Sexual Harassment in Novels

Today, fellow author and friend, Janet Greger (J.L. Greger), talks about writing sexual harassment in novels.

 

Sexual harassment is common in the workplace. #MeToo moments are a way to build empathy in readers for characters and to show, not tell, about what motivates these characters.

The following is an excerpt from the mystery Games for Couples. It’s closely based on a real incident. The character is describing “her longest moment” more than twenty years later to her current partner:

 

“I seldom speak of it. I was an assistant professor at Michigan State and up for tenure. My department head called me at five and ordered me to come to his office at five-thirty. When I arrived, the main office was empty and dark. There was only a desk light on in his attached office.”

 

I closed my eyes and remembered. “My department head was standing in front of the big arched window in his office watering his fig tree, which was at least five feet tall. He turned to me and said, ‘The campus tenure committee doesn’t think you are ready for tenure unless I provide more details. I don’t want to bow to their whims.’”

 

Sanders (the character’s partner) was silent but he put his hand on my shoulder.

 

“I remember I was angry. I blurted out, ‘I have twenty publications in scientific journals—more than enough to win tenure.’ My department head said, ‘They agreed but doubted your teaching credentials.’ I was even angrier as I pointed out that I’d received a small teaching award and had favorable reviews from my classes. He said, ‘Yes, but I didn’t include that info in your file because I didn’t think those details were necessary. Now I’m too busy to bother.’”

 

Sanders grip tightened on my shoulder.

 

“My department head stepped toward me and said, ‘There’s an easy way... to gain my cooperation.’ His brown eyes stared expectantly at me as his right hand reached toward me. The next minute was my longest one. Each second felt like an hour.”

 

You’ll have to read the novel to learn the character’s response, but her comment below gives insight into the long-term effect of the incident.

 

“I forgave that department head years ago. What I couldn’t forget was what I learned about myself… That minute changed me.”

 

Advice for writers: Dramatic moments, like the above #MeToo moment, should not be overly long or overpower the pIot. They are simply tools for developing multi-dimensional characters. As an author you want to build empathy, not sympathy, for the character.

Games for Couples has interesting characters and a strong plot. Here’s a thumbnail sketch:

 

A biotechnology company is desperately racing to develop cultured meat products—meat made from cells in a test tube—-before their competitors. Disaster strikes. A subject in a clinical trial testing one of their new cultured meat product dies. Was his death caused by sloppy mistakes made by the biotechnology company, sabotage by a competitor, or hidden past incidents?

 

In this mystery, four women react differently to sexual harassment but all are changed by their #MeToo moments. The book is available on www.Amazon.com.

J. L. Greger writes is a biologist from the University of Wisconsin-Madison who consulted internationally. The pet therapy dog Bug (shown in the picture) in her novels is exactly like her own stoical Japanese Chin. https://www.jlgreger.com

Left Coast Crime

 Are you going to Left Coast Crime in Albuquerque on April 7-10, 2022?

It’s a conference for mystery writers and readers.

You can help support Great Little Libraries in New Mexico.

 

Background on Great Little Libraries Program. In 2019, the State of New Mexico identified its fifty smallest public libraries in rural areas. These libraries are on pueblos, in unincorporated towns, or in towns with small commercial sectors. Thus, municipal tax support is usually non-existent, and the New Mexico Rural Library Endowment Fund provides a maximum of $2,500 a year to individual libraries. Most of these libraries were created by grass-root efforts of citizens in the community and function with no paid employees.

Community public libraries are a valuable resource in any state. However, they are particularly important in New Mexico because the state ranked 50^th in K-12 education programs in 2018.

Croak and Dagger, the New Mexico chapter of Sisters in Crime, created the Great Little Libraries Adventure to help these fifty smallest public libraries several years ago. We try to supply these libraries with books by our authors and offer to do programs and displays for them to encourage reading and writing. The board for Left Coast Crime agreed to adopt our Croak and Dagger Program in 2021. Thus, all funds raised at the charity auction and all books left over from the Left Coast Crime conference in Albuquerque on April 7-10 will be distributed to New Mexico’s fifty smallest libraries. So, be sure to donate books and bid on items if you attend the conference. For more details on Left Coast Crime see: https://www.leftcoastcrime.org/2022.

Libraries may use the funds for materials, services to support community literacy, or infrastructure challenges that inhibit the library’s literacy mission. Croak & Dagger will request a brief report from each library about how the donation has addressed literacy initiatives in that community.

Learn more about rural towns and pueblos in New Mexico. Although many of the pueblos of New Mexico are famous for their pottery and casinos, agriculture is still a major source of income on the pueblos. If you want to get in the mood for your visit to Left Coast Crime or just want to learn a little about rural life in New Mexico, read a book about the problems in New Mexico agriculture today.

Life is tough on the pueblos of the Southwest. Opportunities and water are always limited. In the thriller, A POUND OF FLESH, SORTA, life gets a lot tougher on the Acoma pueblo when the plague hits the livestock and one man is killed in mysterious accident in a nearby meat packing plant while another disappears. Scientist Sara Almquist thinks she has clues to solve the mysteries if she's not killed first.

Book at: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0960028560

J. L. Greger was a faculty member in the College of Agriculture and Life Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for many years and was involved in a number of outreach program in rural areas. She is now an active member of Croak and Dagger, the New Mexico chapter of Sisters in Crime. https://www.jlgreger.com

WHEN OUR BELIEFS ARE CHALLENGED

Today, my friend and fellow author, Janet Greger (J.L. Greger), will share with you some of the challenges of being a novelist. Sometimes our expectations for the characters or the plot don’t go as we plan. And sometimes our own expectations take an unexpected turn.  Lorna

 

In my latest novel Dirty Holy Water, I wanted to explore what happens when our basic beliefs are challenged. Specifically, what happens when we feel sorrier for villains than victims?

 Let me set the scene. Life is complicated for Sara Almquist. She's about to become engaged and leave for a vacation in India with her boyfriend when she becomes a suspect in the murder of a friend. Sara is used to being a trusted scientific consultant for the FBI and finds being a suspect unnerving, but not enough to prevent her from trying to help the police uncover evidence about the murder. The police and Sara quickly realize that the murder victim, Lurleen Jansen, was killed by a member of her own family. But which one and why?

 Read this excerpt from the first chapter and see if you can guess reasons why a family member killed Lurleen?

 Lurleen Jansen must have been a pretty woman once. Now Sara Almquist could see little attractive about Lurleen, except her expressive green eyes. Lurleen had called Monday and almost demanded that Sara drive her to El Santuario de Chimayó this week. Sara had hesitated but finally agreed to the field trip because Lurleen needed a friend.

 Although Sara had pushed the front passenger seat of her Subaru Forester back to the maximum, Lurleen looked like she was a piece of pimento stuffed in a green olive. Her face was red as she tried to close the clamp shut on the seat belt that strained around her green camouflage cargo pants and T-shirt. “Should have brought my seat belt extender along. Too much work to walk back inside for it.”

 Sara felt a twinge of guilt. She considered volunteering to get the seat belt extender but knew she wouldn’t. Lurleen had been her neighbor in the adults-only community of La Bendita until Lurleen and her husband Pete decided about five years ago that the two- and three-bedroom houses of the gated neighborhood were too small to meet their needs. It wasn’t jealousy that kept Sara from looking for the seat belt extender in Lurleen’s large house. Her reasons were simpler—she knew it would be difficult to locate something small, like a seat belt extender, among the stack of boxes and piles of junk in the house. She was also afraid what she might find. Lurleen didn’t waste time cleaning her house and only hired someone to clean it when a new infestation problem appeared. Some sort of pest, usually bigger than ants, appeared every year.

 Lurleen appeared to hold her breath and clicked the seat belt shut. “Pete’s being tight with me.” She smiled. “But I’ll get what I want.”

 Before Sara could make a catty comment, such as you must have asked for the moon this time, Lurleen changed the subject. “Thanks for agreeing to take me to Chimayó to get some holy dirt for Matt. He’s talking less these days.”

 Sara gave a soft sigh because Lurleen had reminded her why they were making this trip. Lurleen’s daughter Mitzi had become a foster parent for a one-year-old girl named Kayla almost twelve years ago. About that time, Kayla’s biological parents had another child, Matt. He was born addicted to cocaine and quickly displayed developmental delays. The New Mexico Children, Youth, and Families Department, better known as CYFD, had decided the two children must be kept together, and Mitzi had reluctantly agreed to become Matt’s foster care mother, too. When she was five, Kayla had been diagnosed with attention deficit disorder. Eventually Mitzi had adopted both children. Lurleen had been supportive of Mitzi and her two adopted children during the long adoption process.

 Sara admired both women because it took guts to adopt special needs children. Although Sara doubted the holy dirt dispensed from a small pit at El Santuario de Chimayó had curative properties, she recognized faith was sometimes effective in helping patients. 

Buy Dirty Holy Water (paperback or ebook) at: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0960028587   

 

The Kirkus Review for Dirty Holy Water is: "A thought-provoking, disturbing, and engaging mystery with a likable, strong-willed female lead."

The author incorporated her experiences in India into the novel

 

J.L. Greger is a biology professor and research administrator from the University of Wisconsin-Madison turned novelist. She has consulted on scientific issues worldwide and loves to travel. Thus, she likes to include both science and her travel experiences in her thriller/mystery novels in the Science Traveler series. Award-winning books in the series include: Murder: A Way to Lose Weight, The Flu Is Coming, Malignancy, Riddled with Clues, and A Pound of Flesh, Sorta. Learn more at: http://www.jlgreger.com

From Reality to Realistic Fiction

Interesting characters need realistic “warts.” Sometimes the best way to develop a character is to look at a real person. Let me explain how I developed (hopefully) one of the multidimensional people in my new thriller, Riddled with Clues.

My dog, Bug, a Japanese Chin, and I have done pet therapy at the local VA Center for years. This particular VA Center has a number of rehab programs besides a major hospital. It also offers multiple programs to aid homeless veterans in New Mexico.

On one visit to the VA, a ragged veteran sat and stroked Bug for several minutes without speaking. Then he looked at me and said, “What does this dog call you?”

I recognized this was a serious question and deserved a thoughtful answer. I didn’t smirk or giggle. “I think he calls me Mom.”

The veteran lowered his head close to examine the dog’s face and then resumed stroking him. After a minute, he nodded. “I think that’s right.”

Several months later, a neatly dressed man on the VA campus approached Bug and me. “Hello Bug and Bug’s Mom.” As he talked to me for several minutes, I realized this was the same veteran. He was well-educated but had experienced hard times not only in Vietnam but also in his personal life. He wasn’t pathetic; he had dignity.

His words replayed in my mind over the last five or six years. When I set this thriller, Riddled with Clues, at the VA Hospital in Albuquerque, I knew I would include this man as a major character.

Please note: HIPPA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) doesn’t allow health care workers or volunteers to identify patients. However, I don’t know the name of this man and I didn’t describe him in the novel as he looked. Everything about the character in my novel is fictitious, except for the description of these two brief incidents. I think these two incidents showed the mental state and personality of a veteran in rehab better than long descriptions. I hope you agree.

Now aren’t you curious to find out how this character fits into the plot? Note: I didn’t give you the character’s name. Here’s the blurb for Riddled with Clues:

A hospitalized friend gives a puzzling note to Sara Almquist. He received the note signed “Red from Udon Thani” while investigating the movement of drugs from Cuba into the U.S. However, he doesn’t know anyone called Red, and the last time he was in Udon Thani was during the Vietnam War. After Sara listens to his rambling tales of all the possibilities, both are attacked. He is left comatose. As she struggles to survive, she questions who to trust: the local cops, her absent best friend, the FBI, or a homeless veteran, who leaves puzzling riddles as clues.

The other character based on a real individual in this novel is Bug. Isn’t he a handsome devil?

I hope my story will give you ideas for developing realistic final characters.

Riddled with Clues is available in paperback and Kindle on Amazon. https://www.amazon.com/dp/1938436237 

J. L. Greger likes to include tidbits of science and exotic locations in her Science Traveler Thriller/Mystery series, which includes: Riddled with Clues, Murder…A Way to Lose Weight (winner of 2016 Public Safety Writers [PSWA] annual contest and finalist for New Mexico–Arizona book award), I Saw You in Beirut, and Malignancy (winner of 2015 PSWA annual contest). To learn more, visit her website: http://www.jlgreger.com or her Amazon author page: https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B008IFZSC4. 

The Good Old Days?

Today I welcome my friend and fellow author, J. L. Greger to tell you about her inspiration for her new book, The Good Old Days? A Collection of Stories. I had the privilege of editing this one, and I loved her tales.

Intertwining Facts, Memories, and Imagination to Create Fiction

After I read several nauseatingly glowing accounts of the “good old days,” I asked friends about their memories of their childhoods and teen years. Then I began to write short stories and published fourteen of them in The Good Old Days? A Collection of Stories.

Memories need to be supplemented with facts. Although I took copious notes as friends spoke of their past, key details, necessary to make the tales believable, were missing or garbled. I found these details were “hooks” to readers. For example, in the story, “Dirty Dave,” I mentioned the nested Pyrex mixing bowls in yellow, green, red, and blue. Several readers noted I’d gotten the sizes right. The yellow bowl was the largest; the green was the next size. I was glad I had researched the subject. (By the way, these vintage sets often sell for over $100 on eBay. I’ve seen them sell for more at antique shows in New England.)

Memoires help to create a mood. I wrote my stories in the idiosyncratic way of memoirs. Although my vignettes are fiction, the auras of my friends, but not their physical characteristics, are infused into my characters. Thus, some of the characters are playful, and others are cynical or grouchy. I modified the tenor of the stories by telling some of them from the point of view of a child and others from the perspective of an adult. A five-year-old’s view of department stores in the 1950s (e.g. The elevator operator wore gloves. Everything was fastidiously arranged by color in the Notions Department.) in “Questions” is funnier than an adult’s observations.

Memories are snapshots of history. My stories are snapshots of major historical events and societal problems during the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. Nostalgia is fine, but honesty about the past is important. One aspect of several of these vignettes—child abuse in so-called “nice” homes—is not funny. I hope these tales will encourage older readers to remember the past honestly and will let younger readers realize most social problems aren’t new.

Here’s the start of one tale. “How Old Is the Earth?” in The Good Old Days? A Collection of Stories.

This story is based on reminiscences of a friend. He mentioned the Golden Book Encyclopedia, but couldn’t remember any particulars, as he told me about the limitations of his grade-school education. My research supplied all the details about this hot promotional item for A&P Stores in 1959 and 1960. The geological facts are also correct. However, the George in the story is fictional. My friend doesn’t look like George, isn’t a professor, and has never enjoyed a Friday afternoon on the patio of the Wisconsin Student Union. He does like a beer occasionally.

I hope you enjoy this intertwining of facts and memories in fiction.

How Old Is the Earth?

“You’re a scientist. How old is the earth?” My friend, an art professor, looked around the rather raucous crowd on the patio at the University of Wisconsin Student Union on a late summer afternoon. When he waved his tanned arm, I noticed thin, white scars crossed the back of his hand. “What do you think these students would say?”

“First off, I’m no geologist. I don’t know the current scientific estimate, probably several billion years.” I nodded at the students as I sipped my beer. “I doubt any of them could give you a better answer, even if they were sober.”

George pulled his hands through his longish gray hair and then stroked his much darker short beard. “Four and a half-billion years. The most painful and maybe most important fact I ever learned.”

I blinked. “Really? Somewhere in grade school, I accepted the earth had a long history, but I was never fascinated by paleontology or geology.”

“You’re not from a religious home.”

I frowned. “We went to church most Sundays.”

“I mean a home steeped in strict interpretations of the Bible.” He leaned back in his yellow, sunburst metal chair and chewed a handful of popcorn. “Did you know church leaders calculated the earth to be six thousand years old on the basis of the book of Genesis?”

I threw a couple of kernels to nearby birds. “You must really like the Discovery Channel and PBS nature specials. What got us on this line of conversation? I expected you to be reliving your years as a professor of photography this afternoon, one week before your official retirement.”

George took a long swig of his beer. “Today would have been Mum’s birthday. Made me think of the day I was most proud of her. She was your typical stay-at-home mother of the fifties. Well, except Pop was afraid other men would notice her. So, she wore her long dishwater blonde hair in braids wrapped around her head. She looked like a Norwegian immigrant just off the boat in the old daguerreotypes. Didn’t matter to us boys. We thought Mum was pretty.”

He gazed out over the lake for so long I interrupted his thoughts. “What did your mother do on this special day?”

“Be patient. I was remembering how it all began. Do you remember when A&P offered the Golden Book Encyclopedias as a sales incentive in fifty-nine and maybe sixty?”

I pushed my green starburst metal chair back. “Vaguely. I can’t remember the deal exactly. Let’s see...if you bought twenty dollars of groceries, you could purchase one of the volumes in the Golden Book Encyclopedia for an additional dollar or two. Every month, they offered another volume. I think there were…fifteen or sixteen volumes all together.”

George smiled. “Yeah, they had shiny covers in bright colors, not like the standard encyclopedias, World Book and Britannica, with their fake leather covers and gilt-edged pages. Okay, I’m ready to tell my story.”

For the rest of the story, read The Good Old Days? A Collection of Stories. Available at Amazon (paperback and Kindle): http://amzn.com/1537743813

J. L. Greger usually writes mysteries and thrillers with "sound bites" of science and travel: Murder… A Way to Lose Weight (winner of 2016 Public Safety Writers Assoc. [PSWA] annual contest and finalist for New Mexico/Arizona Book Awards) I Saw You in Beirut, Malignancy (winner of 2015 PSWA contest) Coming Flu, and Ignore the Pain.

Website: http://www:jlgreger.com

Amazon author page: https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B008IFZSC4

Why Write Medical Mysteries?

Today I welcome friend and fellow author J.L.Greger. I enjoy her mysteries because I always learn something from them. She uses real cutting-edge medical discoveries as the basis of her books. I’ve asked her to tell us about her latest book, Murder…A New Way to Lose Weight. Lorna

Birth of a Medical Mystery

Have you noticed? Many Americans have schizophrenic attitudes about food. If you doubt me, flip on your TV and watch the ads. First there’s one for a restaurant with pictures of smiling people and sizzling steaks or pizzas dripping with gooey cheese. Next comes a commercial for a diet regime or exercise product. The presenter is smiling as she effortlessly performs twenty abdominal crunches with some sort of “torture” contraption. Most of us would pant after moving the device twice. After a small break for the program, the ads are back.

Funny? Sad and pathetic? Annoying, especially to me, a former professor of nutrition. Maybe, that’s why I wrote Murder…A New Way to Lose Weight.

Let me tell you a little about my new medical mystery.

Dieting is hard. So is fitting into a new job where you aren’t wanted. Linda Almquist is trying to do both as the new interim associate dean of a medical school. Linda steps into a battle among the cliques of the school when she checks out allegations that two diet doctors are recklessly endangering the lives of their obese patients. Then she discovers one of the diet doctors—dead. She and the police suspect the other diet doctor of the murder. Maybe they’re wrong. The murders might be related to something in the past―something involving her boss, the Dean. While Linda fears for her job, the police fear for her life.

Another reason for setting my mystery in a medical school reflects my professional experiences. I was an associate dean in a medical school. Several of the scenes in Murder…A Way to Lose Weight recreate actual events. Associate deans are the recipients of responsibility for all the messes, which the head dean doesn’t want to touch.

Hundreds of clever, creative people (grouped in cliques based on disciplines, intellectual differences, and perceived past slights) work in a typical university health center. Occasionally, a few become bored with medical challenges and unleash their skills on each other. Thankfully, they generally seek revenge verbally, not physically. However, the comments of the medical examiner (Omar Otega) to the investigating police (Hitchings) in Murder…A Way to Lose Weight ring true.

“Motive?” Hitchings scanned the crowd and motioned Omar back to him. “Omar, do we even have a murder? Looks like natural causes.”

“Can’t tell,” replied Omar.

“But no bullet or stab wounds? So natural causes are likely.”

“You’re in a medical school.” Omar walked closer to Hitchings and spoke more softly. “Everyone in this building probably knows how to kill someone without using a gun or knife. A complete tox screen will take weeks. And this woman was only in her thirties, pretty young to die suddenly.”

My third reason to write a medical suspense novel was I found a series of scientific articles on a hot area of research—gut bacteria. Scientists have found the microflora (bacteria) in the gut change with weight loss. Scientists hypothesize they may be able to help patients increase weight loss and keep weight off by altering their gut bacteria. The science educator in me wanted to share that information.

Murder…A Way to Lose Weight (paperback & Kindle) is available from Amazon (http://amzn.com/1610092392).

J. L. Greger likes to include tidbits of science and foreign locations in her thriller novels—I Saw You in Beirut (set partially in the Middle East), Ignore the Pain (set partially in Bolivia) and Malignancy (set partially in Cuba & winner of 2015 Public Safety Writers Association annual competition). Yes, she’s traveled to all those spots. Learn more about her at her website: http://www.jlgreger.com or blog: http://jlgregerblog.blogspot.com.

“Attempting to Find in Motion What Was Lost in Space”

Once again, my guest is JR Greger. She has written a new suspense thriller, I Saw You in Beirut. I loved the book and wanted to know more about it. Enjoy my conversation with her. Lorna

I suspect many of us can identify with Tennessee William‘s famous quote in The Glass Menagerie. “We attempt to find in motion what is lost in space.” The net result for me is I loved consulting internationally while a professor, and I send Sara Almquist, the heroine in my thrillers, to various international locations.

In my latest novel, I Saw You in Beirut, Sara’s past, as a student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and as a globetrotting epidemiologist, provides clues for the extraction of a nuclear scientist from Iran.

How did I get the ideas for this thriller? The University of Wisconsin-Madison was awash with Iranian students protesting the Shah in the late 1970s. I was a professor and the graduate advisor of one of these students. Conversations with her and her friends served the basis of creating the fiery character Farideh Hossein in I Saw You in Beirut.

Then in the 1990s, I consulted on issues in biology (medicine and agriculture) at the United Arab Emirates University in El Ain and the American University of Beirut in Lebanon. As you might expect, I saw research facilities, hospitals, and classrooms, and talked to faculty, business leaders, and students. You might be surprised to learn I also saw a testing lab for the racing camels, agricultural industries, markets in Abu Dhabi and Dubai before the creation of free zones to enhance development, and ships lining up to pass through the Strait of Hormuz. In Lebanon, I was thrilled by Phoenician ruins dating back three-to-four-thousand years and saddened by the damage war had wreaked on the beautiful city of Beirut. It was easy to see why the Lebanese bragged Beirut was once the Paris of the Middle East.

Yes, you guessed right. My fictional Sara just happened to also have consulted (but on epidemiology) in the Emirates and Lebanon.

My area of academic research involved the utilization of metals by humans. Several major research discoveries on this broad topic were made in Iran and Iraq in the 1960s. I knew several of the researchers involved in the Shiraz experiment, which identified zinc deficiency in villagers in Iran. The fictional Doc Steinhaus in my thriller was a grad student research assistant in the Shiraz experiment. Later, he mentored Sara.

Then I supplemented my experiences with lots of research. I Saw you in Beirut is peppered with details on a variety of locations in the Middle East. Why not arm chair travel there?

In I Saw You in Beirut, a mysterious source of leaks on the Iranian nuclear industry, known only as F, sends an email from Tabriz: Help. Contact Almquist. Intelligence sources determine the message refers to Sara Almquist, a globetrotting epidemiologist, and seek her help to extract F from Iran. As Sara tries to identify F by dredging up memories about her student days at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and her work in Lebanon and the Emirates, groups ostensibly wanting to prevent F’s escape attack her repeatedly. She begins to suspect her current friendship with Sanders, a secretive State Department official, is the real reason she’s being attacked.

I Saw You in Beirut is available on Amazon.

NEWS FLASH: Win a free copy of this thrilleron GoodReads  between January 9-15, 2016.

https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/166390

JL Greger’s thrillers and mysteries include: Malignancy (winner of 2015 Public Safety Writers’ annual contest), Ignore the Pain, Murder: A New Way to Lose Weight, Coming Flu, and I Saw you in Beirut. Bug (shown in the picture) rules their house and is a character in all her novels. Her website is: http://www.jlgreger.com

The Inside Story on Biologists Who Become Writers

Today my friend biologist/author J.L. Greger gives some insight on why she writes. Welcome, Janet!

Did you ever wonder why so many physicians and other biologists write novels? Maybe we all secretly dream we’ll write a best seller like Michael Crichton, Robin Cook, or A.J. Cronin. Note: I said dream not expect. What are our other reasons?

Medical thrillers and mysteries are an opportunity to educate readers about science.

Like most scientists and physicians, I shrink into the corner when I hear acquaintances disparage all vaccines. I’m usually too polite, or maybe cowardly is a better word, to make comments, but these experiences remind me science literacy is suboptimal in the U.S.

The trick to doing science education in novels is to do it so gently the reader doesn’t realize (s)he learned a little science. Readers mainly want to be entertained.

Let me show how I turned science into a fast–moving adventure in my latest novel Malignancy. Recently Cuban scientists patented a therapeutic cancer vaccine to treat a rather rare type of lung cancer (non-small cell). This drug revs up a patient’s own immune system to produce cells, which recognize substances found on the surface of tumor cells but not on the surface of normal cells. These immune cells then slay the cancer cells, but not the normal cells.

Okay that’s a heavy dose of science. Boring!

What’s the social relevance? This patent demonstrates Cuban scientists are doing competitive science, and Cuba wants to market it through the free enterprise system. That suggests political changes in Cuba.

It’s getting more interesting. Right?

I also discovered U.S. scientists were trying to augment existing scientific exchanges between the U.S. and Cuba, despite the embargo on Cuba. Check out the editorial “Science diplomacy with Cuba” in the journal Science on June 6, 2014.

Now I’ve got the basis of sending Sara Almquist, a scientist and the heroine of my previous medical thrillers, to Cuba to do a little “scientific diplomacy.”

Let’s add a bit more info. Cuba is in a special trading alliance with Bolivia and Venezuela, and one of Bolivia’s biggest exports is coca and its derivatives (i.e. cocaine). I’ve got the ingredients for a thriller.

Accuracy is important in medical thrillers and mysteries, but shouldn’t seem labored.

In my third novel, Sara Almquist learns silver miners in Potosí, Bolivia carry little food or water into the mines. In order to endure the pain caused by thirst, hunger, and heavy exertion at a high altitude (13,000 feet), they chew coca leaves. The active ingredients in coca leaves and its derivative cocaine are not analgesics that dull pain. They are stimulants and help users ignore pain. Accordingly, I named the book Ignore the Pain not Dull the Pain, but didn’t discuss the pharmacological effects of coca.

Medical novels are a chance for biologists to introduce readers to their colleagues.

First off, I should note no character, except Bug, Sara Almquist’s Japanese Chin dog, in my novels is real. Bug (the character) is based on my own Japanese Chin named Bug. He is a pet therapy dog and a black and white ball of fuzz who outsmarts me daily.

Although I show my protagonist’s warts, I don’t trivialize her into being a bumbler, who clumsily forces her way into police investigations, as the authors of many cozies do. She’s a smart, attractive, and assertive (Isn’t that a nicer word than pushy?) middle-aged woman. Typical of many women scientists.

As an epidemiologist, Sara, in essence, is a professional snoop who analyzes all types of data to discover patterns, which suggest factors that increase or decrease the likelihood of health problems. The analyses of epidemiologists are sometimes the basis of public policies, and experienced epidemiologists are often public health consultants in foreign countries. Thus Sara’s trips to Bolivia in Ignore the Pain and Cuba in Malignancy are logical and allow me to show the locations from a different perspective than that of a tourist.

In Ignore the Pain, I tried to capture the sights, sounds, and smells of poverty in Bolivia. My description of how the indigenous people handle twins when the mother can’t produce enough milk is, I believe, a more effective way to illustrate the dire situations faced by many in Bolivia than to cite statistics, i.e. six percent of the children born in Bolivia die before their fifth birthday.

In Malignancy, Sara meets with sophisticated Cuban scientists who know much more about the U.S. than their counterparts, including Sara, know of Cuba.

Now do you want to know the rest of the story?

I’m a retired biology professor from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Bug and I live in the Southwest. My website is: http://www.jlgreger.com, my Amazon link is http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B008IFZSC4. I can be reached at jlgreger@oaktreebooks.com.

Here are thumbnail sketches of my novels:

● In the suspense novel, Coming Flu, learn whether the Philippine flu or a drug kingpin caught in the quarantine is more deadly. Coming Flu: http://amzn.com/1610090985

● In the medical mystery, Murder: A New Way to Lose Weight, discover whether an ambitious young “diet doctor” or an old-timer with buried secrets is the killer. Murder: A New Way to Lose Weight: http://amzn.com/1610090624

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