If Sigmund Brouwer had a bumper sticker, it would likely say, “Real Men Read!” He has long thought the saying, commonly-heard in the Christian publishing industry, that “boys don’t read,” would be put to rest if the right books were available.

“You have to speak at their level,” he says. “They need books that will have their interest at heart. They aren’t going to read Little Women no matter how good a book it might be.

“Out of our church library, the Lone Ranger had a far greater impact on me than really preachy Christian fiction. It had good people fighting for good things against bad people. It was very clean, not particularly violent, and the characters stood for something.”

Born and raised in Red Deer, Alberta, Sigmund was an avid reader from childhood. He loved the stories, but he also “absorbed a lot of the ideals that I took into adulthood through fiction.”

In addition to reading, Sigmund loved all kinds of sports. “Looking back,” he says, “it seems fairly balanced; there are a lot of good lessons from sports that apply to writing in a practical way.”

Sigmund doesn’t remember a time when he didn’t want to write. He also doesn’t remember a time when God wasn’t part of his life.

“That’s a real gift for parents to bestow,” he says. “Such a complete awareness of God that there doesn’t seem to be an awareness, like breathing without consciously thinking about how the air around you sustains you, so that God is another part of life, and not compartmentalized.”

He studied commerce at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan which pleased his parents. But one of his professors “overlooked my grammar and punctuation mistakes and encouraged me to write,” he says. A short story sent to a magazine was rejected, but Sigmund kept writing “any kind of story that I thought could sell.”

He decided to go to Carleton University in Ottawa to study journalism. However, it wasn’t exactly what he had hoped for. “This sounds cynical, but what I really learned in journalism school was not to trust what I see reported in the media.”

He kept working on his own ideas, and after seven years of rejection letters and about 2,000 pages, the Western Producer published his short story “Healing Time,” a tale about a car accident victim who wanted revenge. “I still have a photocopy of the cheque!” says Sigmund.

Encouraged, Sigmund wrote to newspapers across Canada proposing weekly columns about a bike trip he wanted to take across Canada. “Two newspapers agreed, so I started in Vancouver and finished in Halifax.”

Sigmund was also ranked in the top 20 racquetball players in Canada at the time, so he proposed a monthly column to the editor of the American National Racquetball magazine. It was accepted. A year later, he became the publication’s editor.

But Sigmund still wanted to write fiction, and he wanted to write for boys. He worked on a novel and sent it to 20 publishers. In 1990, just three years after his first story was published, Standard Publishing released the first book in the Accidental Detectives series.

Sigmund has since become one of a handful of Canadian writers who makes a living as a full-time writer, having published 14 more Accidental Detective books, 39 other books aimed at boys who are reluctant readers, eight books for younger children, two non-fiction adult books and 14 adult novels.

He says his goal is to write an adult novel and several books for children (especially reluctant readers) each year. He also makes frequent visits to schools and libraries to encourage children to read.

While women enjoy his books, he really hopes men will read them, and not just for the entertainment value. “If your characters are real, and if they are dealing with situations that seem real, readers can learn without having to face the same sort of difficulties in their own lives,” he says.

Sigmund’s most recent novel, The Last Disciple, hits shelves this fall. The first two books in a new trilogy for children will be published in February.

For more information, visit www.coolreading.com and www.decipherthecode.com

N. J. Lindquist is the executive director of The World Guild (www.theworldguild.com). Her new mystery, Shaded Light, was released last month.

Published in ChristianWeek November 12, 2004 Volume 18 Number 17