This Charlotte doctor-turned-writer started a book about a pandemic — last year
Charlotte author Kimmery Martin started writing a book about a pandemic last year. But what she thought would be a cautionary tale turned into a dark reality.
While we may see an influx of pandemic-inspired novels after this worldwide crisis, Martin brings a unique perspective — she’s an ER-doctor-turned novelist. She’s known for her medical fiction debut, “The Queen of Hearts,” and her second novel, “The Antidote for Everything,” which was released in February.
CharlotteFive sat down to talk with her about her journey writing a pandemic novel while living the reality each day, dealing with the novel coronavirus COVID-19.
From ER doctor to novelist
Martin, who grew up in the Kentucky mountains, lives in Cotswold with her husband, an orthopedic surgeon, two daughters and a son. Martin completed her medical training at the University of Louisville School of Medicine and Vanderbilt University School of Medicine before coming to Charlotte to do an internship in general surgery with Carolinas Medical Center.
So, how does a doctor of emergency medicine become a novelist?
“I started out writing because I love to read. I love books. I love interviewing authors. I like doing book recommendations. And so I just decided to try my hand at this thing that had given me so much joy throughout my life,” Martin said.
She knew that when her first novel, “The Queen of Hearts,” sold to Penguin Random House, it would be an enormous time commitment.
“Not just the writing, but all of the promotional things that go along with that: the social media, book tours, interviews. There’s a lot more than actually just writing, and I was not doing a good job trying to balance all of my home commitments and family commitments and work stuff,” she said.
To better balance her career and her passion, Martin became an on-site ER doctor at an asthma and allergy clinic Uptown, where she could be available if anyone had an anaphylactic reaction.
“That allowed me to really finish the revisions of my first novel and still keep a toe in medicine,” Martin said.
She’s also currently signed up to return to the emergency room if the COVID-19 crisis continues to progress. Until then, she’s working on her third novel. But with her family at home, she’s finding it difficult to keep a writing routine.
“I usually write at home, and I have a really great writing space in my house. It’s hard with everyone here. There’s no real routine anymore.”
Martin generally writes in the morning and mid-afternoon, when her brain is fresh. She’s also in a few different writing groups.
“Prior to the social distancing, I was getting together with my main writing group. We met once or twice a week, and we would usually rotate between each other’s houses or coffee shops,” she said.
Becoming an expert in medical fiction
Writing a book is difficult. Getting a book published? Even more difficult.
“It was a long and humbling process to get a novel written and get it published,” Martin said. “I was definitely motivated by my love of literature.” Luckily, she also loves being a doctor: Her contract with Penguin Random House states that her books have to be medical fiction with a female protagonist who is a doctor.
Martin’s first novel, “The Queen of Hearts,” has been praised by The Harvard Crimson, Southern Living and The New York Times, among others. She recently embarked on the first leg of her book tour for “The Antidote for Everything,” which is temporarily suspended due to COVID-19.
Writing about a pandemic during a pandemic
Martin’s next novel is set to debut in 2021 and could lead one to believe she sees the future.
“It’s about a brand new worldwide viral pandemic, ironically. I’ve been working on it for about a year.”
Martin read 20-30 books on infectious disease and virology to research information for the piece.
“I was trying to think of the absolute most scary pandemic, and the thing that really spurred my interest in it in the first place was the influenza pandemic in 1918. We are long overdue for another severe influenza pandemic,” Martin said.
One of the most frightening elements of the 1918 pandemic was that it disproportionately affected young, healthy people, instead of the usual suspects: very old, very young, immunocompromised. The influenza revved up victims’ immune systems so much that their own immune systems killed them. Martin cites these cytokine storms as a main element in developing her novel.
“You would have young men and women in their 20s and 30s who would be fine at lunchtime and dead by dinnertime. And I thought, we have so much anti-vaccine hysteria, and we still don’t have really good antiviral treatments yet. So if another pandemic happens like 1918, where 500 million people got sick and up to 100 million people died, our medical systems would be completely overwhelmed in no time. So that’s what spurred me to write the book in the first place,” Martin said.
Once she identified the premise, the next step was to create the characteristics of the pandemic itself. Without giving away too much information, you can expect it to be airborne, highly contagious, and have a long lag time between exposure and symptom onset. There will also be a significant percentage of people who are asymptomatic, much like with the coronavirus we’re dealing with now, which makes it easier to pass on but harder to control.
You can learn more about Martin on her website, where you’ll find reading lists, writing resources, information about her published novels and more, or follow her on Instagram or Twitter.
About Martin’s books
The Queen of Hearts
Martin’s first novel tells the story of two best friends who attend medical school together and end up both becoming doctors in Charlotte. An unexpected reappearance of a colleague brings up memories of the past that both of the women have long left behind them. The main character in Martin’s second novel makes a brief appearance in “The Queen of Hearts.”
The Antidote for Everything
Georgia who is a urologist in Charleston. She’s out of the country when she finds out her best friend and colleague, Jonah, a family medicine doctor, is going through a crisis. Jonah realizes something odd is going on at his medical practice — his patients have stopped showing up. He’s informed that if he wants to continue his employment at the clinic, he’ll need to stop treating transgender patients because the medical therapies conflict with the priorities of the hospital administrators. He’s given an ultimatum, and the book centers on the fallout of his decision.
Title Unknown
Martin’s third novel will take us into the heart of a pandemic that mimics the symptoms of the 1918 flu. The main character, an infectious disease doctor, will have access to one dose of an experimental antiviral drug, and will need to choose which of her two children to administer it to. Stay tuned for the release date.
This story was originally published May 8, 2020 at 10:37 AM.
