Dimitri Markov Author Interview

Vera Mortina is a medical fiction novel about a sordid doctor that begins work at a medical practice where strange and deadly things begin to happen. The tag line, ‘when the patient is not the sick one’, is chillingly appropriate. What was your inspiration for Dr. Vera Mortina’s character and her troubled disposition?

I interact with a number of professionals who have rather troubling dispositions, some are physicians, some are nurses, administrators, patients, lawyers and others. How little do we really know about those “difficult” people we have to work with every day? This led to a fictional account developed on the theme of Dangerous Doctors.

There was a lot of time spent crafting the character traits in this novel. What was the most important factor for you to get right in your characters?

The most difficult and yet the most crucial characteristic of Dr Vera Mortina was to convincingly portray how she could function so well as a medical professional and yet be so dangerously disturbed. How she could create such a believable façade that even her partner wanted to get closer to her, and not run away. Her partner was so skilled in his profession, yet he was really blind for a long time, he was drawn to Dr Vera like a moth attracted to the candle light.

I felt that there were a lot of great twists and turns throughout the novel. Did you plan this before writing the novel, or did the twists present themselves as you were writing?

I conceived the general outline and worked on the development as a thought project for a long time before writing it down and developing from an outline. It all revolved around Dr Vera, and she led me to uncover some of the dangerous things she was really up to.

Vera Mortina is a part of your Dangerous Doctors series. What will the next book in that series be about and when will it be published?

At this point, my writing efforts are going to frequently revisiting the writing of the other three Dangerous Doctors, to refine the presentations and address many of the questions you asked above. This includes the theme of excess commercialization of in vitro fertilization clinics in The Surrogate, how the paranoia of aging could effect a physician in Her Charm was Contageous, and the relentless desire for immortality and money in a biotech researcher in BloodBird. Fostering believability is always an issue.

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Chosen in a rush, Dr. Vera Mortina joins a small medical group, but without adequate exploration of her rather unusual background. Her sudden arrival is accompanied by acrimony, odd and disturbing idiosyncratic behaviors, and the unexpected deaths of several patients and staff. The closer Dr. Richard Bates looks into Vera, with her violent thoughts and bizarre hobbies, the more imperiled his own life becomes.