Michael Palmer Q&A Week 4 Transcription
Michael: “Hi everyone, Michael Palmer here. It’s good to be back with you. I want to, before we start answering any questions, I want to remind you and introduce you to the paperback of “The Second Opinion” which goes on sale Tuesday the 29th. So search it out if you haven’t read it before and I think it’s a great book. Also in the back of the book you can find the prologue for “The Last Surgeon” which is pretty scary and will be fun to read. So, without further ado, happy new year. Let’s look at the latest round of questions.
Lynn: “How do you choose your characters? After you choose a character, does it tend to develop a life of it’s own?”
Michael: “The answer is that I always start my books with a “what-if” question and then kind of an answer to the “what-if” question. The third thing I do is to ask ‘well, whose book is this?’ That’s when I begin the process of picking characters. Do I want a male to do this? If it’s a book about infertility I would almost always want to have a woman as the main character so that’s basically the way I begin to select my people. The ones who take a life of their own are more often kind of the ’second-tier’ characters. They usually have a very well-defined persona and sometimes I like what I’m doing with them so much that I greatly expand their role in the book. The best example I can give is a hermit in the book “Critical Judgment” and I liked him so much that he became a main character in the book. So yes, it happens a lot but not as much as people might think with the main character. Those people I know them a lot before I even start the writing.”
Vida: “I would like to know how you got started writing these medically related books? What interested you about this subject? What is your inspiration? And how do you keep the excitement flowing? ”
Michael: “Well, you may not know but I’m a doctor—an MD. I have boards in internal medicine and in ER and so when I started writing, the thing that I had to offer– the thing I had to bring to the table if you wish is my knowledge of medicine and of people as patients. So that’s basically the way I got started. I was trying to duplicate what Robin Cook had done with “Coma” and I’m still trying. Although I hope my own ideas are standing for themselves. So, ‘how do I keep the excitement flowing?’ Sometimes I just can’t keep the excitement going. Most of the time I’m very upbeat about getting to work, but sometimes I just have to push myself. I usually insist that I have to stay here for two hours before I can get up. After that, it’s whatever happens. Hopefully, I’ll be here a lot longer than that.”
Mary: “I know that Dimitri from ‘The Second Opinion‘ is very loosely based on a real life person you know – will ‘The Last Surgeon‘ have any characters in it that are based on family or friends?”
Michael: “Dimitri, for those who haven’t read “The Second Opinion” yet, is a character with Asperger Syndrome who was never really diagnosed and never really treated and now is in his forties and is having a tremendously difficult time with life. The answer is everybody in my books is based on people that I know. I get a lot of work with Asperger Syndrome because of my own son and have known a lot of adults with Aspergers and in fact, in “The Second Opinion” there’s a series of fifteen questions that I answered in association with the Asperger Association of New England. I encourage you to check that out. As far as “The Last Surgeon” goes, a lot of that main character is based on me– my own personality, the fact that I spent many years volunteering with a medical van driving around the streets of Boston and taking care of disenfranchised young people who were mostly out on the streets. So I knew a lot about that when I started writing the book. And a lot of the emotional stuff comes from my own personal experience although not all the war experience I wrote about with Nick Garrity.
Linda: “For enjoyment, what kinds of books do you read in your leisure time–other writers’ thrillers or novels that are very different (in genre, writing style)? What do you enjoy reading in the nonfiction area?”
Michael: “The truth is, I don’t have a lot of leisure time and it bothers me. I just finished reading a great thriller by Lee Child, one of my friends who writes the Jack Reach series and I couldn’t put it down. I had so much fun just relaxing over the holidays and reading it that I forgot how much I enjoy the pleasure of just reading a book. When I do read, which is continuously, I read new writers’ books in order to give them a blurb or quote to support their book. And I do that because when my first book “The Sisterhood” came out, a lot of very famous writers did it for me. John Saul, Mary Higgins Clark, DC Andrews, Clive Cussler. And I feel that I owe it to new writers. Most of my reading now is new writers’ stuff.
Ross: “Is “Fatal” the only book you have written that you drew from personal experience?”
Michael: “Fatal deals with vaccinations and I have very strong feelings about vaccinations, but mostly it’s my job to raise questions in a book and not answer them. So every one of my books deals with experiences I’ve had in my life– I mean where else do you get this stuff? A lot I make up, but I also base a lot what I write on things that happened to me when I was younger, things that happened when I was working in the ER and things that happened to me like yesterday. One of the great things about writing is the immediacy of having it happen and getting it down.
Mattie: “Looking forward to the next adventure– What city does this book take place in? Also, is the setting in a hospital, clinic or doctor’s office?”
Michael: “This book takes place in Washington, DC– same with “The First Patient” and it also takes place a little bit in Baltimore and in Virginia. I enjoy writing about things that happen in hospitals, but sometimes it limits me so much of what I can do that I end up keeping it more outside the hospital. But I can write about hospitals well because I’ve spent countless hours day and night working in hospitals.”
Lynn: “How do you choose your characters? After you choose a character, does it tend to develop a life of it’s own?”
Michael: “The answer is that I always start my books with a “what-if” question and then kind of an answer to the “what-if” question. The third thing I do is to ask ‘well, whose book is this?’ That’s when I begin the process of picking characters. Do I want a male to do this? If it’s a book about infertility I would almost always want to have a woman as the main character so that’s basically the way I begin to select my people. The ones who take a life of their own are more often kind of the ’second-tier’ characters. They usually have a very well-defined persona and sometimes I like what I’m doing with them so much that I greatly expand their role in the book. The best example I can give is a hermit in the book “Critical Judgment” and I liked him so much that he became a main character in the book. So yes, it happens a lot but not as much as people might think with the main character. Those people I know them a lot before I even start the writing.”
Vida: “I would like to know how you got started writing these medically related books? What interested you about this subject? What is your inspiration? And how do you keep the excitement flowing? ”
Michael: “Well, you may not know but I’m a doctor—an MD. I have boards in internal medicine and in ER and so when I started writing, the thing that I had to offer– the thing I had to bring to the table if you wish is my knowledge of medicine and of people as patients. So that’s basically the way I got started. I was trying to duplicate what Robin Cook had done with “Coma” and I’m still trying. Although I hope my own ideas are standing for themselves. So, ‘how do I keep the excitement flowing?’ Sometimes I just can’t keep the excitement going. Most of the time I’m very upbeat about getting to work, but sometimes I just have to push myself. I usually insist that I have to stay here for two hours before I can get up. After that, it’s whatever happens. Hopefully, I’ll be here a lot longer than that.”
Mary: “I know that Dimitri from ‘The Second Opinion‘ is very loosely based on a real life person you know – will ‘The Last Surgeon‘ have any characters in it that are based on family or friends?”
Michael: “Dimitri, for those who haven’t read “The Second Opinion” yet, is a character with Asperger Syndrome who was never really diagnosed and never really treated and now is in his forties and is having a tremendously difficult time with life. The answer is everybody in my books is based on people that I know. I get a lot of work with Asperger Syndrome because of my own son and have known a lot of adults with Aspergers and in fact, in “The Second Opinion” there’s a series of fifteen questions that I answered in association with the Asperger Association of New England. I encourage you to check that out. As far as “The Last Surgeon” goes, a lot of that main character is based on me– my own personality, the fact that I spent many years volunteering with a medical van driving around the streets of Boston and taking care of disenfranchised young people who were mostly out on the streets. So I knew a lot about that when I started writing the book. And a lot of the emotional stuff comes from my own personal experience although not all the war experience I wrote about with Nick Garrity.
Linda: “For enjoyment, what kinds of books do you read in your leisure time–other writers’ thrillers or novels that are very different (in genre, writing style)? What do you enjoy reading in the nonfiction area?”
Michael: “The truth is, I don’t have a lot of leisure time and it bothers me. I just finished reading a great thriller by Lee Child, one of my friends who writes the Jack Reach series and I couldn’t put it down. I had so much fun just relaxing over the holidays and reading it that I forgot how much I enjoy the pleasure of just reading a book. When I do read, which is continuously, I read new writers’ books in order to give them a blurb or quote to support their book. And I do that because when my first book “The Sisterhood” came out, a lot of very famous writers did it for me. John Saul, Mary Higgins Clark, DC Andrews, Clive Cussler. And I feel that I owe it to new writers. Most of my reading now is new writers’ stuff.
Ross: “Is “Fatal” the only book you have written that you drew from personal experience?”
Michael: “Fatal deals with vaccinations and I have very strong feelings about vaccinations, but mostly it’s my job to raise questions in a book and not answer them. So every one of my books deals with experiences I’ve had in my life– I mean where else do you get this stuff? A lot I make up, but I also base a lot what I write on things that happened to me when I was younger, things that happened when I was working in the ER and things that happened to me like yesterday. One of the great things about writing is the immediacy of having it happen and getting it down.
Mattie: “Looking forward to the next adventure– What city does this book take place in? Also, is the setting in a hospital, clinic or doctor’s office?”
Michael: “This book takes place in Washington, DC– same with “The First Patient” and it also takes place a little bit in Baltimore and in Virginia. I enjoy writing about things that happen in hospitals, but sometimes it limits me so much of what I can do that I end up keeping it more outside the hospital. But I can write about hospitals well because I’ve spent countless hours day and night working in hospitals.”
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