Sarcastically Yours, Jen

The Regression Strain By Kevin Hwang
Genre: Thriller

Guest Post

Can you, for those who don’t know you already, tell something about yourself and how you became an author?

I’m an internal medicine doctor and professor at McGovern Medical School at UTHealth Houston where I see patients and teach residents. I’ve wanted to write a novel since I was a teenager but never got past the first few scenes. I’ve written some short stories but a novel was always the dream. 

It still took a while to commit to the concept of writing about a doctor, but once I finally took the advice to “write what you know,” I still needed to decide on a setting. I didn’t want to put the protagonist in a standard hospital or medical office setting. 

On day it finally hit me: We’ve been on a few cruises, I’m a doctor, and maybe there’s a story in there somewhere. A story centered on a single cruise itinerary seemed narrow enough in scope to attempt. I also wanted the protagonist to think about human nature because I think about it a lot.

Can you tell us a little bit about the characters in The Regression Strain?

The protagonist is Peter Palma, a young doctor who takes a job working on a cruise ship because he thinks it’ll be easy gig – just the thing he needs after going through some very difficult times professionally and personally. Of course, he soon finds out he’s in for the “adventure” of a lifetime. He’s thoughtful, vulnerable, and acutely aware of his shortcomings. Peter isn’t your typical cocky, know-it-all hero. He has to dig pretty deep to overcome challenges facing himself and everyone depending on him. He struggles with a lot of self-doubt along the way.

Dr. Elizabeth Hartley is a senior physician on the ship who fails as Peter’s mentor as she teeters on the edge of madness.

Mandy Chin is a nurse from Portland whom Peter can’t stop thinking about in all the wrong ways.

Captain Forster wields an ego bigger than the ocean!

Harrington is the security chief desperate to maintain order.

Calvin is a teenage boy abandoned by his mother.

If your book was made into a film, who would you like to play the lead?

Matt Damon – from back in the Jason Bourne days!

How did you come up with name of this book?

My original title was “Belly of the Whale” because the imagery and theme of someone trapped in an ocean-faring creature or vessel fits with the story. But I heard feedback that the title lacked the intense, edgy vibe that a thriller novel deserves. So I thought about the main external dramatic element of the story, where human behavior changed for the worse, or regressed. Hence, The Regression Strain.

Convince us why you feel your book is a must read.

It’s a fast-paced story with a likeable protagonist struggling with his own nature and against a sinister plot to remake humankind into something terrifying. It has a bit of medicine and science, but not so much as to overwhelm readers. The story has a lot of twists and turns, and psychological suspense.

What makes a good story?

When at least one character, especially a flawed character, struggles against long odds to accomplish something personally important to them. 

What is your writing process? For instance do you do an outline first? Do you do the chapters first?

For this novel – my first – I was a methodological pantser. I developed a sparse outline of the key turning points, maybe 8 in total, and wrote freely to get from one point to the other. A detailed scene list emerged sometime during that process, and in the later stages, I bounced back and forth between writing the actual novel and working on the scene list. It was quite chaotic and messy.

An annoying pattern is that I’ll sit at my computer and struggle to come up with ideas. Then if I go for a walk or drive, or take a shower, that’s when the ideas start flowing.

If you could tell your younger writing self anything, what would it be?

Write what you know. Just start something and get to the end. Then go back and revise it. I still need to remind myself of that.

Blurb

Nobody’s safe when the inner beast awakens…
Dr. Peter Palma joins the medical team of the Paradise to treat passengers for minor ailments as the cruise ship sails across the Atlantic. But something foul is festering under the veneer of leisure. The brig fills with felons, the morgue with bodies, and the vacation becomes a nightmare.

Peter and his staff face a vile affliction that pits loved ones against each other and shatters the bonds of civil society.

With the ship hurtling towards an unprepared New York, only Peter can neutralize the threat, but he’s hallucinating and delirious.

And sometimes primal urges are impossible to resist.

The Regression Strain is a fast-paced, cerebral medical thriller that’ll grab you from the first to the last page.

About the Author

Kevin O. Hwang, MD, is a professor of internal medicine at McGovern Medical School at UTHealth Houston where he sees patients and teaches residents. His academic work has appeared in leading medical journals. Nothing excites him more than chicken enchiladas, index cards, and appropriately sized packaging.

Links for The Regression Strain

• Goodreads

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