About Ron Voller:
This book represents the culmination of 15 years of research at city and university libraries, observatories, interviews with dozens of people with relevant backgrounds and experience regarding the people and events in the story, books and slide catalogues. It has been the journey of a lifetime and nearly twenty years later I'm still discovering new information and anecdotes from this one-of-a-kind scientific duo.
What inspires you to write?
That’s a good question. As a narrative nonfiction writer I’m always on the lookout for some interesting story or an angle on an existing story or character that seems like it hasn’t been written about. I guess if you’re a carpenter you see the details in every house you walk through. It’s a bit like that. You just look at life through the lens of story.
What authors do you read when you aren’t writing?
I don’t read much fiction but, Earnest Hemingway, Hermann Hesse, Michael Crichton, Don Delillo, Bernard Malamud and Marilyn Robinson are some of my favorites. White Noise and Housekeeping are two of my favorite reads, slightly ironic in Robinson’s case given that I’m an atheist. She’s just a brilliant writer and so poetic you can almost sing her stories.
Historical fiction is interesting. I liked Gore Vidal’s American Chronicles immensely. What a beautifully tangled web he weaved there, and also with a tremendous poetry to the language.
I could go on all day on nonfiction but lately, I've picked up Erik Larson’s work again and I’ve been devouring it for several months. The human condition is so fascinating I find there’s very little I’m not interested in.
Tell us about your writing process.
In nonfiction (I write some fiction as well) the process is roughly the same.
If I’m inspired by an idea I do some initial research to get a handle on the general story arc and to make sure I’m on to something that hasn’t been largely filled into the lexicon already. When I’m reasonably sure of that then I start piecing together the timeline and arc of the story I want to tell. I may land on a title that sounds perky and then I start the proposal process.
This can take a while because these proposals are quite detailed: overview, author’s interest, marketing, comparable studies, chapter or section summaries, sample chapters. This is very useful in helping to organize my thoughts on the subject, its audience, and possible distribution as well as drilling for deeper character details and new information on the subject.
Then I need approval and a budget from my publisher to begin the research process in earnest. A typical book will take two years to research and write, but this can vary wildly depending on the subject matter.
For Fiction Writers: Do you listen (or talk to) to your characters?
The only historical character I really interact with is Milton Humason, co-discoverer of the Big Bang theory of universal expansion. He’s such a unique person with such a hard to get and rich history that by the end of my research on his life and career I was very familiar with him and his family and the people he knew. I was going through a difficult period in my life while researching his and focusing on his story helped me through those dark times. Milt is a friend from beyond the coil.
One other aspect of writing nonfiction that has surprised me is the way elements of a character's story convey ideas about his or her motives at any given moment. An example of this is comes from Milton Humason’s story around the turn of the twentieth century. Humason’s dad has been very ill with tuberculosis he contracted in the army during the Spanish-American War and the long cold Minnesota winters and damp springs are threatening to kill him.
Across the country in Los Angeles, Milton’s aunt is marrying a wealthy banker and real estate man named Clayton Witmer. Weeks before the wedding both Witmer’s brother and brother-in-law die suddenly. The loss is not only tragic it leaves Witmer in need of help running the family enterprise. And it’s through this family tragedy that the Humasons make their move west to L.A. where Milton’s father can recover in the warm dry air of Southern California and the Witmer business has another able body to help run things.
What advice would you give other writers?
Well, write, I guess, first of all. Less (not no) seminars and writer’s retreats and more writing. You’ll probably make a good writer in a genre you like to read. Good listeners make better writers. If you’re just starting out it can be a good thing to write a lot to get to know your voice and maybe shake loose some of the stuff you don’t feel comfortable with, or what forms you’re not comfortable in. But writing every day isn’t as important as understanding the why of your story. Take your time, breathe in your story, and get to know it a bit.
How did you decide how to publish your books?
I think this is a question about self-publishing vis-a-vis traditional publishing, and the deeper question of strategy, which I would encourage any writer to pursue before writing in any literary genre.
I made a deal with a traditional publisher, Springer, but that doesn’t mean I don’t support the idea of self-publishing. Self-publishing is great, especially for podcasters or influencers who have a following and want to create something for informational or marketing reasons, that sort of thing. Really the sky is the limit.
What I would encourage folks not to do, at least not right away, is self-publish because they're getting tired of hearing “no" from trade publishers. It can be years sometimes before a book finds a home with a publisher, especially in the fiction world. Fluctuations in the market, what’s trending and not trending, can impact your story’s ability to find an audience so pay attention to the market.
What do you think about the future of book publishing?
In my view the future is just as bright as it ever was. The way people read or take in stories is evolving, I believe in ways that should broaden the audience, not shrink it in the long run. I don’t let current trends bother me much in this respect. We have much bigger fish to fry, like trying to negate the influx of false information increasingly circling around, or figuring out how to make peace in an AI world.
What genres do you write?: Historical Fiction
What formats are your books in?: Print
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All information in this post is presented “as is” supplied by the author. We don’t edit to allow you the reader to hear the author in their own voice.
