the middle of yet another revision (which the agent had requested) I learned she had left agenting to write 1920's erotica, and I took this as a sign and tossed The Lazarus Manuscript into a shallow grave and shoveled dirt over it. But I didn't remain on the sideline for too long; a premise had been germinating inside my head and I felt an urge to write it down somewhere (this time without the pencils). And whereas The Lazarus Manuscript had come haltingly, Absolution poured out of my fingers, largely, I think, because I had stumbled upon an idea for a main character that was not only truly unique, but truly conflicted as well—with a visceral conflict impossible to bypass.

All I needed was the right setting, and, as luck would have it, my pre-med advisor exiled me to Europe for three years before allowing me to attend medical school. (True story.) In my travels I found dozens of great places for scenes in a thriller: castles perched on cliffs, monasteries tucked away in alpine valleys, villages built above rocky coastlines, cities soaked in history, etc. I hope you will accompany Marco as he lays ruin to many of these places, beginning with Monterosso al Mare, Italy, whereAbsolution opens, and stay with him for Doubt, the second book of the Jesuit thriller series.

When I am not writing I like to enjoy the beautiful landscape of central Vermont with my family (my wife, two sons, two daughters, and dog, Hermione Jean Granger Hogenkamp). And I practice medicine as well, in an office with Dr. Lisa Hogenkamp—who does most of the work. (Thank you Lisa!)