Richard Mabry Interview

Q: Let me start with asking you to tell us a little bit about yourself.

A:  I’m a retired physician. My wife and I live in North Texas, where I spend some time writing “medical suspense with heart.” I certainly didn’t plan a career in writing, but as I like to say, it keeps me off the streets and out of pool halls (although sometimes it interferes with my weekly golf game).

Q: When did you first realize you wanted to be a writer?

A:  After the death of my first wife, I used journaling as a coping mechanism. Some of my friends encouraged me to turn that material into a book, but I had no idea how to do it. When I attended a Christian writers conference, a couple of the authors on the faculty challenged me to try my hand at fiction. Eventually I not only wrote the book that was published as The Tender Scar: Life After The Death Of A Spouse, but produced a number of novels. After four years, four novels, and forty rejections, I got a contract. Fatal Trauma will be my eighth published medical suspense novel.

Q: What do you write and why this genre?

A:  I’ve already mentioned how I got into writing. As for the genre, I have always enjoyed mysteries and thrillers, and have read them voraciously since I was in college. Since I’d practiced medicine for over 35 years, I felt qualified to write about that world. After a number of false starts, I eventually found my niche writing medical suspense.

Q: Do you base your characters on people you know or are they totally made up?

A: I may choose to include characteristics of someone I know when I create a particular character, but none of the people in my books actually represent a single person.

Q: Would you tell us about your current book release Fatal Trauma?

A: It begins in an emergency room, where a doctor and nurse face a man with a gun who wants his wounded brother treated. At the end of the evening, three people lie dead and the doctor and nurse find themselves the targets of a Mexican drug cartel with a reputation for drastic revenge. When the doctor realizes he is both a target and a murder suspect, he turns to a high school sweetheart, now a lawyer, for help, much to the dismay of the nurse who loves him.

Q: Where did the idea for this story come from?

A: It began with a newspaper story about revenge killings attributed to a Mexican drug cartel. I put that together with a story I knew of about a doctor facing down a gunman in an ER. After a number of false starts and some significant reshaping, the story finally came together.

Q: Tell us a little about your main character and how you developed him/her.

A: All my novels are freestanding, rather than parts of a series, so I have to create new characters for every one. For Fatal Trauma, I chose an emergency room doctor because of the scene with which I wanted to open. Eventually, his interaction with other characters did a lot to shape Dr. Mark Baker. Unfortunately, just about the time I got to know him pretty well, the book ended.

Q: Would you share with us what you are working on now?

A:  Traditional publishing moves with glacier speed, so in addition to Fatal Trauma, I’ll have another novel, Miracle Drug, coming out this fall and a third book, Medical Judgment, next spring. Actually, all these are already finished.

In Miracle Drug, which was written before the Ebola epidemic became frontpage news, a doctor is suddenly called on to treat an unusual and normally fatal infection sustained by an ex-President and the doctor’s girl friend. A cure will require heroic efforts and a miracle drug, while failure would be catastrophic.

Q: What are some ways that readers of your books can help you as an author?

A:  I encourage my readers to give me feedback. Obviously, if they like what I write, I want to know. However, even if they don’t like it, want to know so I can change as I compose future works. My email address is shown in every book, and there is a “contact me” link on my web page and blog site.

Q: What one thing about writing do you wish other non-writers would understand?

A:  It may take a reader a few days to read a novel—I have numerous emails from people who stay up all night to finish one of my books once they start—but it has taken the author from six months to more than a year to produce the work. We love suggestions for future books, but fulfilling those requests may take two or three years. But don’t let that keep you from communicating with me or any other author. We love it.

Q: Tell me three things about yourself that would surprise your readers.

A: I went to college with Pat Boone (and one of us became famous). I’ve played semi-pro baseball, served as a minister of music, and won a medal while in the Air Force. And I’m very shy and introverted (despite what you may think if you’ve seen me at conferences).

Q: Milk or dark chocolate? Coffee or tea?

A:  Contrary to most of my colleagues, I much prefer milk chocolate over dark. And coffee in the morning, sometimes iced tea later in the day.

Q: Favorite TV show or shows?

A:  I like to relax and laugh, so Big Bang Theory. But I also enjoy Blue Bloods, a detective show that features a family of police professionals with moral values.

Q: Where can readers find you on the internet?

A:  My web page is http://rmabry.com. I blog twice a week at http://rmabry.blogspot.com. My Twitter handle is RichardMabry and my Facebook fan page is http://facebook.com/rmabrybooks. I encourage readers to keep in touch with me at any and/or all these locations.

Q: Anything else you’d like to tell or share with us?

A:  Thanks for reading, thanks for your support.. Without readers, writers would work in a vacuum. And we all know that it’s impossible to sustain life in a vacuum.