Open-minded?

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For the open-minded . . .

Most people see themselves as open-minded. They also see themselves as being correct in their beliefs. So, what happens when those beliefs are confronted by differing facts—not opinion, but facts? Just how open does that mind remain?

You need only observe a Facebook comment thread to see that truly open minds are as rare as common sense these days. The CDC and mainstream media say that vaccines are safe and effective—critical for public health—and no number of scientific studies refuting that will sway your belief. You hear that such-and-such politician is a liar, racist, and morally corrupt, and the lack of factual proof of those claims makes no difference.  Or the reverse—a person you revere remains a “saint” despite evidence of his or her corruption. When faced with reality—again, facts, not hearsay—what does such a person do? Give it critical thought? Seek out unbiased information? Search out other opinions? In the multiple-choice answer, it’s “None of the above.”

In the 1950s, a name was given to this psychological tension caused by conflicting ideas and beliefs: “Cognitive dissonance, the mental conflict that occurs when beliefs or assumptions are contradicted by new information. The unease or tension that the conflict arouses in people is relieved by one of several defensive maneuvers: they reject, explain away, or avoid the new information; persuade themselves that no conflict really exists; reconcile the differences; or resort to any other defensive means of preserving stability or order in their conceptions of the world and of themselves. The concept was developed in the 1950s by American psychologist Leon Festinger and became a major point of discussion and research.”[Britannica.com]

Lawyers deal with this repeatedly in the courtroom. In medicine, we see it daily when someone insists on being prescribed an antibiotic for a viral illness. On social media, the most common reaction seems to be lashing out at the source of such new information with name calling, insults, libel, and other verbal attacks. On many university campuses today, the reaction is disruptive protest or even violence. Forget free speech and civil discourse. Forget being open-minded.

Although the condition now has a “name,” it’s nothing new. Mankind hasn’t changed. In the Bible, we read of this condition in many places in both the Old and New Testaments. Isaiah speaks of men’s idolatrous folly, saying, “They know not, nor do they discern, for he has shut their eyes, so that they cannot see, and their hearts, so that they cannot understand.” [Isaiah 44:18] Ezekiel also spoke to this condition, “Son of man, you dwell in the midst of a rebellious house, who has eyes to see, but see not, who have ears to hear, but hear not, for they are a rebellious house.” [Ezekiel 12:2] Moses in Deuteronomy 29:4, Jeremiah 5:21, David in the Psalms, Matthew, Mark, Luke, Paul, and others all speak of having eyes that do not see, ears that do not hear, and hearts that do not understand. Human nature is just that, human.

In each of the situations presented in these scriptures, the people fought to preserve their concept of an orderly world as well as their self images. However, to do so was then described as rebellion because they did not seek God’s answer to the problem. Why? Because God is the answer.

And therein lays perhaps the greatest cause of cognitive dissonance, being confronted by God’s truth, which is absolute, or maybe by the very idea of God’s existence. Evolution? It’s diametrically opposed to God and His creation. You cannot reconcile the two, despite many attempts to do so over the past 160 years. The LGBTQI lifestyle? To live it, you must reject God’s truth. Abortion? Try explaining away the murder of innocent life to God when His judgment comes. Religion? God says there is only one way into His kingdom, not the ecumenical teaching that all paths lead to God. That same way is the solution to the psychological turmoil of cognitive dissonance.

What one way is the answer? Christ. Through God’s grace He not only gives us access to Him through Christ, He offers us eyes to see, ears to hear, and hearts to understand. In Matthew, Jesus tells us, “This is why I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. Indeed, in their case the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled that says: ‘You will indeed hear but never understand, and you will indeed see but never perceive. For this people’s heart has grown dull, and with their ears they can barely hear, and their eyes they have closed, lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart and turn, and I would heal them.’ But blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear.” [Matthew 13:13-16] Who is it with eyes that see and ears that hear? Followers of Christ.

So, where do you stand?

If you’re one of those followers, you’re probably saying “Amen” after reading this. If you’re not a follower, you’re likely feeling some agitation and trying to reason away what I’ve written. The good news is that God’s eyes are always seeing and His ears always hear. Maybe you should ask Him for help in finding the truth. I speak from experience. He led me away from agnosticism and opened my eyes and unstopped my ears. Isn’t it time for you to join the truly open-minded?

Why thrillers?

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So, I’m asked, why do you write suspense and thrillers? The simple answer is that I write what I like to read. I’ve always enjoyed an edge-of-the-seat reading experience. You know, the kind of book where it’s one in the morning and you have go to work at eight, but want to read one more chapter first. Then, three chapters later you finally give in to your need for sleep. Which genre of books gives you that? For me, it’s suspense and thrillers. But a good thriller isn’t just a string of action scenes. There has to be strong characters with real-life relationships. And there has to be a message of some kind for me to close the book and feel fulfilled. A good book moves you along with the plot while rooting for the characters. A great book has depth and gets you thinking about more than the story line and whether or not the guy gets the girl.

Have I succeeded in writing the kind of book I like to read? I can only say, I hope so. I realize that not everyone enjoys all genres. Those that do are “rare birds.” But I hope that I’m delivering a message that can get every reader thinking, while also giving her a story that keeps her involved, and maybe keeps her up ‘til the wee hours of the morning. I write a mix of thrillers, from medical to political to general police. Most of my stories revolve around issues of social injustice – human trafficking, medical kidnapping, and property rights – or, more recently, looking into Biblical prophecies and how they’re being fulfilled today. (Do you know who sits on David’s throne today?)

As a Christian, I write from my Christian worldview. That doesn’t mean I’m writing my books “for the choir.” My desire is to reach everyone with the message I believe God wants me to impart. After all, these are issues that affect us all, whether directly or indirectly. Still, I honor my beliefs by writing “clean” fiction. You won’t find explicit sex, profanity, or the Lord’s Name taken in vain in my books. Yes, the characters might find themselves in very worldly situations, but that’s the world we live in, the same world Jesus walked in despite our technological advances. As Solomon said, “There’s nothing new under the sun.”

Again, why do I write suspense and thrillers? Maybe my simple answer isn’t so straightforward after all, because the books I like to read are not typically “simple” books. A moving plot. Real-life characters caught up in true-to-life situations. A theme or message that makes you think beyond the story. Not to mention, a story presented from a Godly point-of-view. That’s the kind of book I like to read. I hope I’ve succeeded in writing such books as well.

What if?

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What if … that’s the beginning of every story. What? No, I’m sorry. It’s not “Once upon a time, in a land far, far away.” It’s really “what if.” What if … a troll lived under a bridge and liked to eat goats. What if … loving parents on a dying planet shot their baby to Earth, where he had super powers and grew up to represent the American way.

Or, what if … you lost the most important thing in your life. The Bible’s Parable of the Lost Coin tells of the great lengths to which one woman goes to find one lost coin, one out of ten. Yet, what if that “thing” wasn’t an item, but a person? What would you do to find him?

Every story begins with a premise, a “what if.” From there you add the characters and around the characters, you build a plot and give it a locale. Sometimes those characters are like your children, and head in directions you don’t necessarily want them to go. It’s true. Even though the author creates them, and places them in a world of the author’s creation, they go off on tangents, throw tantrums, or get stuck in old habits. I’m often surprised when one of my characters does or says something I never planned for her to do or say. They do take on a “life” of their own. Sometimes they wander down a path they shouldn’t be on and need an obstacle thrown in their way to “ease” them in the right direction. At other times, it might require a hard kick in the seat. Sound familiar? Is your back side as sore as mine?

So, how does this apply to my story, Indebted? Without giving away spoilers, the story is one of loss, and ultimately, hope and redemption. Young Alice Cummings lost her mother to cancer when Alice was ten, and she was raised in rural, western North Carolina by her alcoholic father. Her search for love and family leads her to get pregnant out-of-wedlock, in an era when that was not socially acceptable, the late 1960’s. Upon returning home, her father makes good his earlier threat and takes the baby one night, and “sells” him. That’s where the tale begins.

But every story needs a middle and an ending, too. What does Alice do? How can she find her son when she’s a young, unemployed runaway? What problems will she encounter? While the heart of the story is her search for love and a family, it’s her encounters along the way, and the obstacles she overcomes, that add the flesh, bone, and sinew to a narrative that keeps you reading, wanting to know what comes next.

Still, I wasn’t fully settled with the idea of a single, straight-line narrative. Oh no, I had to make it hard on myself, give myself a challenge, and add a second plot line. In this one, current day, best-selling author, Myra Mitchell has a life-changing complication thrown into her path. She’s the “Diva of Disaster” who now faces a calamity like one she might throw at one of her own characters. Will she have enough time to write one final book to leave as her legacy? She finds … oh wait, I promised no spoilers. So, how will her story intertwine with that of Alice Cummings?

The idea for this yarn came to me in that quiet, half-sleep period just before waking for the day. My wife is continually amazed when I wake up and tell her I just had an idea for a book, or that I figured out how to solve a plot hole. She doesn’t, however, buy it when I tell her I have writer’s block and use that as an excuse to take an afternoon nap. Hmmm… Seriously, a few years back I wanted to enter a short story in Writer’s Digest’s annual contest and couldn’t come up with an idea. Then, voilà, I woke up with one. Yet, as I wrote the short story, I kept feeling like I could never do the idea justice in fewer than 4,000 words. I needed to add the flesh and bones. Since I still practiced Emergency Medicine at the time, it took me a year and half to finish the novel, and another six months to polish and prepare it for market.

I guess after throwing in that reference to Emergency Medicine, I should tell you a bit more about myself. Yes, I am a doctor, but no, after 30 years in the E.R. (with some brief time off in a Family Practice for good behavior), I have not seen it all. Still, my life’s experiences have been varied and in many ways profound. I grew up in the Midwest, where my seventh grade English teacher told my mother I’d grow up to be a writer. However, rebellious teen that I was, I promptly took a path in science that led to majoring in Bio-Medical Engineering at Duke University, followed by medical school at the University of Cincinnati. The U.S. Army, in its finite wisdom, gave me a scholarship for medical school, so I completed my advanced training at Madigan Army Medical Center in Tacoma, WA, and graduated to a world of major trauma, as well as head colds and the injuries of weekend warriors. After running a Level 2 trauma center, I became a research Flight Surgeon where I learned to fly a helicopter and re-designed body armor. (Yes, my engineering did come in handy once upon a time, in a lab far, far away.) As I said, my experiences have been diverse.

My ER tales range from hilarious to those provoking tears. I can still see the nurses rushing to assist me as a 200-pound woman beat me about the neck and shoulders as she insisted she was shrinking and would soon disappear. No, wait. I didn’t see those nurses because they were rolling on the floor behind the nurses’ station, laughing their heads off. Seems I recall they also disappeared from the room when a nineteen-year-old newlywed private asked why he and his bride couldn’t conceive. After all, they’d been sleeping together since the wedding six months earlier. That’s all, sleeping. No explicit, implicit, or even imaginary sex scene there. Goes back to an old ER axiom, “You can’t cure stupid.”

But on the flip side, there have been the cases that sent me home numb. I had a 45-year old man who arrived in ventricular fibrillation, back in the day before ambulances carried defibrillators. He proved the Biblical truth that we all have our appointed time. All seven defibrillators in the ER failed to work on him. Not one would deliver a shock. Yet, they all tested normally the next day. And nothing will ruin your day faster than a father running into the ER with his dead child in his arms. Why, Lord? Why this little one?

So, why do I bring up these examples? It’s all “fodder” for the word processor. These incidents all provoke that “what if” response in me. One quote from Indebted is “nothing in life is wasted on a writer.” Although none of the stories I just mentioned have yet made it into one of my books, they might. My experiences in becoming a Flight Surgeon included learning how to abandon a helicopter that just crashed into water. That became the inspiration for one scene in my book Looks that Deceive.

I should add at this point that Indebted is a bit different from my other books. A bit different? My wife rolls her eyes. I mean, after all, with all of my general science, engineering, military, and emergency medicine training and experience, would I ever envision myself becoming another Nicholas Sparks? My main genre is medical thrillers, with a Christian bent. That said, Indebted remains my wife’s favorite (so far).

Fringe …

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On the Fringe of Medicine ...

Have you ever watched a TV show or movie, or finished a novel, and found yourself scratching your head at the end, wondering how that writer came up with such a lame idea? If the story was a medically or technology based one, there’s a good chance the writer was flirting with the edge of good science – not cutting-edge or state-of-the-art, but pseudo-science, fringe medicine, or, as some call it, deviant science – and fell off.

Now, I’m not talking about badly portrayed medicine. Television is full of that. I don’t think a week goes by without some character getting an injection into the neck or just above the elbow, neither of which is medically valid. Or what about those lead characters who get shot in the chest, just below the shoulder, and are back at work, busting the bad guys in a week, or less? Trust me, if you’re a writer, don’t use TV, or the movies, as your source of research. I’m sure you already know that.

I am talking about the actual science or medicine behind a story. Is it reality or something on the fringe of science? In medicine, that fringe is often called “alternative” medicine. Such practices as homeopathy and radionics (psionics or dowsing) fall into the “alternative” category, as does aromatherapy, the use of oils, much of herbal medicine, psychic healing, iridology, reflexology, cupping, and more. To date, these forms of therapy have not been scientifically proven and rely on anecdotal accounts of their benefits alone. Each subjective testimony is fraught with potential bias and error, and double-blind testing of such claims has typically failed to show any advantage. You never hear of the treatment failures, just the stories of those claiming positive results.

Please note that, in this post, I’m excluding “neo-traditional,” or ethno-medicine, which consists of traditional, culturally-based forms of treatment such as acupuncture. While these therapies cannot be explained scientifically, some of them have been shown to work and studies into why they work are on-going.

If you decide to include some form of “alternative” medicine in your story, don’t be surprised to find them explained in technical, scientific terms when you research them. Herbal medicine has renamed itself “naturopathy.” Radionics has its mysterious “black box” that looks like a scientific instrument. One of the trends in “alternative” medicine is to take on scientific trappings to make the modality seem legit and of proven benefit.

Mentioning a character’s use of one of these therapies as simply one more layer of her personality is unlikely to cause you problems. However, the risks of using “alternative” medicine in any significant way in a story are many. You must present it accurately, not just in scientific terms, but as its proponents present it. Even when you do so, you run the risk of alienating readers on both sides of that fence. Disbelieving readers might be turned off by its use, while advocates might get angry if it’s used negatively or presented as fraudulent.

And that gets to the crux of using fringe medicine, or science in general, in our writing. If it’s to be a major part of the story, you must make the idea believable. You, the writer, must get the reader to suspend his or her beliefs long enough to accept the premise. The further out on the fringe that therapy is, the harder that task becomes.

Mammas …

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Mammas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow up to be Writers …

With apologies to Ed Bruce, Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson, I’d have to say that writers are the cowboys of the creative arts. For (some) writers, it’s a lonely life – immersed in a world of their own creation – and hard on those who love them. We’d rather write you a book than give you diamonds or gold, but maybe that’s because few writers actually make a living by following their passion.  And every night starts a new day … as we often toil long into the wee hours of the morning, in our faded blue jeans.

Yet, have you ever asked a cowboy to give up his lifestyle? The handful I’ve personally met over my lifetime would say “no.” There’s something about working hard in the wide, open ranges of a ranch that permeates their very being and becomes part of them. They’d no sooner give up that sense of freedom and gratification of a job well done than to give up an arm … or their favorite horse.

Writers can be like that, too. Give up that freedom of creating a world full of intriguing characters, wondering what kind of trouble they’ll get into next? Never. Abandon that sense of fulfillment in completing a story that entertains and touches others, perhaps keeping those readers reading well into those same wee hours the author works crafting his next tale? Not only no, but … well, you know. They’d rather give up that arm, as long as it’s not the one they use to write.

I know firsthand how writing can become a passion that seeps into your soul. I can’t say I always wanted to be a writer, but I always wrote. I wrote technical papers, journal articles, and manuals. I even tried my hand at magazine articles. However, the craft of creative writing was never something I had aspired to. I’m not sure why, but I think it had more to do with not having been exposed to it in school than anything else. 

And that’s where my “Mamma” came in. You see, she let me grow up to be a doctor and such. And yet, she kept at me, urging me to write. I guess my seventh grade English teacher first saw that spark of creativity in me and convinced my mother that I could be a great writer. However, I kept rebuffing her suggestions that I write a book. You see, there was med school, military service, getting married and starting a family, starting a civilian career, and all of those “real life” time demands that we all face that limited my view of a horizon that she seemed to see clearly. She eased up on me for a bit, but began to hammer away again when our children went off to college and the nest emptied. After yet one more of her “reminders,” I happened upon a writing contest and decided to give it a go. Placing in the top five was enough to ignite something inside. Seventeen years and multiple novels later, I can honestly call myself an author and not only has that passion for writing soaked in, it now oozes out.

So, Mammas (and  Papas) remember that you can and will influence your children’s lives not just in those “formative” years, but well beyond. There will be times when you can see a hidden talent in your child that you know beyond doubt could change his life. As parents, we’re a lot like God in this way. He sees in us the talents He gave us and He gently pushes us to utilize those gifts. It seems that most of the time, though, that His timing does not correlate to our timing, and sometimes He has to give us a swift kick to get us back on course. So, if your child doesn’t see it right away, maybe the timing isn’t right. Stick with it, just as God perseveres with us. Oh, and it’s okay to let your babies grow up to be writers.