Author Interview: Chris Minnick

I had the opportunity to interview Chris Minnick, author of Ferment.

Author Bio: Chris Minnick is from Centerline, Michigan. He studied Creative Writing, Film, and Literature at the University of Michigan and Journalism at Wayne State University. He worked in various capacities at several newspapers and magazines before starting a business in 1997, which he ran until 2015.

Today, in addition to writing fiction, Minnick speaks, writes, and teaches about computer programming. He has written over a dozen books, including several in the “For Dummies” series.

Chris is also a winemaker, a swimmer, a cook, and a musician.

Enjoy our interview below:

1. What is the first book that made you cry? Tikki Tikki Tembo by Arlene Mosel. It's a children's book from the 60s that's offensive and disturbing in many ways, but it gave me nightmares as a child because the main character falls into a well and drowns. Falling into things and off of things is my biggest fear to this day. 2. Does writing energize or exhaust you? I like to write first thing in the morning, and I find it energizing and exciting. When I'm in a writing phase, I go to bed looking forward to finding out what I'm going to write in the morning, and I think about what happened during my writing and replay it in my head throughout the day. I sometimes have to remind myself that no one else was there, and that I probably seem to them to have a much less interesting life than I think I do. 3. Does a big ego help or hurt writers? It depends on the type of writing you do. If you're writing self-help or diet books, it helps you. If you're writing romance novels or mysteries, it probably helps too. I write introspective literary fiction with plenty of self-deprecating humor and nonsensical situations. I couldn't do what I do if I had a positive self-image. 4. Have you ever gotten reader's block? All the time, but then I have to remind myself that it's probably not a problem of me not understanding or caring about what I'm reading, but that the author didn't do his or her job well enough. 5. Do you try more to be original or deliver to readers what they want? I pick a specific person who I'm writing for and I try to give them what they want. My first novel, Ferment, was written for my friend Stephanie. I don't think she's read it yet, but as I was writing it I was trying to make her laugh. 6. What other authors are you friends with and how do they help you become a better writer? My good friend Ken Byers in Portland has helped me to understand how to structure a novel and gave me extensive and extremely valuable feedback at a critical time when I was just about starting to believe some of the nice things that people have said about my book. He helped me keep my eye on the writing and how I can improve. Paul Stebleton in Traverse City is a fantastic poet and owner of my favorite bookstore, Landmark Books. He's the Lawrence Ferlinghetti of the 21st century. He was the first person to publish one of my short stories. 7. If you could tell your younger writing self anything, what would it be? It's ok to suck. It's not ok to quit writing because you suck. 8. What was the best money you ever spend as a writer? When I stopped trying to write first drafts on a computer and bought some Palomino Blackwing 602 pencils and a stack of steno pads, my output skyrocketed. I wish I had known about pencils 20 years ago. 9. Did you base your characters on real people? In some way, every character is based on a combination of people I know, layered on top of some part of myself. Maybe that's true for every writer -- I try to write about other people based on my own experience of being a person, and everyone comes out looking somewhat like me. But, no, I can't point to any character in my book and say, "That's Mrs. Boudreaux from next door." But, she's in it in some way along with everyone else. 10. What does literary success look like to you? Success would be to sell 80 million books and win the Nobel Prize. But, continuing to have fun with writing and putting out stories on a regular basis for any number of appreciative readers is a form of success too, I guess. 11. What's the most difficult thing about writing characters from the opposite sex? When I was in the creative writing program at the University of Michigan in the early 90s, I worried a lot about this question of how to realistically write about women. I even went so far as to type up a 10-question survey and give it to my female friends to fill out. The responses were interesting, honest, and hilarious, but they weren't helpful at all in terms of making it easier for me to write women characters. Today, I just make an even number of women and men characters and I write about them the same way except that they may have gender-specific names and body parts. 12. How many hours a day do you write? When I'm working on something actively, I write at least 3 pages a day. I don't worry about how long that takes, except that I have to do something that makes me some money at some point during the day, so that cuts my writing short or causes me to hurry sometimes. 13. What did you edit out of this book? I took out a chapter about how the main character used to be a computer hacker. The character barely interacts with technology at all in the rest of the book, but I wrote ten pages about how he was a whiz kid computer genius, and I filled the chapter with every acronym and piece of jargon I know. This was the only chapter I wrote at night, and it was terrible. I also find that cutting the first paragraph from a chapter, short story, or article improves it. 14. If you didn't write, what would you do for work? I'd be an archeologist. Maybe I could be the archeologist for one of the morning TV shows and come on every day right after the weather and report on what we're finding out about how people used to be along with some high-tech graphics and maps. 15. Share one little known fact about yourself. The most little known fact about myself is that I've written a novel. Beyond that, you might not know that I have a tendency to go way overboard with making Jello. Every so often, I'll make Jello in every container in the kitchen. I love how it looks and sounds. I don't usually end up eating it, because I got sick from eating too much of it once.

Here is what Chris Minnick says of the book, “Whether you love them or hate them, clowns and the circus stir up intense emotions and curiosity. What’s hiding behind the makeup? What goes on after the audience goes home? I did no research for this book, and I’ve never been to a circus. Many writers try to present ‘unfiltered’ views of their subjects. With FERMENT, I tried to paint the most filtered version of the circus possible. This is the circus as I imagine the best and worst possible versions of it to be.”

Author Chris Minnick exposes the gritty events and strange characters that inhabit a small traveling circus in his new novel, FERMENT. Set in the recent past, the book provides a glimpse of what life might be like in the final days of a once-great institution of American entertainment. Told as a series of 48 short vignettes, FERMENT bounces between past and present and between the ordinary and the extraordinary with playful and deceivingly simple language. The mysteries of the circus bubble up throughout the story's twists and turns as the reader is drawn into a troubled world of people, institutions, and morals on the edge of collapse. Minnick's style has been compared to that of Kurt Vonnegut or Charles Bukowski. Readers who enjoy reading about quirky, raw characters and unfamiliar situations will love Ferment.

Learn more about Ferment or Chris Minnick by clicking on the following link. http://ferment.chrisminnick.com/

If you are interested in purchasing the book, please click here: http://amzn.to/2ys0pny