Meet Laura Freeman and Read About Her Medical Crime Thriller RAINING TEARS

Laura is a fellow Wild Rose Press author. I enjoy hosting all authors, so if you'd like to be my guest, please contact me!

About Laura

Laura was a reporter for sixteen years for local newspapers and the Gannett media company in Northeast Ohio. She won the Press Club of Cleveland’s Ohio Excellence in Journalism award twice and the Ohio Newspaper Association award several times. Her historical romance novels include “Impending Love and War,” “Impending Love and Death,” Impending Love and Lies,” Impending Love and Capture,” “Impending Love and Madness,” “Impending Love and Promise,” holiday novella “Tackling Molasses Crinkles,” and crime mystery “Raining Tears.” She is working on a romance mystery “Tangling a Web of Deceit.”

About RAINING TEARS

I wrote RAINING TEARS after attending a Citizen’s Police Academy where we learned different aspects of police work from officers in several local communities. My brother was also a police officer and detective who served as my technical advisor. Although my historical romance novels have two points of view, the hero and heroine, this was the first time I had four points of view, including the villain. Claire was fun to write because she didn’t have to be likeable and could do and say outrageous things. I wanted to allow the reader to understand her reasons and excuses for what she did. I also worked at the local hospital as a secretary and computer operator and drew from those experiences.

During a rainstorm, Claire Batton robs elderly Edith Merryweather at the bus stop for pain medicine and money. She encounters Jack Lawson in a dark alley returning from the drug store. After a rain-filled gutter falls and hits the gun from her hand, Jack picks it up as the police arrive. Claire falls to the ground and begs for her life to make herself look like the victim. When Jack turns around with the gun in his hand and a shot is fired, police officer Beth Moreno shoots him dead.

After giving a false driver’s license belonging to co-worker Abby Keller to the police, Claire sneaks away to the hospital where she is a nurse working third shift.

Detective Sydney Harrison responds to the call about the shooting. She interviews the other officers and suspects the mystery woman in the alley isn’t Abby Keller. Sydney realizes Jack Lawson was a victim after checking the drug store and calling on his wife, Vivien Lawson.

Sydney interviews Abby Keller at the hospital who had her purse stolen from her locker and was missing a bottle of pain pills. Claire hides her injury while she watches them talk. Sydney wants to know if anyone came in with an arm injury, unknowingly tipping Claire off.

The police chief has a press conference about the shooting. When Vivien learns her husband was shot by the police, she’s angry and threatens to go to a lawyer and sue the city. She wants justice.

To cover the injury to her arm the night of the shooting, Claire stages a fall at a convenience store before going to the ER at a neighboring hospital for x-rays.

Vivien stirs up the public against Beth who is dealing with her own demons. Claire worries Beth will recognize her when she comes to the hospital. She attempts to harm Beth but escapes until a final confrontation.

Excerpt

Claire was wasting time robbing a stranger. She needed to get out of the alley now. She waved the gun sideways to send the man on his way. “Forget it.”

He held out his wallet, waiting for her to claim it. A loud crack made her look above at the overhang of the building. The rusty gutter, filled with rainwater, broke away from its neighboring section and crashed onto Claire’s outstretched arm and hand holding the gun.

The weight of the water inside the aluminum frame was like a brick being slammed down on her forearm. She screamed and dropped the gun. A spasm shook her arm, and a sharp stabbing pain shot through the muscles up into her shoulder and down to her fingertips.

The gun lay on the wet pavement between them. The man gazed into her eyes for the briefest moment before he leapt. Claire dove onto her knees to reach her revolver, but the man snatched it in his left hand and stood over her. He pointed the barrel down at her head as she knelt on the wet pavement. 

“I think I’ll keep my money.” He still had his wallet in his right hand and gripped the gun awkwardly in his left. 

She looked up at him towering over her and debated whether to challenge his possession of her weapon. “Do you even know how to use that?”

Purchase RAINING TEARS on Amazon or your favorite book vendor.

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Meet W. Lawrence Gold, M.D., Author of Medical Thrillers and Screenplays

I met Larry about 7 years ago when I was editing for Moongypsy Press. I was assigned NO CURE FOR MURDER. It didn't need much editing, and I devoured it. I've been a fan and a friend of Larry's ever since. His books are right up there with Robin Cook's. He knows his stuff--and he can tell a story that'll make  you want to rip the pages to get through. Here's Larry in his own words, telling you about what's new--including THE DOCTORS' LOUNGE.

 

 

I was born in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn, moved to Queens, and then, as New Yorkers say, my family ascended to the Island.
After graduating from Valley Stream Central High School, I went to Adelphi, a college then, a university now, and then to medical school in Chicago.
The war in Vietnam interrupted my postgraduate medical training with a year in Colorado Springs and another as a Battalion Surgeon in Vietnam. I spent seven months in the Central Highlands with the 4th Infantry and five months in an evacuation hospital in Long Binh outside Saigon where I ran the emergency room.
I returned intact in 1968 to complete my training in internal medicine and diseases of the kidney, nephrology.

I worked for twenty-three years in Berkeley, California in a hospital-based practice and served as Chief of Internal Medicine and Family Practice. For many years, I was an active member of the quality assurance committee.
We retired in October 1995 before fate could intervene. We sailed under the Golden Gate Bridge for a life at sea in Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean.

Four years later, exhausted from repairing everything on board, (often many times) we sold the sailboat and within a year took the lazy man's out; we bought a Nordic Tug trawler. We motored around Florida, the Bahamas, and the entire East Coast and Canada.

I've written fourteen novels, ten in the Brier Hospital Series, and one non-fiction book, I Love My Doctor, But…a lighthearted look at the patient/doctor relationship.

I write primarily to entertain, but I can't help but pass on to readers observations and beliefs culled from years of practice, and yes, my biases, too. I strive for realism in portraying the medical scene that is gripping enough without melodrama or gimmicks.

With even a minor degree of success in writing novels, comes responsibility to readers. I attempt to produce honest material that reflects my beliefs. Exposing these beliefs to the public through my writing requires courage, stupidity, or both. My fans have been generous, and although nobody enjoys criticism, I've learned much from that, too.

The novel that expresses most clearly my candor, and my bias, is For the Love of God. The novel reflects my attitudes toward those who are willing to sacrifice the lives of their children for their personal religious beliefs.
We live in beautiful Grass Valley with 11 year old Bennie, a Yorkie who just looks like he's on steroids and Wesley, a 1 year old rescue, a terrier of some sort.

After having written a number of novels, it was time to sit back and reflect upon the writing process as well as aspects of promotion and sales, lessons always learned the hard way.

While I’ve had excellent reviews of my work, in general, sales have been surprising. My best seller, First, Do No Harm, was the first in the Brier Hospital Series, and while not as well-written as my later novels, that novel and its sales have taught me several lessons. These include the downside of an incompletely edited novel, the importance of character, and writing in such a way that the reader feels the need to move on to the next chapter.

The Brier Hospital milieu has proven popular, but a series has its advantages and disadvantages. The advantages including reengaging the reader in a familiar environment and well-known characters while the disadvantages include making sure that each novel stands on its own feet and can be read in any order. In addition, characters, while familiar to some, must be at least briefly reintroduced. A successful series is self-propagating, an unsuccessful one is a dead end.

I began to think of writing the Doctor’s Lounge to reflect what readers liked best in the Brier series; episodic and dramatic medical scenarios and engaging characters.

Among my most popular characters, a little surprising in this youth oriented world, are a couple, Lola and Jacob Weizman, both octogenarians. I introduced these characters in the murder/mystery novel, No Cure for Murder and readers have been calling for them to reappear.

We’d all like the inside scoop when we discuss back-room politics, religion, education, the arts, the law, and the inner sanctum of medicine. In my newest Brier Hospital novel, ‘The Doctors’ Room’ we get that insider’s view into medical practice and complex ethical issues.

Jacob Weizman has after sixty years of exemplary medical practice, suffered a crisis of confidence and has withdrawn from hospital practice. He spends his mornings in the Doctors’ Lounge where he becomes a sage, a sounding board, consultant, advisor and all around mentor for physicians, nurses, and even for hospital administrators.

Through Jacob’s involvement, the reader can observe the realities of medical practice and how it affects practitioners and patients alike.

Medical fiction at its best is dramatic without being campy, exciting without being unrealistic, and educational without being pedantic and laden with jargon. Hopefully, The Doctors’ Lounge fulfills these criteria.

 

Purchase THE DOCTORS' LOUNGE on Amazon

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