Uh-oh. What's the PROTOCOL for THAT?

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Debut author day! And what fun to find a brand new author with a brand new book—not only the reading-of-it part, but the idea that there’s a person who now knows the joys and the delights, the terrors and the fears. The hugely satisfying moment when that new box of books arrives—and your dream has come true.

And you also know that inevitably, someone will ask: where did you get your idea? But ha! Kathleen Valenti has a terrific and tantalizing (and terrifying!) answer. Whoa. What would you do if this happened to you?

(There’s more about her book PROTOCOL below. And an ARC to one lucky commenter!)
(And yesterday's winners below!)

Technobabbling

By Kathleen Valenti

My husband and I recently watched Apollo 13 with our two children. The film’s a favorite of ours and was a natural inclusion in our self-designed list of Films the Kids Must See. (Last month’s showing: The Princess Bride.)

Our pre-teen son is a movie mimic, so I knew he’d love the zippy one-liners. His favorite line wasn’t the iconic real-life utterance, “Houston, we have a problem,” but rather the reference to technological advances “like a computer that can fit into a single room.”

Forget space travel and rockets and astronauts stranded in a flying life raft. The idea of

a room-sized computer was what captured his imagination.

It made me think of how far technology has come.

That computer that guided the astronauts’ journey? It can now fit inside a cell phone. And that cell phone? In a recent survey, eighty-four percent of Americans said they couldn’t go a day without it.

It also called to mind the genesis of one of my book’s primary storylines.

Technology has a starring role in my debut novel, Protocol, not because I’m super-techy (understatement alert), but because its omnipresence, with all of its attendant risks, gave me an idea for a murder mystery after I had my own technology puzzle to solve.

Several years ago, I sent my laptop to the manufacturer for repair. It came back with someone else’s hard drive, complete with all its digital contents. Turned out the computer snafu went both ways. My hard drive had been swapped into the computer that once housed the stranger’s hard drive I now possessed.

The mix-up left both of us vulnerable and me with the seed of an idea for a hook for the book I always wanted to write.

Houston, I have an idea.

Ideas, as they say, can come from anywhere. Evidently that includes computer problems.

I have a love-hate relationship with technology, and I think many of us can relate. After all, it’s responsible for both important advancements in science and medicine (and cute cat videos) and a crack through which danger can crawl, whether by hacking, identity theft or something much more nefarious.

So what is technology for you? Blessing? Curse? The font of awesome BuzzFeed quizzes? (I just learned that if I were a sandwich, I’d be a PB&J.)

And what real-life events have inspired you creatively? We may not be astronauts stranded in space, but we all have moments—big, small, happy and tragic—that inform the stories we tell.

 HANK: Wait wait wait! What happened about the hard drive? 

(I admit I always take those tests, too. Except for the ones that make it clear they’re swiping your entire email list. Plus, it’s fun to take them twice and see how you can make them come out the way you want, right?)

And you know every one of the inciting moments of my books is a version of something that really happened to me.

But technobabble! The things that come out of  our mouths—the two years ago we’d have no idea what meant! (How many gigs of ram? I store it all in the cloud?)  

What have you said recently, Reds and readers, that surprised you with your techno-knowledge?

Or else: what's on your list of must-see movies for kids?

 (And see below for yesterday's winners!)

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Kathleen Valenti is the author of Protocol, the story of freshly minted college graduate Maggie O’Malley who embarks on a pharmaceutical career fueled by professional ambition and a desire to escape the past. Yet on her very first day of work, Maggie’s pulled into a world of uncertainty as reminders appear on her phone for meetings she’s never scheduled with people she’s never met. People who end up dead.

When Kathleen isn’t writing page-turning mysteries that combine humor and suspense, she works as a nationally award-winning copywriter. She lives in Oregon with her family where she pretends to enjoy running. Protocol is her debut novel and the first of the Maggie O’Malley mystery series.

Pre-order Protocol here:

Amazon: amzn.to/2su4eq0

Barnes & Noble: bit.ly/2sUHKvQ

iTunes: apple.co/2skdTPw

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Kobo: bit.ly/2s6ZnIJ


(Winners from yesterday--tell us your addresses via our websites or Facebook! Hurray--and thank you!)
!

Lucy's winner   Idteacher 14

Ingrid's winner  Hulamom

Hank's winner   Karen M from Kentucky

Rhys' winner .  Raquel Muniz 

Hallie's winner .Sally from PA. 

Jenn's winner  Coralee 

Debs' winner: Marni 

Why Put Yourself Through It?

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: I just finished a big book project (yay! And more on that soon). But at the end of it I said to Jonathan, "Well, that’s that. I have no idea how to write a book, I don’t know how I did this one, and promise you, I will NEVER write another one. Done and Done."

The next day, I had a good idea. Hmm, I thought. Maybe.

Have you ever thought that? Have you ever wondered—not only for a book project, but for anything that you do—how the heck did I do that? And how can I do it again?

And equally important: Why am I doing this?

The wonderful Darden North, MD—as genuinely charmingly wonderful as anyone you’ll ever meet, says writing a book is kind of like giving birth to a baby.

And for him, that is not cliché.  That is reality.

DARDEN NORTH: A lot of people ask: “So what number novel is this for you? Your fourth? Your third?”

Sure, that’s awkward sentence structure. Unfortunately, most people express themselves that way, but we tortured souls who write true-to-life character dialogue are used to it. Those who like stereotypes would suggest that lack of eloquent diction is confined to my native South. However, I think not, and let’s leave the Mississippi stereotypes behind.

No matter how spoken, the interest in another Darden North novel is never ignored and always appreciated by me. That curiosity could not come at a better time with the June 2017 release of my fifth novel and thriller, The FiveManners of Death (WordCrafts Press). That’s the upside to the inquiry. 

The downside to the question is that the curious reader obviously missed one or two of my novels and has some catching up to do. The author and bookseller in me hopes that he or she will also pick up those missing volume.

Now, for the other side of the professional aisle. A companion question often asked of me is: “How many babies have you delivered?”

For a physician who has practiced obstetrics and gynecology for over 30 years and hopes he does not look like it, this is not an unusual query. My typical answer generally earns a chuckle or two: “Enough babies to populate a small town in Mississippi, but one with more than just a post office and gas station.”

By the way, despite the 30-plus years on the job, I can still run down the hall to a patient’s labor room when time is short and not appear at all short-winded when entering the room. (Remember, I’m a fiction writer.)

So, why plan the sixth novel after the release of number five? So, why plan to deliver another baby after 4000 or more? A better inquiry and one more recently asked of me by a journalist was: “Why put yourself through it?”    

Anyone who writes novels has faced that same question, no matter what life situation hangs in balance with being a published author. My other profession is full-time partnership in a large ob/gyn single-specialty group. “Why put yourself through it?” I have a standard answer for both sides of the coin.

For the literary facet: “I’ve got more stories to tell and they’re getting better and better!” and regarding my medical practice: “I’m on call this weekend and there’s no way to get out of it!” Seriously, practicing ob/gyn is fulfilling and rewarding. However, there are few professional fields more demanding, considering new procedures to master like robotic minimally invasive surgery and the increased pressures from government regulation and cost containment concerns. Yet, becoming a part of so many families by helping them to expand theirs is a lot of fun.  

Back to the writing thing …The truth is I do have a sixth story to tell and a seventh and an eighth and …well, you get it. There is a real internal drive to get better and better, to be a regular on the best seller lists.

My novels have been billed as murder mysteries and/or thrillers. I settled into the thriller genre with the last three including the newest, The 5 Manners of Death. Because of who I am, most describe my work as medical thrillers. Since I’m not always writing about a deadly virus on the rampage or an evil scientist bent on altering genomes and not for the common good, I describe my novels simply as thrillers, written with medical characters—flawed human beings like everyone else, chased by others, new mistakes and problems around every bend.

Maybe I do need to include more evil scientists in my novels. And, of course, if one is a thriller or mystery novelist, it doesn’t hurt to have a lot of patients who like to read them. 

Hank and Mom

HANK: And of course, all those babies are instant fans, right? So Reds, do you have any idea about the doctor who delivered you? Funny, I’ve seen my birth certificate a million times, but never noticed that. (And now I have another book idea.)

            Were you born in a hospital? Or where? 

         And if you write--WHY do you do it?

And if you have questions for Darden, he’ll be coming to visit—house call!—throughout the day. Unless, of course, a new baby needs him.

DARDEN NORTH    

     A native of the Mississippi Delta and a board-certified physician in obstetrics and gynecology, Darden North is the nationally awarded author of five novels in the mystery/thriller genre, including an IPPY for Points of Origin. He practices ob/gyn full-time at Jackson Healthcare for Women in Flowood, Mississippi, where he is a certified daVinci robotic surgeon and delivers babies. North also serves as Chairman of the Board of the Mississippi Public Broadcasting Foundation and on the Editorial Advisory Board of the Journal of the Mississippi State Medical Association

     A magna cum laude graduate of the University of Mississippi, he begin his writing and publishing career as Editor-in-Chief of the 1978 Ole Miss yearbook and continued for the 1982 Medic while in medical school. He participated as an author panelist at “Murder in the Magic City,” “Killer Nashville,” “Murder on the Menu,” and “SIBA Thriller Author Panel.”   Darden North lives with his wife Sally in Jackson, Mississippi. In his spare time, he gardens, enjoys family, walks for exercise, and travels. Sally and Darden have two young adult children who also work in the medical field.

THE 5 MANNERS OF DEATH

           After a construction worker unearths a human skull on the campus of the University of Mississippi dating to the 1960s, an older woman’s desperate attempt to erase history counts down the five ways to die in the thriller, The Five Manners of Death. The woman is the niece of Dr. Diana Bratton, a surgeon surrounded by bodies after the discovery of her Aunt Phoebe’s 50-year-old note detailing the manners of death. Suicide, accident, natural causes, and one death classified undetermined are soon crossed off this list—leaving Diana to believe that only homicide remains. Yet the police prove her wrong. Diana believes that family trumps the truth but discovers that murder is her family secret.

 Website: www.dardennorth.com

www.facebook.com/DardenNorthAuthor         www.facebook.com/DardenNorth 

https://twitter.com/dardennorth 

https://instagram.com/dardennorth

Purchase Link for The 5 Manners of Death (Hardcover, trade paperback, eBook) https://www.amazon.com/5-Manners-Death-Darden-North/dp/0998395994/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1491621959&sr=8-3&keywords=darden+north 

    chapter one typewriter . Copyright: ragsac / 123RF Stock Photo