Charlie Donlea's Blog, page 4
April 2, 2017
The Making of a Medical Examiner
The Making of a Medical Examiner:
By Dr. Livia Cutty
The summer after my sister graduated high school, just as she was preparing to head off to college, she disappeared. She and another girl, actually. They both vanished from a beach party in our small North Carolina town. Their abduction sent Emerson Bay into panic.
Every resident, neighbor and friend looked for these two girls, large packs of volunteers walking shoulder-to-shoulder through the woods hoping to stumble across any clue that might help located them. We held vigils, too, lighting candles late into the summer night in some strange show of faith that our girls would be returned to us.
This went on for two weeks, just long enough for me to secretly lose hope. And then Megan McDonald, the other girl who was taken along with my sister, resurfaced. She had escaped from a bunker hidden deep in the woods, ramrodding her way through the forest on a dark, rainy night until someone spotted her wandering on Highway 57.
My sister? She was never seen again.
That was last August. Back then I was finishing the fourth year of my anatomical pathology residency. I’d completed my undergraduate degree, endured four years of medical school, and had settled into residency prepared to spend my four-year stint learning how disease affects the human body. Back in that old life, a cushy hospital pathology job waited in my future. Maybe a teaching gig at the university. Then my sister disappeared and my priorities changed. After my residency, I applied for a forensic pathology fellowship—a one-year program that would turn me into a medical examiner. My thinking was this: Someday, my sister’s body would show up in someone’s morgue. It would be up to a forensic pathologist to use his skills to uncover the clues my sister’s body left behind, and to hand those clues over to the authorities who might track down her killer. I wanted those skills, simple as that.
The following July, nearly a year after my sister went missing, I started my year of fellowship at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in North Carolina. I also started reading the bestselling memoir that was sweeping the nation. It was the true story account written by Megan McDonald, the girl who disappeared with my sister. Megan had miraculously escaped her captor, and her riveting story of survival was a blockbuster topping every bestseller list in the country. The memoir bothered me, the whoring of such personal tragedy for monetary gain infuriated me, and the fact that the book never once mentioned my still-missing sister unnerved me.
It was about that time, on a hot Monday morning, that the body of a young man rolled into my morgue. That body changed my life forever. It changed Megan’s life as well, since after I completed the autopsy I began to question every page of her bestselling book. My biggest question: Was this hunk of three hundred pages a memoir, or pure fiction?
To find out how things transpired the summer I started my forensic fellowship, pick up The Girl Who Was Taken. It’s a hell of a story. And the way things end will have you gasping like a brand new path fellow the first time a zipper rips down a body bag and their maiden corpse is dumped in front of them.
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By Dr. Livia Cutty
The summer after my sister graduated high school, just as she was preparing to head off to college, she disappeared. She and another girl, actually. They both vanished from a beach party in our small North Carolina town. Their abduction sent Emerson Bay into panic.
Every resident, neighbor and friend looked for these two girls, large packs of volunteers walking shoulder-to-shoulder through the woods hoping to stumble across any clue that might help located them. We held vigils, too, lighting candles late into the summer night in some strange show of faith that our girls would be returned to us.
This went on for two weeks, just long enough for me to secretly lose hope. And then Megan McDonald, the other girl who was taken along with my sister, resurfaced. She had escaped from a bunker hidden deep in the woods, ramrodding her way through the forest on a dark, rainy night until someone spotted her wandering on Highway 57.
My sister? She was never seen again.
That was last August. Back then I was finishing the fourth year of my anatomical pathology residency. I’d completed my undergraduate degree, endured four years of medical school, and had settled into residency prepared to spend my four-year stint learning how disease affects the human body. Back in that old life, a cushy hospital pathology job waited in my future. Maybe a teaching gig at the university. Then my sister disappeared and my priorities changed. After my residency, I applied for a forensic pathology fellowship—a one-year program that would turn me into a medical examiner. My thinking was this: Someday, my sister’s body would show up in someone’s morgue. It would be up to a forensic pathologist to use his skills to uncover the clues my sister’s body left behind, and to hand those clues over to the authorities who might track down her killer. I wanted those skills, simple as that.
The following July, nearly a year after my sister went missing, I started my year of fellowship at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in North Carolina. I also started reading the bestselling memoir that was sweeping the nation. It was the true story account written by Megan McDonald, the girl who disappeared with my sister. Megan had miraculously escaped her captor, and her riveting story of survival was a blockbuster topping every bestseller list in the country. The memoir bothered me, the whoring of such personal tragedy for monetary gain infuriated me, and the fact that the book never once mentioned my still-missing sister unnerved me.
It was about that time, on a hot Monday morning, that the body of a young man rolled into my morgue. That body changed my life forever. It changed Megan’s life as well, since after I completed the autopsy I began to question every page of her bestselling book. My biggest question: Was this hunk of three hundred pages a memoir, or pure fiction?
To find out how things transpired the summer I started my forensic fellowship, pick up The Girl Who Was Taken. It’s a hell of a story. And the way things end will have you gasping like a brand new path fellow the first time a zipper rips down a body bag and their maiden corpse is dumped in front of them.
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June 22, 2016
That Book
If you’re an avid reader, you’ve come across that book.
That magical book that touched you and moved you. The one you didn’t want to put down. The one you stayed up too late reading. The one you couldn’t wait to get back to, couldn’t stop thinking about, and were sad to finish.
If you love to read, at least one book has already come to mind. Maybe more. But the truth about reading is that this type of book doesn’t come around often. It certainly doesn’t describe every book we pick up. Still, those magical books fill us with hope that another is around the corner. And that hope is what keeps us reading the good books as we hunt for the great ones.
I remember the first book that captivated me in this way. The one that transported me away from my real world and firmly planted me elsewhere. It was John Grisham’s legal thriller The Firm. Decades after it was originally published, I still consider it one of the best suspense novels I’ve come across. I’ve read it multiple times simply for entertainment. And now, as an author, I read it to remind myself how to write good suspense. I read Pat Conroy’s The Lords of Discipline and Thomas Harris’s The Silence of the Lambs for the same reason.
To me, each represents that book. They have a special place in my heart, not just because they are books I love, but because they saved my career. They may have caused it.
The road to publication can be rocky and long. My journey to get my debut novel, Summit Lake, into bookstores was a decade long battle fraught with rejection. It was my fourth attempt at writing a book. My first manuscript generated more than one hundred rejection letters. My second was worthy enough to land me an agent, but still produced scores of rejections from New York publishers. On my agent’s urgings, I wrote a third manuscript, and when that story met with the same fate as all my previous works—four hundred pages of plot, more than a year of my life, and a stack of rejection letters—I decided I’d had enough. I concluded that the publishing industry was too difficult to break into, and my talents too meager to compete.
So, I stopped writing. A solid few weeks went by. I hadn’t quite told my agent that I’d given up, but she knew how disappointed I was by the last round of rejections. During that low point, I found time for self-reflection and discovered something was missing in my life. After I stopped writing, an odd feeling of loss filled me up inside. It took a little time to figured out that void was present because I was no longer chasing my dream.
After weeks of sulking, I got back to the computer and started another story. It would be my fourth manuscript. This time, I did not dive blindly into the story. Before I started, I asked myself why I wanted to write it. I attempted to define my dream, and figure out what, exactly, I was trying to accomplish. My answer came when I reflected on why I love to read. My epiphany arrived when I thought back to John Grisham and Pat Conroy and Thomas Harris, and the novels that moved me and touched me. I realized then I was writing because I wanted to create that book. I wanted to write a novel that people couldn’t put down, the one they couldn’t wait to get back to, the one they couldn’t stop thinking about. I wanted to write a book the reader would be sad to finish.
With all these intentions clear in my mind, I penned the story of a murdered law school student, the investigative reporter assigned to her case, and the chilling connection that forms between victim and investigator as secrets emerge in the small mountain town where the killing took place. I placed this town in the Blue Ridge Mountains and named it Summit Lake. Then, my agent and I shipped the manuscript off to New York.
In a few weeks, we had an offer for a two-book deal. Summit Lake sold at auction in Germany, as well as Poland and Brazil. Brilliance purchased the audio rights, and Reader’s Digest bought the condensation rights to include in their May publication of Select Editions alongside Amy Sue Nathan and Lee Child.
Today, I am moved every time I hear from a reader who tells me Summit Lake is the book they couldn’t put down. The one they couldn’t wait to get back to. The one they couldn’t stop thinking about and the one they were sad to finish.
Will it be that book for everyone? Surely not. But this writer is proud to hear that it has been for some, and grateful for those who have let me know.
Charlie Donlea
May 2016
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(This post originally appeared on the blog The Suspense is Thrilling Me)
That magical book that touched you and moved you. The one you didn’t want to put down. The one you stayed up too late reading. The one you couldn’t wait to get back to, couldn’t stop thinking about, and were sad to finish.
If you love to read, at least one book has already come to mind. Maybe more. But the truth about reading is that this type of book doesn’t come around often. It certainly doesn’t describe every book we pick up. Still, those magical books fill us with hope that another is around the corner. And that hope is what keeps us reading the good books as we hunt for the great ones.
I remember the first book that captivated me in this way. The one that transported me away from my real world and firmly planted me elsewhere. It was John Grisham’s legal thriller The Firm. Decades after it was originally published, I still consider it one of the best suspense novels I’ve come across. I’ve read it multiple times simply for entertainment. And now, as an author, I read it to remind myself how to write good suspense. I read Pat Conroy’s The Lords of Discipline and Thomas Harris’s The Silence of the Lambs for the same reason.
To me, each represents that book. They have a special place in my heart, not just because they are books I love, but because they saved my career. They may have caused it.
The road to publication can be rocky and long. My journey to get my debut novel, Summit Lake, into bookstores was a decade long battle fraught with rejection. It was my fourth attempt at writing a book. My first manuscript generated more than one hundred rejection letters. My second was worthy enough to land me an agent, but still produced scores of rejections from New York publishers. On my agent’s urgings, I wrote a third manuscript, and when that story met with the same fate as all my previous works—four hundred pages of plot, more than a year of my life, and a stack of rejection letters—I decided I’d had enough. I concluded that the publishing industry was too difficult to break into, and my talents too meager to compete.
So, I stopped writing. A solid few weeks went by. I hadn’t quite told my agent that I’d given up, but she knew how disappointed I was by the last round of rejections. During that low point, I found time for self-reflection and discovered something was missing in my life. After I stopped writing, an odd feeling of loss filled me up inside. It took a little time to figured out that void was present because I was no longer chasing my dream.
After weeks of sulking, I got back to the computer and started another story. It would be my fourth manuscript. This time, I did not dive blindly into the story. Before I started, I asked myself why I wanted to write it. I attempted to define my dream, and figure out what, exactly, I was trying to accomplish. My answer came when I reflected on why I love to read. My epiphany arrived when I thought back to John Grisham and Pat Conroy and Thomas Harris, and the novels that moved me and touched me. I realized then I was writing because I wanted to create that book. I wanted to write a novel that people couldn’t put down, the one they couldn’t wait to get back to, the one they couldn’t stop thinking about. I wanted to write a book the reader would be sad to finish.
With all these intentions clear in my mind, I penned the story of a murdered law school student, the investigative reporter assigned to her case, and the chilling connection that forms between victim and investigator as secrets emerge in the small mountain town where the killing took place. I placed this town in the Blue Ridge Mountains and named it Summit Lake. Then, my agent and I shipped the manuscript off to New York.
In a few weeks, we had an offer for a two-book deal. Summit Lake sold at auction in Germany, as well as Poland and Brazil. Brilliance purchased the audio rights, and Reader’s Digest bought the condensation rights to include in their May publication of Select Editions alongside Amy Sue Nathan and Lee Child.
Today, I am moved every time I hear from a reader who tells me Summit Lake is the book they couldn’t put down. The one they couldn’t wait to get back to. The one they couldn’t stop thinking about and the one they were sad to finish.
Will it be that book for everyone? Surely not. But this writer is proud to hear that it has been for some, and grateful for those who have let me know.
Charlie Donlea
May 2016
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(This post originally appeared on the blog The Suspense is Thrilling Me)
January 11, 2016
The Mark of a Good Book
I am well aware of the entertainment venues that compete with novels. Although an avid reader, I, too, am a lover of music and movies, of television and sports.
I'm a sucker for watching acoustic covers on YouTube. If you've seen one Zac Brown video, you know you'll need to see them all. I've binge-watched entire television series—headphones on, iPad to nose and lights off in the middle of the night. Breaking Bad and Sons of Anarchy caused me more lost sleep than any writing deadline. Sunday afternoons are spent watching football. And my family has a standing date each week called Friday Night Movie Night.
So I understand Summit Lake is up against steep competition—and this doesn't take into account the vast number of other novels written by authors whose talents far surpass my own.
But when I set out to write my story, I wanted to give it a chance. I wanted it to possess the ammunition needed to fight off the competition. So I took inventory and pinpointed what, exactly, makes me pick up a book rather than reach for the remote or log onto the computer.
And the answer is this: The book has to call me back to it.
If a story makes me think about it after I've put it down, if it makes me wonder what will happen next, if it makes me ponder where the characters are going and what is in store for them—then, when I'm free and able to spend leisure time on entertainment, hands down I'm reaching for that book before anything else.
I've been fortunate to hear from readers around the country and across the ocean who have told me Summit Lake does exactly that. I've enjoyed hearing that readers couldn't wait to get back to the story. "Couldn't put it down" is a cliché. We all have lives and work and responsibilities that force us to put books down. But when I hear that readers couldn't wait to get back to the book, I know I've succeeded. When they couldn't wait to return to the characters they are getting to know, the setting they are starting to visualize, the story that's subtly poking their curiosity, and the mystery they think they've got solved but need just another few pages to be sure—well, then the book has a fighting chance against the competition.
So try it. Pick it up and get into the story. Then, put it down and get on with your life. If the characters or the setting or the mystery calls you back to it, then turn off the television for a night, stow the tablet at bedtime, and read a good book.
And if you're able to figure out the twist in Summit Lake , let me know by dropping me a line. I'd love to hear from you.
Read More
Visit My Website
Summit Lake
I'm a sucker for watching acoustic covers on YouTube. If you've seen one Zac Brown video, you know you'll need to see them all. I've binge-watched entire television series—headphones on, iPad to nose and lights off in the middle of the night. Breaking Bad and Sons of Anarchy caused me more lost sleep than any writing deadline. Sunday afternoons are spent watching football. And my family has a standing date each week called Friday Night Movie Night.
So I understand Summit Lake is up against steep competition—and this doesn't take into account the vast number of other novels written by authors whose talents far surpass my own.
But when I set out to write my story, I wanted to give it a chance. I wanted it to possess the ammunition needed to fight off the competition. So I took inventory and pinpointed what, exactly, makes me pick up a book rather than reach for the remote or log onto the computer.
And the answer is this: The book has to call me back to it.
If a story makes me think about it after I've put it down, if it makes me wonder what will happen next, if it makes me ponder where the characters are going and what is in store for them—then, when I'm free and able to spend leisure time on entertainment, hands down I'm reaching for that book before anything else.
I've been fortunate to hear from readers around the country and across the ocean who have told me Summit Lake does exactly that. I've enjoyed hearing that readers couldn't wait to get back to the story. "Couldn't put it down" is a cliché. We all have lives and work and responsibilities that force us to put books down. But when I hear that readers couldn't wait to get back to the book, I know I've succeeded. When they couldn't wait to return to the characters they are getting to know, the setting they are starting to visualize, the story that's subtly poking their curiosity, and the mystery they think they've got solved but need just another few pages to be sure—well, then the book has a fighting chance against the competition.
So try it. Pick it up and get into the story. Then, put it down and get on with your life. If the characters or the setting or the mystery calls you back to it, then turn off the television for a night, stow the tablet at bedtime, and read a good book.
And if you're able to figure out the twist in Summit Lake , let me know by dropping me a line. I'd love to hear from you.
Read More
Visit My Website
Summit Lake
