Pick Your Poison

I love drugs. They’re the currency with which I practice my profession. Not a day in the office goes by without completing at least one transaction that involves them. I’ve learned to field questions about the over-the-counter varieties (Which cough medicine do you recommend?). I’ve learned to negotiate the economic value others place them (If I get this one off the $4 list, will it work as well?). I’ve heard men in highly-polished shoes wax poetic about pills. I’ve seen doctors draw their ethical shades of objectivity when being paid to discuss them. I’ve laughed with late night comedians as they crack jokes about their potency. Magazines devote back covers to their potentials. Football games air commercials about them…often pairing grey-haired men with younger women. Dr. William Osler, master clinician at Johns Hopkins Hospital at the turn of the twentieth century, was onto something when he wrote that, “the desire to take medicine is perhaps the greatest feature which distinguishes man from animals.” Ever since my pharmacology class in medical school, much of my training has been devoted to learning the form and function of pharmaceuticals. Much less time has been devoted to their names. One creative joy of writing Control Group was building a pharmaceutical company that needed a medicine cabinet full of blockbuster drugs. BioloGen Pharmaceuticals is my fictional baby-biotech born in the pastoral beauty of southwest Ohio, founded on the idea that more perfect drugs can be created by mechanizing the process of research and development. Rather than testing for side effects in rats and humans, the founders of BioloGen developed an Automated Device to Acquire Molecule, affectionately called ADAM. This machine runs potential chemicals through a battery of tests to see if they will be harmful in humans. When promising “hits” are discovered, ADAM can then test these compounds against computer-simulated biologic systems to see if side effects will develop. Never underestimate the hubris of a human with a good idea. The story takes place in 1993, ten years before completion of the human genome project, yet the founders of BioloGen have unparalleled faith that their machine has enough information to bypass the traditional regulatory process of drug development to offer safe medicines quickly. My research for the pharmaceutical industry initially came in the form of drug detailers, a.k.a. pharmaceutical representatives, coming to the office or hospital to educate physicians about their goods. I had...
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A Rose by Any Other Name

A friend of mine won a contest in which the grand prize was to be killed by Lee Child. For fellow fans of the Jack Reacher series, this was just about as good as it gets. I met Andrew Peterson at the Santa Barbara Writer’s Conference in June 2008, months before Dorchester Publishing published his debut novel, First to Kill. Apparently Lee Child held a character-naming auction in which he chose three names to be included in a forthcoming novel. Who wouldn’t jump at the opportunity to have their namesake rendered in the mind of the most prolific thriller writer today? Sure enough, when Delacorte Press published 61 Hours in 2010, my friend found himself as a cop on the Boston beat. It didn’t turn out so well for him. SPOILER ALERT: He gets nailed on page 283. “Peterson was sprawled across the front seats, dead from a gunshot wound to the head.” For me, my characters’ names come not from contests but from context and the world around me. Indeed, in the 13 years since completing the first draft of Control Group, most of my character names have undergone a metamorphosis. As I take stock of this current cast, here’s a rundown of some of the characters in the final version of Control Group—and how their names crept into the story. Interestingly, only one made if from first to final draft: Karen Kiley At BioloGen – Karen Kiley : She made it into the sixth page, chapter one of the first draft in the fall of 2004 (under the working title Big Pharma). “After their first interview, Carter [sic] had left with the impression that Karen Kiley was the consummate marketing executive: she had the boldness to ask for what she wanted and the charm to get it.” I saw the last name Kiley on a relator sign in our neighborhood while walking the dog. Knowing she had a hard edge under her soft smile, I thought I’d add a similar hard “kuh” sound to her first name. Douglas Schofield : He started as Douglas Kay for the first 5 years of the novel, based on a fellow physician’s last name. I later realized, though, that I needed some visual and aural differentiation of the character names to set him apart from Kiley and the then-protagonist Carter. During the 2013 dismantling re-write, while reading a Civil War history,...
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No, thank you

I got my first literary rejection in June 2005 at a table for two. This was no anonymous letter, either. I was seated on a white folding chair, poorly balanced on a grassy hillside of our writer’s retreat, wearing scratchy slacks and stiff sandals bought for the occasion. The tanned lady flipped through my first five pages with the casualness of a seasoned Los Angeles literary agent, which she was. “I won’t drag this out,” I remember her saying. “It’s not ready. I’m the wrong agent for this.” Was there a right agent for a work that was not ready? I din’t know, but I was willing to find out. Over the next 8 years, I sent copies of my manuscripts to 72 agents, editors, and publishers. Each one, in their own special way, said “Thank you, but no.” Here are some of the most memorable rejections: “We do not feel strongly enough about your project to pursue it further.” “I honestly don’t feel that I could represent your work with the requisite enthusiasm.” “You have a good idea, but I am not the right agent for this.” “Although you propose an interesting book idea, I did not feel I would be the best agent to represent you at this time.” “After considering your material, we have decided your project is not something we feel we can successfully represent at this time.” “That you for letting us review CONTROL GROUP, which we read with great interest. Unfortunately, we have determined that we are not the appropriate agent.” “I’m sorry to say it’s not right for me.” “I’m afraid I must pass.” “While the idea was interesting and thought provoking, the thriller just did not grab our attention.” “I’ve had a good first reading of CONTROL GROUP, so I’ll be reading the novel myself in the next few weeks” [November 2005] “I’ve finally had a chance to read CONTROL GROUP. The premise is good and the background material is solid. In the end, the tone is too Cincinnati—medical thrillers have to be so slick, even if the reality is not.” [December 2005] and finally… “In my view, I don’t think I—or any agent—will succeed in New York with CONTROL GROUP. It does have a surface readability and some tension, too, but I just didn’t get involved with the characters.” [December 2008] Wow. What a long list of literary shortcomings. And...
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