David, describe yourself for our visitors.
My wife and I have four kids five and under, so this is what I do: write and kid stuff. And I try to keep up with some select guys at church. Besides emails, record-keeping and taxes, that’s about all I have time for! Oh, I read. I guess that falls under the category of writing for me, since one is such an integral part of the other.
How do you find time to connect with God?
That’s a lifelong discipline, isn’t it? I have reached a point in my life where I spend the most time simply listening. I like to sit in my easy chair and listen to God’s Word on CD, then interact with Father about it. I want to learn to hear His Spirit speaking to me quietly more and more.
Who are your favorite authors? Favorite books?
William Manchester, the historian. In high school I read his 1600-page narrative of US history from 1932 to 1972, The Glory and the Dream. Loved it. Also loved his Goodbye, Darkness.
I like C.S. Lewis. I am mostly a nonfiction reader. It’s the rare fiction book that completely grabs me. This past year I did enjoy The Road, by Cormac McCarthy, and The Children of Men, by P.D. James.
Tell us about your journey to publication.
My journey is unusual, to say the least. I had co-authored and self-published a nonfiction book called The Rest of the Gospel: When the Partial Gospel Has Worn You Out. We still sell it out of our garage. A friend read it and loved it; she sent a copy to an author friend of hers, who loved it; he recommended it to his publisher, WaterBrook Press. I sent them a copy and it received some serious consideration but was finally rejected. However, it gave me a contact with them. When I self-published my first fiction, Dinner with a Perfect Stranger, I sent them a copy and they jumped on it. It sold lots of copies, WaterBrook signed me to a contract to write two more books, and I quit my day job and started writing full time.
It’s hard to overstate how very unusual this is. To get a book into the hands of a publisher for a serious look without an agent is hard to do. I just fell into that. Then to send them a second book and immediately get a contract for it is unusual. Then to sell enough copies and be signed to a contract sufficient to support oneself sufficiently for several years and quit one’s day job—that is extremely unusual. I would never advise anyone to expect it. It happens less than one percent of the time—among published authors.
Tell us about your current book?
The Next Level: A Parable of Finding Your Place in Life is a story about who and what we are living for. Logan, the mid-20s main character, applies for a job at a large corporation housed on five floors of an enormous office building. As a strategic analyst he is to discover the primary problem on each level of the company and report his findings to the enigmatic CEO. How each level operates represents various approaches to life that people take. He discovers that all but one produce little profit for the company. It’s a parable placed in a corporate setting that is meant to make people consider their view of ultimate reality and the purpose for which they are living.
How did you come up with ideas for this book?
A spiritual mentor of mine, Dan Stone (the primary author of The Rest of the Gospel) talks about living above or below what he simply calls The Line. The Line is an artificial demarcation between two realms: the spiritual reality that God sees and the everyday appearances that we live among. The Apostle Paul calls these realms the unseen/eternal versus the seen/temporal. Jesus fully expresses his life through us only as we focus on the former, seeing as God sees and increasingly valuing what God values. This truth is the ground out of which the book grew. I placed the story in a corporate setting because it is one so many people can relate to, and I myself worked in such a setting for ten years.
List your three most recent books.
Besides The Next Level: A Parable of Finding Your Place in Life, I have three books on the market:
Dinner with a Perfect Stranger: An Invitation Worth Considering (2005)
A Day with a Perfect Stranger (2006)
The Rest of the Gospel: When the Partial Gospel Has Worn You Out (2000, nonfiction)
What’s next for you?
I’m working on a novel that, in part, addresses the question, “Now that you’ve established a real relationship with God, what do you do next? How do you live it out?†I may also be returning to nonfiction at some point.
Where can visitors find you online?
All of my books are on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. My new website, davidgregorybooks.com, will be up and running soon. My first two fiction books have their own websites: dinnerwithaperfectstranger.com and adaywithaperfectstranger.com. Supplemaentary material for The Next Level can be found at randonhouse.com/waterbrook/. My nonfiction book, The Rest of the Gospel, is available at onepressbooks.com.
Recent Comments