Gerald Myers, guest blog, October 21st, 2009

I’d like to begin by thanking Romance Junkies for inviting me to submit today’s blog.  Since this is the first time I’ve ‘blogged’ my offering may not be as polished as the more experienced participants, but having been a journal keeper off and on over the years I relish the undertaking.

In way of introduction, I’m a clinical cardiologist born and raised in Philadelphia who spent the bulk of his professional career in Pittsburgh, but decided to relocate to Northern Colorado in the summer of 2003.  Although medicine is my vocation, my passion has always been creative writing.  This ostensibly dates back to early adolescence when I attempted to write my own version of a ‘Hardy Boys’ book.

After dabbling with fiction writing in the late eighties and then intensifying my efforts during the next decade I was rewarded with the publication of my first novel, Muted Colors in the summer of 2001.  The work, though considered a medical thriller by the literary community, has at its crux an intense, passionate and decidedly dysfunctional relationship between my antagonist, a somewhat naïve psychiatrist, Marshall Levy and Dr. Rose Shaw an attractive geneticist with a rare congenital heart disease who befriends him and then insidiously morphs into his muse.  Rose, it seems, reveals a fascination I’ve always had with the ‘evil woman’ in contemporary fiction.

The success of this first endeavor has led to three subsequent publications over the last eight years.  The first, a psychological thriller, called Song of the Siren, is based on an authentic experience I had while driving back from Bethesda, Maryland back in the winter of 1981.  That’s when a young woman from Baltimore tailed me for 100 miles through northern Maryland and into Pennsylvania, before we both stopped at a Howard Johnson’s between Breezewood and Bedford, PA.  There, we shared a coffee and exchanged ‘stories’.  The next was an historically based espionage tale entitled Lethal Legacy that mainly takes place in the late 80’s, but has its roots in Nazi Germany.  And my latest is a coming of age offering set both in Philadelphia in the late 70’s and in Pittsburgh fifteen years later.  Featuring a gruesome murder and the intricacies of the Sicilian Mafia in the back story, my publisher insisted on calling it, The Frame.

As you may have gleaned, I find it challenging to explore different genres within the context of novel writing and the results have been satisfying.  And to make things more exciting, now that I’ve contracted a screenwriter to adapt Muted Colors (a work my daughter young-adult daughter affectionately labeled ‘soft porn’) into a screenplay, my avocation may soon be heading into a totally new realm.  I’ve been told that the adaptation may be ready for presentation at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City this January.

So, with that brief introduction, I encourage the reader to sample my work and let me know how it plays.  If your interested in obtaining examples of one or all of my novels, I’d be happy to provide signed copies.  Just contact me at geraldm651@yahoo.com.  The cost would be $11.95 plus S&H.  The titles are also available at my publisher’s website, sterlinghousepublisher.com and of course through Amazon.  And please, check out my new ‘fledgling’ website at geraldmyers.com.

Let me close by sharing that it has been a true privilege to share my thoughts with you today and I look forward to submitting entries in the future.

Literarily speaking

Jerry Myers