MY WRITING JOURNEY
by guest blogger Richard "Doc" Mabry
I retired from
medicine almost 20 years ago. The death of my first wife was devastating, but
God blessed me once more with the love of a wonderful woman, and within less
than a year, I planned to retire. I had been a solo practitioner for 20 years
before joining the faculty of a med school for the final 10 years of my
practice. I missed my patients, of course, as well as the daily contact with my
colleagues, but I looked forward to time spent writing.
I had been working on a book detailing my experiences after the death of my first wife, and through a number of fortunate experiences, it was eventually published as The Tender Scar: Life After The Death Of A Spouse. This non-fiction book is now in its second edition, and I looked upon it as the ministry I was called to by that event. But there was more to come.
At the urging of
several writers to “try my hand at fiction,” I began to write novels. I tried
forty times, but that door seemed closed. Then, when I had given up, an agent
said she’d represent me, and she presented my book to an editor who’d just been
charged with starting a fiction line. That book, which I called Run Away
Home, was published as Code Blue, and I
entered the whirlwind that was the life of a published author.
I won’t detail the
ups and downs of the next several years. But suffice it to say that fame and
fortune did not automatically follow. Then came the pandemic, and I didn’t
write during (or after) that time. My dear, sweet wife had been both my most
ardent supporter and my severest critic since I first started writing, and it
didn’t escape her notice that I had not written anything since my last work, Critical
Decision, was published in the spring of 2021.
I had (really,
without conscious thought) concluded that it was time for me to lay down my pen.
She disagreed. She suggested several ideas to me, but I couldn’t get them to
work. While her idea of a medical person trying write a mystery didn’t pan out,
in my writing I developed two characters who seemed to show promise—a nurse
with a bad experience after an almost-marriage and a widower doctor who had
never given thought about another marriage. Then I brought them together
through the heart trouble of the nurse’s mother. Soon I had populated the story with a few
additional characters, and eventually I had a novella written. There were
edits—lots of edits—after that, but I’m now ready to announce that Medical Mystery is available for pre-order.
Until its
“official” release on January 18, 2022, the Kindle version of my newest novella
will be available for 99 cents. Also, if you haven’t read it, my “Christmas
novella,” Silent Night, Deadly Night, is also available in Kindle format
for 99 cents until Christmas. And for whoever wins the print copy (when they
are available), if you’ve already pre-ordered the Kindle version of Medical
Mystery, I’ll give you a copy of one of my previous books. Sound fair?
If there’s a moral
to this tale, I guess it’s this: despite age, or infection, or political
upheaval, or whatever—if you’ve been given the gift of writing, it’s for a
reason. Don’t argue with God. Use the gift.