Ask the Author: Donald Shinn
Answered Questions (12)
Donald Shinn
The case of the mysterious survivor! The biggest mystery in my life is: How am I still alive? A recent infectious disease doc came into my hospital room reading off my medical history and then stopped at the foot of my bed and asked, "What are you? A cat with nine lives?" I laughed and assured her cats were way cooler than I'd ever be. I was more of a dude with nine lives. She laughed and updated her notes.
When I was born in 1958 the expected life expectancy for a hemophiliac was the late teens or early twenties, the thirties if you were lucky. Advances in treatment both extended and then drastically shortened that expected lifespan. The new treatment involving freeze-dried clotting factor that came about in the mid-seventies made treating hemophilia much easier. (Also, much more expensive!) It involved pooling together large batches of plasma (initially ten thousand units and then later a hundred thousand units) to extract the clotting factor needed to treat hemophilia.
When you pool that much plasma together you will always have infectious diseases in the plasma pool. Nearly every hemophiliac using the clotting factor in the seventies got Hepatitis B and Hepatitis C. When HIV came to America in 1976, it quickly found its way into the clotting factor. This led to the death of the majority of hemophiliacs. I was spared due to a genetic variation called CCR 5 Delta 32. This protects one from HIV, and also smallpox, and the plague. (I'm happy to report I haven't tested my immunity to smallpox and the plague just yet. It seemed to work okay against HIV though.)
In the 1990's the prions responsible for Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease found their way into the clotting factor supply. I used over 250,000 units of clotting factor that was later recalled due to that contamination. So far anyway, my brain hasn't wasted away. (Or if it has, I don't know it.)
I've survived losing an eye to a bleed, bleeding ulcers, pulmonary embolisms, DVTs, a torn abdominal wall, gall bladder issues/surgery, sepsis, a broken femur, osteoporosis, a collapsed lung, two iliopsoas bleeds, Hep B, Hep C, exposure to the prions responsible for CJD, and more. How did I do it? God only knows. He has a role for me to fill and I guess I haven't filled it yet, so he keeps me hanging around. I could have, should have died multiple times, but I haven't.
There was a brief period of time when due to a plasma shortage during the HIV crisis the lovely folks at the CDC, NIH, and FDA discussed waiving the rules on buying plasma from African prisons and using that for hemophiliacs. (Some African prisons at the time were forcibly extracting plasma to sell to offset the cost of holding the prisoners. The HIV rate in those prisons was reportedly 98%.) The theory was that since both AIDS and Ebola had erupted in Africa that using plasma from Arica for hemophiliacs would let the government see more easily if there was a new threat out there. Since we'd all already been exposed to HIV it wouldn't matter. Yeah. Suffice to say I pretty much stopped following the advice of the CDC, NIH, and FDA after that. If they say go left, I go right. I think that's part of why I'm still alive today Maybe it's not such a mystery after all. Do the opposite of what the government says, and you'll live long and prosper! (Now if only I could get that prosper part down. I sure haven't nailed that yet.)
When I was born in 1958 the expected life expectancy for a hemophiliac was the late teens or early twenties, the thirties if you were lucky. Advances in treatment both extended and then drastically shortened that expected lifespan. The new treatment involving freeze-dried clotting factor that came about in the mid-seventies made treating hemophilia much easier. (Also, much more expensive!) It involved pooling together large batches of plasma (initially ten thousand units and then later a hundred thousand units) to extract the clotting factor needed to treat hemophilia.
When you pool that much plasma together you will always have infectious diseases in the plasma pool. Nearly every hemophiliac using the clotting factor in the seventies got Hepatitis B and Hepatitis C. When HIV came to America in 1976, it quickly found its way into the clotting factor. This led to the death of the majority of hemophiliacs. I was spared due to a genetic variation called CCR 5 Delta 32. This protects one from HIV, and also smallpox, and the plague. (I'm happy to report I haven't tested my immunity to smallpox and the plague just yet. It seemed to work okay against HIV though.)
In the 1990's the prions responsible for Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease found their way into the clotting factor supply. I used over 250,000 units of clotting factor that was later recalled due to that contamination. So far anyway, my brain hasn't wasted away. (Or if it has, I don't know it.)
I've survived losing an eye to a bleed, bleeding ulcers, pulmonary embolisms, DVTs, a torn abdominal wall, gall bladder issues/surgery, sepsis, a broken femur, osteoporosis, a collapsed lung, two iliopsoas bleeds, Hep B, Hep C, exposure to the prions responsible for CJD, and more. How did I do it? God only knows. He has a role for me to fill and I guess I haven't filled it yet, so he keeps me hanging around. I could have, should have died multiple times, but I haven't.
There was a brief period of time when due to a plasma shortage during the HIV crisis the lovely folks at the CDC, NIH, and FDA discussed waiving the rules on buying plasma from African prisons and using that for hemophiliacs. (Some African prisons at the time were forcibly extracting plasma to sell to offset the cost of holding the prisoners. The HIV rate in those prisons was reportedly 98%.) The theory was that since both AIDS and Ebola had erupted in Africa that using plasma from Arica for hemophiliacs would let the government see more easily if there was a new threat out there. Since we'd all already been exposed to HIV it wouldn't matter. Yeah. Suffice to say I pretty much stopped following the advice of the CDC, NIH, and FDA after that. If they say go left, I go right. I think that's part of why I'm still alive today Maybe it's not such a mystery after all. Do the opposite of what the government says, and you'll live long and prosper! (Now if only I could get that prosper part down. I sure haven't nailed that yet.)
Donald Shinn
I don't have anything planned for Sara after book four. I'm not opposed to bringing her back again if I come up with a good idea for how to do it. I just don't have that idea right now. The original Sara book was to be the only Sara book. Then the 2016 election came along and inspired books two, three, and four. There's a germ of an idea where a social media mogul (like a Mark Zuckerberg) decides to figure out exactly how many people she's killed and exposes some of her former clients. It's just too easy for her to kill one guy though. Maybe something like a Project Veritas or Wikileaks type group starts to expose her former clients, but does so from secrecy? She has to figure out who they are and then stop them before they destroy too many people? She used a hacker group to expose the pedophiles in book four, so maybe one of those hackers then turns on her and tries to expose her clients and her?
At this moment, I'm trying to finish up a book where an odd group of four people discovers how a drug kingpin is smuggling cash out of the US and intercept one of his shipments netting themselves $2 billion in cash along with almost three billion in the artwork he was shipping to his villa in Colombia. They end up donating the artwork to the Philly art museum which creates all kinds of extra problems. Suffice to say the drug kingpin is not especially happy about this turn of events. It's a longer novel than I've written in quite a while at over seventy thousand words now, and likely to end up around eighty thousand when I finally get it done. I'm hoping to wrap it up by Christmas. I'm doing a rewrite on one section today.
I've got some other stuff in the nearly done category including "The Plain People League" where a group of normal Janes and Joes who are more or less invisible to the rest of the world, uncover corruption, criminals and take the law into their own hands to get justice. It's largely inspired by the song "Mr. Cellophane" in the musical Chicago. The PPL is made up of janitors, waitresses, customer support workers, maids, cooks, dog walkers, Uber drivers, etc. Being invisible (at least to some) can be a handy tool for fighting injustice.
There are another ten or so books in one stage of completion or another. There's a YA story of a couple of teenagers who discover they have the power to alter others' actions through their thoughts. They were part of a former CIA program where psychic abilities were tried to be genetically engineered but funding had been cut and the program abandoned. No one realized the abilities only kicked in after puberty. When the two discover what they can do all heck breaks loose. Suffice to say the CIA gets very interested in them again.
There's a story tentatively titled "The Programmer" where a young woman computer programmer who grew up programming computers and can speak to almost any machine in machine language realizes that DNA and RNA are both computer programs and the cells are computers. She starts to look around the world/universe and discovers there are many more things that seem programmed. She then finds that the universe's operating system is hidden in the cosmic background radiation. She then intercepts it and learns how to manipulate it. This gives her God-like powers. Russia and China are on the verge of attacking the US and have their fleets massed along our coasts when she uses her programming skills to send their crews back to their home countries and their ships to the Sea of Tranquility on the moon.
Then there's "New Eden" a sci-fi story that never went too far as I never knew how to end it. Amazon has their new Vella program where stories can go on forever, so that may get dusted off and used for that. In "New Eden" I keep the physics of space travel sane. (No instant popping up halfway across the universe.) It starts out with a young woman journalist (Jessie Kowalski) learning that she's to be the journalist covering the first voyage to a nearby (ten light-years away) planet that's been dubbed New Eden. The flight there will take 25 years and the flight back another 25 years, so it's kind of a big commitment. Suffice to say she never makes it back but her daughter does, who's never set foot on a planet before. An entrepreneur who's building a new spaceship discovers that his father had acquired the ownership of the old ship and thus he now owns the young woman who's back on Earth but completely unprepared for life on Earth. The guy then takes her along as he and a crew of hundreds try to leave the universe and venture into the void beyond. Once out there they watch as the universe we know reverts to a single point and then erupts in a new big bang. (In theory, every atom has a critical mass but for most atoms, the mass is so large it's impossible to achieve. In the story, the critical mass of iron is everything in the universe, but over the life of the universe everything decays into iron, so it works out. Once everything is sucked together into a supermassive black hole, the iron atoms reach criticality and you get a new Big Bang.) The crew then divides up and settles on new planets only to then reunite outside the universe as that version nears its end. I like the idea of exploring how humans change over time when isolated and then reunite and see the changes in one another. Humans on a planet with heavier gravity might be shorter, stockier, and stronger. Skin colors change, facial patterns change. It is a never-ending story. Perfect for the Vella format.
And there's more. I have a story of a guy who had a near-death experience after getting hit by a car who finds out he can't rejoin his body and there are now two of him. The physical one and the purely spiritual one. Suffice to say his less physical self didn't "go to the light" as he was distracted looking at a pretty nurse and is now stuck here in nonphysical form. It's a problem for him.
And there's more yet. Suffice to say I don't need anything else to write. I need to finish more of the stuff I've gotten started. God willing, every three or four months I should be able to toss out another story. A lot of stuff is nearly done.
At this moment, I'm trying to finish up a book where an odd group of four people discovers how a drug kingpin is smuggling cash out of the US and intercept one of his shipments netting themselves $2 billion in cash along with almost three billion in the artwork he was shipping to his villa in Colombia. They end up donating the artwork to the Philly art museum which creates all kinds of extra problems. Suffice to say the drug kingpin is not especially happy about this turn of events. It's a longer novel than I've written in quite a while at over seventy thousand words now, and likely to end up around eighty thousand when I finally get it done. I'm hoping to wrap it up by Christmas. I'm doing a rewrite on one section today.
I've got some other stuff in the nearly done category including "The Plain People League" where a group of normal Janes and Joes who are more or less invisible to the rest of the world, uncover corruption, criminals and take the law into their own hands to get justice. It's largely inspired by the song "Mr. Cellophane" in the musical Chicago. The PPL is made up of janitors, waitresses, customer support workers, maids, cooks, dog walkers, Uber drivers, etc. Being invisible (at least to some) can be a handy tool for fighting injustice.
There are another ten or so books in one stage of completion or another. There's a YA story of a couple of teenagers who discover they have the power to alter others' actions through their thoughts. They were part of a former CIA program where psychic abilities were tried to be genetically engineered but funding had been cut and the program abandoned. No one realized the abilities only kicked in after puberty. When the two discover what they can do all heck breaks loose. Suffice to say the CIA gets very interested in them again.
There's a story tentatively titled "The Programmer" where a young woman computer programmer who grew up programming computers and can speak to almost any machine in machine language realizes that DNA and RNA are both computer programs and the cells are computers. She starts to look around the world/universe and discovers there are many more things that seem programmed. She then finds that the universe's operating system is hidden in the cosmic background radiation. She then intercepts it and learns how to manipulate it. This gives her God-like powers. Russia and China are on the verge of attacking the US and have their fleets massed along our coasts when she uses her programming skills to send their crews back to their home countries and their ships to the Sea of Tranquility on the moon.
Then there's "New Eden" a sci-fi story that never went too far as I never knew how to end it. Amazon has their new Vella program where stories can go on forever, so that may get dusted off and used for that. In "New Eden" I keep the physics of space travel sane. (No instant popping up halfway across the universe.) It starts out with a young woman journalist (Jessie Kowalski) learning that she's to be the journalist covering the first voyage to a nearby (ten light-years away) planet that's been dubbed New Eden. The flight there will take 25 years and the flight back another 25 years, so it's kind of a big commitment. Suffice to say she never makes it back but her daughter does, who's never set foot on a planet before. An entrepreneur who's building a new spaceship discovers that his father had acquired the ownership of the old ship and thus he now owns the young woman who's back on Earth but completely unprepared for life on Earth. The guy then takes her along as he and a crew of hundreds try to leave the universe and venture into the void beyond. Once out there they watch as the universe we know reverts to a single point and then erupts in a new big bang. (In theory, every atom has a critical mass but for most atoms, the mass is so large it's impossible to achieve. In the story, the critical mass of iron is everything in the universe, but over the life of the universe everything decays into iron, so it works out. Once everything is sucked together into a supermassive black hole, the iron atoms reach criticality and you get a new Big Bang.) The crew then divides up and settles on new planets only to then reunite outside the universe as that version nears its end. I like the idea of exploring how humans change over time when isolated and then reunite and see the changes in one another. Humans on a planet with heavier gravity might be shorter, stockier, and stronger. Skin colors change, facial patterns change. It is a never-ending story. Perfect for the Vella format.
And there's more. I have a story of a guy who had a near-death experience after getting hit by a car who finds out he can't rejoin his body and there are now two of him. The physical one and the purely spiritual one. Suffice to say his less physical self didn't "go to the light" as he was distracted looking at a pretty nurse and is now stuck here in nonphysical form. It's a problem for him.
And there's more yet. Suffice to say I don't need anything else to write. I need to finish more of the stuff I've gotten started. God willing, every three or four months I should be able to toss out another story. A lot of stuff is nearly done.
Donald Shinn
Hi Spurt. You're doing everything fine. I'm glad you found it.
Donald Shinn
The advantage of having multiple stories you're writing at once is if you get a bit blocked on one, you can go back and read another one that you've got started and get inspired to make changes on that and before you know it you're writing like mad on that story again. You may still be blocked on the first story, but it doesn't matter as long as words are hitting paper. (Or the screen.)
Donald Shinn
There's nothing quite like the feeling when a story is flowing out of you. Time stops, you forget everything else. The only things in the world are you and the story.
Donald Shinn
Just write and keep writing. Be open to advice and criticism but if you feel what you're doing is right, do it. Use the tools that are available also. I love having Grammarly up as I write to catch things I might miss.
Donald Shinn
I'm writing multiple books right now. I keep about five or six stories in circulation at a time and move from one to the other as the mood strikes. There's a YA story about a boy who discovers he can use mind control on people without their knowledge they were controlled. He meets a girl with similar power and they bond. The government discovers their ability and tries to exploit them. There's a story about a small group that steals a very large cash shipment from a drug kingpin and then try to survive as he's hunting them down. There's a Christmas story where a guy is awakened at midnight on Christmas to find herald angels circling his home and informing him that he's Christ reborn. (He's more than a bit surprised and confused by this as he still feels just like himself.) There's what promises to be a very long sci-fi series where real-world physics is used instead of the magical stuff one typically sees in space travel stories. (No instantly jumping to light speed or decelerating quickly. In the real-world humans on those ships would be red splatters on a wall if those types of speeds existed.) And there's more besides those. There are four or five books that are "done" but just need final editing and a cover. I stay busy.
Donald Shinn
Honestly, I think you're either a writer or you're not. You've got stories in your head that have to get out or you don't. I don't think it's inspiration as much as genetic. (It could be a form of insanity.) The vast majority of writers never find success, but we write anyway. Why? It's what we do. those stories just have to come out.
Donald Shinn
I was lying in bed Christmas Eve trying to go to sleep when the most recent idea I've started writing popped into my head. It was just about midnight when the idea popped into my head. A guy's awakened by his wife at midnight to go out and stop whoever's shining a light on their house and singing. He staggers out to find out that they were herald angels and they were insisting he was Christ reborn. Suffice to say it creates all kinds of chaos for him. It's a comedy. With any luck, that book will be out by Christmas 2020.
Donald Shinn
I stared at the calendar in disbelief and wondered how it could have happened. It was another election year!
Donald Shinn
I'm more inclined to reread old books that I love than read new books. Frederick Forsythe's "The Day of the Jackal" gets reread every year. I'll likely reread the whole Harry Potter series also. Right now I'm rereading Gordon Prange's "At Dawn We Slept: The Untold Story of Pearl Harbor." Peggy Anderson's book "Children's Hospital" is due for a reread also. I'll also probably read some of Tracy Kidder's books again, most likely "House" and "The Soul of a New Machine."
Donald Shinn
I always loved James Herriot's Yorkshire in his "All Creatures Great and Small" series. I'd most likely just enjoy the rolling hillsides and talking with the locals.
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