Robin Johns Grant published her first novel, Summer’s Winter, in 2014, and her second suspense novel, Jordan’s Shadow, is due out in February 2015. Summer’s Winter won a bronze medal in the Romance – Suspense category of the International Readers’ Favorite Book Awards, and Robin was named 2014 Author of the Year by the Georgia Association of College Stores.
Family and friends are happy that Robin’s imagination is finally paying off. She’s always had way too much of it. She started making up stories before she could write them down (dictating them to her mother) and always had her head in the clouds. She was obsessed with books and movies like Harry Potter and Star Wars and did a lot of crazy fan stuff, which helped her dream up Jeanine and Jamie’s story for Summer’s Winter. It’s a romantic suspense novel, but as John Granger said, it also “a romance-thriller about fandoms…and explores the important intersection of literature, spirituality, and imagination.” (See “About Robin’s Writing,” below.)
With a degree in English, several non-fulfilling jobs under her belt, and a mid-life crisis coming on, Robin returned to school and earned a master’s degree in library and information science in 2005. She now has her best day job ever as a college librarian, which keeps her young by allowing her to hang out with students.
With her wonderful husband Dave and formerly feral felines Mini Pearl and Luna, Robin lives in Georgia.
About Robin’s writing:
As a Christian, Robin can’t help but explore spirituality in her writing, but wants to do so in a way that reflects the awe and wonder of God and eternity. One of Robin’s favorite events during her first year as an author was an interview by John Granger, who has written a number of books analyzing Harry Potter as literature. Here is an excerpt:
John: You open the book [Summer’s Winter] with a spooky playground sequence in which the good preacher’s daughter is accused of being a witch — and it seems a credible charge. Later Jeanine explains to Jamie what his life as an actor means and it turns out to be a projection of her experience as a writer/story teller. You’re after some big game here in terms of imagination and spirituality, I think. What can you tell us about that without spoiling the story?
Robin: I don’t pretend to have all the answers, but it’s a connection I believe in and want to know more about, so yes, it’s a prominent theme in the story. One book that’s made me think isThe Slumber of Christianity, by novelist Ted Dekker. He talks about the importance of imagination and story, even going so far as to say things like, “Humans have an actual dependence on various forms of fiction to understand truth. This is how God made us. Our minds explore all truth using the imagination first and foremost.”
I’ve mentioned that, from an early age, I was fascinated by my fascinations—how a fictional world could invoke such longing in me, especially since my brain knew that if I could actually visit that world, it probably would seem just as mundane as or even more dangerous than my own. C.S. Lewis noticed the same thing about the intense longings that certain stories or music could produce in him, and identified this as our longing for God and the eternal: “The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing…they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.” (from The Weight of Glory)
(Click here to read Robin’s entire interview with John Granger.)