Randy Ingermanson's Friends

Hannah Alexander is a husband and wife team, Mel and Cheryl Hodde. They are two of the nicest people you'd ever want to meet, which is a little ironic, because they write medical thrillers. Cheryl likes to tell about their first date, when she asked Mel how to paralyze somebody. Mel's a doctor, ya see, and Cheryl was working on a novel. After Mel realized that there was nothing personal -- it was just business, he told her how to do the grisly deed. One thing led to another and of course they got married. If you have a weak stomach, you might not want to listen to their dinner conversations.

James Scott Bell is a lawyer. A lawyer, fer heaven's sakes. I know a lawyer. As you can guess, Jim writes legal thrillers. He also writes historical novels about Kit Shannon, an early twentieth century woman lawyer in Los Angeles. Jim, of course, also lives in LA, where he hangs out at coffee houses and says "Dude!" to people while pecking furiously at his Mac laptop and slurping his latte. To my knowledge, Jim does not own a pair of shoes. He is currently one of the fiction columnists for Writer's Digest.

Sigmund Brouwer is a writer with many books to his credit. The first book of his I read was Double Helix, which I thought was terrific. I met Sigmund at a CBA conference a few years ago and was astounded when he introduced himself to me and my writing buddy John Olson. We were unknown writers and Sigmund talked to us like we were real people.

Michael Carroll is a world-class space artist who lives in Colorado. He used to live in San Diege and he and I belonged to the same critique group for a while. The photo at left is NOT Mike! It's one of his many space paintings. We've got a lot of the same interests -- science and archaeology. Mike's space art is as good as anyone on the planet, and he also happens to write pretty darn well. He specializes in science -- dinosaurs, planets, volcanoes, and a thousand other things. His books are supposedly for kids, but I like them too -- although I just look at the pictures.

Colleen Coble is the only person in the world who is allowed to call me "Ran." We've become good friends after hanging out at Mount Hermon, at the annual CBA conference, and in a writer's email loop. Colleen has been on the best-seller list a few times. I'm trying to get her to teach me that trick. She writes romantic suspense and has cleverly set some of her novels on Hawaii so she could write off the expenses for her research trips.

Brandilyn Collins exploded onto the Christian writing scene with her very first novel, and she's continued to fly high since then. Brandilyn writes what she calls "seatbelt suspense" (translation--not for the faint-hearted). If you expect to find bodies in jacuzzis at midnight, then Brandilyn is your girl. I am proud to say that she was one of my earliest fans. Soon after she emailed me raving about my first novel, we met at the Mount Hermon writer's conference and became fast friends. When she let me read one of her unpublished novels, I quickly realized she was a major talent waiting to happen. And she did, soon after that. My daughters are quite impressed that I know Brandilyn Collins.

Meredith Efken writes mom-lit and she is hysterically funny. Because I write humor, I know all the tricks writers use to tickle your funny-bone, and so I can usually see the punchline coming. It takes a LOT to make me laugh. That said, Meredith's book SAHM I AM had me laughing out loud every couple of pages, which is unheard of. I can't remember when I read a funnier book. Meredith is a Stay-At-Home-Mom who home-schools her two daughters. She's also a big fan of my writing and she's become my favorite critiquer because she really gets my writing and knows how to make it better. Meredith now runs a fiction editing service. I was her first customer, but she has many more now.

Rene Gutteridge is a baby-faced writer who lives in Oklahoma City. She narrowly missed the Oklahoma City bombing way back in the bad old days. Rene is about five feet tall, and she was an all-state basketball player in high school. So when she met editor Steve Laube at a writer's conference and challenged him to a game of HORSE, Steve (who is six feet tall) thought he had a shoo-in. Five shots later, he discovered that Rene was anything but a wimp. And, oh yeah, Rene was PREGNANT at the time! Rene's books have been on the best-seller lists several times, but she remains as humble and sweet as ever.

Tracy Higley lives in Pennsylvania and home-schools her seven billion kids. OK, I may be exaggerating here, but Tracy's a busy lady. She likes writing thrillers and archaeology-related stuff. I met her at Mount Hermon before she got published and quickly discovered she was very talented and very hard-working. After I gave her just a few suggestions on improving her writing, she totally rewrote one of her books in a few weeks. Wow! Soon after that, she got a high-powered agent, and soon after that, she sold her first novel. Tracy runs her own internet-based business and is a very clever marketer.

Gail Martin is a friend of mine who writes romances. If you think physicists can't possibly know anything about romance, well, that's your problem! Even if you're right, you gotta admit that we are still allowed to know romance writers. I can promise you they're very cool people. Gail started writing in 1997 and got published in 1998, which is about 10 times faster than I was able to break into print. She's now signed over 40 book contracts and has over a million copies in print. Gail has written a book for Writer's Digest on Writing The Christian Romance. Check out the special page on her site, "For Writers".

Cindy Martinusen has a thing about Europe and World War II and family secrets. Her first novel, Winter Passing, was a Christy award finalist and she's continued to write a strong novel every year since then. I met her at Mount Hermon a few years ago and found her to be very friendly and gracious. She was a key player in the infamous "Shaving Babbitt" scam.

Bill Myers has been on my must-read list ever since his book Blood of Heaven. Bill likes to write about bizarre stuff -- gene splicing from the blood of Jesus into a criminal, psychic/psychological research, parallel universes. In other words, he's right up my alley. I absolutely love his writing. It's a pleasure to read anything he's written. He is also a very gracious person who genuinely cares about people.

John Olson has been a writing buddy of mine for several years, and we've coauthored two novels, Oxygen and The Fifth Man. I met John at the Mount Hermon writing conference back in 1996 and we quickly became good friends, following the usual nerd-herding instinct. John's a biochemist, which is not a physicist, but hey -- nobody's perfect.

Kathy Tyers is a science fiction writer and one of the nicest people in the galaxy. She's written two of the Star Wars novels, Balance Point and The Truce at Bakura, along with the Firebird series and several other SF books. Kathy is a tremendously talented writer and her skill in world-building is simply amazing. When I was an unpublished writer and a complete nobody, Kathy graciously critiqued a few chapters of a novel I was working on and helped me become a better writer. That novel eventually was published. Thanks Kathy!

Laura Jensen Walker is a humor writer with an amazing ability to turn bad things in life into laughs. Laura's first book was titled Dated Jekyll, Married Hyde, which is as funny as it sounds. She was diagnosed with breast cancer on her first anniversary. Out of that difficult time in her life, she wrote one of her most significant books, Thanks for the Mammogram! which is all about dealing with breast cancer. Laura is one of the funniest people I've ever met and I love hanging out with her because she laughs at even my worst jokes. She's just easy to please. I was really excited when Laura made the transition to fiction. She now writes chick-lit and her books are drop-dead funny. Just like her.