The spark that became the basis of the story of By My Side came from a dressing down I received from a consultant surgeon when I was a junior doctor. That, I have to assure you, was far from romantic. A junior doctor at the time, I was hauled into an office by a scary consultant in a temper, not something I would usually think of as romantic, but I had the urge to write a ‘we hated each other, we loved each other’ story and I had the first part sorted... Having first-hand experience of working on the wards, hospital life was somewhere I felt comfortable to start and so I took it from there.
Putting in too much medical knowledge was something I was very aware of. You forget when you’re in a particular profession, (or have been, in my case) how little everyone else knows about these things, and I didn’t want the book to read like a letter from the bank manager or a lawyer – you know, when you only understand about every third word, so I asked a non-medic to read it before I sent it in.
The other new thing for me, was the ‘story within a story’. This was something I wanted to try, having fallen in love with The Notebook. Writing feeling into two separate stories in very different ways was brilliant, and this was my attempt to try it.
Mostly, though, I love a good weepy and by the end of this book, I cried every time I read it and I have to tell you, with writing a book, unless you’re a seasoned vet, you read it a lot! But my theory is, if I don’t feel the emotion, how on earth is anyone else going to.
Next time I’m going to tell you about the first real person I ever put in a book…
http://www.harperimpulseromance.com/books/by-my-side
Putting in too much medical knowledge was something I was very aware of. You forget when you’re in a particular profession, (or have been, in my case) how little everyone else knows about these things, and I didn’t want the book to read like a letter from the bank manager or a lawyer – you know, when you only understand about every third word, so I asked a non-medic to read it before I sent it in.
The other new thing for me, was the ‘story within a story’. This was something I wanted to try, having fallen in love with The Notebook. Writing feeling into two separate stories in very different ways was brilliant, and this was my attempt to try it.
Mostly, though, I love a good weepy and by the end of this book, I cried every time I read it and I have to tell you, with writing a book, unless you’re a seasoned vet, you read it a lot! But my theory is, if I don’t feel the emotion, how on earth is anyone else going to.
Next time I’m going to tell you about the first real person I ever put in a book…
http://www.harperimpulseromance.com/books/by-my-side
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