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Dr. Jane Bennett Munro,
pathologist and author |
Listen to a webcast of a portion of this interview here.
ADVANCE: This is Jill Hoffman, managing editor for ADVANCE for Administrators of the Laboratory, and I'm talking with Dr. Jane Bennett Munro, a hospital-based pathologist who is semi-retired and lives in Twin Falls, Idaho. We're discussing her first novel titled "Murder Under the Microscope." Dr. Munro, "Murder Under the Microscope" takes place in your home town of Twin Falls. The central character Dr. Toni Day becomes tangled in a web of deception and is forced to solve a murder case in order to save her career and her life. She must rely on more than just her microscope in pursuit of the mystery's answers.
Can you talk about when and why you embarked on this first novel, inspired by your real-life, 34-year career as a solo pathologist in a rural hospital where you have been involved in several forensic cases?
Dr. Munro: Well, the idea first came to me many years ago when we actually had a substitute physician in our hospital who was even more antagonistic to the lab than physicians usually are. I mean, all doctors want their lab results the minute they order them or sooner, and the longer they have to wait the meaner they get, but this locum tenens made those docs look like pussycats. She was equally nasty to me when I intervened on the lab's behalf. She even wrote a letter to the administrator complaining about my incompetence. Well, I was pretty young and relatively inexperienced at the time, having come to Twin Falls right out of residency. And having another doc, and a woman at that, treat me like a piece of garbage really did a number on my self-esteem. So naturally, I wanted to kill her. Unfortunately, that's against the law so I decided that one day I would write a book and do it there.
And when I had the time, and I am not kidding, I started this book nearly 20 years ago, but work kept getting in the way. I was a solo pathologist then, and I frequently put in 14-hour days, and when I got home at night, all I wanted to do was crash. But it became a sort of joke because every time anybody ticked me off, I would threaten to put them in my book like it was a curse or something. And now, there they are.
ADVANCE: Can you talk about the process of writing this novel and anything surprising that happened during the process?
Dr. Munro: Well, it was actually my husband, now my ex-husband, who actually got me started. I had talked about writing a book about this experience, and he gave me a word processor for Christmas in 1992, and I plugged that puppy in and starting typing. Everyone else went off skiing, and I stayed home and kept on typing.
Then the next year I attended "Murder in the Grove," which is a writer's workshop held in Boise in the Grove Hotel. Ridley Pearson was the guest of honor that day, and Joanne Pence sat at my table, or maybe I should say I sat at her table at lunch. Before the meeting, we were given the opportunity to submit 10 pages of whatever we were writing to be critiqued by a publisher or an agent or an editor or somebody else in the business so I did that, and the agent told me, "I want to read the rest of it." I was so jazzed. But when I sent her the first draft, she said she stayed up all night reading. She couldn't put it down but she couldn't sell it. She said it needed a sub-plot. So I put in a sub-plot. She still couldn't sell it. So then she said she wanted Toni to be more "kick-ass." And I made Toni more kick-ass. She still couldn't sell it. So I gave up.
But since then, I've gone through a divorce and I've moved and various other things, and I work at a different hospital in a group now instead of being solo. So there's been a lot of changes. And my current gentleman friend, when he found out I was trying to publish a book, told me not to give up. He kept sending me clippings from the newspaper about authors who persisted and finally got published and then won all sorts of awards, and just wouldn't leave it alone. So one day, just to shut him up, I got online and Googled publishers and found Universe, which is an online vanity publisher and sent them my information, and said, "OK, now are you satisfied?"
Here I am. The novel is published. They gave it "Editor's Choice," and it seems to be doing pretty well, at least around here.
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