Author Deven Greene Writes Medical Crime Fiction

Many thanks to Deven Greene, retired pathologist and author, for joining me on today’s episode of The Art of Medicine with Dr. Andrew Wilner. Deven started writing while still working full-time, carving out time in the evenings, on weekends, and even during vacation.

Now retired from medical practice, Deven’s writing time is very structured. She writes 7 days a week, 1100 words a day. Her heroine for three of her books is a pediatrician. Those three books focused on autism, genetic engineering, and pharmaceuticals. Deven hopes that her readers not only enjoy her novels but also learn from them.

Today, she is going to tell us why she writes, how she writes, and why you might want to read one of her books! Deven has an MD and a PhD, and she takes great pains to make her fiction fact-based. During our 35-minute discussion, she explained why she chose the pen name, “Deven Greene.”

Please join us for this fascinating discussion! Learn the difference between a “plotter” and a “pantser.” Deven provides her take on self-publishing vs traditional publishing, as she’s done both. We also highlight the scourge of scammers that prey on vulnerable writers.

Deven is currently working on her 7th novel, “Rhino Wars,” an eco-thriller about rhino poaching. Soon to be available on Amazon!

For more info, go to DevenGreene.com.

#autism #fiction #fictionwriting @devengreene #eco-thriller

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Transcript

[Andrew Wilner, MD] (0:08 - 1:14)

Welcome to the Art of Medicine, the program that explores the arts, business, and clinical aspects of the practice of medicine. I'm your host, Dr. Andrew Wilner. I've planned a great program for today, but first, a word from our sponsor, locumstory.com.

Locumstory.com is a free, unbiased educational resource about locum tenens. It's not an agency. Locumstory answers your questions on their website, podcast, webinars, videos, and they even have a locums 101 crash course.

Learn about locums and get insights from real-life physicians, PAs, and NPs at locumstory.com. And now to my guest. Today, I have the pleasure of speaking with a retired pathologist who writes under the pen name of Devin Greene.

Devin Greene is the author of six novels. She's going to tell us why she writes, how she writes, and why you might want to read one of her books. The seventh is in the making.

Welcome Devin Greene.

[Deven Greenee] (1:15 - 1:17)

Well, thank you. I'm very glad to be here.

[Andrew Wilner, MD] (1:18 - 2:07)

Well, I love to have physician writers on this program. I've published four books myself. The fifth one is, I guess the kindest way to say it would be gestating.

It's taken a while to get it going, but it's exciting. And I'm always interested to meet other doctors who write, particularly because doctors are pretty busy. And so it's a hard thing to squeeze in.

So I want to talk a little bit, first of all, why take the trouble to write something? And then we'll get a little bit into the how. How do you make it happen?

So six books. And when did all this start? Was this something, you were 60 years old and said, gee, I'm going to write novels?

Or does it date back to when you were 12? How did this happen?

[Deven Greenee] (2:07 - 6:35)

Well, I wish I knew. But when I was really little, I liked to write. And then I became involved with other things and that went by the wayside.

But I like to read and I like to read a variety of things, including true crime and thrillers. All right. So at some point I thought, I have a really good idea for a thriller.

I just kept thinking it. But I was really too busy to consider writing. And then at some point, I decided to start.

I thought, I'm just going to do it. And I was still working at the time. And that was very difficult.

I know there's some positions that are become writers and they'll get up at four in the morning and write things like that. And I don't have the energy for that. So I would mostly write on the weekends, in the evenings.

Sometimes I would take some vacation days and just write. So anyway, I did. First, I did take courses and I read some books on writing.

I think there's things to learn. It seems like one could just sit down and start writing, but there's really things to learn about tempo and different aspects of making a successful book. So I did some research and then I decided it's time to start.

And actually, my husband and I were going on a vacation and that's when I started. I brought my laptop and I started. And that book has never been published.

So I did complete it. And then when I retired, I really decided to really get into writing, very seriously spent a lot of time at it. Not that I didn't spend a lot of time on the first book, but I just never got it published.

And I get ideas and I'm kind of looking at the next shiny thing. So by the time I finished that book, I really wanted to write a different one. So it was always put on the back burner.

I can always come back to that. I'll come back to that and publish it. It was really finished, but it wasn't really quite publishable yet.

So I just haven't backtracked. And actually, the subject of that book was weight loss because that's such a huge industry. But if I wanted to publish it now, I'd have to completely redo it because we have all these weight loss products now that almost everybody seems to be on.

I've been surprised. I've been talking to people and they say, oh yeah, I'm taking that. And they're not, why?

Oh, I had some cardiac problems and people are taking it for all sorts of reasons. So at this point, I would have to have a completely different approach, but it's always been an issue with people wanting to lose weight and wanting to pay a lot of money to lose weight. But anyway, that was my first book not published, not one of the six.

So then when I did retire, I got serious about writing my next book. And actually what happened was I was going to write another book, which now is my second book. But then I decided I wanted to write another book first.

An idea came and I just had to do it. Okay. So that was the birth of the Erica Rosen MD Trilogy.

So I have three books that are about a pediatrician of all things. And I thought a pediatrician, who would think of a pediatrician as being involved in some crime fighting. So I think we can imagine almost anybody else, but not a pediatrician.

But anyway, I decided to make it a trilogy. And the first one was about genetic engineering, human genetic engineering. And the second one that I wanted to write first was about autism.

And then the third one I had to think about, what am I going to do for my third one? And I, it's about pharmaceuticals. And then I've moved on and, and none of my other books are related, but I really, I really enjoy it.

I tried not to.

[Andrew Wilner, MD] (6:35 - 7:01)

There you go. I think that's the bottom line. This is fun, right?

This is fun. Yeah. And hard work, hard work, but fun.

Well, let's talk a little bit about the work. You mentioned you're willing to work in the evenings, on the weekends, and take holidays from work. You went on vacation with your husband.

He went off golfing. You stayed there with your laptop. Yeah.

How do you do it on a daily basis?

[Deven Greenee] (7:01 - 7:36)

Well, things are different now because I'm retired. Okay. So when I, it took me a while to get my rhythm, you might say, because once you're retired, you just have a lot of time.

You can do stuff and it's almost paralyzing. I could do anything, you know? So at first, I just started just writing just all the time, writing all the time.

And then I decided, you know, I think my husband wasn't too happy about that. And I just was spending too much time. I realized I was spending too much time.

[Andrew Wilner, MD] (7:36 - 7:39)

I can hear him. Now you're retired and you're busier than ever, right?

[Deven Greenee] (7:39 - 7:40)

Yeah.

[Andrew Wilner, MD] (7:40 - 7:40)

Yeah.

[Deven Greenee] (7:41 - 8:24)

Yeah. So what happened was I slowly kind of developed my rhythm. And now there's different parts of writing a book.

So the first is the rough draft. And that's my most structured time. I write, usually this is what I do when I'm doing a rough draft.

I get up, I have my coffee, breakfast, and then I sit down to write and I write 1100 words and then I'm done for the day. And so if you do the arithmetic in 1100 words a day, I've got the rough draft in less than three months.

[Andrew Wilner, MD] (8:24 - 8:30)

All right. Well, I got to ask, you know, why not a thousand? Where did you come up with 1100?

[Deven Greenee] (8:31 - 8:36)

I started with a thousand and then I thought, I'll just do 10% more.

[Andrew Wilner, MD] (8:37 - 8:39)

All right. You're a high achiever. Okay.

[Deven Greenee] (8:40 - 9:21)

And actually a lot of writers say, well, 1100, that's a lot. So different people, some people will write a certain number of words a day and some people will write for a certain amount of time a day. Those are the two major things people might choose.

And then some people just write when they feel like it. But I like to be very structured and I write seven days a week, 1100 words a day. And I actually write down, you know, a word.

It tells you how many words you have in your documents. I write it down when I'm done. Then I go 1100 or often a little bit more because you don't land exactly on 1100.

And I have a list. And it can't be less.

[Andrew Wilner, MD] (9:22 - 9:41)

So it's always going to be a little bit more, right? If it's 1099, you're going to have to come up with another sentence. You got it.

You got it. I always do complete a sentence. I don't stop.

Just leave it hanging there. So, but you have to know what to say. Do you know what to say before when you sit down?

[Deven Greenee] (9:42 - 11:38)

Well, that's a good question. I'm constantly thinking about it. So when I'm not writing, I'm thinking about what I'm going to write next.

And sometimes I don't quite know what I'm going to write next. And some days takes me longer than others. So on days where I really know exactly what I'm going to write for 1100 plus words, it comes out pretty quickly.

Other days I may struggle. And another question people often ask is how much do I plan my book in advance? That's a question that comes up a lot.

And and usually people say, are you a plotter or a pantser? A plotter being somebody who writes a detailed plot outline and a pants or somebody who writes by the seat of their pants. And I'm, I think most people, especially those that write fiction are in between.

And I'm in between. I, I started off trying to write a pretty tight outline of what I was going to write. And I realized once you get down to the granularity of putting the words down, things pop into your head.

You just get distracted, go in different ways. And there are times when actually I'm planning my next book that I haven't started yet. And I still haven't decided there's two ways things could go.

And they both come back to the same place, but there's two ways things could go. And I may not decide what to do until I get down there and just am typing it because I keep going back and forth. I should do it this way.

No, I should do it that way. So, so I'm, I'm not a tight plotter, that's for sure. I definitely have a plot, an overall plot in mind.

And I always have pretty much a happy ending. Okay, so things get resolved. So I know that that is going to come to that place.

[Andrew Wilner, MD] (11:39 - 12:29)

Well, that's very interesting. I interviewed one writer, and he had everything spelled out in his outline. And then when he would sit down to write, really, all he had to do was fill in the blanks.

And I've talked to other writers said, well, what's the point of that? You know, the whole point is kind of discovery and animating your characters and let them make the decisions, you know, as you know, it'll become clear what they want to do if you've created a good character. And it's hard to know all that before you even start.

So I think philosophically, there really is a spectrum of where to it sounds like you're kind of in the middle, I want to jump to the end for a minute. Publishing, are these self published, you have a quote, real publisher. Tell us about that end of the business.

[Deven Greenee] (12:31 - 15:21)

Well, I started off really wanting to have a publisher. And I got, I did have a publisher, a small publisher. Okay, there's, there's the big five, maybe it'll be the big four in another week.

I don't know. Maybe there'll be just one. But those are great to get, but pretty much impossible for someone like me.

I mean, if you haven't been in the industry, or, or extremely good luck. But but most of the people that land that have already developed their careers, long time ago, or, you know, they have connections in journalism, or things like that. So anyway, but there's a number of smaller publishers.

And I did land one of them. Okay, actually, I had two that were interested in I, before I took my first firm offer. And I went with that small publisher.

And I stayed with it, because I thought that kind of gave me I've got a publisher gave me some gravitas, some kind of respect. And then I published three books with that publisher. And then the fourth book, I didn't want to use that publisher.

So stupid me, I went with a different small publisher for my fourth book. And then I decided, I don't want to use a publisher, I want to self publish, I know, I know a lot of writers now, because I belong to some writing groups. And so I've met a number of people that that right.

And they're really, almost all of them are self published. And so I talked to some people found out how to do it. And so I got the rights back from my first three books.

And I have self published those now that's the Erica Rosen, MD trilogy. And then I've, I've got one that is still with the second small publisher, and I will get secret, I will get the rights back when when the contract expires. And I will self publish that.

And then the two I've done recently, are self totally self published. And I'll say this much. I'm glad I did go with a small publisher, because when I decided to self publish, I got all the files back.

So I didn't have to learn how to, how to do that there, there is a learning curve. Now, there are companies you can hire. So if you just have a document, you can hire a company to do everything for you, from getting your copyright to getting things, what, you know, the inside of the book, the cover, everything you need to do, you can hire companies to do that.

But I was able to do everything on my own, having the files already made. So it wasn't as steep a learning curve. The last two books that I've done, I've just done completely on my own.

[Andrew Wilner, MD] (15:22 - 15:30)

Well, this is not a ringing endorsement for small publishers. Why did you decide that it was better to do it yourself?

[Deven Greenee] (15:30 - 15:41)

Well, they take a big cut of the money. Not that there's that much money to take a big cut of, but they take they do take a cut. And they don't do much.

[Andrew Wilner, MD] (15:41 - 15:49)

They didn't do anything, right? What are you guys doing? Right?

They put it up on Amazon. You can do that, right? Yeah.

[Deven Greenee] (15:49 - 16:22)

And, and since I now control everything, if I if I were to want to put something on sale, I can just do it. Otherwise, it's very cumbersome. You know, call the pub, you know, you have to make all sorts of arrangements if you want to do something.

This makes it very easy. I'm just totally in control. Now, there's some writers that actually sell books on their website.

I don't do, I haven't gone that far. They don't yet. So I still sell through all, you know, Amazon, of course, is the big one, but in any place else where you can buy books, my books can be ordered.

[Andrew Wilner, MD] (16:23 - 16:40)

Is there a bit has to now you've been you're you're pretty detail oriented, I think. Have you seen any difference in your sales, for example, and in your self published versus traditional published books? Is there any difference?

[Deven Greenee] (16:41 - 17:16)

No, no. So it's all it's really all about advertising. It that because I think I've learned things don't happen.

They don't go viral. I mean, you may be lucky enough to be picked up by an influencer or somebody like that. But it's all just trying to get your books out there yourself.

And it doesn't matter if you are self published or have a small publisher because they don't they don't really do it. They'll put your books up on their website.

[Andrew Wilner, MD] (17:17 - 18:12)

All right. Well, that's question 11 on my script here. How to self promote as an author with all the noise out there.

You know, it's a great thing for authors now that you can self publish. Right. And if I have a book that's sitting next to me over there that I wrote many decades ago before they had self publishing and you know, it went to all the people and some of them said it was great, but they, you know, weren't ready to publish it.

Another one said it was terrible. Anyway, never got published. And it's a little dated now.

Like you say, I would have to make some changes. You know, they weren't using cell phones, you know, in my book, you know, that had pictures. So I would have to make some technical changes.

But now anybody can put up a book. So I think there are millions of books published every year. How do you separate yourself from the noise?

Well, that's a good question.

[Deven Greenee] (18:13 - 19:12)

And I wish I had the answer. So I'm still, you know, I have a newsletter, I have a website. I now have a Facebook page, which I don't use much.

So and slowly, there is some word of mouth, but it's very slow. Every once in a while, I run an ad, I think that I've kind of seen other authors that I think do better than me. And what they do is when they publish their book, they spend a lot of money on ads.

It could be the worst book in the world, it doesn't matter. They spend a lot of money. And I don't know if you've noticed this, but even like James Patterson, when he has a new book, it's advertised on TV.

He's got people paying a lot of money to advertise his books, and they sell because people know about them. Also getting your book into bookstores. That's a whole other thing that the bigger publishers do, but the smaller publishers don't do that.

[Andrew Wilner, MD] (19:13 - 19:23)

That was a question I had, because obviously, you want to walk into Barnes & Noble and see your book. And the big publishers, of course, can do that. But I wondered whether the small ones really can do any better than you?

[Deven Greenee] (19:24 - 19:25)

No.

[Andrew Wilner, MD] (19:25 - 19:40)

No. There's an answer. In a word, no.

So there's a question I have to ask, because everybody always asks, and you can say as much or as little about this as you want, but can you make a living as a writer? I mean, you've got six books. That sounds like a lot.

[Deven Greenee] (19:41 - 19:46)

Oh, no. I could not possibly live off of what I make. Not possibly.

[Andrew Wilner, MD] (19:46 - 20:01)

All right. And I can see, I don't know, I took a quick peek at your office. You don't look like a extravagant kind of person.

It's not like you have to pay for the jet and the driver.

[Deven Greenee] (20:02 - 20:05)

I got a discount on the jet. No, just kidding.

[Andrew Wilner, MD] (20:06 - 20:11)

So making a living as a writer is an elusive goal, would you say?

[Deven Greenee] (20:12 - 21:06)

I would say so. There's a saying, there are more people making money off of writers than writers making money. And I think it's true, because you can spend a lot on taking courses, paying a publicist, buying all sorts of services.

I don't do that. Maybe I should. But another word of caution I'll say to any new writers, there's a ton of scammers out there now.

It's unbelievable. It seems to have really picked up in the last year. A day doesn't go by when I don't get multiple scans.

And I don't even know how they all get, because I get messages from them in different ways. And I used to just get them through my website, which is fine, but some are directly contacting me and that really bothers me.

[Andrew Wilner, MD] (21:06 - 22:30)

Well, we'll take a second on that, because it's happened to me also. I remember getting a phone call, Dr. Wilner, we saw your book, The Locum Life, and we're so interested in, we have great news that a traditional publisher has picked it up and they're going to give you a $50,000 advance. And my book's been published for a number of years, and frankly, it's a very niche market.

It sold about a thousand copies plus, which is hardly a bestseller. And I thought this was fantastic. So I called them back and the guy talked to me for an hour and he wanted to do this.

But first he said, you know, we're going to have to look at the book because we might have to do some editing just to get it prepared for the publisher. That sounded a little phony. Anyway, it turns out I've gotten many more of these coming from different directions, and it is a well-known scam.

And of course, you know, with the internet, I have a website and my information is available and the book is available and summaries of the books are available. So someone can call you cold and be pretty well informed. Of course, this guy wasn't even know what the book was about.

And I thought that was a little strange. So writers really do have to be very, very careful. You know, it's the old saying, if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

Yeah.

[Deven Greenee] (22:30 - 22:34)

I mean, I think most writers think their books are really good.

[Andrew Wilner, MD] (22:35 - 22:35)

Yeah.

[Deven Greenee] (22:35 - 23:06)

I mean, they were writers work hard on their books, whether or not you like their genre or their book or whatever. They worked hard on it and they're proud of it. And so when somebody comes to you and says, I love your book, you know, I have all these great plans for it, blah, blah, blah.

It's so believable because, of course, finally someone's recognizing. But I have on my on my particular website, I can find out where a number of inquiries are coming from. Not all of them.

But I get a lot from Nigeria.

[Andrew Wilner, MD] (23:07 - 23:08)

Oh, there you go.

[Deven Greenee] (23:08 - 23:46)

Yeah. And I know. And they and they write to me using kind of American names.

OK. And they sound good. And and some of them are better than others.

I'll say that I've started to notice like, oh, some of some of these are really good. Some are really bad, because when somebody says, I love your book. Well, which book?

I mean, right. I got six of them. I suppose if I just had one, I would be flattered and I wouldn't think that that just because the title was missing, that it was suspicious.

But I got six books out there. And when you say I love your book, not books, plural.

[Andrew Wilner, MD] (23:47 - 23:49)

Right away, there's a good way.

[Deven Greenee] (23:49 - 23:49)

Yeah.

[Andrew Wilner, MD] (23:49 - 24:05)

It's very interesting. Let me change the topic for a minute. You know, you practiced as a physician in your books.

Now, do you consider yourself a medical educator? Or are these just fun or.

[Deven Greenee] (24:06 - 25:25)

OK, well, that's another good question. I like well, I like my books, first of all, are primarily to be fun, but I always have information in there. I hope that readers learn something from my books.

So it may not be medicine. It may be more science, what I call sciency. And what I do is I will write something that's kind of technical or medical, however you want to phrase that.

And I have people read it that are not physicians or scientists. OK, so I always start off with something that's just too detailed. And and I, I just there's a lot of smart people out there.

They just don't have the background. And but they want to learn things. So I try to make it accessible to everyone.

And so I get it to a point where I think people who want to learn or understand it can understand it. So sometimes it takes me a little while to get there because I like to keep things accurate. I sometimes I leave out certain steps just to make it more readable.

But I do really try to make my my descriptions of those sorts of things very accurate.

[Andrew Wilner, MD] (25:25 - 25:28)

All right. Before we go any further, what is your website, please?

[Deven Greenee] (25:29 - 26:08)

Oh, it's Deven Greene. That's D-E-V-E-N-G-R-E-E-N-E dot com. And I'll say this, stick in as many E's as you can.

OK, so it's Deven with two E's, Greene with three E's and an E at the end. And I always mention that there is a Deven Greene without an E on the end who is a comedian who's very much on the edge. And she's more popular than I am.

So so a lot of times if you Google me, they'll say, oh, did you mean Deven Greene without the E? And you'll get a lot of her stuff.

[Andrew Wilner, MD] (26:09 - 26:30)

All right. Well, we were talking a little bit before I press the record button about your decision to have a pen name. So tell us first, why?

And then and then secondly, why that? I mean, if you're going to pick a pen name, right, you could pick any name in the universe, right? So why a pen name?

[Deven Greenee] (26:31 - 27:12)

Well, I I tend to be kind of a private person and I was and actually a lot of beginning authors start this way. They're kind of embarrassed. They don't want it.

They don't want anybody to know that they're writing because because, you know, they could fall flat on their face. And so so I just thought I don't really want people out there to know who I am and I don't I don't want people to know I'm writing. Yeah, I slowly started telling people like my friends that I'm my husband knew he was and my brother.

They're kind of the only people that knew. So and actually, the name is, I'll just say, similar to my real name.

[Andrew Wilner, MD] (27:12 - 27:24)

OK, so you drew from that. But doesn't it make it hard to promote your books if you're not really who you say you you know what I mean? If the name of the book isn't your name, how do you how do you?

[Deven Greenee] (27:24 - 27:43)

Well, I just go by Devin Greene whenever I'm talking about my books. And some people know that that's not my real name. You know, like like Lee Childs, that's not his real name.

But I don't know what his real name is. There's there's a number of famous authors that that use pen names. So it's not that unusual.

[Andrew Wilner, MD] (27:43 - 27:47)

So you find it hasn't really gotten in the way of your your marketing.

[Deven Greenee] (27:48 - 28:17)

No, it gets a little awkward sometimes when filling out forms for publishing, like what's your name and then which name do I put down? Things like that, more legal stuff. But but for marketing, it's not a problem.

It's just Devin Greene. And and I did think that I went through a number of names and I would Google them and then I would find, oh, there's somebody else with that name. So this was not the first name I came up with.

And believe me, when I Googled it, the other Devin Greene didn't come up.

[Andrew Wilner, MD] (28:18 - 28:24)

So the one without the maybe a more recent kind of invention, this other.

[Deven Greenee] (28:24 - 28:30)

Yeah. She may have become more famous in the interim as I was getting things published. But that's the way it goes.

[Andrew Wilner, MD] (28:31 - 28:42)

Now, before we wrap up, I want to talk about one of your books. Tell me about the one you said. I think it was the second book maybe with about autism.

Why? Why autism? And what was the point of the book?

[Deven Greenee] (28:43 - 31:34)

OK, well, autism. OK, so my some people ask me if my characters are based on somebody. And they aren't.

They're sort of a combination of people that I know or imagine, except for the second book and the the main character, other than Erica Rosen, is a young autistic man. And he's modeled after my son. I have a son with autism and he's severely autistic.

His communication is very bad. But he has certain splinter skills and a lot of people have heard of splinter skills or they call them savants if they're very advanced. So he has splinter skills, but his communication is very bad.

And I had always thought that a an autistic person would make a great suicide bomber. Because they can look perfectly normal. They can be taught to follow instructions and they don't know what they're doing.

So I mentioned this to my husband and he said, oh, that's ridiculous. Well, we went to the airport. We were going on a trip and we had to go through one of the the machines that they circle you at the airport.

So before we got in there, I was explaining to him because he will follow instructions. Like I said, lift your arms up, walk in there. And the man operating the machine said, he noticed what I was doing and he said, oh, he can just go through.

So he got no screening. And this is sort of my experience. So I had a character that was really modeled on my son.

I've read other books and seen shows about these autistic people or so-called, what I call so-called autistic people. Now they're on the spectrum, which when they're at the top of the spectrum, I don't know that they really should have a disease attributed to them. But he is definitely autistic.

And I had his character be the only person that could solve this dilemma of suicide bombers, but he really wasn't talking. So Erica Rosen, who in the first book dealt a lot with disabled children, was able to slowly get the information from him. And that's what the book is.

I wanted it to be realistic because I kept thinking, what would he do? What would he do in this situation? And of course, he's never been involved with a plot to be a suicide bomber, but I tried to make it as realistic as possible rather than something fantastic and something I wouldn't believe.

[Andrew Wilner, MD] (31:34 - 31:41)

What a wonderfully original and thoughtful story.

[Deven Greenee] (31:42 - 31:50)

Yeah. Well, yeah, that book was kind of special for me. So I have a book written about him.

I dedicated it to him, but he doesn't know it.

[Andrew Wilner, MD] (31:52 - 32:17)

Well, that's really lovely. And I'm going to read that one. Okay.

For sure. And that's one of the reasons I like to talk to writers because you read a book and you say, I always want to meet that person. It's like, well, what were they thinking?

Why did they write it this way? And so now I have a clue. Thank you.

[Deven Greenee] (32:17 - 32:32)

Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

So the name is Unwitting. I call it the un-series. They're all unnatural, unwitting, and unforeseen.

So I got on the un-wagon.

[Andrew Wilner, MD] (32:32 - 32:36)

All right. So one minute about your next book and then we'll wrap up.

[Deven Greenee] (32:36 - 34:40)

Okay. Well, my next book is actually an eco-thriller. It's got a scientific basis for it, but it's about rhino poaching.

And one thing I really like about writing is I do a lot of research. I research not only the main subject, but a lot of ancillary things because I want to learn more than I'm going to put in the book. I don't put everything I know in the book.

I want to know more than I put in the book. So I was doing a lot of research about this particular thing, and I was going to either do rhino poaching or elephant poaching, you know, the rhino horns and elephant tusks. And I learned that rhino horns are worth a lot more.

They're the most valuable substance, weight by weight in the world, more than diamonds and gold and cocaine. I was shocked. Okay.

And that's why it's so hard to control. So in my book, I have a way to control it based in science. And as I was putting my story together, I thought, I wonder if somebody's thought of this already.

Because my books are all what I consider doable. They're not science fiction, really. They're doable.

And in general, they haven't been done before. So I decided to just, I'd never heard of anyone doing this. And then I found out, yeah, people had tried to do it.

And they got slapped down by environmentalists, of all things. And I was totally shocked. I was surprised at the reasons.

And I think it's wrong. And I talked to the CEO of one of the defunct companies who was very helpful. So he wants me to write this book so that he can start his company up again.

But we'll see. And it's almost done. And the name I have for it now is Rhino Wars.

And it takes place mainly in South Africa, where rhino poaching is crazy.

[Andrew Wilner, MD] (34:40 - 34:48)

Fantastic. Well, it's been really fun and educational to speak with you today. Is there anything else you'd like to add?

[Deven Greenee] (34:51 - 35:14)

No. I would say people can visit my website if they have any questions. I have a contact form on there.

And I answer all my emails, unless I sense you're a scammer. So if you tell me that you want to make a movie out of my book, I probably will not answer you. Especially if you don't even say what book it is.

So anyway, I do love to hear from my readers.

[Andrew Wilner, MD] (35:16 - 35:19)

Devin Greene, thanks for joining me on The Art of Medicine.

[Deven Greenee] (35:19 - 35:20)

Thank you. It's very enjoyable.

[Andrew Wilner, MD] (35:21 - 37:51)

And now a final thanks to our sponsor, locumstory.com. Locumstory.com is a free, unbiased educational resource about locum tenens. It's not an agency.

Locumstory exists to answer your questions about the how-tos of locums on their website, podcast, webinars, and videos. They even have a locums 101 crash course. At locumstory.com, you can discover if locum tenens make sense for you and your career goals. What makes locumstory.com unique is that it's a peer-to-peer platform with real physicians sharing their experiences and stories, both the good and bad, about working locum tenens. Hence the name, LocumStory. Locumstory.com is a self-service tool that you can explore at your own pace with no pressure or obligation. It's completely free. Thanks again to locumstory.com for sponsoring this episode of The Art of Medicine. I'm Dr. Andrew Wilner. See you next time. Compensation for their appearance on The Art of Medicine. Andrew Wilner, MD, is a professor of neurology at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center in Memphis, Tennessee.

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