Emergency Physician and Award-Winning Author Dr. Melissa YI

DR. MELISSA YI

Melissa Yi is an emergency physician and award-winning writer. In her newest romantic crime novel, DEATH FLIGHT, Dr. Hope Sze battles murder on an airplane. Previous Hope Sze volumes were recommended by the Globe and Mail and CBC Books as best suspense novels of the season. We asked Melissa to tell us what she likes in a Medical Romance and what authors sometimes get wrong.

I’m an emergency doctor, so I’ll sum it up first in case we get pulled away from each other.

I’m a book slut. I’ll read pretty much anything, as long as it’s good. So my rules for medical romances are my rules for everything. Hook me with people I care about, a clever plot, a fascinating setting, goosebump-worthy emotion, intricate language or humour—preferably all of the above—and I’m yours. I love reading. The more books, the better. Who’s with me?

However! Medical romances can be a tougher sell for me because medicine is my day/night job. I don’t find reading about medicine relaxing when I could be perusing journal articles or, you know, playing with my children. So if you get the details wrong, I’m out. 

DR. HOPE SZE BOOK 1

Now, I’m probably pickier than most medical romance readers. But if you’re a writer, I expect you to do the research out of respect for your readers and your own craft. If you make mistakes and tell a good enough story, I’ll stay with you. But you’d better tell a rollicking good story.

My next beef would be ridiculous plots that try to ratchet up the adrenaline by starting off with Hollywood bang—say, a gunshot or a bomb—and escalating to Mount Everest levels of implausibility.

What? Now they have to deal with nuclear war, zombies with bubonic plague, AND sentient dental plaque? After a certain point, it seems more ludicrous than dangerous. I close the book. (Although I kind of like the sentient dental plaque. I write fantasy and science fiction under my real name, Melissa Yuan-Innes. I may have to run with that one.)

Plus, if the characters and setting feel too generic for me, I have nothing to hold on to and no reason to care. Goombye, as one of my high school friends used to say.

TERMINALLY ILL RELEASE PARTY

I probably sound harsh. Give me everything! seems to be my battle cry. But as a matter of fact, I like reading good medical romances. Doctors, nurses, pharmacists, paramedics, orderlies, secretaries, custodial staff—as far as I’m concerned, we’re a band of heroes, brothers and sisters and partners, working nights, days, weekdays and weekends, literally 24/7, in order to save lives. Everyone matters. Everyone goes full tilt in the ER, around the clock. I welcome books about us, in every discipline. I, personally, don’t usually read billionaire novels because I love ordinary people in the trenches, doing extraordinary things. And if they get to fall in love and score a happily ever after, even more yes!

On one night shift, not one, not two, but three nurses mentioned how their first husbands had mistreated them. One RN was left penniless with two little ones on Christmas Day after her ne’er do well cleaned out their bank account. Two of them had gone on to find their Prince Charmings, and the third had made a good life independently.

If they can do it, so can we. In fiction and in real life.

So please write and read a treasure trove of medical romances, and I will follow you to the ends of the earth!

Want to check if I can walk the walk? My medical romances star Dr. Hope Sze, a Montreal family medicine resident who battles death, disease, outright murder—and an attraction to two different men.

DR. HOPE SZE BOOK 6 DEBUTS  9/6/18!!!

Ryan Wu is her first love, her first lover, and a gorgeous engineer. They broke up partly because she was accepted to medical school on the opposite side of the province and partly because he’s religious and she’s not, but otherwise, he’s exactly Hope’s cup of hot, hot chocolate. They struggle to keep their hands off each other.

Dr. John Tucker is a blond resident with a big mouth who’s hyper and makes bad jokes, not as good-looking as Ryan, and much more erratic, but he loves Hope right down to his bone marrow. To be honest, I thought Tucker was annoying when I started writing Code Blues, the first book, but he caught my eye, and I thought, Wait. He’s…interesting. Flawed but honest, real, and passionate.

The love triangle takes a serious twist in Death Flight, the sixth book, which debuts September 6^th. Come fly with me!
Facebook Launch Party on 9/6/18  7-8pm EDT; 4-5pm PDT

DEATH FLIGHT trailer link

DEATH FLIGHT

Doctor-wise, Melissa has worked as far north as Ivujivik, Quebec (Inuktitut: ᐃᕗᔨᕕᒃ, north of 60; also the northernmost village in a Canadian province). Nowadays she stays closer to home, running codes in Eastern Ontario. She’s cheerfully married to her high school sweetheart, with two loud and loveable children and a Rottweiler shepherd. She loves stories, yoga, blading, sustainable fashion, laughter, intelligence, and random craziness. She hangs out mostly on Facebook, with occasional forays as @dr_sassy on Twitter, and on her website, http://www.melissayuaninnes.com/.

Author of Human Remains, a best Canadian suspense book at the Globe and Mail, a CBC Books top ten mystery and a must-read mystery by CBC Radio's The Next Chapter. Arthur Ellis Award finalist.