Posted on April 3, 2010 - by admin

Author Interview – Richard Godfrey

Q: When did you start writing, and what inspired you to write?

A: In 1971, after leaving a two year Peace Corps agricultural service in Nepal, I began driving ambulances in Oakland, California and wanted to create a fictional account of the experience.

Q: How long did the book take you from start to finish?

A: In about five years I wrote but never published a novel titled: The Company Moon. In the nineties, after working in the field of surgery for many years, I was motivated to retell the story of the ambulance company, only through a new backdrop of Washington DC and the never fully explored events of the Watergate period.

Q: Where do you write?

A: I write wherever I am, which is pretty much all over the planet.

Q: What’s the best thing about being a published author?

A: I think it’s the opportunity to move on to another book project, and that people are inspired to tell you their stories if they know that you write.

Q: Who are some of your favorite authors?

A: Mark Twain, Joseph Conrad, Barbara Kingsolver, Abraham Verghese, Lawrence Durrell, Robert Sachs

Q: Do you hear from your readers much? What kinds of things do they say?

A: I have had mostly good reviews and encouragement. There are always critics and it has been helpful and painful to hear their advice and condemnation. I try to seek out negative as well as positive points of view. Readers have enjoyed picking out characters that they remember from the seventies but mostly like the action sequences of the book. They complain about the confusion and large number of sub plots. One critic says I don’t use enough sex and violence!

Q: What are your current projects?

A: I’m a strong believer in community endeavor. I’m currently working with some community supported agricultural non profit projects in the US and in Africa. I raise bees in my back yard. I’m also working on a new book in Kenya – a biographical account of women helping to deliver medical care in Kenya. Sarah Obama, the grandmother of Barack Obama Sr. is one of the subjects, and her life is fascinating from early years to now.

I continue my work as a surgical oncologist in the Bay Area and as part of a University affiliated surgical training program.

I’m going to sail to Hawaii in May. Here’s hoping for good weather!

Q: What do you like to do when you’re not writing?

A: As per the last question, if it’s green or blue, I want to explore it.

Q: How did you come up with your title?

A: The best way to understand the title of The End of the Race is to read it. It then becomes self evident. Of course, it changed in the process of writing – from The Race to A Race to the End, to the current title, which is quite final.

Q: Is there a message in your book that you want readers to grasp?

A: Yes, but if I tell you, you will never remember. From a health care standpoint I can communicate that the book emphasizes how much of our health is really self dependent, and not a result of a socially imposed system. It is not unlike government, which every society must have, but which requires a balance between the individual and social needs. How one arrives at that balance is the not so subtle secret contained in the book.

Q: What’s the hardest part of writing a book?

A: Creating characters that live in a space accessible to readers – which opens emotional and intellectual space.

Q: If you had to do it all over again, would you change anything in your latest book?

A: Everything, a million times. Each fictional character develops a life of their own, and as time passes, they die and are born.