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In conversation with Terry Shepard, award-winning broadcaster, narrator, and author, a deep dive into the writer's craft with the artists and support systems who create the stories we love.
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What happens when a brilliant psychiatrist goes from the executive suite to a prison cell, then gets one last shot at rebuilding his life in a free clinic where almost nobody wants him?
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That's the wonderfully complicated premise behind Boston Psychiatric, the new novel from J.
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Brian Turk.
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His protagonist was once a celebrated pharmaceutical CEO in one of psychiatry's rising stars.
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Then came the conviction, the prison sentence, and the spectacular collapse of everything he had built.
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Now on parole, Raj is assigned to a struggling Boston clinic filled with suspicious co-workers, eccentric personalities, endless paperwork, terrible coffee, and patients who couldn't care less about who he used to be.
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The author J.
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Brian Turk joins us in conversation.
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Brian, it's great to have you.
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Thank you, Terry.
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Again, I feel honored to be with you, and you've had so many great authors on.
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I feel privileged.
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Did you originally intend to write a novel about psychiatric care?
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It just happened that way.
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It actually was a film I did in 2009.
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I did an independent film, and I came across a fellow actor, Rich Gustis, who was also a stand-up comedian in Boston.
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He was an instructor.
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He's very well revered in Boston.
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And he had long hair and he had a dark beard.
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And I thought this is like a Jesus figure.
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And I'm thinking, oh, redemption thing.
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Oh, great.
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What would be the best place?
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He was a little zany.
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I said, but you're Dr.
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Murphy, head of a psychiatric clinic.
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That would be really cool.
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And all these quirky patients would come in.
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So another actor, Raj Jazzwell, was he was actually a doctor and intern in Boston.
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And he wanted to grow up and be a comedian, too.
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So I said, Oh, he'd be a great lead character because he's a doctor.
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He's got all the background.
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I don't have to train these guys.
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So it just fell together.
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And again, I like the redemption thing of are people better than the worst thing they've done?
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Because let's face this, we all have done something at some time in our life that we're not terribly proud of.
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And how can you redeem yourself from it if it's a big tragedy?
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Like his was that he was head of a psychiatrist, psychiatric, not psychiatric, but pharmaceutical company, and cross the line, as we do once in a while, not we, but some people do once in a while, and you take money that's inappropriate money to fund your research, and he got caught by the government and is sent to prison.
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And the thing is, should he really be there?
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Can he do anything else better for society than sit in a prison cell?
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And that's kind of how the story evolved.
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What made you choose a free psychiatric clinic as the setting?
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A free clinic would let everybody in.
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So actually, in our world, it's kind of not a great medical system where the people who have a lot of money are taken care of, and people at the very end, people that commit a crime or something are to are brought into the system.
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But the people in the middle are not.
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But if you have a free clinic, anybody can come to it.
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So it opened the world up to many different characters and personalities.
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His website is backbaystories.com.
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How do the patients contribute to Raj's transformation?
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He comes in initially saying this is time I have to put in, but he becomes more and more connected to them.
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He begins to understand that he has a lot to offer, but they also can teach him something.
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One of the main themes in the book is yes, and I got that from my improv comedy.
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I did an improv comedy in Boston at the improv asylum for a couple years.
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And that teaches you to say yes and and to go with the feeling and build on it.
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So instead of sitting down and saying, Here's your diagnosis, this is the medication, I'm kind of done with you, he gets more involved into what caused this problem.
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How can we work together to resolve the issue?
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So it's more of the patients become people to him with dreams, hopes, and fears, and he works with them to get close to let them be able to tell them what their real problem is that they're having.
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So he gets past, he
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does the medication, but gets past the meditation, medication it's on understanding the people.
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Then he begins to understand himself more.
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And sometimes just keeping a patient upright for five minutes is a win.
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Your life could be a fascinating memoir in itself.
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How did your winding road take you from an Air Force intelligence officer to an author?
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Going back many years, my father was a commercial writer.
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At times he laid claim to the fingers, do the walking through the all pages, Keebler Cook Cookies, the Elves.
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He started with the Greyhound in Chicago, where I was born, and with a customer that was Greyhound at the time.
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And Angie Dickinson, for us to remember her from Police Story and that, was the actress who was in the commercial that he did.
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So I grew up with that.
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He also had a show on location for about 15 years in Cleveland, a human interest story.
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So I would go with him as a young boy to interview different notables in Cleveland.
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And one of his big stories at the time was he went up with the man who painted the flagpole at the Terminal Tower.
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And he's in the old days, he's holding the microphone as he's climbing up.
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So it was a lot of human interest stories.
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And the one of his early ones was a police story about the first real motorcycle cops in Cleveland in their fancy uniforms and that.
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And then the last thing I'll say about that is I can't fall asleep at night unless there's a typewriter going.
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So I grew up.
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One more quick story, because this is funny.
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Fourth grade, I come out, and there's four children.
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Mom's getting us ready for a school at a Carnett Ward Academy, and there's this guy sleeping on the couch.
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And there's an older guy, and my father was in his office typing as usual.
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And I go, Mom, who's that?
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I said, Oh, don't worry about it.
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It's Governor Rhodes.
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He was a noted governor in Ohio, also known as a favorite son of the Republican Party.
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But my father was doing a speech for him.
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So I grew up in an uncommon environment, let's say.
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What was the attraction of improv comedy?
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Actually, I went on a cruise and there was an improv group there.
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And
I said to myself, like we all do, Terry, I can do this.
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And they had a workshop later that day.
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So I joined it.
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And uh a woman giving it after we did it, we all took part, said, You're very good.
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And I go, I know.
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I said, Well, that's a shock.
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So I found out there was improv asylum like Second City, if you're familiar with Second City in Chicago and Boston.
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I said, I can go there.
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I'm a little older, but what the heck?
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So I really enjoyed doing that.
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You learn a great deal.
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You learn to work in a group, to take something and build on it to make a story.
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So I was naturally had that.
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And that's really how I got into that.
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J.
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Brian Turk is our special guest.
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We're talking about his book, Boston Psychiatric, BackbayStories.com, is the website.
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Why is humor important in a story dealing with guilt, suffering, and redemption?
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I think it's extremely important because we have humor in our lives all the time, which balances us.
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It gets extremely depressing if you I didn't want to do a mental health specific story as they've been done in the past, and frankly, they're depressing.
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But if you look at the humor in the situation, that's something you I'm sure you noticed when I wrote the story, is that there's the patients are treated respect and with dignity.
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The humor comes from the situation, things that happen.
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And that's really what the humor is in the book.
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Your resume is varied.
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Air Force officer, military intelligence, security consultant, filmmaker, actor, comedian, and now novelist.
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Which of those experiences influenced your storytelling the most?
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Oh, I think they all did.
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I believe for a writer, you need a vast amount of experience to capture, again, to create I like to create worlds.
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To create the world, you have to experience life.
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You have to uh be around many characters.
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And I'll tell you, there's not you not the military is no less unique than the real world.
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So you see that side, comedy side, I see entertainment side, the real life side, life growing up from a young boy through college.
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And I'll tell you, college was crazy, but you find all these unique and you experience them, plus you feel them.
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You have to feel the emotions, I believe, for the story, too.
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How did you feel when you when this happened to you?
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How did you feel at your lowest point?
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So that all contributes to it.
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You've also worked in film.
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When you write a novel, do you tend to see scenes visually almost as though you're directing them?
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Yes, and that was a criticism of my publicist, to be frank, was you're writing the first draft was more like a like the movie was.
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You need to expand the story, you need to tell, you need to uh show and not tell.
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So, yes, I wrote as as a director, as a as a writer, as a uh improv, stand-up comedian, and you need to you need to bring it all hearts, not just that one facet of it.
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So it was an experience, it was a learning experience doing a novel.
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And the other thing I tell people is take criticism and work with the best people you can.
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You may love your story, but if it doesn't communicate what you want to, and create an environment that the reader wants to come with you in the story, you're not you're wasting your time.
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So be open, and that's my greatest strength, and I think that's really from improv, yes, and is this is what I did, this is what I'm giving you to build on it, and I'm open to what you tell me.
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And that's what I did in the filming of the movie.
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I had a lot of cast members say, Hey Brian, what if we do it this way?
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And I said, I'm open to it, I'll do two different scenes, we'll see what works better.
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So I think that's very bad.
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You got to take criticism not to heart, just take criticism as people want to help you.
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It's an ensemble cast when you when I did the film, and I wanted everybody to be part of it, so that's where I come from.
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So I listen to screen, you know, that doesn't mean you gotta take it all, Terry.
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We know there's bad criticism.
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Oh, it's good, you can feel it in your heart.
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Our special guest is Jay Brian Turk.
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His book is Boston Psychiatric BackbayStories.com is the website.
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What do you think separates forgiveness from redemption?
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Forgiveness?
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That's a great question.
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Separates forgiveness
from redemption.
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Forgiveness can be given it can be tough, but it can be given.
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Redemption, you gotta do a lot of work at it.
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You've done something, it's like breaking a window.
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If you throw a baseball and you accidentally throw it through your neighbor's window, you can go over and say you're sorry and they can forgive you, but you gotta pay for the window.
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Or you gotta make, if you know what the money you gotta make it up.
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I'll rake your la yard for a month or whatever, but you get you gotta redeem yourself.
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Which character was the most fun for you to write?
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Dr.
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Hodgkins, who was the quirky psychiatrist who was obsessively compulsive about forms and not really that interested in healing patients, but he was the administrator of the administration, and it's an offshoot of the movie where a good friend of mine, Steve Deval, played Steve Hodgkins, and he did it so I wanted to capture it and expand his personality in the book.
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I really liked that, it was fun.
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You also write that Dr.
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Weston Mysteries, what does Boston Psychiatric allow you to do as a writer that the mystery format doesn't?
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Dr.
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Weston is actually an offshoot of Dr.
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of Boston Psychiatric, where I have a patient of Belize Sherlock Holmes in modern-day Boston.
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But I didn't want to make a close relationship to it, so I broke it off, it made it into a book of 19 mysteries.
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I think mystery you're more centered in a type of way the reader expects the characters to move in.
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You're in the mystery form, you're in the police procedure.
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Not that it's all police.
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Mine is uniquely because it talks, it really goes into psychological aspects of the main character and Dr.
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Weston Mysteries.
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The Austin Psychiatric lets you go anywhere.
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It's just the world is more open.
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What do you hope people will take away from their encounter with Boston Psychiatric?
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I really hope they take away that we are more than our the worst thing we've done.
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And there is redemption for us.
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Boston Psychiatric is the book.
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Backbaystories.com is the website, and our special guest has been J.
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Brian Turk.
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Brian, this is fantastic.
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Thanks so much.
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Thank you, Terry.
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I really enjoyed it.
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I'd like to do it in the future with you with my next novel.
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In Conversation with Terry Shepard is a copyrighted presentation.
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All rights returned.
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I'm Lisa Davis.
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Join Terry Shepard next time in conversation.