Speaker 1: 0:04

I honestly don't know. If it's something well, you're not born with it. Obviously it's something you develop very slowly from the very beginning. I think I was like that from the very beginning. I almost never gave up in my life. Almost everything I started, I tried to bring it to the limit that I could do. Now there were certain things that I found out were not totally possible and so I backed down, but not because I didn't try really hard until the very end.

Speaker 2: 0:42

Hi friends, this is Read and Write with Natasha podcast. My name is Natasha Tynes and I'm an author and a journalist. In this channel I talk about the writing life, review books and interview authors. Hope you enjoy the journey. Hi everyone, and welcome to another episode of Read and Write with Natasha. I have with me today Dr Christina Lepore, who's a renowned cardiologist and accomplished author who creates compelling medical thrillers. Born in Bologna, italy, and now based in Southern California, dr Leporte masterfully combines her medical expertise with storytelling talent to craft engaging narratives. Her book Change of Heart follows former detective Kirk Miner and FBI newcomer Charlotte Bloom as they investigate a murder disguised as suicide in New York City. This thriller uncovers a conspiracy involving a sinister organ donation chain after the mysterious death of a medical student. All right, dr Christina Laporte, thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you, I love medical thrillers. I think it's a very cool genre. So, dr Laporte, I think the first question is what made you do this? What made you move from being a cardiologist to actually writing fiction?

Speaker 1: 2:18

Hi. I went to medical school in Bologna, italy, and I came to the United States. I did my training and I practiced internal medicine for 20 years and at that point I just felt I needed to do something more, something a little bit different. So I wanted to become a cardiologist and it was pretty hard to get back into training and while I was waiting I was reading different things. I was already, you know, in my mid to late 40s and I came across to a booklet called the Art of Fiction.

Speaker 1: 2:50

Before then, I hated writing. When I was in school, you know, it was like a nightmare for me when they gave us a assignment. I realized that if you are an author, you create your world and then you invent characters you want to meet and then you can make anything you want happen. So I was just fascinated by that and I said I'm going to try to write novels. Of course, I had no formal training, so I had a good idea for plots, but I got help and it took a while before I actually produced something that was ready to be considered by, maybe, agents or publishers and that was also a very hard thing to do to lend an agent, a publisher, etc. But that's how it all started. Do you still practice medicine? I actually fully retired at the end of 2022.

Speaker 2: 3:43

And do your patients read your books? What do they think?

Speaker 1: 3:48

about it. Yes, yes, my patients are my very big fans. They come to my book signings and everything, and, if you think about it, the medical world is really a very good background for thrillers. By the way, I never thought of writing any other genre, I just love thrillers. But if you think about it, we deal with life or death, so there is no higher state and, you know, there is always the pressure of time and there is a lot of overlap between doctor and author, because we both need to read people, to create characters or to make a diagnosis, and again, the pressure of time is there, and so it's a very good match. It's a very good background.

Speaker 2: 4:31

That's actually very true. So can you tell us a bit about how you came up with the idea for the book? Was it actually inspired by something that you witnessed or experienced during your work?

Speaker 1: 4:48

Definitely, definitely. In this particular book I wanted to write something about the worst thing that can happen in cardiology, and that is your heart is not pumping and they tried everything they could and now you need a new heart because there is nothing else to do. And if you think about it, that alone, right away from the off, start, is a very big conflict of interest, because you have to hope for somebody to die for you to live. That's true. So again, you know.

Speaker 1: 5:19

And so in this particular book there is a mystery at the very beginning. There is a mystery because the number of heart transplants is going up in New York City and the doctors should be really pleased because usually there is shortage of organs. But now the number of transplants is going up because the number of suicides is going up, and the suicides are strangely committed right in front of a hospital, so their heart can be harvested right away and also it's committed with surgical precision. These people shoot themselves in their head, but they avoid the area of the brain that keeps the heart beating. So the heart keeps on beating and the brain is destroyed, and they're right in front of the hospital. And this is the mystery that turns out at the end with a very big twist, and so you have to read the book to know.

Speaker 2: 6:13

Oh, wow, fascinating. I see this as a TV series. Actually, we're trying, yeah, yeah, I mean I see it happening. Thank you, yes, okay, so I have an accent and I hear an accent too, and so I'm assuming correct me if I'm wrong that you did not grow up speaking English, or English is your second language, no second language.

Speaker 2: 6:38

Okay, just like me, and I also publish in English. There you go, and so I want to ask you about publishing in a language that's not your native language. You know, you've been living in the US for a while. Just like me, did you feel resistance from others, from yourself? Did you have some self-doubt? How did you deal with the fact that you were writing in English, not in your native Italian?

Speaker 1: 7:10

It's really strange because it never really occurred that much that problem to me. I mean, I had other problems. I did not know the art of writing. I mean I did not know how to do tag, how to do dialogue first person, third person, that you can't. You know the rules, so I had to learn all that from a writing coach because I was old enough that I didn't really have time to do, you know, exchanges with friends and things like that.

Speaker 1: 7:32

But the fact that the language actually was pointed out by my husband, who's my alpha reader, so he gets the first shot on my books and he corrects all the italics and by italics I don't mean the letters, you know, they look like the Tower of Pisa, I mean everything that gives away that. English is my second language, because in Italy, in Italian, you know, the position of the verb is a little different and all that. So although I've been here for decades and I couldn't actually write a book in Italian, I would have more difficulty writing in Italian than in English. I still kind of sneak in some little things. You know that.

Speaker 2: 8:17

I guess you know they're just like you're learning when you're little, so you're.

Speaker 1: 8:20

You'd never give them up, just like the accent yeah, that that's interesting.

Speaker 2: 8:27

So you mentioned a writing coach. So I'm curious First, why did you decide like a writing coach rather than like a writing course, and how was your experience with the coach? And how did you find that coach Like where, online? I'm just curious to understand this. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 8:42

No, I was going online and looking at actually writing courses with different people, and one in particular really struck me about in one of these conferences, online, you know, and so and she had the email and she was doing that privately and so I hired her, I emailed her and she read some of my work and she liked it and she thought she could help me, straighten it out and teach me, I guess, the trade more, because the story really didn't change. You know, it was there. So we went through my very first book, which was not this one. There was a very first book we went through, like you know, and she would send back pages. She liked the pages instead of having emails at the time, and so they would come back with all these red things, you know, just like being in school.

Speaker 1: 9:44

But I needed an accelerated course because I was a little older and also was working full time, so I didn't really have a lot of time. You know, some people have a writing group and then they exchange things and all that, but I just needed like an accelerated version of it because I didn't have a lot of time literally, you know, in my future and at the time because I was working full-time as a cardiologist, and so that's what happened, and it was very, very it was good for me to do that, and I still hear it in my head when I'm writing now. I put a name in this book Charlotte. Her name is Charlotte and I told her Charlotte.

Speaker 2: 10:26

All right, yeah, yeah, of course. So, charlotte, okay, so what's the difference between a writing coach and an editor? Just for the listeners, so that they can understand.

Speaker 1: 10:36

Yes, an editor. You send an editor something that you think is already as polished as you can get, that you think is already as polished as you can get. The writing coach you know. You just send them what you got at the beginning, so it's the first you know. So she picks up all the things you're doing you're still doing wrong, like, for example, I had the habit to go from one person to another in a jarring way, which you can do that if you're a famous author, but you can't do that if you're just starting and you're looking for an agent and you go from one person to another and you do like a universal, for example, you know point of view. It's very. It's not looked at as something you know. As long as you're as your fame or author, they know you're doing it on purpose, but if you're not, they think you don't know what you're doing.

Speaker 2: 11:31

That's true, that's true. So, since you're like really into the world of medical thrillers, what do you think of the TV shows now that do this? So, like you remember, like ER, and I think now there's a new one everyone's talking about in HBO called the Pit, by the same actor who was actually in the ER. So do you think they're accurate and do you think they actually do their due diligence when they run these TV shows like medical thrillers?

Speaker 1: 12:02

Some of the things are not accurate. I mean, they're probably, of course they're gonna have consultants, but for example, one, just to give you an example, when, like you know, people get a shot and immediately they pass out. I mean it's like, unless you have proper fall intravenously, you know, and you're getting a procedure that does not just to give you the same, you know you get a shot of I don't know volume or something. It's like two seconds, boom, the guy passes out. That's just an example.

Speaker 1: 12:33

And of course, you know there are a lot of inaccuracy, like for not even necessarily medical thing, but medical shows. But uh, like know, there are shows in the wilderness and people get these wounds and they don't get infected, for example. I mean there are a lot of things that you have to accept in order to watch the movie, you know, does it bother you? But most of all, for example, er was pretty well done. I mean, it was really obviously dramatized and exaggerated, because that's what you do. You know you have so little time that you have to really pick the essential and the essential has to be, you know, expanded and blown up, you know. So, obviously, I think it was very well. I think ER is very well done.

Speaker 2: 13:25

Does it bother you if you see inaccuracies on TV?

Speaker 1: 13:30

Well, no, because I'm sure there are some inaccuracies in my book and the things I'm not an expert of. For example, here just to give you a very funny example there is cybercrime. The bad thing that's happening here is cybercrime, which is a modern thing. We have medical records. Now you can read what the doctors write. Before you couldn't, but the disadvantage is that they're vulnerable.

Speaker 1: 13:59

While I was doing my research just in 2023, there was a million and a half records of people donors or recipients of transplants organ transplants that was revealed to unauthorized people, you know, just for a computer glitch. So it's possible. So I did. You know the cyber crime area is hacking and there is a Charlotte is an expert, is an FBI, an FBI cyber expert. And it's funny because while I was describing her work since I don't know anything about hacking or computer and computer challenge I was just describing her Googling very fast. So my editor said well, you know, when you're a cyber expert, you don't just google very fast, you do a lot of other things, so you may as well just read something. So I read in a book about that and I'm sure that I put down stuff that probably, if a computer expert actually, or in hacking reads my book, I'm pretty sure that is going to frown.

Speaker 2: 15:08

So okay, so you mentioned reading who are other medical thriller writers that inspired you or that you look up to?

Speaker 1: 15:19

Yes, Well, of course Robin Cook. You know he invented the genre with coma.

Speaker 2: 15:25

Which novel? Which novel? Coma, coma, coma, okay.

Speaker 1: 15:30

Coma C-O-M-A. It was a movie in the 70s, right, I think, and it was about actually people who were killed to steal organs. That was also that. It was a completely different story than mine, but the background was that.

Speaker 1: 15:49

And of course I really love Tess Gerritsen and she was kind enough to give me a blurb on the book. It's right on the cover and I met her at the Thriller Fest, the Thriller Fest and she was just so nice. Sometimes a very famous author they're very busy and it's very hard for them to even consider your book for a blurb. They can't, they don't have time, you know. But she was just wonderful. She blurred my first book and now she blurred my second book and I put her right on the cover and I'm very, very grateful because she's really a very good medical thrillers author. I mean it's their books are really good with the results and aisles and and now she has a new series, the spy coast. It's very funny because the old fogies, but they're all old spies, so you know you can imagine it's like so incongruous. You know, you're just the clash is like kind of funny.

Speaker 2: 16:52

Oh, wow, okay. So I want to talk a bit about your publishing journey. So the traditional way of publishing, as you know, everyone knows, is you find an agent and you find a traditional publisher, and now there's a lot of authors who are doing either hybrid publishing or self-publishing. Which route did you choose and why?

Speaker 1: 17:15

Well, I just went for the traditional because I had no idea how to do the self-publishing and also because self-publishing, although it's very, very popular, does not reach many, many people unless you are like Andy Weir. You know the author of the Martian, who put it on Facebook and then basically his friends said you know it, on amazon, we want a book, and he wanted to put it on amazon for free and he couldn't, so he put it there for 99 cents. He thought everybody wanted to read this book, already read it and he made 40 million dollars with oh wow, with a business, I mean because it's very good. And and then of course, an agent call them up and publisher called them up and movie producer called them up. But unless you are him, you know you maybe you reach a couple of hundred people if you have a lot of friends and a lot of family, but if you have a traditional publisher, then you can reach thousands of people. Of course there is a drawback that you're going to get this, you know, a smaller royalty for that right.

Speaker 1: 18:27

But so I decided to go that way because I really didn't know how to do self-publishing. That was the main reason. I didn't really know where to start and I was prepared for rejection, but I was not prepared for this. I mean how difficult it was. It was the most difficult thing I've done in my life. I mean you could say worse than medical school, but worse than saving lives. I mean I'm not the most important thing, probably, but definitely the most difficult. I mean it was. It was really hard and the more I got hundreds of rejections and these were books that were polished and everything and finally I I was, I was really discouraged and uh, with my first book.

Speaker 1: 19:14

And then I got my real, the book that actually got published. What happened was I, um, I watch a. I was watching tv and I saw a commercial and there was a man who got a card and the card said your heart attack will arrive tomorrow. It was a commercial about aspirin. So of course you take aspirin. You don't get it. So I said that's my next book, that's the one which is going to get published. And so it got published. The name is Dissection. It's my first book. You can't see my poster of it, but even that one. After got it, after the writing coach, I got a good editor. I got an editor who had actually launched Stephen King and Grisham. He loved the book so I was confident. I mean before I had doubts, right, but he liked it, he edited, it was beautiful, and even then I got hundreds of rejections. So I finally hired I was almost ready to give up and self-publish. And I finally hired a coach to get an agent.

Speaker 2: 20:21

Oh wow, there's a coach to get an agent. There's a coach living doing that.

Speaker 1: 20:24

He goes to show you. I love that. Okay, or interesting. And he reshuffled my query. He gave me a good list of people for my genre. That was very useful because I didn't have to Google and all that stuff. It was prepared, you know, with all the requirements to submit queries. And then also he reshuffled my queries. He put on top that my editor was Bill Thompson and all of a sudden I got 10 requests, including agents who had not requested before.

Speaker 2: 20:54

Oh, wow. What was the change? What was his magic? What changed?

Speaker 1: 21:00

was the query. He reshuffled the query First. You know the query? Yeah, of course. Yeah, so I all of a sudden got 10 requests for manuscript. I mean the book was the same that nobody read it, because you know people, agents and all that if they don't like the way you write D or so, and so they're going to throw it in the circular file. It's just, the competition is incredible. I mean, you have a two out of 100 chance of getting published. Of all the things that agent and publisher get, two out of a hundred actually get published.

Speaker 2: 21:38

It's really dismal. So you got an agent, and it's the same agent that's publishing all your books.

Speaker 1: 21:43

Now I got an agent first, the first thing my agent told me. You know what it was. I don't know if I can sell your book, oh wow.

Speaker 2: 21:54

That's a bit frustrating.

Speaker 1: 21:55

Okay, it took us three years to find the publisher. Oh wow, three years after the agent. And so so before I was looking at my phone looking for the rejection du jour, but then we were both looking at our phones looking for the rejection to do, my agent and me and I Right. And then so finally we got a publisher and it was a Bancroft Press. And Bruce Borth is wonderful, he's a wonderful editor, not just the publisher. So now he's my editor now and is publishing all my books.

Speaker 1: 22:32

Because the therapy for rejection which never stop hurting, by the way, you always hurt from rejection, no matter if it's number 259, it still hurts, it's the same. So, yeah, the therapy for that is I wrote more. That's the only thing that helped me feel better. I wrote more and you know they held with the first book. I wrote the second book that got published finally, and then everybody got rejected a lot. In the meantime I was writing this book and then another two books are coming out. I have four books that I wrote while I was trying to get an agent. So it took me a long time and it took a lot of rejection and you just have to be persistent. It just depends how much you want it, how passionate you are about that. I really love writing. I go into my world and hours go by. I don't know how they went. I mean I really enjoy doing it. It's hard but I like that feeling that you can do anything you want. You're the creative, the creating feeling you know.

Speaker 2: 23:40

I love this. I love what you said that the therapy to rejection is to write more. I think is it okay if I quote you Absolutely.

Speaker 1: 23:50

It was the only thing that made me feel better To say well, this hasn't been rejected yet. Well, I'm writing right now. This is new.

Speaker 2: 24:00

I love this, so I'm curious now you're retired and you're writing full time now.

Speaker 1: 24:06

Yes, now I'm really pushing the book, it's like because it never ends, there is always some other obstacle. Now, as to the book, I think it's good and a lot of people say it's good, but if people don't know that this book is around, nobody's going to read it.

Speaker 2: 24:24

How many hours do you write a day?

Speaker 1: 24:26

Well, now I have a lot more time. In this particular moment I'm not writing because I'm campaigning for the books right now, but so I took a few months because it's like a full-time job. You know you're giving interviews, you're online and it's all. I like that. But you know you can't do the other things Because when I write I really have to be immersed into the book. I can't just write something and then wait a week or three or four days. I have to every day. I have to write a few, at least a few hours to keep. Yeah, otherwise the mind is not thinking about it anymore. You know it's thinking about other things. It is distracting and you end up I end up writing fragmented things which are not going to work, because you know you're not in it.

Speaker 1: 25:16

You have to, you have to put yourself into the characters, into the story. You know, live the story. And then that, because that's the only way you're going to concretize it, because you can't just tell the story, you have to concretize. You have an idea and the idea has to be concretized, can be told. That's the old saying show, don't tell. The idea has to be concretized into action. Yeah, by characters.

Speaker 1: 25:45

So the readers read that and and they can get into the character, just like the author went into the character. They're not three-dimensional and if the author didn't go into the character, so the reader cannot get into the character. And then they arrive through reading and they arrive to the original idea. They say, aha, this man is brave, wow, that's what he did, or something like that. And then they can have their own opinion about the action, the character, because they are like live people and different people can have different opinions. But you know that has to be concretized, otherwise it's extremely boring if one just tells a story. You know, yeah, you know that's good to fall asleep at night, but not to sit at the edge of the seat with, you know, in a trailer yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 26:37

So I want to talk about marketing and which is, I completely agree, is marketing. A book is is a full-time endeavor. What are your marketing tactics? And I know maybe you cannot like tell from the numbers yet, but I'm curious to see. What did you focus on and where do you think is you got the highest ROI for your investment in terms of marketing?

Speaker 1: 27:04

One thing that was very, very useful and we did with the first published book Dissection is BookBub. Bookbub is wonderful If you can get in. They don't accept everybody. So my first book was accepted twice for United States and for other English-speaking countries. So it reached number one in political thriller in the United States Amazon Number two medical thrillers and in Amazon UK I think it was number two spy thriller. And then Australia and Canada did very well. Canada was number six medical thriller. So Book Bob was like the most wonderful thing that gave us most results.

Speaker 1: 27:49

If by results you mean people reading the book because you have to discount it, but you know at that point you want people to read it. You know you don't actually care how much money you get on that particular point, you just want as many people as you can to read it. So then they can tell, hopefully, their friends, and maybe they will buy the hard copy book or whatever, or they buy a kindle at the full price or. But the most important thing, my, what I want the most is as many people read my book as I can. Other things I did because I really didn't know anything about marketing zero.

Speaker 1: 28:27

Yeah, I hired the publicist for both books one for the first book and one for this book and of course, I did a lot of things like this, like interviews, and it's difficult to know what effect they have, because there may be a live interview and your numbers are not changing, but maybe, who knows, maybe people heard about you on the radio and the next time they hear again, maybe next time they'll buy your book. So it's hard to tell. It really is how many people you're going to reach, how many people will buy the book after they see this interview. But at least I'm out there, at least I'm out there talking about my book. Maybe they won't buy my book now, but next time they see me somewhere on Facebook or or hear about something, they say oh, that was the.

Speaker 1: 29:18

I saw that interview with Natalia.

Speaker 2: 29:23

So you mentioned BookBub. That was like the. Do they take self published books or they only take traditional?

Speaker 1: 29:31

Okay, I don't know I do not think so, but I'm not sure I I don't. I never seen something that looks like published there. But you know, they don't even take all the regularly published.

Speaker 2: 29:43

Yeah, and I have no idea what their criteria is.

Speaker 1: 29:45

I, I think they look at, uh, how many reviews you have which right now, I beg everybody who wants to buy this, please put a review on Amazon for me or a Goodreads, because they're so important and so yeah, so they look at that and they look at the blurbs you have if you have famous authors, which are, again, difficult to get. But at the end of the line, I honestly don't know why they picked me twice and they rejected most of the books that my publisher sent them before.

Speaker 2: 30:21

So who knows, Any other tips that you have for marketing things that really worked well? I mean, many people who watch this show are aspiring authors or debut authors, and I would love to give tips on specialty marketing because, you know, more authors are now realizing that the hardest part is not actually writing the book, it's selling the book Exactly.

Speaker 1: 30:45

It's actually selling the book. But yeah, so first of all, the book. Again, in order to get an agent and to get a publisher, the book has to be extremely polished. So if you do not have already a publisher who also is an editor, you have to hire an editor. It can't be your friend, it has to be a professional editor. I mean your friend can read it to begin with, you know, criticize it or whatever. I mean you know it's fun to have. I've never participated in book clubs like that. You know the writer's club, but you know it's fun. I can imagine. But that's not what's going to get you a polished book.

Speaker 1: 31:25

Unless somebody actually knows what they do and plus, friends, you know, tend to be sympathetic you need somebody who's ruthless to tell you what doesn't work. I mean, I had editors that told me you know, you got too many characters, you got to kill a couple. I mean, really kill them, not the very beginning, they eliminate it and you have to rewrite and everything. So a friend probably is not going to tell you that, you know. So that's number one. It has to be completely polished and then you have to be open to spend some money. It's like an investment. Yeah, you know. Yeah, I mean, yeah, publishers cost a lot of money. And if you have a very good publisher who will help you my publisher actually helped me and he's rare, unless you are a very big name, most publishers do not I mean they send your book away and then they, you know, they have some people who market for you a little bit, but they're not going to pay for big time publicists to publicize your book, to get interviews, interviews on tv or or you know, radio talk shows and things like that, or instagrammers or, but they do all those things and it's extremely time consumer to go to the instagram and see who's got how many friends.

Speaker 1: 32:47

And now the other thing is you have to have a platform. I had nothing when I got my age and I didn't. I wasn't even on facebook. I mean, I knew nothing. I had to get trained for that, but I don't. I honestly don't think I don't find it very effective. I find it necessary to be on facebook, but I mean I have friends and my family, but I don't. I mean I have a few thousand friends but I don't see a very big movement of I mean it's just because unless they're really friends, they really know you. Then when they, when those group, when that group that knows you buys your book, how many, how many can they buy? How many times they can can they come to your book? How many can they buy? How many times can they come to your book signings? So it's not like, unless you're very famous, it's hard.

Speaker 2: 33:38

Are you active on social media now?

Speaker 1: 33:41

I am on social media. You can find me on Facebook. You can find me on X. I'm not that big on X, I don't know how to get people on X, but please join me on X on Facebook. I really appreciate it. I'm on Substack. I send my emails through Substack. I have a fairly large email mailing list. But again, all those things, they're just as successful as you can think. But I really think the best way is word of mouth. That's true. The best way to spread your book is word of mouth. That's why you try to reach as many people as possible and hopefully they like the book and they tell their friends. And that's really, I think, is the only way a book is. The readers are going to make it or break it, and thank God for that, because at least it's not up to the agents, it's not up to the publishers, it's up to the readers.

Speaker 2: 34:44

So where do you get the most engagement on social media? Is it Substack? Where do you get the most engagement with your fans?

Speaker 1: 34:52

Well, my most engagement is Facebook, because I know how to do that. I don't even know how to a lot of times I don't even know how to put a movie, a video, on Instagram. I mean, unless you have the actual thing you know, and then you put it in Like if you have a link.

Speaker 1: 35:13

I mean I need the help of my son to put it on. Yeah, so I do facebook and I enjoy facebook to some extent, although you can waste a lot of time and that's you know. But I enjoy, I. I do that and uh, you know I try to tell people what's going on. You know the new cover, do you like it? You know, you know I try to tell people what's going on. You know the new cover, do you like it? You know you know things like that. Yeah, and I get a response. I get, you know, I get quite a few responses, but I'm not, you know, it's not. I'm not sure how much it contributes, you know, to the same.

Speaker 2: 35:47

Is it an author page or?

Speaker 1: 35:49

a friend's page, An author page. Well, again, I really almost use it interchangeably. I have both, but I use them all. You're really supposed to be one with your family and friends and the other one is public and it is so. But I kind of put both of the same stuff in one and the other.

Speaker 2: 36:09

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 36:11

I don't put a lot of stuff about my family. I just don't feel comfortable. I never felt comfortable, even in my private thing. I mean, it's just, you know, I have some little thing about my grandkids and all that, but I just don't feel too comfortable, to be honest, with the time we live.

Speaker 2: 36:29

Yeah, I'm curious about your mindset. I mean your mindset you're very resilient. I mean the fact that you kept pushing after all the rejections, you kept trying. How did you develop this mindset? Is the fact that you know, being an immigrant like myself, is it something that makes that made you unique? It's like the hustle culture, all culture, all of that. Like, how did you develop this, this mindset of never giving up?

Speaker 1: 36:57

I honestly don't know. If it's something well, you're not born with it. Obviously it's something you develop very slowly. Um, from the very beginning, um, I think I was like that from the very beginning. I, I almost never gave up in my life Almost everything I started. I tried to bring it to the limit that I could do. Now, there were certain things that I found out were not totally possible and then so I backed down, but not because I didn't try really hard until the very end, beginning at the very end. Just to give you an example, I mean, I, I, I started to do uh, uh, martial art when I was uh in my 30s and I'm stuck with it.

Speaker 1: 37:41

It took me a long time but I went to my black belt. I mean I just not like that, I just wanted to do it, uh. And then, um, to get into cardiology took me three years. I mean I was in my 40s. I had to match a fellowship program of kids I mean these people were like in their 20s and I mean the teachers in the program were younger.

Speaker 1: 38:06

I had to sleep at the VA hospital at night because I couldn't come back home, because I was on call and I live in Newport Beach. So when I was on call I had to sleep in a hospital in an empty hospital bed, yeah, yeah, and I had two kids at home. I mean, you know it was hard. They were nice enough to be supportive. My husband was supportive. So I guess both of the things I did and I wanted for example, I really always wanted to come to the United States. Since I was a kid, my father was enamored with the space program in the United States. My mother almost killed me, because you know what she must have gone through, because at the time it was terrible, you know. I mean I left in Genova with the boat and my parents on this on the shore and you know there was no phone. I mean, there was a phone but it was very expensive. It may be your phone for Christmas or something you know it wasn't like.

Speaker 1: 39:07

You know you do FaceTime or whatever. Whatsapp. It's free and you can call your family anytime in Italy. Talk to my sister at any moment. Have you thought of writing a memoir? A memoir? No, not yet.

Speaker 1: 39:21

I don't know if I could. I don't know if I would be able to do that. But what I'm saying is it's something that I guess I just felt like I always wanted to do the most I could with what I had. Then I always had it in me and sometimes it was actually too much. Yeah, it was like everything was never enough, and maybe it was.

Speaker 1: 39:49

You know, you have to be careful with that, and I don't know if it was the way I was brought up. Yeah, we always were brought up. That school was very important, that you had to excel in school. I mean my parents were very, very sweet, very nice parents. It's not like they were beating me up if I didn't score well, but there was some sense of honor that you have to do your best whatever you do, and everything I have, I had to fight for it, I had to get it. I mean I was not. I mean my parents were not rich by any means. I mean, I remember my father putting in his camera, which he loved, because we didn't have enough money. So I grew up, you know, not poor, but you know we didn't have a TV or a car until I was a teenager.

Speaker 2: 40:48

Yeah, so what's the future hold for you? What are you going to work next after trying to sell this book and all of that?

Speaker 1: 40:59

Yeah well, like I said, I have two more books coming. One in October is called Defrosted. It's about cryogenics. It's about a doctor getting defrosted in the future to solve a problem that he only he could solve. He didn't leave anything because he was upset when he died, and and then, um, so, and then he wakes up in a world where, if you're not used to society, they let you die again. So he has to save the planet, otherwise he's going to die again. So, um, so that's next. And then there is a my very famous first book. That's next.

Speaker 1: 41:30

And then there is my very famous first book that's coming in 2026, and it's called Dying to Remember and it was a revised opposite with everything I know now, and it's the prequel of Dissection and Change of Heart. Now all my books can be read independently, but the characters some of the characters are the same. In that sense it's a prequel, because he actually explains why the uh, the private investigator was also in change of heart. Uh, kirk minor, why does he have medical knowledge? And and it's a very strange thing, it's like having sherlock holman and dr watson in one brain.

Speaker 1: 42:12

So it's a very interesting character and I couldn't give it up, so I kept him and he actually had a terrible car accident which was not really an accident, but you know that's the story of the first book and his brain got smashed and he was basically dead and he got this experimental brain surgery and when he wakes up he thinks about another woman. He doesn't recognize his wife, but he knows some medicine, so nobody knows about this. You have to read that book when it's coming in 2026. And then I'm writing a few more. I don't write, I'm not writing right this minute, but I have one that's just ready to be edited and I have another one with the first 100 pages, which I interrupted just to do the to publicize these other books that are coming out. So I'm going to keep on writing as long as I have a brain that works, that's working.

Speaker 2: 43:10

I love it. I mean, this has been very inspiring, Christina. And any final words you'd like to say to anyone who's listening or watching? Well, don't give up.

Speaker 1: 43:21

If that's your passion, focus on the good thing, focus on what you feel when you're writing. And if that's not enough, then maybe it's not worth it. You know, definitely it's not worth it to go to hell like this. But if writing gives you that satisfaction, that feeling that you are in your own world and you can make everything you want happen, and you really like that, then don't give up Because, again, the last word is with the readers. Yeah, yeah yeah, Maybe the book you're writing now the one that's going to make it.

Speaker 2: 44:01

Yeah, that's been very inspiring, Dr Christina, and I really appreciate your time and.

Speaker 1: 44:06

I'm pretty old, you know. I mean, I did it late in life, you know. But if you're young and everything, you've got your own life ahead of you.

Speaker 2: 44:14

So you know, but if you're young and everything, you've got your own life ahead of you, so you know you have a lot of time. Well, you look great. So thank you very much for joining me, dr Christina, and for anyone who's listening or watching, make sure to check Dr Christina's book, the Latest Exchange of Hearts. Make sure to check Dr Christina's book, the Latest Exchange of Hearts. And thank you very much for joining me for another episode of Read and Write with Natasha, and until we meet again, ciao. Thank you, ciao. Thank you for tuning in to Read and Write with Natasha. I'm your host, natasha Tynes. If today's episode inspired you in any way, please take the time to review the podcast. Remember to subscribe and share this podcast with fellow book lovers. Until next time. Happy reading, happy writing.