So, I decided I was going to do something about it. After a while I became almost embarrassed that my book was LDS fiction. I’d tell someone that I’d written a book, and they’d be excited and ask about it, and the instant they realized it was an LDS book you could see the interest fade out of their eyes.
When I first got published in the LDS market-even before the book was released-I immediately ran into a lot of the standard criticisms about LDS fiction. My reasoning for starting the Whitney Awards was essentially a move from pessimism to optimism.
Image courtesy Robison Wells Tell us about the Whitney Awards. I’ve been involved in the LDS writing world for several years, as a board member of the LDStorymakers, a writer’s guild, and in 2007 I founded the Whitney Awards, an award for novels by LDS authors.Īnd, because I have to pay the bills somehow, I returned to school and got my MBA in marketing. I ended up being the first in the group to get published. He instead invited me to write a couple chapters and come down to his writing group. But my brother, Dan, was the opposite: he’d always wanted to be a writer, and at the time he was at BYU working on an English degree (he is now a full-time horror writer.) I called him up, told him my book idea, and told him he ought to use it for one of his books. However, I’d never wanted to be a writer and had no interest in being an author. It was awesome.ĭuring college, I got my first idea for a book. So, I fell back on architecture and went to work for a wood products company, designing floor and roof systems. I started the program the January after 9/11 and consequently emphasized in the Middle East and did my senior thesis on the political efficacy of modern terrorism.Ĭonsequently, when I graduated, I couldn’t get a job. That didn’t last long, though, and I bounced through a couple other majors-history and anthropology-before ending up in political science. That last one was the most influential when I came back from my mission, I started college as an architecture major. I’ve always loved the visual arts and design, and as a teenager that was my creative outlet: I painted, I designed sets for the local theater, I drew houses for real estate ads. I didn’t set out to have such a wide variety of career experiences I just did what seemed interesting at the time and ended up with a schizophrenic résumé. I think that I would probably describe myself as a reluctant Renaissance man. How would you describe yourself and everything you do? Website Photo by Tiffany Tertipes It seems like you’re involved in so much more than just writing. He has served on the board of directors of LDStorymakers and founded the Whitney Awards. Robison Wells is the author of On Second Thought, Wake Me When It’s Over, and The Counterfeit.
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