Ask the Author: Susan McCormick
Answered Questions (4)
Susan McCormick
I'm going to tell the story of the inspiration for The Antidote, which came out last spring. I was a parent volunteer for a sixth grade science class chicken wing dissection. I'm a doctor, and I knew I could do this. I bought a chicken the night before and practiced, and I was ready to scintillate the sixth graders by demonstrating the exciting connection between muscles and tendons and bones. I opened and closed the wing, placed it in their hands, showed them the thin strips of tissue coordinating all the action.
Did I see fascination? Excitement? Feigned interest of any sort? Sadly, no.
On career day, surely they’d want to hear about my journey to becoming a doctor, then. And they did. They asked polite and pertinent questions. But they were not truly thrilled.
They were much more enthusiastic about a different topic they were studying, and I was there that week as well. Mythology. Greek gods. Beasts with multiple heads. Fathers who swallowed their children whole. They learned it in school, but they already knew everything there was to know and then some. Why? Rick Riordan’s The Lightning Thief series.
This got me to wondering. Was there such a fiction series about medicine? The human body? Ailments and health? The excitement of biology or chemistry or engineering or math? Excluding books that deal with video games, very few.
So I set out to write one, weaving in maladies much like The Lightning Thief weaves in mythology. In The Antidote, twelve-year-old Alex Revelstoke discovers a family secret. He can see disease. And not just disease, but injury, illness, anything wrong with the body. He sees skin melt away to reveal the organs beneath, much to his shock and horror. He comes from a family of doctors with this extra gift, going back generations, helping, healing. But Revelstokes are locked in a centuries-old battle with ancient evil itself, an entity called ILL, the creator and physical embodiment of disease. Alex is the last Revelstoke, all that stands between ILL and his new super disease, worse than polio, worse than smallpox.
So instead of battling the Three Fates and Medusa, Alex battles allergic reactions and appendicitis and sudden death in young athletes, and ILL revisits infectious diseases and pandemics from the past like plague, measles and leprosy.
Crazily, this book was written before the pandemic, and it was published the first year in. Which is why Kirkus review called it "Timely and resonant."
Did I see fascination? Excitement? Feigned interest of any sort? Sadly, no.
On career day, surely they’d want to hear about my journey to becoming a doctor, then. And they did. They asked polite and pertinent questions. But they were not truly thrilled.
They were much more enthusiastic about a different topic they were studying, and I was there that week as well. Mythology. Greek gods. Beasts with multiple heads. Fathers who swallowed their children whole. They learned it in school, but they already knew everything there was to know and then some. Why? Rick Riordan’s The Lightning Thief series.
This got me to wondering. Was there such a fiction series about medicine? The human body? Ailments and health? The excitement of biology or chemistry or engineering or math? Excluding books that deal with video games, very few.
So I set out to write one, weaving in maladies much like The Lightning Thief weaves in mythology. In The Antidote, twelve-year-old Alex Revelstoke discovers a family secret. He can see disease. And not just disease, but injury, illness, anything wrong with the body. He sees skin melt away to reveal the organs beneath, much to his shock and horror. He comes from a family of doctors with this extra gift, going back generations, helping, healing. But Revelstokes are locked in a centuries-old battle with ancient evil itself, an entity called ILL, the creator and physical embodiment of disease. Alex is the last Revelstoke, all that stands between ILL and his new super disease, worse than polio, worse than smallpox.
So instead of battling the Three Fates and Medusa, Alex battles allergic reactions and appendicitis and sudden death in young athletes, and ILL revisits infectious diseases and pandemics from the past like plague, measles and leprosy.
Crazily, this book was written before the pandemic, and it was published the first year in. Which is why Kirkus review called it "Timely and resonant."
Susan McCormick
In my own personal life, I have no mystery. But in life, all around me, mystery abounds. As a cozy mystery writer, I see plots everywhere. The car share driver overly interested in how long I’ll be traveling? I see a set up for burglary. A cutthroat music competition that comes every four years with only one scholarship awarded? I see a mom who will do anything to help her child succeed. An arguing couple in a National Park? I see a husband who might lean too close to the edge and “fall off.” I am kind, sedate, and boring in my real life, but my imagination is full of mystery.
Susan McCormick
THE FOG LADIES is a cozy murder mystery, due out in Oct, with a group of feisty older women and one overworked, overtired, overstressed medical intern who all live in an elegant apartment building in San Francisco where old ladies start to die. I am working a a sequel, if the Fog Ladies live through the evil in their building. I also envision a sequel for GRANNY CAN'T REMEMBER ME, this one for adults.
Susan McCormick
Plotting is smart, or you will end up with too few suspects, as I did with my first draft of THE FOG LADIES. Then lovely, innocent characters have to be turned into potential murderers. However, though I try to plot and plan, along the way, with fingers flying on keypad keys, writing magic happens. Characters do unexpected things and get themselves into trouble. One of my characters, Enid Carmichael, discovers Starbucks lattes at the ripe old age of eighty. She loves the bitterness, the froth. I wrote that. Then she craved more, and the next thing I knew, she was stealing Starbucks coupons from her neighbor’s newspaper to feed her addiction. She did that. Not me. Give your characters a little space to be themselves, because the surprises they bring will delight you and your readers.
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