When we called Charles Martin for this interview he was working on his ‘fort’, an enormous backyard structure consisting of two towers linked by a bridge. He explained that something like 27 kids live in their neighborhood, and the fort is part of his plan to make the Martin house the gathering place for his three sons and their friends. Charles took a break from constructing this medieval masterpiece to answer some questions.

WOF: BookPage described you as “An author of ‘God-haunted southern literature’.” What does that mean?

MARTIN: There was a guy who had written a review for them who compared me to Faulkner and (John) Grisham. One of the great attributes of Southern fiction is the way writers infuse God in their writing. It’s hard to take Him out of the fabric of their text. Go back to Faulkner, Flannery O’Conner and Walker Percy and you’ll see what I mean. I think Grisham’s Testament is one of best Christian fiction novels ever written. I love that phrase and I’m grateful somebody said it about my work.

WOF: Both Wrapped in Rain and your earlier book, The Dead Don’t Dance, are written from the perspective of people with “damaged” loved ones. Is that a particular area of interest for you?

MARTIN: For some reason I gravitate toward characters who start out in angst or despair. Somebody has an issue and it’s something that cannot be fixed with aspirin or a bandaid. It’s a cancer, something serious. One thing I love doing is meeting these character and figuring them out – finding them in a place where despair hangs over them like a cloud and taking them to place where they’re beyond it. I hate to use the terms ‘healed’ or ‘redeemed’ because life doesn’t always work that way. I want to take them through a process from despair up to a place where there’s hope. I’m hoping it takes the reader to a place where they end up with hope. The job of a novelist is to take what has been said a thousand times before and until it’s been worn out, and say it in a way they’ve never heard it before.

How does the audience receive it? Do they want it? I don’t write what they want, I write what’s in my head, but I try to write what can be received in a way that’s different and new and fresh. If someone takes the time to read my story, I don’t want to leave them with just a twist in the plot. I want to leave them with something that shakes up their insides, grabs hold of their heart and shakes stuff off it – the junk we harden it with. I want my books to get through some stuff and leave them hopeful.

WOF: Some scenes in the book — especially those showing Rex’s treatment of those around him — could be painful for some of our readers to read.
Were those scenes difficult to write?

MARTIN: Yes. Flannery O’Connor said, “For the near blind you have to use awfully large characters.” That was her response to criticism about violence in her stories. My question was, does it mirror true life? Is it true? Could it happen? The reality is that this stuff happens every day.

I took story from friend who told me about his dad. I fictionalized it, but I started there. If you’re gonna understand what Miss Ella did, you gotta know how much it hurt for her to stay there. Rex is evil — flat out bad. I want you to go from the place of hating him to place where Tucker is at the end of the book where he brings his dad to the wedding.

The twist is, how does Tucker reconcile with his dad when his dad can’t talk with him? He has to wrestle with his demons way down deep, and we needed to know how they got there, what caused them, and that they were real.

WOF: There’s a scene in the book where the waitress at Clark’s Fish Camp goes off on Southern food in general and ‘swate’ tea in particular. Is this based on an actual event or did you just seize the opportunity to expound a philosophy of Southern cuisine?

MARTIN: Clark’s is a real place and they do have great food. And their tea is really sweet. I think that scene came from glimpse I saw of lady giving tea back in a restaurant. I remember the look on her face as one of distaste. But it’s like Dixie would say, if you’re not from the South, you just don’t get it.

WOF: You cover a lot of territory in Wrapped in Rain . . . mental illness, baseball, alcoholism, photography, horse breeding. Did you draw a lot from real-life experience or did you do a ton of research? (Or both?)

MARTIN: All the above. I’m a closet photographer. I’m not any good but I can talk about it like I know what I’m talking about it. One of my best friends started suffering from mental illness probably 16 years ago. We met 18 years ago, so I met him when he was ‘normal’. Then he began showing signs of something I didn’t understand. He was misdiagnosed four times, but I got him to some great doctors. I’ve seen him slide off the slippery slope of something I hate with a strong hatred because of what it’s done to my friend. I think until we get to heaven he’ll just be who he is now, and I miss who he was. I look forward to getting my friend back in heaven. He’s very different from Mutt, but many of Mutt’s eccentricities I was able to draw from Hank’s obsessions and compulsions. Hank’s doctor has become a dear friend; he’s written several books about mental illness. Mutt’s doctor is a bit of a clone of him. We met once a week while I was writing the book and he helped me script where the illness would start, how it would digress, and where it would end up. I’m proud that it’s true to life. Mutt isn’t fixed at the end, but you have hope.

WOF: What’s the significance of the ice cream truck?

MARTIN: I don’t know. I really don’t. That’s what’s neat about the process of following characters and figuring out what they intersect with. I was working on the story — I think Mutt was pressurewashing the house — when I heard an ice cream truck in my head. And I thought, well, we’ll see where that goes. I needed comic relief because the book is so heavy. You need something to laugh about now and then or you’ll give up and stop reading.

WOF: Is Waverly Hall based on a real location?

MARTIN: The place in the book is creation of my imagination. I spent a lot of time thinking about it and painting a picture of it in my head. I sat down with Christy (my wife), who is a designer, and we worked out what it would look like in that era with a gothic style . . . what a house done by Rex would look like. We figured out what the moldings were like and everything so that when I wrote about it, I would have it in my head. My grandparent’s home was called Waverly Hall, but nothing is the same except I borrowed the name.

WOF: What’s your writing process? Do you start with characters or plot?

MARTIN: My work is very much character-driven; it needs to be more plot-driven, but it’s not. That’s something to work on. That has to do with me and my reason for writing; I’m not interested in the next thriller, I’m interested in getting people from one place to another. I introduce someone with a problem, hopefully get you to care about them, and take you on a journey with them.

C.S. Lewis said he got the idea for the Chronicles of Narnia in a flash, seeing a faun with an umbrella walking through a snowy forest. For Wrapped I got a flash of a picture of neat, motherly black woman who was not necessarily attractive but just a neat bosom of a woman, holding a scared boy wearing footed pajamas in her lap in front of fireplace, and he was talking about a stomachache. Then I saw a man holding a shotgun in mouth of his father. So I began the process of figuring out how that boy became that man.

WOF: What do you do when you’re not writing?

MARTIN: Since last January I’ve written five books; mostly for the last 20 months writing has been my day job and my night job. I coach T-ball and I’m assistant coach on another team (Editor’s Note: the Martins have 3 boys); I try to help Christie, but I fall down there. I love to fish but I haven’t done much of it lately. I don’t play golf because that’s six hours on Saturday that I’m not spending time with my kids.

WOF: Do you have a favorite reading spot?

MARTIN: Hmmm. No, and I need one. I do have two offices. I have a desk for the business end of writing and I have a desk where I write. I try to keep them separate. It was one of the best pieces of advice I got: Try to keep the business end from leading in to creative end. Set up one place where you work business and one where you create.

WOF: Should we look for you in the Hallmark Hall of Fame production of The Dead Don’t Dance?

MARTIN: No. Selling movie rights is like selling a car. Once you sign over the rights, they can do whatever they want with it. I’m hopeful they’ll create a great story. People ask me, “Are you worried about it?” No, I’m not. If people really want to know the story they’ll read the book. I did hear that they’ve got a great screenwriter, Kristine Johnson, who wrote “I Am Sam”, to do the script.

For more information on Charles Martin and his books, and updates on the upcoming Hallmark Hall of Fame production, visit www.charlesmartinbooks.com.