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Melissa Yi’s GRAVEYARD SHIFT is #121 in the
never-ending series called INSIDE THE EMOTION OF FICTION where the Chris Rice
Cooper Blog (CRC) focuses on one specific excerpt from a fiction genre and how
that fiction writer wrote that specific excerpt. All INSIDE THE EMOTION OF FICTION links are
at the end of this piece.
Name
of fiction work? And were there other
names you considered that you would like to share with us? GRAVEYARD
SHIFT. Let me tell you, this was a tough one. Next
contender: Night Shift. In the
end, I thought Graveyard Shift was
more descriptive, even though I call them night shifts or nights myself. Either
way, Stephen King has a lock on both Graveyard
Shift and Night Shift!
Code White: some readers voted
against this because the first book is named Code Blues Remains Silent: I do like this, because it's creepy,
implying both forced silence and death, but Hope Sze #5 is Human Remains, which I thought was confusing
Has
this been published? And it is totally fine if the answer is no. If yes, what publisher and what publication
date?
Nov 1/19 with Windtree Press, https://windtreepress.com/portfolio/graveyard-shift/
What
is the date you began writing this piece of fiction and the date when you
completely finished the piece of fiction?
Hmm. I'd have to check. It took me almost a year, because I started it before NaNoWriMo 2018, where you write 50,000 words in November, and I was still doing edits in August 2019. I wrote another novel in between, The Age of Secrets, which is set in Ecuador and the Galapagos. (Left: Overlooking the Nile at the Old Cataract Hotel in Aswan, Egypt)
Where
did you do most of your writing for this fiction work? And please
describe in detail.
Gosh. I wrote part of it in
Egypt. My photos were mostly wiped out (remember, kids, back up your work and
your photos!), but I have a few pictures of the Red Sea and the Nile. Right)
What
were your writing habits while writing this work- did you drink something as you
wrote, listen to music, write in pen and paper, directly on laptop; specific time
of day?
Mostly, I wrote on my MacBook
Pro, which is limping along at the end of its life. Hang in there, buddy.
You're only seven years old! I bought an iPad with a keyboard case, which was
fast but its memory got completed clogged up, so I finally bought a desktop
iMac. Yea, verily, this was an expensive year. All that switching around
between devices was part of the reason I lost my photos.
I prefer to write in the morning,
after my kids get on the school bus, and take a nap before I start a new task for
the afternoon. Ideally, I do yoga before they get up.
Psst! Sometimes, I relax and walk
our Rottweiler, Roxy,(Right) to get my 10,000 steps a day. Writing is MUCH more chill
than working as an emergency room doctor, which is my day/night job, so I try
to enjoy the flexibility.
What
is the summary of this specific fiction work? Three word summary: Worst. Night. Shift. Ever.
Official blurb:
Drugs. Alcohol. Violence. Chaos.
All in a night’s work for Dr.
Hope Sze, aspiring Montreal emergency physician—until someone tries to strangle
her with her own stethoscope. Then Hope’s lover disappears.
A second woman barely escapes
throttling before her beloved vanishes too. Hope slogs through the pneumonia
and hemorrhoid patients cramming the ER while a psychopath stalks the empty,
post-midnight hallways of St. Joseph’s Hospital. Waiting. Waiting patiently. Until
everything explodes.
Can
you give the reader just enough information for them to understand what is
going on in the excerpt?
Dr. Hope Sze, an emergency
physician in training, confronts a drug addict.
Please
include the excerpt and include page numbers as reference. The excerpt
can be as short or as long as you prefer.
p. 1-3:
"I just need a refill,
doc." The emaciated, over-tanned woman glared at me from the black vinyl
bed of St. Joseph's ER exam room number 4. "I ran out over the holidays.
My stomach hurts so bad, I want to puke."
"Right, Ms. Goody," I
said, eyeing the crumpled bag of chips she'd tossed at the garbage can and
missed. Whenever the triage nurse wants to indicate that the patient's 10/10
abdominal pain is B.S., she'll write, Says pain 10/10. Eating chips.
And guess what? Narcotic addicts
often complain about stomach pain, nausea, and vomiting.
It was 23:06, Lori Goody was my
inaugural patient on my first emergency room night shift back in Montreal, and
I was in no mood for bull when I had nine horrid hours to go.
I handed back her empty, yellow
pill bottle. "The problem is, you refilled this prescription a week ago.
You should have enough Dilaudid to last you until next month. It’s only January
eleventh."
The patient pushed herself into a
sitting position, her brown eyes narrowed behind fake eyelashes. Since she
looked like Miss Anorexia, I secretly marvelled that she had enough muscle mass
to prop herself up. "What’s your problem? You a doctor?"
"Yes. I’m Dr. Sze." I
showed her my badge and adjusted the stethoscope hung around the back of my
neck.
"We're trying not to
prescribe narcotics because over 17,000 Americans died from prescription
opioids in 2017." It hit Canada, too—about half that number in the past
two years—although most of them overdosed on synthetic Fentanyl bought
unlabeled on the street. "Ms. Goody, I checked the blood work from your
last visit. Your potassium was slightly high—"
She waved her hand at me. "I
heard of you. Hope Sze." She pronounced it like Zee, which is close
enough. "You’re the one who’s always running around with murderers."
Stung, I said, "I don’t run
around. I've solved a few cases—"
"Get me a real doctor. One
who's not in school anymore, and one who doesn’t think she’s the police."
I glanced at the door behind me.
I could grab the supervising physician. Even though I'm a doctor, I'm what used
to be called an intern, and I think patients have the right to refuse trainees.
On the other hand, I'd have to
bug Dr. Chia, who was finishing up her evening shift with me on the ambulatory,
or walk-in, side. I’d already messed up an intubation with Dr. Chia at the
beginning of my medical residency six months ago.
No, I'd battle it out for a few
minutes with a narcotic-seeking patient instead of immediately weeping on my
staff. I tried to smile. "Ms. Goody, I am an M.D. doing my post-graduate
residency training—"
"Right. You're a resident.
That's useless. Get me the real doctor."
I sucked in my cheeks and checked
the door to my left and then the one behind me again, wishing that Lori Goody
would take off.
The white-walled examining room
barely felt big enough for the two of us plus the examining room bed, a chair,
and the newly-added ledge that squashed me against the right wall as I checked
the monitor for St. Joe's brand new electronic record system, SARKET.
"Got it? Or maybe you no
understand Engleesh?" The patient jabbed a pink acrylic nail at me.
Oh, my God. She'd noticed my Asian
heritage and was trying to mimic a Chinese accent. My instinct was to face
punch her, but as a doctor, you have to act professionally and smile even
though patients will report you at the drop of a nun's cap.
"Maybe because you're too
busy making Fentanyl?"
Ugh. She must have read those
headlines like China Is Poisoning America With Fentanyl. I gazed at her,
ignoring her T-shirt slogan, BL♥W ME, I'M IRISH. "Actually, China made
Fentanyl a controlled substance, Ms. Goody—"
"For fuck's sake. Get me the
real doctor. My heart is racing. You're giving me a heart attack." She
placed her palm on her chest and hyperventilated, exaggerating the stringy
tendons of her neck as well as minimal boobage.
Lori Goody was 35 years old.
She'd only have a heart attack with seriously nasty genes and/or cocaine and
speed.
Although, speaking of drugs, she
had that look, the one my new boyfriend, Tucker, called "rode hard and put
away wet": bleached brown hair, darker skin than me even though she was
white enough to insult my ancestry, uneven teeth, frosted pink lipstick that
might have looked good a few decades ago, and grimy running shoes with no socks
despite the icy January weather.
I approached her cautiously,
reaching for the navy stethoscope draping the back of my neck. "I can
listen to your heart—"
She seized both ends of the
stethoscope and wrenched them in opposite directions, to strangle me.
Why
is this excerpt so emotional for you? And can you describe your own
emotional experience of writing this specific excerpt?
It's maddening that a patient
tries to strangle Hope, but that's the reality we face. Hospital staff get
attacked all the time. One of the nurses in the book says, "I've been kicked, I've been punched ... "
That's a direct quote. I've
tended to nurses who've been bitten, hit, and throttled. One doctor broke a rib
or two in a fistfight with a patient. No one talks about how it's dangerous to
deal with sick people, at night, with minimal security.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/epidemic-of-violence-against-health-care-workers-plagues-hospitals/
That said, this is not an
emotional excerpt for me. I turn my emotions off when I step through the doors
of the emergency room. I couldn't do my job if I allowed myself to feel
everyone's emotions. Of course the staff does cry. I especially remember a code
on a child where the orderly did chest compressions with tears pouring down her
face. But I, personally, try to feel compassion without overt tears. When a
life is at stake, I try to follow the algorithm and make clear decisions.
Crying can come later.
That's probably why a patient
called me "the most unfeeling doctor I've ever met," which inspired
my non-fiction series.
Were
there any deletions from this excerpt that you can share with us?
I changed her T-shirt slogan a few times. If you look up offensive
T-shirts online, lots of them were for St. Patrick's Day, which seemed
appropriate for Lori Goody. I played with "I ♥ FUN" before
I settled on "BL♥W ME, I'M IRISH."
Other
works you have published?
ZOMG. This is the seventh Hope
Sze book. I've also written other mysteries like The Italian School for Assassins (Octavia, a mild-mannered public
servant, joins an assassin school on a lark and falls in love—and murder), romances
like The List (where a soon-to-be
divorcee makes a list of all the guys she coulda-woulda-shoulda and decides to
run through them all simultaneously), and fantasy and science fiction and
medical essays under the name Melissa Yi.
Anything
you would like to add?
No one has asked me about emotion in my work before, so thanks for that. I do feel more emotional about other scenes, and readers have told me that they've cried over my books, but I tend to reserve emotion for later. Gotta take me out to dinner first!
Melissa
Yi wields a
stethoscope and a scalpel as an emergency physician. She also pens the Hope Sze
medical thrillers, which have been named one of the best Canadian suspense
books by the Globe and Mail, CBC Books, and The Next Chapter. Yi was a finalist
for the Arthur Ellis Award for best crime story in Canada and shortlisted for
the Derringer Award for the best short mystery fiction in the English language.
Sometimes, she sleeps.
Connect with her on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/MelissaYiYuanInnes
Twitter (@dr_sassy), or best of
all, www.melissayuaninnes.com
INSIDE THE EMOTION OF
FICTION links
001 11 15 2018 Nathaniel
Kaine’s
Thriller Novel
John
Hunter – The Veteran
002 11 18 2018 Ed
Protzzel’s
Futuristic/Mystery/Thriller
The
Antiquities Dealer
003 11 23 2018 Janice
Seagraves’s
Science
Fiction Romance
Exodus
Arcon
004 11 29 2018
Christian Fennell’s
Literary
Fiction Novel
The Fiddler
in the Night
005 12 02 2018 Jessica
Mathews’s
Adult
Paranormal Romance
Death
Adjacent
006 12 04 2018 Robin Jansen’s
Literary
Fiction Novel
Ruby the
Indomitable
007 12 12 2018 Adair Valerez’s
Literary
Fiction Novel
Scrim
008 12 17 218
Kit Frazier’s
Mystery Novel
Dead Copy
009 12 21 2019 Robert Craven’s
Noir/Spy Novel
The Road
of a Thousand Tigers
010 01 13 2019 Kristine Goodfellow’s
Contemporary
Romantic Fiction
The Other
Twin
011 01 17 2019 Nancy J Cohen’s
Cozy Mystery
Trimmed To
Death
012 01 20 2019 Charles Salzberg’s
Crime Novel
Second
Story Man
013 01 23 2019 Alexis Fancher’s
Flash Fiction
His Full
Attention
014 01 27 2019 Brian L Tucker’s
Young Adult/Historical
POKEWEED: AN ILLUSTRATED NOVELLA
015 01 31 2019 Robin Tidwell’s
Dystopian
Reduced
016 02 07 2019 J.D. Trafford’s
Legal
Fiction/Mystery
Little Boy
Lost
017 02 08 2019 Paula Shene’s
Young Adult
ScieFi/Fantasy/Romance/Adventure
My Quest
Begins
018 02 13 2019 Talia Carner’s
Mainstream
Fiction/ Suspense/ Historical
Hotel
Moscow
019 02 15 2019 Rick Robinson’s
Multidimensional
Fiction
Alligator
Alley
020 02 21 2019 LaVerne Thompson’s
Urban Fantasy
The Soul
Collectors
021 02 27 2019 Marlon L Fick’s
Post-Colonialist
Novel
The
Nowhere Man
022 03 02 2019 Carol Johnson’s
Mainstream
Novel
Silk And
Ashes
023 03 06 2019 Samuel Snoek-Brown’s
Short Story
Collection
There Is
No Other Way to Worship Them
024 03 08 2019 Marlin Barton’s
Short Story
Collection
Pasture
Art
025 03 18 2019 Laura Hunter’s
Historical
Fiction
Beloved
Mother
026 03 21 2019 Maggie Rivers’s
Romance
Magical
Mistletoe
027 03 25 2019 Faith
Gibson’s
Paranormal
Romance
Rafael
028 03 27 2019 Valerie Nieman’s
Tall Tale
To The
Bones
029 04 04 2019 Betty Bolte’s
Paranormal
Romance
Veiled
Visions of Love
030 04 05 2019 Marianne
Maili’s
Tragicomedy
Lucy, go
see
031 04 10 2019 Gregory Erich Phillips’s
Mainstream
Fiction
The Exile
032 04 15 2019 Jason Ament’s
Speculative
Fiction
Rabid Dogs
033 04 24 2019 Stephen P. Keirnan’s
Historical
Novel
The
Baker’s Secret
034 05 01 2019 George Kramer’s
Fantasy
Arcadis:
Prophecy Book
035 05 05 2019 Erika Sams’s
Adventure/Fantasy/Romance
Rose of Dance
036 05 07 2019 Mark Wisniewski’s
Literary
Fiction
Watch Me
Go
037 05 08 2019 Marci Baun’s
Science
Fiction/Horror
The
Whispering House
038 05 10 2019 Suzanne M. Wolfe’s
Historical
Fiction
Murder By
Any Name
039 05 12 2019 Edward DeVito’s
Historical/Fantasy
The
Woodstock Paradox
040 05 14 2019 Gytha Lodge’s
Literary/Crime
She Lies
In Wait
041 05 16 2019 Kari Bovee’s
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Fiction/Mystery
Peccadillo
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042 05 20 2019 Annie Seaton’s
Time Travel
Romance
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043 05 22 2019 Paula Rose Michelson’s
Inspirational
Christian Romance
Rosa &
Miguel – Love’s Legacy: Prequel to The Naomi
Chronicles
044 05 24 2019 Gracie C McKeever’s
BDMS/Interracial
Romance
On The
Edge
045 06 03 2019 Micheal Maxwell’s
Mystery
The Soul
of Cole
046 06 04 2019 Jeanne Mackin’s
Historical
The Last
Collection: A Novel of Elsa Schiaparelli
and
Coco
Chanel
047 06 07 2019 Philip Shirley’s
Suspense/Thriller
The
Graceland Conspiracy
048 06 08 2019 Bonnie Kistler’s
Domestic
Suspense
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on Fire
049 06 13 2019 Barbara Taylor Sissel’s
Domestic
Suspense/Family Drama
Tell No
One
050 06 18 2019 Charles Salzberg’s
Short Story/
Crime Fiction
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051 06 19 2019 Rita Dragonette’s
Historical
Fiction
The
Fourteenth of September
052 06 20 2019 Nona
Caspers’s
Literary
Novel/Collage
The Fifth
Woman
053 06 26 2019 Jeri Westerson’s
Paranormal
Romance
Shadows in
the Mist
054 06 28 2019 Brian Moreland’s
Horror
The
Devil’s Woods
055 06 29 2019
Epic Fantasy
Wings
Unseen
056 07 02 2019 Randee Green’s
Mystery Novel
Criminal
Misdeeds
057 07 03 2019 Saralyn Ricahrd’s
Mystery Novel
Murder In
The One Percent
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Domestic Suspense
Her Secret
Son
#059 07 05 2019 Sonia Saikaley’s
Contemporary
Women’s Literature
The
Allspice Bath
#060 07 09 2019 Olivia Gaines’s
Romance
Suspense Serial
Blind Luck
#061 07 11 2019 Anne Raeff’s
Literary
Fiction
Winter
Kept Us Warm
#062 07 12 2918 Vic Sizemore’s
Literary
Fiction-Short Stories
I Love You
I’m Leaving
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Dark
Paranormal Urban Fantasy
THE ORPHANS
BOOK ONE: THE LOST RACE
TRILOGY
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Fiction
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SINS
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BITTER
WATER
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Novel
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LIST
069 08 08 2019 Diana Y. Paul’s
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Mainstream Fiction
THINGS
UNSAID
070 08 10 2019 Phyllis H. Moore’s
Women’s
Historical Fiction
BIRDIE
& JUDE
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Fiction
TINSMITH 1865
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Breckinridge’s
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Collection
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& OTHER STORIES
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Fiction
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Matthew Goldberg’s
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Thriller
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P.I.
THE BIG
CRESCENDO
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Monarchs
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with Scientific Bent
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Suspense
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#88 10 14 2019 Kate Maruyama’s
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DEAL”
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BEHIND”
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Fiction:
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#95
11 03 2019 Jay Requard’s
Dark Fantasy/Horror
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& DUST: THE PALE SAND ADVENTURES”
#96
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Fiction
“WITH
OR WITHOUT YOU”
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Science
Fiction
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Tale
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Killers’
https://chrisricecooper.blogspot.com/2019/11/98-inside-emotion-of-fiction-god.html
https://chrisricecooper.blogspot.com/2019/11/98-inside-emotion-of-fiction-god.html
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Historical
Literary Fiction
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Historical/Contemporary/Duel
Timeline/ Women’s
Fiction
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Weird
Western/Contemporary Fantasy
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#120 01 09 2020 Terry Kroenung’s
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#121 01 12 2020 Melissa Yi’s
Fiction
Thriller
“GRAVEYARD SHIFT”
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