June 26, 2025 • 18 mins
ANTHOLOGY SERIES. Tonight we’re chatting with T. D. Severin, whose novel DEADLY VISION has just been released by Penmore Press. The book is a medical thriller that peole are comparing to Michael Crichton and Dean Koontz
Deadly Vision is a high-concept medical thriller that follows Dr. Taylor Abrahms, a pioneering surgeon and researcher in the field of Medical Virtual Reality. Abrahms leads the Virtual Heart Project (VHP), a revolutionary initiative that fuses virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and microsurgery to transform cardiac care. The technology allows doctors to perform intricate, life-saving surgeries inside a virtual recreation of a patient’s heart. However, as the project gains media attention during a heated presidential election, it becomes a political flashpoint. Abrahms faces relentless attacks from political operatives, established medical professionals threatened by new technology, and even murder, as those connected to the VHP are targeted one by one. The story is not only a fast-paced thriller but also explores themes of innovation, resistance to change in medicine, and the personal cost of pursuing groundbreaking science in a hostile environment.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/castle-of-horror-podcast--4268760/support.
Deadly Vision is a high-concept medical thriller that follows Dr. Taylor Abrahms, a pioneering surgeon and researcher in the field of Medical Virtual Reality. Abrahms leads the Virtual Heart Project (VHP), a revolutionary initiative that fuses virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and microsurgery to transform cardiac care. The technology allows doctors to perform intricate, life-saving surgeries inside a virtual recreation of a patient’s heart. However, as the project gains media attention during a heated presidential election, it becomes a political flashpoint. Abrahms faces relentless attacks from political operatives, established medical professionals threatened by new technology, and even murder, as those connected to the VHP are targeted one by one. The story is not only a fast-paced thriller but also explores themes of innovation, resistance to change in medicine, and the personal cost of pursuing groundbreaking science in a hostile environment.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/castle-of-horror-podcast--4268760/support.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Hello, and welcome to Castle Talk, where we talk to
writers and creators of today's genre worlds. I'm your host
Jason Henderson, publisher at castle Bridge Media, home of the
Castle of Horror anthology series. Tonight we're chatting with T. D. Severn,
whose novel Deadly Vision has just been released by pen
Moore Press. The book is a medical thriller that people
are comparing to Michael Crichton and Dean Koontz when they
(00:30):
talk about it. And one thing, by the way, that
you have in common with Crichton is that you're also
a medical doctor. I mean, you know, and which is
what he brought to his books. And I want to
get to that in a second. But the concept here
is your main character is a doctor, Taylor Abrams, and
he has this new technology called medical virtual reality, which
(00:53):
when I was reading about it sounded amazing and I
hope you'll tell me if there's any truth to this
at all. But the moment he starts getting attention about
this technology, there are forces at work who both want
to kill it for political reasons but also want to
kill it for other reasons, and sometimes they may literally
kill everybody involved. So it's it's very much a medical thriller.
(01:17):
I tend to think of like old Robin Cook thrillers, right,
like like Coma and stuff like that. So I think
this is going to be really exciting to talk about.
So do you want me to call you a TD or.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
Todd Todd's fine, yeah, TD, or just the pen name initials?
Speaker 1 (01:33):
Yes, so so yeah, so so Todd. Welcome, Thank you,
thank you for having me. I really appreciate you taking
the time. No, absolutely, okay, So my first question is
this the medical technology that is at the heart of this.
Can you tell us a little bit about what it
is that in the book this guy has announced and
(01:55):
why is it that his life gets dangerous after that?
Speaker 2 (01:59):
Absolutely? So the medical technology, and to kind of play
off your earlier question or wonderment, is all really based
in true science. Now, what we've created in the book
doesn't actually exist, but the technology for what I was
envisioning actually could exist. A let's just say, it's a
(02:20):
couple iterations away from where we are right now. So
in the book, what Taylor creates is something called the
Virtual Heart Project, which is a way to perform part
surgery entirely within virtual reality. So essentially you use high
resolution ultrasound and MRI scans, and with the detail that
we have today and the computing power we have today,
you can really create an very immersive virtual environment of
(02:44):
a patient's heart and specifically, in this case, the patient's
coronary artery to the detail that you can see the cells,
and you can see the plaque which is blocking the
coronary arteries, which is leading to the heart attack. Now,
right now, we treat these with angioplasty and it's usually
pretty successful, but the truth is that the death rate
from heart disease is continuing to climb and angioplasty is
(03:06):
not without its risk. So I was wanting to envision
how the concept of virtual reality and immersive simulation could
be used medically, and that led me to creating this
vision of a virtual angioplasty. So in the concept, Taylor
then enters a virtual world of the patient's heart and
(03:29):
a patient's coronary artery, while simultaneously, a micro robotic on
a servo mechanism follows his movements in the actual coronary
artery directly to the side of the plaque, and then
when he's ready, uses the laser to blast away the plaque,
and that was the basic concept that I was trying
to envision with this. Now, why would people try to
stop it? That's a really good question, actually, because when
(03:51):
I was writing this, and you know, of course a
thriller has to be, you know, a thriller, And I
realized as I was writing it that the best antagonist
is not somebody who's evil.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
You know.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
It's not like, you know, doctor evil who wants to
rule the world. You know. The best antagonist is simply
a strong character who wants something opposite than what the
hero wants. So with that realization, it kind of brought
up a multiple levels of obstacles the tailor's going to
have to face. The first one is within the medical
center itself. And trust me, I've spent a lot of
(04:24):
time in academic medical centers and they are a hot
cauldron of steaming, malicious politics. And everybody really does hold
on to the power of their department and their territory
and their residents and their medical students and their resources
like a feudal overlord. I mean, it's like this is
their fight them, and anything that threatens it is immediately
(04:47):
beset with terrific resistance. So it became very easy at
that point to envision a cardiac surgeon who's quite threatened
by this technology because he does cornary r bypass surgeries
will be obsolete if this technology works. But he's not
the real antagonist, you know, he's one of them. The
real antagonist within the medical center is the chief of medicine,
(05:10):
a guy named Bennington Crawford, who simply opposes the concept.
And this led to a real detailed discussion of medical ethics,
which kind of permeates throughout the whole book. And I'm
really happy to see that a lot of the professional
reviewers that have read the book have really latched onto
this concept that we're examining an ethical dilemma within medicine
(05:31):
at the same time that we're examining a thriller. So
the concept becomes, can we continue to afford hypertechnology and medicine?
Where is the line have to be drawn? When do
people become actually victims of the costs of hypertechnology rather
than benefits. And it kind of harkens back to the
seventies when renal dialysis first was introduced and it gave
(05:56):
people the ability to save lives of kidney patients who
couldn't be saved before. But immediately. You know, there's thousands
and thousands of patients who are signing up for dialysis
or being signed up by their doctors, and the budget
quickly ballooned to several billion dollars a year. This is
in the seventies, and they realized that they can't do this.
You know, they didn't have the money to afford to
(06:17):
treat all these people for dialysis. So they came up
with you know what we're called the God committees. And
the God committees were committees that each state had which
would decide whether or not you got dialysis or you
didn't based upon whatever their criteria or so. In essence,
the committee decided if you were to live or you
were to die. And that is a massive ethical dilemma.
So our Chief of Medicine is on that side of
(06:38):
the view that we can't get ourselves into that situation.
Medicine is bankrupting this country. We know that our medical
systems in huge trouble. Yet you have this exciting technology
that can save lives and is very high tech and futuristic,
and that's the clash within the medical center. Yeah, and
then we just took that a little bit larger beyond
that by introducing politics at that moment, with the political
(07:01):
with the presidential election, and the antagonist senator who's running
for president and is in the lead, is running on
a platform of, you know, a complete halt on hypertechnology
and medicine, so we can't afford it. We need to
get our medical cost center control, and so it leads
to multiple layers of antagonists who are trying to stop
(07:22):
him for political reasons, for powerful reasons, for their own
personal reasons, and of course for the cauldron of politics
and the medical center.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
It's such an interesting question because you know, if you
think about any given medicine that has like saved our
parents' lives or or what have you, you know, those
medicines get more and more expensive. These are real, These
are real arguments that people are having every day, you know,
and and with people in theory, you know, well meeting people,
(07:53):
you know, arguing and I don't really want to get
into politics particularly, but for instance, the Secretary of Health
and Human Services has distinct ideas about how medicine should
be done in this country, and it is different from
how it has been done recently, and so he's arguing
with a lot of people at his own level, you know,
and the rest of us are just sort of standing
(08:15):
back and going, well, I wonder what's going.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
To happen right well, and yet very very interesting point
and it's the milieu that we live in right now
was actually a perfect milieu I believe to have released
this book because these issues are are really at the
forefront right now. And you know, we want, of course
the goal of medicines to save lives, but then you
get to the question of how much can society afford
(08:41):
and is there a balance between society's ability to afford
a medical treatment versus the life of the individual patient
who would benefit from that treatment. And it's not that
I don't and very importantly, I don't answer the question,
the big question. I don't answer it, and I don't
(09:03):
actually even take a side, which to me was kind
of one of the most fun things about writing it
because Benington Crawford, to me, was actually my favorite character
to write. If you if you read the book, he's
Morgan Freeman. I mean he Morgan Freeman was one hundred
percent of my model. Just the way he speaks, you know,
the thoughtfulness that Morgan puts behind his role, gravitas, way
(09:24):
and vision and he's just speaking you know that, you know,
on the on the ethical side of things. And Taylor's
the passionate guy who's in the emergency room. He's seeing
people dying, and it's just a clash that you can
see is going to happen, and then it all explodes
in a murder and insanity. But you know that that
happens when you when you are right.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
You know, when you read the book, it feels people
say it's Coon's like, and actually it does feel like
that kind of very modern thriller writing, you know, getting
into the heads of these characters. And I wonder how
you how you thought as you were writing to Li,
how you were toggling, like how much information you actually
(10:03):
know as a person who spends more time than most
studying this stuff versus telling a story, Like did you
ever find yourself tapping back and going, don't throw all
your research on the page, or like, basically, I'm wondering
how you got into the writing mindset coming from this
medical doctor or perspective.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
Oh absolutely, I mean that's that's the craft, right, that's
the goal of what we're all trying to learn how
to accomplish. I would say, you know, certainly in the
earlier drafts I probably was guilty of too much info dumping.
You have all this information, and despite whatever knowledge I
may or may not have, I did a tremendous amount
(10:42):
of research. I mean, every single aspect of this book
is research, including like which flowers are blooming in October
and NAPA, because I had to have the flowers right
on the vase, you know, on the table when they
entered this in where things go incredibly wrong. So everything
was very well researched, and and I created a lot.
For example, the servo mechanism that is going to be
(11:05):
guiding the laser through the blood vessels, it doesn't exist yet,
and so I had to imagine, how are you going
to get a laser to move even upstream inside of
a real artery following my hero's movement within the virtual world.
And I was thinking about that, Well, you couldn't have
a propeller because that would create cavitation bubbles, which would
kill somebody. You couldn't have legs crawling because that would
(11:28):
irritate the vascular lining, which would kill somebody. So I
had to come up with another thought. And so what
I did is I created a laboratory in my medical
center called the Farm, where they specialize in robotics based
upon animal locomotion, and specifically I started studying fish locomotion
and specifically again shark locomotion and the way that the
(11:50):
water goes through the shark which helps to propel it.
And that became the foundation on how this thing moves
in the body. Now I wasn't even going to put
that in the book at first, but there's this big scene,
which is a grand round scene, where Taylor presents his
research and the doctors in the idea and start pelting
him with questions, and one of the doctors jumps up
and screams, how does it move in the body? And
(12:11):
all of a sudden I realize that, oh my god,
I just introduced that question, so I better be prepared
to answer it. So that led to this whole development
of the movement. And at that point, as you said that,
the trick is to bring the information out in pieces
and slowly within the confines of the actual thriller, rather
than this isn't a medical treatise, you know, this isn't
(12:33):
a medical exactly. Yeah, So the story is about this
character and what he goes through as his research is
sabotage and he is driven in saying and there's murder afoot,
people are dying, and the tension is building, and the
presidential election is getting closer, and all this is happening,
and then throughout that we're just laying the small foundations
(12:54):
of the medical principles by which the story's moving forward.
You could, in some ways it's almost like the mcguffin.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
Yes, right, exactly in the same way that a that
a John Grisham legal thriller isn't really about the law.
I mean it is, but it's about this character. And
and you know, you're you're writing about your your particular
doctor and his particular desire to to to do this
cool thing. So you're an interesting guy though, because you
(13:20):
also not only are you a surgeon and a thriller writer,
but you actually also run a record a record label,
and you were telling me that you guys did a
soundtrack album for this book. So how did that come together?
Speaker 2 (13:36):
Well, yeah, thank you for mentioning that the record labels
called Ripple Music and it's in a subgenre of heavy
rock of post black sabbathy sort.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
You will see the most interesting guy at the Christmas parties.
Honestly with you, I don't know what to talk about here.
My wife tells me I talk too much. I get
I get excited, I get passionate about this. So I've
been writing the record label for fifteen years, which by
the way, put fifteen years of a cabash on writing
(14:07):
the book because I have enough bandleid. And it came
time that I realized I had to get the book
out there because medical, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence are
common words now, and when I started writing the book,
they were considered science fiction, but now they're common, so
I had to get the book out there. So when
the book's coming out and I have this large fan
(14:27):
base of people who are passionate about the music, I
wanted to introduce them to the book as well. And
it seemed such a natural thing to bring some of
my artists together and say, hey, guys, you know writing
a book it's about this, and I just give them
a blurb. That's all I did. Here's a little blurb,
and they went off.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
I mean, I have such amazingly talented artists on the label,
and they gave me these eleven songs, which, from start
to finish truly tell the story of the book, maybe
not in words, maybe just in tone, maybe in your
the instrumental atmosphere, but from the beginning to the end,
it tells the story of the book. The very first
(15:06):
notes you'll hear in that soundtrack are a boom boom,
a heartbeat, so it's it was really amazing. And then
the book cover actually, which is also the CD cover,
was designed by my graphic artist, Marcus Eves from the
record label. When I found out, he said, I want
to do the cover great, and so he created that cover,
which I just thought was beautiful. He's a talented artist,
(15:27):
and he has a song on the soundtrack.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
You know, I can't think about that without thinking of like,
you know, projects like Alan Parsons Project did his whole
Garalan poh right, and you might not remember this, but
it was a whole concept album that went through the
works of.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
Eggar, Allen Poe and all. His first record is genius.
Of course I love it. I'm gonna say Alan Parsons
Projects band that was their first record, and then afterwards
I think came Eve and then I Robot and Turn
of a Friendly Card and yeah, I love it.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
I remember Gudi anyway, but yes.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
Kaldi was another concept record.
Speaker 1 (15:59):
Yeah, yeah, gosh, okay, so talk to me about because
people who listen to our show always want to know
about process, and so we only have a few more minutes.
But I want to know, like, how are you getting
the work done? Like if you have to get up
in the morning and go to work, it's like, are
you like getting up early to knock out five hundred
words or how do you get it done?
Speaker 2 (16:19):
Yeah, entirely. I get up at four o'clock every morning,
and I'll work for two to three hours in the
morning before I go to work. I still I'm still
a surgeon. I'm still a nice surgeon. So I still
go into the office every day, and then at lunch,
I'll usually do about an hour's worth of work, either
on the book or on the record label because I
got to do both. And then when I come home upstairs,
(16:40):
I'll work out, maybe sneak in another half hour, and
then spend the rest of the time with family.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
That's amazing, that's I I'm just really impressed. I love
I love hearing how somebody is able to manage their
writing with their with their profession, and it is it
is really really inspiring. Okay, tell us where we can
find it. The book is the book is Deadly Vision,
so tell us where somebody can go to find it,
and also where to find the.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
Record Well, thank you. The book is available at Amazon,
t D Severn. The book is Deadly Vision. It's available
at Amazon. It's a Barnes and Nobles, it's you know,
it's a kindle version if you want that. It's available
in all those ways, and then the c D and
you can also buy the book on the record label
website which is Ripplemusic dot bandcamp dot com. And you
(17:25):
can find all this stuff on my personal website, which
is tdsevern dot com.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
That is fantastic, Todd. I'm so thankful. I loved getting
a chance to talk to you, and I kind of
feel like we could probably actually dig in and talk
about this like for hours.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
Next time.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
But we'll do it next time. Hopefully I'll see you
at some event. But thank you so much for spending
the time. And I'll make sure that you that you
get that I send you the link when when when
this goes out, And I'm so glad that we were
able to touch base on this. Congratulations on the release
and on the on the responses. That's really great.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
I appreciate it so much. Thanks for taking the time. Yes, sir,
audios bye bye. Oh okay, I'll cut there, but I
just wanted to say, have you thought are you doing
an audiobook?
Speaker 2 (18:10):
It is, it's supposed to come out in August. I'm
not doing it. I didn't publish the book. There's a publisher,
so they're doing it. Oh great, that's great, awesome.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
All right, well that was that was really wonderful, and
I'm honestly true. I wish I had more time because
you're a fascinating guy and I know that we could
talk about more. So all right, hang in there, and
I got to jump on another call, so peace.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
Sure you're taking the time. Bye bye bye
Hello, and welcome to Castle Talk, where we talk to
writers and creators of today's genre worlds. I'm your host
Jason Henderson, publisher at castle Bridge Media, home of the
Castle of Horror anthology series. Tonight we're chatting with T. D. Severn,
whose novel Deadly Vision has just been released by pen
Moore Press. The book is a medical thriller that people
are comparing to Michael Crichton and Dean Koontz when they
(00:30):
talk about it. And one thing, by the way, that
you have in common with Crichton is that you're also
a medical doctor. I mean, you know, and which is
what he brought to his books. And I want to
get to that in a second. But the concept here
is your main character is a doctor, Taylor Abrams, and
he has this new technology called medical virtual reality, which
(00:53):
when I was reading about it sounded amazing and I
hope you'll tell me if there's any truth to this
at all. But the moment he starts getting attention about
this technology, there are forces at work who both want
to kill it for political reasons but also want to
kill it for other reasons, and sometimes they may literally
kill everybody involved. So it's it's very much a medical thriller.
(01:17):
I tend to think of like old Robin Cook thrillers, right,
like like Coma and stuff like that. So I think
this is going to be really exciting to talk about.
So do you want me to call you a TD or.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
Todd Todd's fine, yeah, TD, or just the pen name initials?
Speaker 1 (01:33):
Yes, so so yeah, so so Todd. Welcome, Thank you,
thank you for having me. I really appreciate you taking
the time. No, absolutely, okay, So my first question is
this the medical technology that is at the heart of this.
Can you tell us a little bit about what it
is that in the book this guy has announced and
(01:55):
why is it that his life gets dangerous after that?
Speaker 2 (01:59):
Absolutely? So the medical technology, and to kind of play
off your earlier question or wonderment, is all really based
in true science. Now, what we've created in the book
doesn't actually exist, but the technology for what I was
envisioning actually could exist. A let's just say, it's a
(02:20):
couple iterations away from where we are right now. So
in the book, what Taylor creates is something called the
Virtual Heart Project, which is a way to perform part
surgery entirely within virtual reality. So essentially you use high
resolution ultrasound and MRI scans, and with the detail that
we have today and the computing power we have today,
you can really create an very immersive virtual environment of
(02:44):
a patient's heart and specifically, in this case, the patient's
coronary artery to the detail that you can see the cells,
and you can see the plaque which is blocking the
coronary arteries, which is leading to the heart attack. Now,
right now, we treat these with angioplasty and it's usually
pretty successful, but the truth is that the death rate
from heart disease is continuing to climb and angioplasty is
(03:06):
not without its risk. So I was wanting to envision
how the concept of virtual reality and immersive simulation could
be used medically, and that led me to creating this
vision of a virtual angioplasty. So in the concept, Taylor
then enters a virtual world of the patient's heart and
(03:29):
a patient's coronary artery, while simultaneously, a micro robotic on
a servo mechanism follows his movements in the actual coronary
artery directly to the side of the plaque, and then
when he's ready, uses the laser to blast away the plaque,
and that was the basic concept that I was trying
to envision with this. Now, why would people try to
stop it? That's a really good question, actually, because when
(03:51):
I was writing this, and you know, of course a
thriller has to be, you know, a thriller, And I
realized as I was writing it that the best antagonist
is not somebody who's evil.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
You know.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
It's not like, you know, doctor evil who wants to
rule the world. You know. The best antagonist is simply
a strong character who wants something opposite than what the
hero wants. So with that realization, it kind of brought
up a multiple levels of obstacles the tailor's going to
have to face. The first one is within the medical
center itself. And trust me, I've spent a lot of
(04:24):
time in academic medical centers and they are a hot
cauldron of steaming, malicious politics. And everybody really does hold
on to the power of their department and their territory
and their residents and their medical students and their resources
like a feudal overlord. I mean, it's like this is
their fight them, and anything that threatens it is immediately
(04:47):
beset with terrific resistance. So it became very easy at
that point to envision a cardiac surgeon who's quite threatened
by this technology because he does cornary r bypass surgeries
will be obsolete if this technology works. But he's not
the real antagonist, you know, he's one of them. The
real antagonist within the medical center is the chief of medicine,
(05:10):
a guy named Bennington Crawford, who simply opposes the concept.
And this led to a real detailed discussion of medical ethics,
which kind of permeates throughout the whole book. And I'm
really happy to see that a lot of the professional
reviewers that have read the book have really latched onto
this concept that we're examining an ethical dilemma within medicine
(05:31):
at the same time that we're examining a thriller. So
the concept becomes, can we continue to afford hypertechnology and medicine?
Where is the line have to be drawn? When do
people become actually victims of the costs of hypertechnology rather
than benefits. And it kind of harkens back to the
seventies when renal dialysis first was introduced and it gave
(05:56):
people the ability to save lives of kidney patients who
couldn't be saved before. But immediately. You know, there's thousands
and thousands of patients who are signing up for dialysis
or being signed up by their doctors, and the budget
quickly ballooned to several billion dollars a year. This is
in the seventies, and they realized that they can't do this.
You know, they didn't have the money to afford to
(06:17):
treat all these people for dialysis. So they came up
with you know what we're called the God committees. And
the God committees were committees that each state had which
would decide whether or not you got dialysis or you
didn't based upon whatever their criteria or so. In essence,
the committee decided if you were to live or you
were to die. And that is a massive ethical dilemma.
So our Chief of Medicine is on that side of
(06:38):
the view that we can't get ourselves into that situation.
Medicine is bankrupting this country. We know that our medical
systems in huge trouble. Yet you have this exciting technology
that can save lives and is very high tech and futuristic,
and that's the clash within the medical center. Yeah, and
then we just took that a little bit larger beyond
that by introducing politics at that moment, with the political
(07:01):
with the presidential election, and the antagonist senator who's running
for president and is in the lead, is running on
a platform of, you know, a complete halt on hypertechnology
and medicine, so we can't afford it. We need to
get our medical cost center control, and so it leads
to multiple layers of antagonists who are trying to stop
(07:22):
him for political reasons, for powerful reasons, for their own
personal reasons, and of course for the cauldron of politics
and the medical center.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
It's such an interesting question because you know, if you
think about any given medicine that has like saved our
parents' lives or or what have you, you know, those
medicines get more and more expensive. These are real, These
are real arguments that people are having every day, you know,
and and with people in theory, you know, well meeting people,
(07:53):
you know, arguing and I don't really want to get
into politics particularly, but for instance, the Secretary of Health
and Human Services has distinct ideas about how medicine should
be done in this country, and it is different from
how it has been done recently, and so he's arguing
with a lot of people at his own level, you know,
and the rest of us are just sort of standing
(08:15):
back and going, well, I wonder what's going.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
To happen right well, and yet very very interesting point
and it's the milieu that we live in right now
was actually a perfect milieu I believe to have released
this book because these issues are are really at the
forefront right now. And you know, we want, of course
the goal of medicines to save lives, but then you
get to the question of how much can society afford
(08:41):
and is there a balance between society's ability to afford
a medical treatment versus the life of the individual patient
who would benefit from that treatment. And it's not that
I don't and very importantly, I don't answer the question,
the big question. I don't answer it, and I don't
(09:03):
actually even take a side, which to me was kind
of one of the most fun things about writing it
because Benington Crawford, to me, was actually my favorite character
to write. If you if you read the book, he's
Morgan Freeman. I mean he Morgan Freeman was one hundred
percent of my model. Just the way he speaks, you know,
the thoughtfulness that Morgan puts behind his role, gravitas, way
(09:24):
and vision and he's just speaking you know that, you know,
on the on the ethical side of things. And Taylor's
the passionate guy who's in the emergency room. He's seeing
people dying, and it's just a clash that you can
see is going to happen, and then it all explodes
in a murder and insanity. But you know that that
happens when you when you are right.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
You know, when you read the book, it feels people
say it's Coon's like, and actually it does feel like
that kind of very modern thriller writing, you know, getting
into the heads of these characters. And I wonder how
you how you thought as you were writing to Li,
how you were toggling, like how much information you actually
(10:03):
know as a person who spends more time than most
studying this stuff versus telling a story, Like did you
ever find yourself tapping back and going, don't throw all
your research on the page, or like, basically, I'm wondering
how you got into the writing mindset coming from this
medical doctor or perspective.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
Oh absolutely, I mean that's that's the craft, right, that's
the goal of what we're all trying to learn how
to accomplish. I would say, you know, certainly in the
earlier drafts I probably was guilty of too much info dumping.
You have all this information, and despite whatever knowledge I
may or may not have, I did a tremendous amount
(10:42):
of research. I mean, every single aspect of this book
is research, including like which flowers are blooming in October
and NAPA, because I had to have the flowers right
on the vase, you know, on the table when they
entered this in where things go incredibly wrong. So everything
was very well researched, and and I created a lot.
For example, the servo mechanism that is going to be
(11:05):
guiding the laser through the blood vessels, it doesn't exist yet,
and so I had to imagine, how are you going
to get a laser to move even upstream inside of
a real artery following my hero's movement within the virtual world.
And I was thinking about that, Well, you couldn't have
a propeller because that would create cavitation bubbles, which would
kill somebody. You couldn't have legs crawling because that would
(11:28):
irritate the vascular lining, which would kill somebody. So I
had to come up with another thought. And so what
I did is I created a laboratory in my medical
center called the Farm, where they specialize in robotics based
upon animal locomotion, and specifically I started studying fish locomotion
and specifically again shark locomotion and the way that the
(11:50):
water goes through the shark which helps to propel it.
And that became the foundation on how this thing moves
in the body. Now I wasn't even going to put
that in the book at first, but there's this big scene,
which is a grand round scene, where Taylor presents his
research and the doctors in the idea and start pelting
him with questions, and one of the doctors jumps up
and screams, how does it move in the body? And
(12:11):
all of a sudden I realize that, oh my god,
I just introduced that question, so I better be prepared
to answer it. So that led to this whole development
of the movement. And at that point, as you said that,
the trick is to bring the information out in pieces
and slowly within the confines of the actual thriller, rather
than this isn't a medical treatise, you know, this isn't
(12:33):
a medical exactly. Yeah, So the story is about this
character and what he goes through as his research is
sabotage and he is driven in saying and there's murder afoot,
people are dying, and the tension is building, and the
presidential election is getting closer, and all this is happening,
and then throughout that we're just laying the small foundations
(12:54):
of the medical principles by which the story's moving forward.
You could, in some ways it's almost like the mcguffin.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
Yes, right, exactly in the same way that a that
a John Grisham legal thriller isn't really about the law.
I mean it is, but it's about this character. And
and you know, you're you're writing about your your particular
doctor and his particular desire to to to do this
cool thing. So you're an interesting guy though, because you
(13:20):
also not only are you a surgeon and a thriller writer,
but you actually also run a record a record label,
and you were telling me that you guys did a
soundtrack album for this book. So how did that come together?
Speaker 2 (13:36):
Well, yeah, thank you for mentioning that the record labels
called Ripple Music and it's in a subgenre of heavy
rock of post black sabbathy sort.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
You will see the most interesting guy at the Christmas parties.
Honestly with you, I don't know what to talk about here.
My wife tells me I talk too much. I get
I get excited, I get passionate about this. So I've
been writing the record label for fifteen years, which by
the way, put fifteen years of a cabash on writing
(14:07):
the book because I have enough bandleid. And it came
time that I realized I had to get the book
out there because medical, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence are
common words now, and when I started writing the book,
they were considered science fiction, but now they're common, so
I had to get the book out there. So when
the book's coming out and I have this large fan
(14:27):
base of people who are passionate about the music, I
wanted to introduce them to the book as well. And
it seemed such a natural thing to bring some of
my artists together and say, hey, guys, you know writing
a book it's about this, and I just give them
a blurb. That's all I did. Here's a little blurb,
and they went off.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
I mean, I have such amazingly talented artists on the label,
and they gave me these eleven songs, which, from start
to finish truly tell the story of the book, maybe
not in words, maybe just in tone, maybe in your
the instrumental atmosphere, but from the beginning to the end,
it tells the story of the book. The very first
(15:06):
notes you'll hear in that soundtrack are a boom boom,
a heartbeat, so it's it was really amazing. And then
the book cover actually, which is also the CD cover,
was designed by my graphic artist, Marcus Eves from the
record label. When I found out, he said, I want
to do the cover great, and so he created that cover,
which I just thought was beautiful. He's a talented artist,
(15:27):
and he has a song on the soundtrack.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
You know, I can't think about that without thinking of like,
you know, projects like Alan Parsons Project did his whole
Garalan poh right, and you might not remember this, but
it was a whole concept album that went through the
works of.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
Eggar, Allen Poe and all. His first record is genius.
Of course I love it. I'm gonna say Alan Parsons
Projects band that was their first record, and then afterwards
I think came Eve and then I Robot and Turn
of a Friendly Card and yeah, I love it.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
I remember Gudi anyway, but yes.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
Kaldi was another concept record.
Speaker 1 (15:59):
Yeah, yeah, gosh, okay, so talk to me about because
people who listen to our show always want to know
about process, and so we only have a few more minutes.
But I want to know, like, how are you getting
the work done? Like if you have to get up
in the morning and go to work, it's like, are
you like getting up early to knock out five hundred
words or how do you get it done?
Speaker 2 (16:19):
Yeah, entirely. I get up at four o'clock every morning,
and I'll work for two to three hours in the
morning before I go to work. I still I'm still
a surgeon. I'm still a nice surgeon. So I still
go into the office every day, and then at lunch,
I'll usually do about an hour's worth of work, either
on the book or on the record label because I
got to do both. And then when I come home upstairs,
(16:40):
I'll work out, maybe sneak in another half hour, and
then spend the rest of the time with family.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
That's amazing, that's I I'm just really impressed. I love
I love hearing how somebody is able to manage their
writing with their with their profession, and it is it
is really really inspiring. Okay, tell us where we can
find it. The book is the book is Deadly Vision,
so tell us where somebody can go to find it,
and also where to find the.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
Record Well, thank you. The book is available at Amazon,
t D Severn. The book is Deadly Vision. It's available
at Amazon. It's a Barnes and Nobles, it's you know,
it's a kindle version if you want that. It's available
in all those ways, and then the c D and
you can also buy the book on the record label
website which is Ripplemusic dot bandcamp dot com. And you
(17:25):
can find all this stuff on my personal website, which
is tdsevern dot com.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
That is fantastic, Todd. I'm so thankful. I loved getting
a chance to talk to you, and I kind of
feel like we could probably actually dig in and talk
about this like for hours.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
Next time.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
But we'll do it next time. Hopefully I'll see you
at some event. But thank you so much for spending
the time. And I'll make sure that you that you
get that I send you the link when when when
this goes out, And I'm so glad that we were
able to touch base on this. Congratulations on the release
and on the on the responses. That's really great.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
I appreciate it so much. Thanks for taking the time. Yes, sir,
audios bye bye. Oh okay, I'll cut there, but I
just wanted to say, have you thought are you doing
an audiobook?
Speaker 2 (18:10):
It is, it's supposed to come out in August. I'm
not doing it. I didn't publish the book. There's a publisher,
so they're doing it. Oh great, that's great, awesome.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
All right, well that was that was really wonderful, and
I'm honestly true. I wish I had more time because
you're a fascinating guy and I know that we could
talk about more. So all right, hang in there, and
I got to jump on another call, so peace.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
Sure you're taking the time. Bye bye bye
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