Q&A With CC Robinson

Mickey Mikkelson was kind enough to connect me with CC Robinson who is the author of Divided which is the beginning of a series. I am honored to be doing this Q&A with CC. 

Q: CC would you like to tell the readers of the blog and I a little bit about Divided & where the idea for the novel came from?

A: Thanks for this opportunity to share Divided’s story. If I hadn’t lived this, I wouldn’t believe it, but I saw the setup for Divided in an all-night dream. I met my main characters – Marcos, Rose, Harriet, and Jason – and saw their plight. Tall, impregnable walls locked them away from other ethnicities and each had grown up never interacting with someone from another ethnicity. It was certainly terrifying, but maybe not surprising given the state of America and our division today. I knew I had to tell their story and bring them freedom from tyranny and oppression. The only issue was up until then, I had written non-fiction primarily and only dabbled a little in fiction. I had an entire MFA to learn and after five drafts of the first two books, my editors and beta readers tell me I’m there! I hope the readers agree.

Q: How many books do you plan on having in the Divided series?

A:  I’ve already written approximately fifty percent of the remaining three books in the Divided series, making a total of four novels in the series. Yes, four. I know that’s not normal, but I felt strongly that each point of view character needed a spotlight. Too many novels historically have ethnically diverse characters only as minor or side characters, while the white characters are the stars. This practice had its day and time and we’ve all enjoyed those novels. However, with the state of division and rancor in the United States at all-time highs, I felt readers needed to see the world through others’ lenses. As a result, each of my main characters have an opportunity to move the plot. In Divided, Marcos, an eighteen year-old Hispanic male, drives the plot. Rose, an eighteen year old Asian female, will move the plot forward for Caged, Book Two. Then books three (Betrayed) and four (United) will be captained by Harriet, my African American teenager, and Jason, a white male teenager, respectively.

Q: Would it be fair to say that the characters and setting in your novel are taken from bits and pieces of people you know & places you’ve been?

A: I think as a writer it’s nearly impossible to not borrow our favorite traits, both good and bad, from people and places we’ve known. This sometimes includes ourselves. That being said, Marcos, Rose, Harriet, and Jason have blossomed into their own personalities. Perhaps someone I’ve known will recognize Marcos’s stubbornness or Rose’s anger as their own, but not the sum total of my characters’ personalities. In the editing and redrafting process, I made sure my characters’ personalities stayed true to who they are, while also providing for growth over the course of the novel and the series. These are all teenagers, after all, and who among us is the exact same person we were as teenagers? My fab four have a lot of growing up to do and will naturally change as a result of the dystopian shenanigans they get into.

Q: What lessons do you hope readers learn after reading Divided & what emotions do you hope they feel after reading it?

A: The primary emotion I want readers to feel is hope, followed a close second by courage to go outside their comfort zone. Division in the United States has only worsened over the last fifteen years and I aim to give my younger readers vocabulary and a pathway to forge greater unity. I think one of the fallacies of my nation has been forcing assimilation into a dominant culture upon diverse minority cultures, rather than embracing the colorful fabric of how different we are. If we took time to understand why someone thinks differently from us, then perhaps we would be more empathetic toward them, even if we still disagree. It’s not only possible to disagree without becoming disagreeable, but it’s essential if we are to preserve our society. But this takes hard work and a willingness to go outside your cultural comfort zone to learn about another’s life. My characters, despite never having met someone from another ethnicity and unintentionally blundering into cultural offense, have embraced an open-mindedness toward learning I would love to see readers mimic.

Q: If Hollywood were to get the rights to your work (if they haven’t yet) who would be your dream cast to play the characters you created?

A: I’m not sure about who I’d want to play my fab four – Marcos, Rose, Harriet, and Jason – but I definitely want Rob Lowe to play the main villain in Book One, Divided – Jason’s father, Hudson Britwell. Other than that, I’d love to see some fresh teenager faces on the big screen for the fab four. And of course, I would offer myself up as a laborer “extra” in the secret labor camp where Marcos ends up.

Q: From the little bio-Mickey sent, you used to be a medical doctor working in post-civil war nations. That sounds exciting and terrifying at the same time! Which countries were you in while you were a doctor & what were those experiences like?

A: Big shout-out to Vanderbilt University where I gained my medical doctorate and masters in public health degrees, with my research project in rotavirus, the most lethal gastrointestinal virus in the world for children.

Most of the time my medical trips overseas were not glamorous or very exciting at all, but were lots of hard work and sweat because it was hot! We did the bulk of our medical work in Sierra Leone after the end of that nation’s thirty-year civil war. Our local partner, New Harvest Ministries, is amazing and we honestly had trouble keeping up with their ventures and ideas. We started with one medical clinic in Bo, expanded to a second in the capital Freetown, then added an economic development program and found a way to take both clinics “on the road” to serve isolated villages where medical care was typically a few days’ walk, if not longer, away. Ours was a collaborative venture, unlike the old colonialism-inspired mold of overseas medical work or missions. We were partners in every way, and when they no longer needed us by 2012, we all celebrated the successes.

When our teams first arrived in Freetown, we doubled the numbers of medical personnel in the nation. We also brought the first dentist into the nation in at least a decade. He taught New Harvest’s church planters how to extract teeth, which became one of the most requested clinic services. I’m sure that sounds weird to westerners, but when you’ve had a toothache for months and someone offers to extract the tooth, you’re quite thankful. The two other most requested services, especially for those teams who brought the medical clinic into the bush, were circumcision (AIDs is still a major issue) and vaccinations. In the west, we are accustomed to going to the doctor for anything, but what if you had to walk four days and wait a few more? That’s what it was like in Sierra Leone when we worked there. Civil war had decimated their entire health system and I’m thrilled their nation now has a vibrant district healthcare system.

Often our clinic days spanned twelve plus non-air conditioned hours and we still had a line when we finished for the day. We had to figure out creative ways around lack of running water and electricity, limited pharmaceutical supply, and an inability to purchase the most basic medical supplies, like swabs and rubbing alcohol, in-country. Slowly over the course of the ten years we were involved, Sierra Leone developed and recovered from war. There’s an African saying, “Many hands make light work.” While westerners might admire what we did, I see our part as being only one of many laboring to bring the nation back from civil war. And it was an honor to play even a small part in a nation’s recovery. 

Other than Sierra Leone, which was our longest-running work at ten years, we also served in the mountains of Colombia during the FARC years and, briefly, in Afghanistan, though the Taliban resurgence put an end to that clinic’s existence. There were some scary times, like facing armed Liberian rebels at a checkpoint, navigating a vehicle’s breakdown in the middle of the bush, or undertaking a land border crossing, but God was good and protected and sustained us through it all.