Dr.
John Benedict graduated cum laude from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and
entered medical school at Penn State University College of Medicine. While there, he also completed an internship,
anesthesia residency and a cardiac anesthesia fellowship. He currently works as
a physician/anesthesiologist in a busy private practice in Camp Hill,
Pennsylvania.
Dr. Benedict has been writing stories
since high school, but his creative side was put on hold to pursue a medical
education and start a family—he now has a wife and three sons. Finally, after a 15-year pause, his love of
writing was rekindled and his first novel, Adrenaline—a
gritty medical thriller with a realism borne of actual experience—was born.
Besides creating scary stories,
the hallmark of Dr. Benedict’s writing is genuine medical
authenticity—something in short supply these days in thriller fiction. He draws on his 25+ years of experience as a
board-certified anesthesiologist to infuse his writing with a realism that
renders it both vivid and frightening. As one of only a handful of
anesthesiologists throughout the country writing fiction, he gives readers a
taste of what really goes on in the operating room, the human drama inherent in
this high-stress, high stakes environment where lives are continually on the
line. Readers will find out what it’s
like to hold a patient’s life in their hands, as the author provides an
illuminating glimpse into the fascinating, but poorly understood realm of
anesthesia.
Purchase ADRENALINE on Amazon.
Questionnaire:
Thanks
for letting us interrogate you! Can you
give us a go-for-the-gut answer as to why you wanted to be an author?
I
am an anesthesiologist in real life. To illustrate the real reason I started
writing, I will need to relate a true story from 20 years ago:
One
day it struck me—at 2:00 in the morning in the midst of another grueling
24-hour shift. I had just finished interviewing a nice lady with an appendix
about to burst—we’ll call her Linda. I had done my best not to yawn as I went
through the routine questions that an anesthesiologist is obliged to ask. She
appeared nervous, which soon gave way to tears. I did my best to comfort her,
took her hand, told her I would take good care of her. That I would watch over
her carefully in the operating room and see her through surgery. And be there
when she woke up in the recovery room. She appeared to calm down a bit. I
wrapped up my pre-op assessment and asked her to sign the anesthesia consent
form, while assuring her the risks would be minimal. She raised her eyebrows at
this and the fearful look returned. I wondered: What the hell does minimal
mean when you’re talking about life and death? More tears. She told me of
her two young daughters at home that desperately needed a mommy. I felt my own
throat tighten. I quickly buried my emotions, tried not to think about my wife
and three sons, and focused on the task at hand as we wheeled her litter back
down the hall to the OR.
After
Linda was safely tucked in the recovery room, operation a success, anesthetic
uncomplicated, I lay down in the call room to try to catch a couple of z’s. My
mind wandered as I lay there. Rarely, I thought, does a person willingly
surrender control of their mind and body to a virtual stranger. Yet, this is exactly
what happens when the person is a patient being wheeled in for surgery and the
stranger is their anesthesiologist, whom they have just met minutes beforehand.
Talk about an extraordinary amount of trust. This degree of trust made a
distinct impression on me that night, some twenty years ago.
Other
thoughts followed soon thereafter. What if the trust Linda had exhibited
earlier was ill-conceived and her doctor was actually bad? Not just incompetent
or sleepy, but downright evil. Being an avid reader of thrillers, I thought
this chilling concept would make for a good story. Too bad I wasn’t a writer.
(Disclaimer time: I don’t want to scare people here. All the docs I have known
in my 30 years of medical practice are highly competent professional people,
who would never purposely hurt anyone.) But I still couldn’t shake the evil
concept; it kept gnawing at me until eventually I had to put it down on
paper—lack of writing experience be damned. So Adrenaline was birthed,
my first medical thriller novel that explores this issue of absolute trust
implicit in the anesthesiologist-patient relationship—specifically, what
happens when that trust is abused and replaced by fear. Adrenaline
was finally published twelve years after my encounter with Linda.
Tell us (we won’t tell
promise!) is it all it’s cracked up to be?
I mean what are the perks and what are the demands?
The demands are easy
to list: The goal of getting published requires hard work and perseverance and
an enormous investment of time. And you
must believe in yourself, even when no one else seems to. It’s also helpful to have thick skin when it
comes to handling lots of rejection letters and one-star reviews. Write because you enjoy the process, not
because you think big success (and money) is right around the corner. The perks are as follows: 1) getting a 5-star
review from a reader who falls in love with your story and can’t wait to read
the next one. 2) getting picked up by a mainstream publisher who loves your
work. 3) getting critical acclaim by a recognized national review
organization. 4) watching your Amazon
sales rank soar.
Which route did you take –
traditional or self-published – and can you give us the nitty gritty low down
on what’s that like?
You must realize the
journey is long. Good agents and
interested editors are very hard to find.
I sent out literally hundreds of query letters to agents and even
managed to hook up with several poor agents.
This was primarily an exercise in frustration. Finally, I attended multiple writing
conferences and did manage to get signed by a reputable agent. I thought my
journey was near its end. However, I learned that even finding a decent agent
doesn’t guarantee selling your book to a mainstream publisher. My agent
couldn’t sell my book. Finally, I
decided to go the self-publishing route.
This proved to be the way to go for me.
I chose CreateSpace, which worked fine for me—there are several other
good alternatives out there. Be prepared
to pay a small amount to get your book published—it pays to price-shop. Once set up, you can sell your book as an
inexpensive ebook on Amazon (and elsewhere).
The internet is an extremely valuable sales platform and if your book is
half-decent, it can spread by word-of-mouth alone. Readers leave reviews and rate your book and
this can attract new readers. I’m
pleased to report that Adrenaline
sold very well as a Kindle ebook. In 2014, over 80,000 copies were downloaded
from Amazon pushing it to the #1 paid medical thriller. I also picked up over 400 reader reviews
(mostly 5-star). Armed with these sales
numbers and positive reader reviews, I was finally able to attract a mainstream
publisher for my third medical thriller, Fatal
Complications, due out in December 2015.
Tell
us for real what your family feels about you spending so much time getting your
book written, polished, edited, formatted, published, what have you?
Eventually your family comes to
the realization that you are serious about your writing and it is more than a
hobby. Until you reach this point,
however, you will need to carve out time to write and this can be difficult. In
the beginning, I would try to get up early on a Sunday morning and head to the
library—I would finish up in a couple of hours and make it back home before
anyone was awake. Ideally, you’ll have an understanding spouse who will indulge
your dream of becoming an author. As
everything in life, it’s a balancing act and you must try hard not to alienate
your family in the process of writing your novel.
Your pets actually get their food on time or do
they have to wait until you type just one more word?
Luckily, I have a wife and
three children, so between the five of us, the dog always managed to get
fed—mostly on time.
Are they actually still alive?
Do plants need water? Who knew?
In
writing your book, how did you deal with the phone ringing, your family needing
dinner or your boss calling you saying you’re late?
I always needed to go to a
library or super quiet place away from phone, internet, TV and family—otherwise
I would just waste my time with distractions.
What
was the craziest or insane thing that happened to you in the book publishing
process?
This is gonna sound dumb, but I’ll never forget this
moment. Amazon lets you do a 5-day free
sale every so often on your books. So, I
ran a BookBub promo on Adrenaline for
5 days. I was traveling at the time, so
I checked my numbers on my phone at a rest stop. By noon of the first day,
50,000 e-books had been downloaded. I
thought for sure it was a mistake, signal glitch or I was simply reading it
wrong. However, by the end of the fifth
day, over 80,000 books had gone out.
This was way beyond anything in my experience. Even though the books went out for free and I
didn’t make a dime, the exposure was awesome and I picked up over 400 reader
reviews in short order.
How
about the social networks? Which ones do
you believe help and which ones do you wish you could avoid?
I’m not convinced that Facebook
or Twitter ever helped me that much.
Perhaps if you devoted enough time to them and had zillions of
friends/followers it would make a difference.
But then where would you get the time to actually write? I’ve found Goodreads to be pretty useful—the
members are definitely into books, although they tend to be a more critical
bunch.
Book
sales. Don’t you just love them (or lack
of?)? How are you making the sales
happen for you?
This is the tough one—where the
rubber meets the road.
My
experience is that there are two basic ways to improve sales. The first is to write a good book, which will
garner good reviews. Good reviews are
huge in determining who will buy your book.
The more, the better.
Word-of-mouth matters. The second way to goose sales is by dropping the
prices on your books from time to time to attract new readers. For instance, if you have more than one book,
you can drop the price on the first one (or offer it for free for a limited
time) in an effort to gain new readers.
The theory goes, if they like your stuff, they’ll come back and pay full
freight for your other books. Even if
you only have one book, it’s still worthwhile to drop the price to attract
readers and hopefully get some reviews, which are all-important.
In
addition, if you can advertise with Bookbub or similar outfits, you can
maximize your results. You may have to
pay something to make something.
What
is one thing you’d like to jump on the rooftop and scream about?
The publishing industry has
undergone massive changes in the last ten years. Self-publishing no longer has the stigma that
it once had. Many people want to write a
book and now is a great time to do so. I
believe a very viable strategy is to self-publish first and try to establish a
track record of sales and good reviews (sadly, there’s no substitute for
writing a decent story). After you have
done this, then you approach an agent or editor and make your pitch. In this
ultra-competitive environment, you’ll have a much better chance of getting
picked up this way by a traditional publisher and save yourself a lot of the
rejection pain.
Okay,
too much sugar for you today! Here’s a
nice cup of Chamomile tea and come on over and sit under the cabana and watch
the waves roll in. Now…can you tell us
what you love about being a published author and how all those things above
doesn’t matter because it’s all part of the whole scheme of things and you
wouldn’t have it any other way?
OK, it’s the perks of being a
writer that I mentioned above that make it all worthwhile. Writers, I believe become addicted to readers
praising their books. Above all, writers
crave the validation of their work that comes from satisfied readers. So, as long as the praise is forthcoming, the
writer can easily ignore all the hard work and pain of actually producing a
novel. It’s also pretty cool to see a
shiny new hardback on the shelves at Barnes and Noble, or to see someone
reading your book in public.
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