Robin Cook's Blog, page 2

Hello everyone. Time for another post! I...

Hello everyone. Time for another post! I promise to make this one truly short (at least short for me lol) First I’d like to personally thank all those people who have taken the time to comment about CHARLATANS. It has been so encouraging for me to read them as I start work on my next book. Of course I have to say that I also appreciate hearing so many positive responses. As I have said in previous posts, there is always the concern that your readers are not going to like what you have done even though your goal is to capture and keep their interest and make reading fun, enlightening, and thought provoking. As I have said in the past, I started to write medical thrillers to make people aware of problems associated with the medical-industrial complex, and I continue to do so. Knowing that the system doesn’t always have the best interests of patients at the forefront is the first step in protecting one’s self and one’s family. It is also hopefully the first step in changing the system to be better. We all have a responsibility to let our representatives in congress know how we think. That is central to the democratic process. Unfortunately for most people it is difficult to know what is going on inside our hospitals and doctors’ offices, ergo my medical thrillers. A good example is my book INTERVENTION, which I recently quickly reread for research since it was the last book that Jack Stapleton was the main character as he will be back in the book I am working on now. Reading INTERVENTION certainly opens ones’ eyes to the ‘alternative medicine’ issue, which is an important issue. Unfortunately many too many people fall into the hands of a ‘side’ industry that is a waste of money, time, and even can be dangerous. As an aside, I also recently reread CURE because that is the last time Laurie Montgomery was the main character, and obviously she too will be in this new book. That book was about the behind the scenes patent battles involving the lucrative, emerging stem cell industry. That alternative medicine industry is a burgeoning problem that probably warrants another book because there are far too many bogus stem cell treatments out there putting patients at risk like I portrayed in my book SEIZURE. Interesting enough, the patent fights over CRISPR(CAS9), which is what my new book is about, are even worse than those involving stem cells.

With this post, I am going to include some links to articles that those of you who have read CHARLATANS might find interesting. I’m also going to include the FACEBOOK profile page of Gail Shafter, which I think might bring a smile to the faces of those of you who have read CHARLATANS, as it lends a fun but charlatan-like authenticity to the CHARLATANS’ storyline!

As a final point I wanted to say a few words in reference to my last post where I talked about the challenges of going from a book to a movie as I am struggling with it in relation to the CHARLATANS screenplay. Now many of you probably have your own preferences as to cases where the transition has worked well and you liked the movie as well as the book or even better, although most often people feel the book is better as it depended on ones’ own imagination rather than the movie director’s or screen writer’s. It is easy to google ‘best book to movie adaptions’ which will include the usual like THE GODFATHER, GONE WITH THE WIND, STAND BY ME (actually adapted from a Steven King short story), GOODFELLAS (book was WISE GUY), and the Harry Potter books to name a few. But I want to introduce you to one that you will not find on these ‘google-able’ lists. And that is the movie THE AFRICAN QUEEN with Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn. It is an old black and white movie, of course, but I loved it and didn’t even know it was also a book by C.S. Forester until I ran across the book in the room of a Bed And Breakfast. Just for fun, I read the book and also loved it so much that I went back and watched the movie again. After loving the movie just as much for the second time, I went back and reread the book and liked that just as much also. In other words it is the only time I haven’t been able to decide which one is better! So…I challenge you people to give THE AFRICAN QUEEN a try or tell the rest of us in a comment if there is another book-movie combination that you cannot decide which is better.

So that’s it…I confess the post is not as short as I intended, but as I explained before, I am a novelist or I am trying to be a novelist lol All the best to every one, Robin Cook

Trust Me, I’m a Fake Doctor: How Medical Imposters Thrive in the Real World
https://www.theguardian.com/global/20...
Dr Con Man: The Rise and Fall of a Celebrity Scientist Who Fooled Almost Everyone
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2...
Facebook Friends May Get You Sick: Obsessive Social Media Use Triggers URI
http://www.medicaldaily.com/facebook-...
Beware of Social Media Celebrity Doctors
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/...
Three Reasons Why Pacemakers Are Vulnerable to Hacking
https://phys.org/news/2017-09-pacemak...





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Hello everyone! It is the first of September, which marks the end of summer for most of us here in...

Hello everyone! It is the first of September, which marks the end of summer for most of us here in the northern hemisphere. Normally such a situation makes me rather melancholy with the need to exchange those warm days of summer lasting to past 8:00pm with cold days of winter with darkness beginning at 5:00pm or earlier. But this year I find myself rather chipper and the reason is that the response to CHARLATANS has been so positive. In my last post I admitted that I was worried that you, my readers, might not like the book as well as I liked it. Well, it seems that my worries were not necessary as there have been many very positive comments including a number that said that the book was ‘difficult to put down.’ As you can well imagine, such a comment is ‘music’ to a thriller writer’s ears. It means that the story was so engaging that the reader had to continue even if it was, say, past midnight and that they knew they should have turned off the light by 10:30 the latest! Thank you to all of you that have taken the time to read the book, especially to those willing to make a comment, and I am hoping to hear more reaction after this post. I am going to take this positive response as an encouragement to write character heavy stories. Although such narratives are more difficult to write than action based stories, ultimately I like it better too since I get to live with these fleshed out characters over many months. Noah and Ava certainly became like friends over the past winter whereas Mason morphed into someone I would rather ignore! All three came to life for me over the months such that they would wake me up in the morning so they could come back to life!

Now that I am reasonably confident that you, my readers, have enjoyed CHARALANS, I’d like to ask if the novel has stimulated thoughts as to the direction of our culture with its progressive reliance on social media and the internet to the exclusion of more face-to-face contact with each other. COMA, my first big bestseller, ended up making people recognize the seriousness of going into a hospital where one had to give up autonomy and essentially control of one’s life. Hospitals are scary places when you are a patient, some more scary than others, especially in those where the bottom-line has become more important than patients’ lives. COMA made people realize that hospitals were places best to be avoided unless seriously needed and even then it is best to have an ombudsman. I have a sense that CHARLATANS is going to do the same for peoples’ reaction to doctors. There are great doctors but there are bad ones too and those who inflate their expertise. Unfortunately the medical profession has done a relatively crummy job of policing itself in this regard. At any rate, my question for those who have enjoyed CHARLATANS, has reading the book influenced your thinking and possibly altered your thoughts about how we train doctors. Also, what are your feelings about concurrent surgery after reading the story. Do you think concurrent surgery is appropriate? Personally, I don’t like it, especially when patients are not told, but there are a number of people who think differently, particularly hospital administrators and those surgeons who like to maximize their productivity.

In the past I have included a few post about the writing process and explained my approach. From reading the comments that such posts evoked, I am tempted to go a bit further. I have mentioned in past posts that CHARLATANS will be produced as a major motion picture. All summer I have been working on a screenplay in cahoots with a very good friend. Originally I thought going from the book to the screenplay for CHARLATANS would be ‘a walk in the park’ since I had essentially outlined the story in a screenplay format. The narrative is already divided into the classic three act structure (they are appropriately called book I, II, and III). The story is also begun with a visually powerful prologue that I believe grabs the reader from page one. Just like a book, I believe a movie should grab the viewers attention from the very first scene. But as I seriously contemplated the screenplay, I realized I couldn’t just use the prologue as the movie’s beginning because it would not provide the personalities of the main characters, namely Dr. Ava London, Dr. “Wild Bill’ Mason, and finally Dr. Noah Rothauser. It wouldn’t even give you the reason the patient was beloved by the entire hospital staff, making his death such an agonizing event. My question here is whether you, my readers, can understand the difficulty moving from a novel to screenplay. Strangely enough, for those who have read the book, what I am proposing now is that the movie version shouldn’t start out in OR #8 with the death of Bruce Vincent like the book but rather should start out with the two FBI agents visiting the internet troll in Middletown, Connecticut with the shocking realization that by killing the man that they are not FBI agents but rather ‘charlatans’ pretending to be FBI agents. After this rather shocking beginning, the movie titles would appear, followed by the scene of Dr. Noah Rothauser manacled to a bed with his voice over explaining his confusion about where he is and why he had been abducted. In this form the story will evolve essentially as a flashback. So what do you people think of this approach and do you understand the dilemma? Books and movies are entirely different beasts, with books generally capable of being significantly richer since our imaginations via the written word with the benefit of the omniscient third person are more powerful than mere visual images even when buttressed by appropriate dialogue. In an ironic sense, a visual image is almost limiting when compared with our own imaginations.

Once again I have made my post much too long, but as I have pointed out in the past, I am a novelist not a journalist. I look forward to reading the comments this post engenders as well as more reactions to CHARLATANS, the book. Warm wishes to all, Robin Cook

PS I just asked Primo if he agrees with all I have said. He's not sure!?!? lol





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Hello everyone! It is the first of September, which...

Hello everyone! It is the first of September, which marks the end of summer for most of us here in the northern hemisphere. Normally such a situation makes me rather melancholy with the need to exchange those warm days of summer lasting to past 8:00pm with cold days of winter with darkness beginning at 5:00pm or earlier. But this year I find myself rather chipper and the reason is that the response to CHARLATANS has been so positive. In my last post I admitted that I was worried that you, my readers, might not like the book as well as I liked it. Well, it seems that my worries were not necessary as there have been many very positive comments including a number that said that the book was ‘difficult to put down.’ As you can well imagine, such a comment is ‘music’ to a thriller writer’s ears. It means that the story was so engaging that the reader had to continue even if it was, say, past midnight and that they knew they should have turned off the light by 10:30 the latest! Thank you to all of you that have taken the time to read the book, especially to those willing to make a comment, and I am hoping to hear more reaction after this post. I am going to take this positive response as an encouragement to write character heavy stories. Although such narratives are more difficult to write than action based stories, ultimately I like it better too since I get to live with these fleshed out characters over many months. Noah and Ava certainly became like friends over the past winter whereas Mason morphed into someone I would rather ignore! All three came to life for me over the months such that they would wake me up in the morning so they could come back to life!

Now that I am reasonably confident that you, my readers, have enjoyed CHARALANS, I’d like to ask if the novel has stimulated thoughts as to the direction of our culture with its progressive reliance on social media and the internet to the exclusion of more face-to-face contact with each other. COMA, my first big bestseller, ended up making people recognize the seriousness of going into a hospital where one had to give up autonomy and essentially control of one’s life. Hospitals are scary places when you are a patient, some more scary than others, especially in those where the bottom-line has become more important than patients’ lives. COMA made people realize that hospitals were places best to be avoided unless seriously needed and even then it is best to have an ombudsman. I have a sense that CHARLATANS is going to do the same for peoples’ reaction to doctors. There are great doctors but there are bad ones too and those who inflate their expertise. Unfortunately the medical profession has done a relatively crummy job of policing itself in this regard. At any rate, my question for those who have enjoyed CHARLATANS, has reading the book influenced your thinking and possibly altered your thoughts about how we train doctors. Also, what are your feelings about concurrent surgery after reading the story. Do you think concurrent surgery is appropriate? Personally, I don’t like it, especially when patients are not told, but there are a number of people who think differently, particularly hospital administrators and those surgeons who like to maximize their productivity.

In the past I have included a few post about the writing process and explained my approach. From reading the comments that such posts evoked, I am tempted to go a bit further. I have mentioned in past posts that CHARLATANS will be produced as a major motion picture. All summer I have been working on a screenplay in cahoots with a very good friend. Originally I thought going from the book to the screenplay for CHARLATANS would be ‘a walk in the park’ since I had essentially outlined the story in a screenplay format. The narrative is already divided into the classic three act structure (they are appropriately called book I, II, and III). The story is also begun with a visually powerful prologue that I believe grabs the reader from page one. Just like a book, I believe a movie should grab the viewers attention from the very first scene. But as I seriously contemplated the screenplay, I realized I couldn’t just use the prologue as the movie’s beginning because it would not provide the personalities of the main characters, namely Dr. Ava London, Dr. “Wild Bill’ Mason, and finally Dr. Noah Rothauser. It wouldn’t even give you the reason the patient was beloved by the entire hospital staff, making his death such an agonizing event. My question here is whether you, my readers, can understand the difficulty moving from a novel to screenplay. Strangely enough, for those who have read the book, what I am proposing now is that the movie version shouldn’t start out in OR #8 with the death of Bruce Vincent like the book but rather should start out with the two FBI agents visiting the internet troll in Middletown, Connecticut with the shocking realization that by killing the man that they are not FBI agents but rather ‘charlatans’ pretending to be FBI agents. After this rather shocking beginning, the movie titles would appear, followed by the scene of Dr. Noah Rothauser manacled to a bed with his voice over explaining his confusion about where he is and why he had been abducted. In this form the story will evolve essentially as a flashback. So what do you people think of this approach and do you understand the dilemma? Books and movies are entirely different beasts, with books generally capable of being significantly richer since our imaginations via the written word with the benefit of the omniscient third person are powerful than mere visual images even when buttressed by appropriate dialogue. In an ironic sense, a visual image is almost limiting when compared with our own imaginations.

Once again I have made my post much too long, but as I have pointed out in the past, I am a novelist not a journalist. I look forward to reading the comments this post engenders as well as more reactions to CHARLATANS, the book. Warm wishes to all, Robin Cook

PS I just asked Primo if he agrees with all I have said. He's not sure!?!? lol





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Robin Cook's cover photo

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Hello everyone! Today is the day! After...

Hello everyone! Today is the day! After all my planning, all the research, all the outlining with the inevitable fits and starts, and then all those hours of writing, meaning isolated from the world with just my cat, Primo, keeping me company, CHARLATANS has finally appeared. Today is publication day. For those of you who have written a book know, it is a time of relief that all the effort has finally paid off. At the same time it is a moment of anxiety because it is a situation where one has put a lot of one's self out there for all to see and judge. The hope is that people will enjoy it, find it interesting and thought provoking to the point of being willing to spend the time and effort reading it even though there are so many other demands on time and other avenues of entertainment. The fact is reading generally requires more effort than say, watching a TV show or watching a movie because reading is a more active process requiring more areas of one's brain to be functioning. I will hold my breath to see if you readers think Charlatans ranks up there with my previous books that you have indicated you have enjoyed. Personally I think it is one of my best, but I am merely the author lol! (that means I have to be biased). I can't wait to hear some responses. But there is one thing I want to emphasize. In contrast to many other bestseller writers, I have no staff. I do everything myself, research, outlining, and writing. So I am to blame for the result, which I hope is positive. I believe it is the most character heavy book I have written, meaning the whole story wouldn't happen if the main characters had different personalities than what I have created. I am really looking forward to hearing peoples' responses as well as a little worried. I have one request. Part of the fun of Charlatans is the surprises so I hope people will refrain from giving them away. So...my fingers are crossed that people will enjoy the story as much as I did writing it, and I can't wait to hear some comments from all of you. Rest assured, I will read all of them.

To celebrate publication day, my very creative Literary Agency called Trident Media Group made up a hospital ID card for one of the main characters of CHARLATANS, Dr. Noah Rothauser. (in my dreams it looks like me when I was a surgical resident laugh out loud) I have included it with this post. They also made up a Facebook profile page for another main character, Dr. Ava London. I've included that too. Happy reading everyone. All the best, Robin Cook





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Hi everybody. Finally today is one of those beautiful...

Hi everybody. Finally today is one of those beautiful summer days on Martha's Vineyard. Unfortunately they haven't been as prevalent as previous summers and the water temperature of the ocean on South Beach is still only about 65, which I find intimidating unless there are big waves to entice me into the water. There have been a lot of overcast and cool days. The good side of that is that it is easier to stay here at my desk and work on the screenplay for Charlatans. Speaking of Charlatans reminds me that my publisher is doing a give away. Here is the link below and best of luck to everyone. All the best, Robin Cook

Shelf Awarenessis running a giveaway for CHARLATANS! Enter for a chance to win a free copy of my newest medical thriller, CHARLATANS, on sale August 22: http://apps.shelf-awareness.com/signu...



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Hmmm. I just did a post and when I...

Hmmm. I just did a post and when I read it over, I forgot to mention the significance of the quote from CHARLATANS. It happens to be one of the themes of the book as is spoken by a medical doctor, something that should put a bit of a shiver in everyone's spine. And that is why the quote is significant. Of course, a lot of people would have figured that out without me saying it, but I wanted to say it just the same. All the best, Robin Cook



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Hi everyone! Here is yet another teaser from...

Hi everyone! Here is yet another teaser from the creative media people at my literary agency. It is a quote from CHARLATANS, but I can't remember which character said it. It was either Noah, the Super Chief Surgical Resident or Ava, one of the staff anesthesiologists. I'd look it up, but I can't because I happen to be in the Big Apple for a few days doing some research for CHIMERA. Since the next book will involve Jack and Laurie, it will have to take place here in NYC. Happy summer! Robin Cook





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Oh! By the way! I have talked with...

Oh! By the way! I have talked with the creative people at my literary agency about including international people in future give-a-ways. I'm all for it and will be happy to come up with paying for the additional shipping costs. I don't like to discriminate!!!!!! Thank you to all my overseas readers. Sincerely, Robin Cook



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Hello everybody. Happy Friday with the...

Hello everybody. Happy Friday with the last weekend in July about to begin. That means August comes within days along with my long awaited release of CHARLATANS. I'm having trouble tamping down my eagerness to hear some reactions here on Facebook. Meanwhile let me say this: one of the characters in CHARLATANS has a hard time unplugging from electronic devices. I think it's safe to say that we are all guilty of that time to time even those of us who are not teenagers (lol), but what I wanted to explore in Charlatans as one of the themes of the book is what happens when that digital addiction goes too far. You'll have to wait until August 22 to see exactly what I am talking about, but in the meantime here's another chance to win an ARC of CHARLATANS as well as a digital detox gift package that my generous publisher has creatively put together. Good luck to those who enter and enjoy to those that win!; I think I'll enter myself