The Reading Frenzy: **GIVEAWAY** Interview Patricia Gussin

Today it's my pleasure to bring you Patricia Gussin who comes to chat about her new medical thriller, After the Fall, her final novel in the Laura Nelson series. They say write what you know and Patricia knows her way around a stethoscope. See what interesting paths Patricia and her husband have taken since leaving the medical field, including founding Oceanview Publishing. Enjoy our chat!
Plus one lucky entrant US ONLY has a chance to win the novel, giveaway details are below.

Please welcome Patricia Gussin!

ISBN-13: 9781608091270
Publisher: Oceanview Publishing
Publication date: 1/6/2015
Pages: 378

Overview

A tragic accident ends Laura Nelson’s career as a surgeon. After accepting a position as Vice President for Research in a large pharmaceutical company, Laura works to finalize the imminent approval of the company’s groundbreaking new drug. But Jake Harter, a malicious Food and Drug Administration employee, cannot let that happen. He is obsessed with Adawia Abdul, the beautiful Iraqi scientist who discovered the drug. As soon as the drug is approved, Adawia will collect a substantial bonus and reluctantly return to replace her dying father, the lead scientist in Saddam Hussein’s bioweapon program. As Hussein’s henchmen apply brutal pressure to assure Dr. Abdul’s speedy return to Iraq, Harter uses his influence to stall the drug’s approval. If Laura gets in his way, he will eliminate her as he has her predecessor and his own wife.

Giveaway is for one print copy of
After The Fall
US ONLY
sponsored by Oceanview Publishing
and Patricia Gussin
Please Use the Rafflecopter form below to enter
Thanks Oceanview and Patricia
Good Luck!

Patricia welcome to The Reading FrenzyTell my readers about After The Fall

After the Fall is the story of Laura Nelson, an accomplished surgeon whose career is ended as quickly as a slip on the ice. She takes a job as the Vice President for Research of a major pharmaceutical company. While working to finalize the approval of a groundbreaking new drug, her efforts are being thwarted by a malicious FDA employee with reasons not to get that drug approved. Laura’s relentless determination puts her solidly on his “must eliminate” list. A story of heroism, love, family, and cultural diversity.

Patricia this is your fourth and final novel in the Laura Nelson series.Why did you feel it should end now?

The Laura Nelson series covers a period of twenty-five years. In Shadow of Death, Laura is a medical student with small children in the midst of the social upheaval of the 1967 Detroit riots. Then the series skips seven years in Laura’s life. In Twisted Justice, she’s a thoracic surgeon; in Weapon of Choice, she’s Chief of Surgery, and now in After the Fall, she’s a Vice President of Research and Development in Big Pharma. She’s now forty-eight years old, her children are off on their own, she’s in a romantic relationship. Over the four books she’s endured a lot; much of which is brought to closure in After the Fall. We can only hope that she has a well-deserved ordinary life after this. But who knows?

Will you miss your cast of characters in this series or are you happy to set off on a new adventure?

I will miss this cast of characters. I have an extensive spreadsheet, arranged by family and chronology that encompasses the Nelson, Jones and Monroe families from the Laura Nelson series and the Parnell family from The Test and the Monroe and Jones family in And Then There Was One. So I can always go to this cohort of characters and feature them in future books.

Patricia you and your husband Robert co-wrote What’s Next For You?I understand it’s actually Robert’s and your career/life transition story but it also says it’s not a memoir or a how to.

What exactly is it and who should read it?

We wrote What’s Next For You? as an response to the question: how did you transition from careers in medicine and medical research to writers, publishers, and vintners. In What’s Next For You? we tell our story from a he-said—she-said point of view and hope that it’s funny and inspirational. We’d been asked to speak to many groups of people who are going through a transition in their life and we ran out of speaking-time so we wrote the book. Our motto as discussed in the book is: “thoughtful impulsiveness.”

Patricia you own two vineyards in New Zealand both have the name “Oceanview” in them, is this in anyway connected to Oceanview Publishing?

We brought our first vineyard before we started Oceanview Publishing. Because it’s located at the Pacific Ocean in Marlborough, New Zealand, we called it Oceanview Vineyards. Because that and because we love the ocean and our Florida and our New York homes are on the ocean, we named our new publishing company Oceanview Publishing. Incidentally, all the grapes from Oceanview Vineyards in New Zealand go into the most awarded New Zealand wines from Villa Maria Estates.

They say write what you know and with the exception of What’s Next For You you obviously took their suggestions.Will you ever veer from the medical field in your novel writing?

I love the intersection of medicine and family so from some perspective there will probably be at least a medical practitioner presence. Case in point, my New York Times best-selling novel, And Then There Was One, is not a medical thriller with one exception: the mother of the abducted triplets is a forensic pediatric psychiatrist.

Can you give us a hint about your next project?

I am working on a thriller that involves a parental abduction to Egypt just before the upheaval.

Patricia your bio is impressive and extensive.How did it lead to your to becoming an author?

My medical background was pivotal in leading me into writing. I wrote Shadow of Death in an attempt to revisit the reality of that experience in the context of urban conflict—a fictional way. Subsequently the book has been used in two universities for contemporary urban history. I have also leaned on my experience balancing career and family and on my medical practice and pharmaceutical research experience.

Patricia being a medical doctor you obviously know how to work under pressure, but what about writing deadlines.

Do they turn you topsy-turvy or is it all in a days work?
All in a day’s work. At one point I had five kids in middle and high school, was the Medical Director at a major Pharmaceutical Company, and getting an MBA at Columbia University. I do appreciate the perspective that fiction writing provides; if you get something wrong, nobody dies.

Patricia thanks so much for taking the time to answer my questions

Good luck with Laura Nelson #4 and all the stories you have yet to write.

Will there be any author events/signings for this novel?
I will have signing events in Sarasota, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Grand Rapids, and more.

Connect with Patricia - Website - Facebook - Twitter

MEET PATRICIA:

New York Times and USA Today best-selling author Patricia Gussin has practiced medicine and has worked in medical research as worldwide vice president for a leading healthcare company. She is a graduate of Aquinas College, Wayne State University School of Medicine, Columbia University Business School, and has an honorary degree from Duquesne University.

Gussin’s first novel, Shadow of Death, was nominated best first novel by International Thriller Writers. Twisted Justice, The Test, And Then There Was One, and Weapon of Choice followed. Her latest, After the Fall, is Gussin’s sixth novel and the fourth in the Laura Nelson series.

The mother of seven children, she and her husband, Dr. Robert Gussin, live on Longboat Key, Florida, and in Amagansett, New York. The Gussins also own and operate two vineyards in Marlborough, New Zealand. They co-authored a non-fiction book What’s Next...For You? in response to frequent questions as to how they transitioned from careers in medicine and medical research to authors, publishers and vintners.

Reviews:

Publishers Weekly

★ 11/24/2014

Dr. Laura Nelson, chief of surgery at Tampa City Hospital (Fla.), reluctantly seeks a new career after suffering a serious hand injury in Gussin’s superior fourth and final series thriller (after 2012’s Weapons of Choice), set a year after the Gulf War. Laura agrees to become an executive at Keystone Pharma, a company about to release a wonderful new drug, Immunone, for which she helped organize the clinical trials. Meanwhile, FDA project manager Jake Harter is desperate to keep Immunone from being approved, for his own nefarious reasons. Jake is also willing to hide vital data and commit murder to keep his lover, Iraqi researcher Adawia Abdul, from leaving the U.S. Meanwhile, Saddam Hussein’s minions are pressuring Adawia to return home so that she can create bioweapons. Gussin deftly resolves the various plotlines at the climax. Along the way, she vividly depicts her characters’ interior lives, especially Jake’s slide into monomania as he collides with the determined, clear-headed Laura. (Jan.)

Booklist

“Gussin completes her Laura Nelson series with an action-packed medical thriller...Gussin uses her experience as a surgeon and medical researcher to create a complex, realistic story that will appeal to readers with a taste for thrillers centering on science and politics.”

Suspense Magazine

“This book is the fourth and, sadly, the end of the Laura Nelson series that has been so incredible to read…This fascinating series has the reader chomping at the bit for yet another piece of the puzzle every single time one of the books comes to an end. The writing, the characters, the plot—everything is so well done. Patricia Gussin will continue to gift fans with another amazing tale very soon. But Laura Nelson and her relentless determination and heroine status will be missed."