Dianne Harman Asked me to Say Why I wrote “Bedlam’s Door”

October 3, 2016 by Mark Rubinstein Leave a Comment

A Man Who Writes of Madnessand Hope!

Several years ago I read a book by Mark Rubinstein, which I think was Mad Dog Justice, and was so taken by his writing that I believe I’ve since read every book written by him. Mark is a superb author, but what I find so interesting about him is that he has the ability to write brilliantly in a number of different genres.

His newest book, Bedlam’s Door, illustrates that ability perfectly. Mark is a psychiatrist and in this book be shares his psychological experiences with the reader (and yes, the names have been changed!). This is a non-fiction book, but absolutely riveting. After I read it, I asked him if he would write a post about how he came to write this book. Believe me, this book is well worth your time and money!

Why I wrote Bedlam’s Door: True Tales of Madness & Hope

After writing six works of fiction, what made we write a non-fiction book based on my experiences as a psychiatrist?

I’ve always loved stories.

As a kid, I fell in love with Aesop’s Fables, Hans Christian Anderson’s stories, the Brothers Grimm fairy tales, and the Greek and Roman myths. It barely mattered whether the stories told about soldiers, heroes, villains, or described desperately conflicted people facing momentous obstacles. Looking back on the books I adored, I realize that aside from being entertaining, they conveyed elemental truths about humanity.

Love of stories was an important reason in my choosing to become a psychiatrist. Early in my medical school education and then during my residency, I realized that while many people may be diagnosed as having the same psychiatric condition, one-hundred different people will have one-hundred different pathways to the same disorder. Psychiatry has a remarkable human dimension, and at the heart of each story lie powerful emotion and choice—and above all, conflict.

When I became involved with forensic psychiatry—the intersection of psychiatry and the law—I became privy to some of the most extraordinary stories I’d ever encountered. Some were so bizarre, that if written as novels, they would strain credulity.

Why would a man of Hungarian descent run down a street ranting “I’m King of the Puerto Ricans.”?

Why would a psychiatrically hospitalized young woman sneak a razor blade on to the ward, give it to another patient, and direct her in slitting her wrists?

Why would a woman present herself to surgeons for a dozen operations when nothing is physically wrong with her?

Experience taught me that all patients’ stories funneled down to the basic elements of human functioning—how people think, feel and behave. It became clear that nearly all mental illness—no matter how seemingly bizarre—could be understood when attention was paid.

I realized mental illness posed challenges to patients, their families, and the people charged with their care. Our country is in the midst of a pressing crises to improve mental health care delivery. I also felt it was important to describe the life-altering advances being made in the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of psychiatric conditions.

Of all medical specialties, psychiatry explores people’s lives. Each case is a mini-biography revealing the circumstances and conflicts leading to symptoms. Above all, psychiatry has a human dimension, where each patient has a unique story, but at the same time, taps into a shared commonality.

Whether a story concerns a prison inmate, carpenter, homemaker, police officer, short-order cook, student, or private investigator, a story of conflict and struggle emerges.

Most of all, I wrote Bedlam’s Door to depict the humor, sadness, nobility, poignancy, and richness of our shared human experience.

Mark Rubinstein, M.D.

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‘The Nix,’ A Conversation with Nathan Hill

October 2, 2016 by Mark Rubinstein Leave a Comment

Nathan Hill’s stories have appeared in various literary journals and he has won or been nominated for many prestigious prizes. He is an Associate Professor of English at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota, where he has taught creative writing and literature courses He has worked as a newspaper and magazine journalist, and holds a BA in English and Journalism from the University of Iowa and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.

The Nix, his sprawling, multi-tiered debut novel, is ostensibly about a young English professor and failed writer, Samuel Anderson, who undertakes reconstructing the life of his mother who abandoned him when he was 11 years old.

But from the realm of disturbed family dynamics, to youthful friendship and romantic obsession; to the radical Sixties, to Norwegian ghosts, politics, video gaming, academia; to the Vietnam and Iraq wars; to secrets and lies, and to many other things, the novel is about much, much more. It examines the idea “the things you love the most will one day hurt you the worst.”

I understand between research and writing The Nix, it was ten years in the making. Tell us how it came to be what it is now.

I was doing some very poor work during the first couple of years writing it. I started the novel in 2004 as a young man straight out of an MFA program. I wanted to write something that would give me the kind of career I’d imagined for myself. I was writing crap. When you write to impress agents and editors, you’ll write bad prose. My writing didn’t have any personal human truths. I was rejected everywhere, as I should have been.

I floundered for a couple of years. I was doing research but was also trying to figure out what kind of book I wanted to write. I moved from New York and took a teaching job in Florida, having dropped out of the whole publishing query letter-writing scene. I was teaching and playing a lot of video games, and was sort of mentally marinating for a long time.

I then thought I’d missed my chance at being published, so I decided to take that anxiety about ‘blowing it’ and put it into the book. I included some experiences I was having teaching as well as with video games. When I decided to tell a true human story, the writing took off. I had to tear down my preconceived notions about what a successful writer should be and simply became the writer I needed to be.

It’s difficult to pick out my favorite sections of the novel, there were so many, but I absolutely loved the interplay between Samuel and his student, Laura Pottsdam. I know you spent years in academia, so tell us what Laura epitomizes.

When I was teaching, there were a lot of Laura Pottsdams in my classes. She’s an amalgam of some students I dealt with. While most college students are hard-working and want to learn, there’s a number of students who will plagiarize, cheat and not feel badly about it. They won’t do the reading, and have trouble paying attention to anything besides their phone, and will ask about the utility of what they’re learning. ‘Why do I need to know Hamlet in real life?’… questions like that.

Frequently, that attitude, combined with a sense of entitlement since they’re paying tuition and feel they deserve to get a great job, is reinforced by parents who will provide a last measure of self-defense when the students get into trouble. Just Google the term plagiarism epidemic and you’ll know exactly what I’m describing.

As often happens, when I write and spend enough time with a character, I began to ask myself questions about Laura, which in turn made me realize something was going on with my students that made them fundamentally different from the way I was in college. I realize the world has changed—drastically. My students grew up during the Great Recession. Teachers and parents tell them it’s a competitive marketplace, not only here, but worldwide. Corporations won’t look out for them. Students now are enormously anxious about getting a job and moving out of their parents’ homes. The assumptions I could make sixteen years ago—about finding a job and living independently—no longer hold.

Today’s students feel they need to excel in everything, so some of them cheat. Once I understood that, Laura Pottsdam became a more sympathetic character for me.

The Nix has a kaleidoscopically sweeping quality, zooming from 1968 to 2011, then back to 1944, and is told from multiple points of view. How did you manage to organize this wonderful sprawl?

My first draft was one-thousand and two pages long. [Laughter] I chipped away about four-hundred pages. It was so long because I gave myself permission to go down whatever rabbit hole or cul-de sac I imagined. I figured I might as well entertain myself in the writing of this book.

If I don’t ask you about one chapter, I’d be remiss. The Nix has a ten-page chapter that’s one-sentence long. Tell us about that.

I started writing that chapter as depicting the day Pwnage—the video game guru—would stop playing video games. Then, I started listing all the reasons he couldn’t stop playing. I read the rough draft to my wife who asked ‘Is this all one sentence?” It struck me that maybe it should be one sentence. I wanted to capture how time could slip away when you’re so engaged in something. Pwnage was feeling claustrophobic and anxious. At that point, the video game was the only thing giving his life meaning and substance. I wanted to textually replicate his anxiety in the reader.

Critics have likened The Nix to works by John Irving, Jonathan Franzen, Michael Chabon, Donna Tartt, Thomas Pynchon, among others. How does that make you feel?

[Laughter] Obviously, it makes me feel wonderful. How could I not feel great about it?

Does it make you feel burdened by expectations about whatever comes next?

I’m looking forward to getting back to the material for my second book. After all the attention this book is getting, I still have to go back and face a blank page. That blank page doesn’t give a damn what the New York Times said about me.

Yes, it’s gratifying people are saying such nice things about the book, but when I go back and start working again, I have to forget about the praise.

The Nix contains reflections on the misguided literary ambitions of a young man who wants to write for the prestige and social recognition it will get him. Will you talk about that?

Samuel wants to write because he thinks it’s going to make people like him. In college, I tried using my writing to impress women, and it’s shocking how poorly that worked. [Laughter] I tell my creative writing students to write because you need to. There should be something about the activity itself that’s valuable. Writing for recognition, ego, or praise guarantees you’ll write poor stuff.

In some ways, I think writing a novel should be like planting and tending a garden. People don’t keep a garden to get famous. A garden isn’t a failure if thousands of people don’t look at it. A gardener loves gardening because it brings a measure of joy. The writing of this book brought me a great deal of joy. If there’s humor in the book it’s because I think a pre-requisite for setting a scene is it must delight me in some way. I feel it’s a healthier way of writing than the way I approached it as a young man. Being published, I think, should be viewed as a side-effect of the writing.

What’s the most important lesson you’ve learned about writing?

I once handed in a story in a creative writing class. The teacher looked at it and said, ‘You can do this, but you’re going to die soon, so you might as well write something that really matters.’ That was good advice. I think of that incident when I’m writing.

You’re hosting a dinner party and can invite any five people, real or fictional, living or dead. Who would they be?

That’s a cool question. I’d stick with writers and set up a literary salon. I’d invite Virginia Woolf, Donald Barthelme, David Foster Wallace, James Baldwin, and Gertrude Stein. I would just cook and listen. Now that would be a fun party!

What’s coming next from Nathan Hill?

I’m working on a new novel. I have a premise and characters. I don’t as yet have a plot, but that will come. I’ll be writing about the things that interest me. Right now that happens to be marriage, authenticity, gentrification, and the nineties. We’ll see what that turns into. [Laughter]

Congratulations on penning The Nix, a soulful, hilarious, profoundly penetrating novel so brilliantly written, it took me on a head-spinning ride across a fantastic literary landscape.

Mark Rubinstein’s latest book is Bedlam’s Door: True Tales of Madness and Hope, a medical/psychiatric memoir.

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Review of ‘Bedlam’s Door’ in The Providence Journal

September 30, 2016 by Mark Rubinstein Leave a Comment

“Bedlam’s Door”

Mark Rubinstein’s eye-opening “Bedlam’s Door” (Thunder Lake Press, $15.95, 280 pages) might not be fiction, but it certainly helps us better understand the methods and motivations of the psychologically damaged who populate both sides of the genre.

Rubinstein, who practiced psychiatry in the military and afterward, has framed his book around a series of case studies that, taken as a whole, strive to provide a keen and often scary grasp of what makes people do the inexplicable. For our consideration, he presents patients who suffer from a myriad of conditions, from surgical addiction to identity disorder, trauma, and depression, just to name a few. All in captivating prose that provides a unique insight into the fragility of the human mind.

In reading “Bedlam’s Door,” I couldn’t help but be struck by how Rubinstein’s well thought-out conclusions apply to a literal rogue’s gallery of fictional villains, as well as heroes, from Hannibal Lecter to Jack Reacher, from Darth Vader to Batman. A masterful treatise on mental (un)health, as professionally polished as it is riveting.

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‘Reckless Creed,’ A Conversation with Alex Kava

September 27, 2016 by Mark Rubinstein Leave a Comment

Alex Kava is the internationally bestselling author of fifteen thrillers which have been published in thirty-two countries. In 2015, she launched a new series featuring Ryder Creed, a former marine turned K-9 search-and-rescue dog trainer and Maggie O’Dell, a character from the previous series.

Reckless Creed, Alex Kava’s sixteenth thriller, finds Ryder Creed at the center of an ominous case. In Chicago, a young man jumps from his hotel room window; in Alabama, the body of a young woman is found; and along the Missouri River, hunters stumble upon a lake whose surface is littered with dead snow geese. Before long, Ryder and O’Dell discover the deaths are connected by a conspiracy and a deadly virus.

Ryder Creed is a different kind of investigative character. Tell us a bit about him.

He’s different because he’s not from law enforcement. That’s one reason I brought Maggie O’Dell into the story, so she could put together the law enforcement pieces of the puzzle. Ryder is a reluctant hero. He would be content to simply live his life in the company of dogs and not get terribly involved with people.

When I began writing the Maggie O’Dell series, I knew next-to-nothing about law enforcement and had to research nearly everything. I’m finally writing about something I know and love: dogs.

Ryder often gets pulled in to help other people, and wants to do the right thing, which can take him into situations he shouldn’t be in. He’s a refreshing character to write about because he’ll confront danger even though it’s not necessarily his job to do so.

Integral to Reckless Creed is a tracking dog’s ability to smell and detect various odors. Tell us about this ability.

It’s incredible. Dogs actually have different layers for sifting through scents. Out in the open, they sometimes begin breathing rapidly and bring air into their nasal passages, sorting through the scents.

A handler told me a good way to understand dogs’ ability to sort through odors was with this analogy: if we have a pot of beef stew on the stove, we smell stew. But dogs can smell the individual ingredients—the beef, carrots, potatoes, the onions—and sift through each of the scents.

So, dogs have an exquisite olfactory inventory. In Reckless Creed, you describe virus-sniffing dogs, which makes me think of the real life issue of dogs being used for medical detection. Will you talk about that?

Several organizations are researching using dogs to detect certain kinds of cancer. They’re now being used to detect diabetes. There was a case in the UK detailing how a little boy with Type I diabetes had a dog trained to wake up the parents during the night if the boy’s insulin level was low. The dog’s sensitivity was so great, the child could play football with the dog sitting on the sidelines, yet even from that distance, it could alert the parents if the child’s blood sugar was either too high or low.

Research is being done on dogs’ detection ability with cancer cells. There have been studies where they’ve determined dogs can detect certain types of cancer at an earlier stage than any of our most sophisticated testing methods. This includes prostate, breast, and lung cancer. All that’s needed is a breath sample from the patient.

I met a young girl in Denver whose dog was able to alert her and summon help when she was about to have an epileptic attack.

These extraordinary abilities will be put to further use in the health care as well as in the security and law enforcement fields.

Can dogs sniff and detect something like bird flu or C. difficile without themselves becoming infected?

Yes. They’ve taken dogs into nursing homes because elderly people are so susceptible to C. Diff. Dogs can detect it at an earlier stage than more traditional methods. If it’s caught at an earlier stage, lives can definitely be saved. And fortunately, dogs cannot contract C. Diff.

As for bird flu, there’s not much research about that. But I’ve talked to some veterinarian friends—who are vital research resources for me—and they’ve told me there’s a flu in dogs that resembles bird flu in humans. They’ve been using a viral antidote for it.

You’ve written both series and standalone novels. What are the advantages of each?

I never intended to write a series when I started the Maggie O’Dell stories. I intended the first book to be a standalone, but the publisher wanted a second one, then a third, and then it became a series. I learned how to write a series by the seat of my pants. Looking back, that’s what kept Maggie so fresh: I was getting to know her along with my readers.

There’s something rejuvenating about writing a standalone novel. Even though it’s comforting to have a series with the same characters surrounding you each time, with a standalone, you create an entirely different group of people. I try writing each of my series’ novels to read as if it were a standalone. The process of writing a standalone allows me to create a whole new world.

What do you love about the writing life?

I love coming up with twists and turns, and believe it or not, I love doing research. I love learning new things. I’m a news junkie, so if something taps my interest, I start digging. And I come up with plots and sub-plots from what I’ve read, and then I go wild with them.

You’re hosting a dinner party and can invite any five people, living or dead, real or fictional, from any walk of life. Who would they be?

I would start by inviting Harper Lee because To Kill a Mockingbird is my favorite book. It would be amazing to be able to talk with her. Then, I’d invite Alfred Hitchcock because I love using the Hitchcockian approach to suspense thrillers—bringing the readers to the edge and leaving them there. My next guest would be Scout Finch. Can you imagine Scout contradicting some of the stories as Harper Lee would be trying to tell them? Amelia Earhart is fascinating, so I’d invite her. And the fifth would be Jack London, a real dog person, because I just loved Call of the Wild.

What’s coming next from Alex Kava

The next book is Lost Creed and deals with the mystery surrounding Creed’s sister, Brodie, who disappeared from a rest stop during a family road trip. Brodie was only eleven and Creed was fourteen when it happened.

Congratulations on writing Reckless Creed, an unusually suspenseful and provocative thriller detailing the chilling possibilities we face in today’s unpredictable and dangerous world.

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September 23, 2016 by Mark Rubinstein Leave a Comment

Book Review: Bedlam’s Door by Mark Rubinstein, M.D.

September 21, 2016September 21, 2016Elise Ronan

Today 1 in 5 Americans suffers from a mental illness. These diagnoses can be anything from anxiety, to depression, to psychosis or bi-polar disorder. Each illness varies in its effect and its degree of disability. Sadly these conditions remain suspect and misunderstood. The stigma surrounding mental health issues is so overwhelming that most people choose to suffer rather than actually access the necessary psychiatric care. For many it is not until there is a major life crisis that the medical world steps in and sadly, even then, we find that our prison system is a major response to psychiatric illness.

51z3nrxsvfl-_sx331_bo1204203200_ A new book that attempts to dispel some of the myths and misunderstandings surrounding mental illness, is written by Dr. Mark Rubinstein. In his book Bedlam’s Door, he opens up the world of psychiatry and the mental health community. He introduces us to several of his patients and tries to bring us into the reality in which they live. Whether the patient is dealing with PTSD brought on as a Holocaust survivor, suicide, uncontrollable OCD, or a manipulative psychotic, the reader begins to understand the nuances and the fine lines that the psychiatric community needs to traverse.

Every case is different, even when it is the same illness. It’s learning how to read the unwritten cues and finding a way into a person’s psyche that is the talent of a good doctor. You are drawn into the quest to help those who are calling out for help and yet have no way to help themselves. It is a look into a world that is not only misinterpreted by the uninitiated, but in many quarters, reviled for the fear and loathing it engenders.

Dr. Rubinstein, examines his patients’ humanity. He has the reader see the underlying problems, the still waters that exacerbate and alienate those who are dealing with diseases that the world cannot see. He explains how he handled each problem and gives us a follow-up. The “Aftermath” of each episode is not sugar-coated. He does not hide the truth. Not every situation ended on a positive note. As with every illness in the world, doctors can do only their best, and yet sometimes even that is not enough.

Dr. Rubinstein’s book is unique in that it presents those with mental heath conditions as the fragile human beings that they are. He shows how the medical community can help, support and provide that doorway of transition from the loneliness of mental illness back to the functioning, productive real world. He is also not afraid to show how the medical community at times fails their patients due to incompetence, misdiagnosis or even neglect. He calls out to society as a whole for understanding, compassion and respect for those dealing with these invisible, and mostly misunderstood, medical issues.

On a personal note: As anyone who has followed me for a while, you know that I write a blog called Raising Asperger’s Kids. This blog revolves around the issues we encountered in bringing up our sons, both of whom, are on the autism spectrum. Along with autism our family also deals with the issues arising out of ADHD, OCD, generalized anxiety disorder and epilepsy.

In all honesty, one of the largest problems we faced over the years is the lack of compassion by society at large. Dr. Rubinstein’s book will provide an understanding and recognition about the humanity of those dealing with various mental health conditions. I highly recommend it to anyone looking for a career in social work, education, medicine, and even human resources.

I recommend this book for anyone who seeks to make the world a better place.

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https://mark.markrubinstein-author.com/a-review-of-bedlams-door/

‘Santorini Caesars,’ A Conversation with Jeffrey Siger

September 21, 2016 by Mark Rubinstein Leave a Comment

Jeffrey Siger, a former Wall Street attorney, gave up his legal career to write mystery thrillers. Living on the Greek island of Mykonos, he has written his eighth novel in the Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis series. His books have been nominated for the Left Coast Crime and Barry Awards.

Santorini Caesars begins with the assassination of a young demonstrator by trained killers in the heart of protest-charged Athens. Chief Inspector Kaldis, convinced the killing was far more than what it seemed, takes the investigation to the beautiful island of Santorini where he encounters a secret gathering of Greece’s top military commanders who are devising their own response to the uncertainties and political crisis facing their country.

It could be a coup d’état, or something else since Greece has a history of deposing duly-elected governments. The international intrigue escalates as the threat of another assassination looms, and Kaldis moves to expose what is going on and tries to stop it.

Andreas Kaldis is an intriguing character. Tell us a little about him.

Andreas is a second generation cop living in a land where police are not highly regarded. No matter how the political winds blow, he stands up for what he believes is right. He deals with the issues confronting his country and has the authority to investigate crime as well as political corruption.

How has he evolved over the course of eight novels?

For his first assignment, Kaldis started off on the island of Mykonos. He was sent there as ‘punishment’ for having been too closely on the heels of certain corrupt officials back in Athens. On Mykonos, he met Yanni Kouros, who becomes his sidekick for the rest of the series. Kaldis gets married and eventually returns to Athens. There, he is promoted to his present position of Chief Inspector and is empowered to investigate a variety of crises confronting Greece.

Each book in the series is essentially an element in a mosaic exploring a crisis for Greece as well as for Europe. Whether it be the relationship of Greece to the church, its relationship to its own government, the situation with migrants, or other social and political issues, each book delves into a contemporary problem.

The island of Santorini plays an important role in this novel and almost becomes a character. Tell us about this island’s history and role in the novel.

Santorini has probably been more firmly fixed in the world’s imagination than any other Greek island. It’s said to be the lost island of Atlantis. Enormous earthquakes and volcanoes have happened in this area. If you look at Santorini, it’s the view from the caldera, the rim of what once was the volcano, that is one of the world’s most intriguing vantage points. You will see blues and greens you’ve never seen elsewhere. Strangely, the very earthquakes that destroyed much of the island, are responsible for it having become an important Greek tourist destination.

How does the current refugee crisis in Europe make for fertile ground in writing your mystery novels?

Are you reading the draft of my next book? [Laughter]. That’s precisely what I’m writing about. The refugee situation is a crisis for the world. If you live in the Middle East or Africa and fear for your children, you look toward Europe as a safe haven. The only rational wish is to get your children out of these places.

That’s the motivation driving this migration by refugees. It will never end until the world recognizes something must be done politically and environmentally. Greece has become the filter-trap for refugees. Previously, Greece had a homogeneous population. With the influx of a million refugees into a country of ten million people, there’s been a ten percent increase in population. The politics have become more polarized. There are now people of different faiths and cultures in the country. Everything has become intensified. This has given rise to the growing power of right-wing parties. These dynamics are playing out in a country that doesn’t have the money to sustain itself because Greece is basically bankrupt.

Each pressure creates a reaction and that’s very rich fodder for my books. Living on Mykonos, I have access to people in government and business, so my writing becomes informed. Andreas Kaldis is the perfect vehicle for expressing concerns about these compelling national and world issues.

What made you give up practicing law to become a full- time novelist?

When I was younger, I always thought I’d become a writer.

I went to school with a kid with whom I played football. One day in class, he stood up and read something he had written. The teacher said, ‘All of you writers…if you work hard, you’ll be able to write like this young man.’ I never believed I could write as well as he did, so I became a lawyer.

That guy’s name is John Edgar Wideman, who went on to write Philadelphia Fire, which won the 1990 PEN/Faulkner Award. He’s a distinguished novelist.

Years later, someone who read my writing encouraged me to begin writing full-time. I had a successful law practice and didn’t want to give that up to become a struggling writer.

But, while practicing law, I sat down and wrote a book which was very well-received. A friend urged me to pursue writing full-time. It was after 9/11, and I said to myself, ‘Life’s too short.’ I walked away from my law practice, began to write full-time, and have never regretted a moment of it. I teach mystery writing at a university and tell my students, ‘Writing is a lousy way to make a living, but a wonderful way to make a life.’ Not having become a writer earlier allowed me to more comfortably practice my art as a writer.

Which authors in the mystery/thriller genres do you read?

When I’m writing, I don’t read other mystery writers. It can throw me off my game. My favorite writer is Cormac McCarthy. Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes mysteries are a favorite of mine. If I named all my favorite writers, I’d probably lose a number of friends [Laughter].

What’s coming next from Jeffrey Siger?

You already anticipated my next book. I’m involved in a project dealing with the refugee crisis and haven’t as yet determined how I’m going to handle this issue in the next Andreas Kaldis novel, but it will get done.

Congratulations on writing Santorini Caesars, a novel that’s both a rock-solid mystery and comments incisively about so many issues besetting Europe and the world today.

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‘Debt to Pay,” A Talk with Reed Farrel Coleman

September 13, 2016 by Mark Rubinstein Leave a Comment

Reed Farrel Coleman, a best selling author of 24 previous novels, has penned the popular Moe Prager series as well as other well-received books. He’s a three-time winner of the Shamus Award, and has won the Macavity and Barry Awards, among others.

Robert Parker, considered by many to have been the dean of American crime fiction, was the author of seventy books, including the series featuring Chief Jesse Stone.

After Parker’s death in 2010, Reed Farrel Coleman was chosen to keep this immensely popular series alive.

In Debt to Pay we find Chief Jesse Stone romantically involved with former FBI agent Diana Evans. When a Boston crime boss is murdered, Jesse suspects it’s the work of Mr. Peepers, a deranged assassin who has caused trouble for Jesse in the past. Peepers promised revenge against the Mob, Jesse, and one of Jesse’s cops, and against Jesse’s ex-wife Jenn. Peepers toys with the police as to the when and where he’ll strike, and Jesse knows there’s a steep debt to pay and blood will be spilled in the process.

Debt to Pay is the third Jesse Stone novel you’ve written. What was it like to take over a series written by the legendary Robert B. Parker?

It was an interesting challenge because I felt like a psychologist might feel stepping into Sigmund Freud’s shoes. [Laughter] It’s not like I took over some minor writer’s character…I tried not to worry about that reality, and decided not to try to live up to Bob’s legacy. I think writing is difficult enough without throwing more hurdles in front of myself than already exist. I realized how momentous a task it was, but my approach was to simply write the best book I could.

Do you feel you had to adhere to Robert Parker’s voice for Jesse, or were you tempted to take him in a slightly different direction?

When I was offered the opportunity, one of the first people I called was my friend, Tom Schreck. He’s an author, New York State boxing judge, a drug counselor, and a huge Robert B. Parker fan. I wanted his advice about how to go about writing these books. He said something that crystallized my approach to this series.

Tom is an avid Elvis Presley fan. He said, ‘I’ve seen all the best Elvis impersonators, but no matter how good they are, there are two things you can never get past: number one is, you’re aware it’s an imitation, and number two is, the impersonator can never do anything new. He’s trapped in the Elvis persona. His words were like an explosion in my head. I determined not to try imitating Bob, because I could never escape the fact that readers would see it as imitation. And, imitation—no matter how good—is never as good as the original. And, I could never do anything new if I was going to mimic what Bob did. I decided I’d be true to the character—Jesse Stone would act as he had in the past, but the reader would see different aspects of Jesse emerge, and the town of Paradise would evolve. So, in a sense, I use the same camera Bob did, but my focus is different.

In Debt to Pay, Jesse has given up drinking alcohol. What accounts for this turn of events?

He gives it up temporarily. If you think of Jesse Stone, you think of Tom Selleck, who played him on TV … a tall, handsome guy who’s athletic and whom women love. A reader can have trouble relating to someone like that. Everyday people relate to Jesse because he struggles, as do we all. Personal challenges are what make us human. I think it’s really important to show Jesse having serious problems with alcohol. Sometimes he succeeds, and sometimes he fails.

I’m familiar with your series’ characters: Moe Prager, Gus Murphy, and now, Jesse Stone. How do you go about formulating different characters for various different series?

My own series are easier because the best place to look for new characters is to look in the mirror. Somewhat like method acting for writing, I try coming up with some aspect of a character that I feel within myself—a flaw, an emotion, an incident—something that happens to me, and it becomes the basis for a character. It’s far more challenging to find a way into somebody else’s character. My way into Jesse was his baseball career because I’ve always been an avid baseball fan and consider myself a jock. That was my route into Jesse.

You’ve been called a ‘hard-boiled poet’ and the ‘noir poet laureate’ by various critics. What about your writing has resulted in these characterizations?

Bribery. [Laughter]. I started as a poet when I was thirteen, and it’s evolved into prose, but I’ve never lost my love for the sound of language. I’m not conscious of it while working, but when I re-read my writing, I see a certain lyricism, and know I’ve never lost the love of the sound of words.

If you could read any one novel again as though it’s the first time you’re reading it, which one would it be?

That’s pretty easy for me to answer. It would be The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler. It has its flaws, but it’s the kind of writing I wish I could do. There are others like Slaughterhouse Five that come close, and if I didn’t write crime novels for a living, it would be a different novel.

What, if anything, keeps you awake at night?

The cat and the New York Mets. [Laughter].

I don’t regret things. I don’t look back and rue my decisions. I’m not a big sleeper; I sleep five or six hours at most. So nothing really keeps me up at night.

Looking back at your career, has your writing process changed in any way?

I’m not sure my process has changed, but I’ve changed as a writer. I’ve never stopped being influenced by other writers. My writing has become slightly more refined. For me, the more I write, the better I get at it. When I no longer feel I’m getting better as a writer, that’s when I’ll stop. For example, I once had an idea for a novel, but I wasn’t yet a good enough writer to tackle it. It took me five years to complete Gun Church because it took me that long to develop the skills needed to write that novel.

What’s coming next from Reed Farrel Coleman?

Another Gus Murphy novel is coming next. It’s called What You Break.

Congratulations on writing Debt to Pay, a beautifully crafted novel that captures Robert B. Parker’s world view, as it tells the tense story of a flawed but intrepid police chief who finds himself pitted against a tenacious “cat-and-mouse” killer.

Mark Rubinstein’s latest book is Bedlam’s Door: True Tales of Madness and Hope, a psychiatric/medical memoir.

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“Bedlam’s Door” Interview

September 9, 2016 by Mark Rubinstein Leave a Comment

True tales from the psych ward

By Jeannette Ross on September 9, 2016 in Lead News, People ·

Mark Rubinstein’s new book is Bedlam’s Door, a collection of nonfiction stories from his career as a psychiatrist. — Jeannette Ross photo

Mark Rubinstein loves stories. It was a major factor in why he chose to specialize in psychiatry as he was working toward his medical degree.

General medicine was too uniform, he said — high blood pressure, gall bladders, heart ailments. “There are no stories,” he said in an interview with The Bulletin late last month. “I love stories.” As a psychiatrist, he said, “I was privy to some of the most amazing things.”

Now a Wilton author most noted for a run of novels including Mad Dog House and The Lovers’ Tango, Rubinstein has taken some of those stories and arranged them in an engrossing new work of nonfiction, Bedlam’s Door: True Tales of Madness and Hope.” The book, which was published Sept. 1, includes 15 stories taken from Rubinstein’s decades of practice.

His reason for writing the book was to clear up misunderstandings about psychiatry, mental health “and what madness means.”

“I have this wealth of stories, many of which read like fiction and in a sense truth is stranger than fiction,” he said. While the names and a few other details have been changed, “these things actually happened. … the basics are all true and some of them are hard to believe,” he added.

“I picked those that are most memorable — either they were odd or something I couldn’t get out of my mind. Some of them are 25 to 30 years old.” They include a man who manages to commit suicide while hospitalized, a man in an expensive, but tattered suit and carrying a mysterious briefcase, who seeks “accommodations” at a hospital, a woman whose hair-dying episode leads to endless house cleaning, the son of a mobster who seeks counseling because his family does not respect him.

The stories primarily stem from his work first as a resident and then as an attending physician at a major New York City hospital. Most came through the doors of the emergency room, hence the title, Bedlam’s Door.

With each chapter he tells a story and then adds an afterword, either filling the reader in on what happened to the patient, relating how the case affected him, or how it fit in on the continuum of mental health care.

“I tried to pick an array of tales that show an aspect of pathology,” Rubinstein said. They deal with PTSD, depression, suicide attempts, obsessive-compulsive behavior, schizophrenia, survivor’s guilt and more. But behind them all are the stories — stories of people’s lives and the events that brought them to Rubinstein.

“You can see 20 people with depression and hear 20 different stories,” he said.

Each story offers an inside look at how a psychiatrist confronts each case and begins to search for what can be a very elusive reason for a person’s behavior. Without the physical symptoms available to an internist, the psychiatrist must rely on the patient’s willingness to make what can be very painful revelations.

When asked which patients are the most difficult to treat, the answer was not what one might expect.

“The easiest to get asymptomatic are the severely psychotic patients,” he said. Medications can “suffocate” schizophrenic and bipolar symptoms. And those who are clinically depressed can also be helped immensely with medication.

“The most difficult to turn around are the garden-variety people who have what we sometimes refer to as neurotic patterns,” he said. These “maladaptive interactive patterns of behavior” such as the passive-aggressive person who is alway late, the super-aggressive person who always says what’s on their mind and drives others “insane,” the woman who always falls for the guy who pays no attention to her, the man who always finds a woman who berates him because as a child his mother was very harsh.

These are the kinds of problems that are very difficult to change, he said. “They are not serious mental illnesses, but they are conditions that create unhappiness,” Rubinstein said. “Most come [for help] when they realize how unhappy they are after a long time.”

Forensic psychiatry

In Bedlam’s Door Rubinstein also reveals something of himself. Several of his stories focus on forensic psychiatry, the field in which the practice of psychiatry intersects with the law — an area in which Rubinstein specialized.

His first foray into that arena involved a patient he refers to as Patricia. She was grieving the sudden loss of her husband and suffering from PTSD, brought on by the trauma of seeing him lying in his coffin with his neck broken, an act committed by the funeral home to make the tall man fit into an inadequately sized casket.

There was reason to believe Patricia was going to commit suicide, and so she was hospitalized. But, as is her right, she petitioned to be released and thus a hearing was scheduled before a judge. Rubinstein, who was a first-year resident at the time, was tasked with testifying for her continued hospitalization. He recalls his nervousness as he was cross-examined and his efforts to keep Patricia in the hospital where she could be treated.

Rubinstein’s next foray into a courtroom was as a paid expert witness in a malpractice case brought by a woman who attempted suicide by jumping in front of a subway train. The woman, referred to as Willa Mae, had gone off her medication and began hearing voices that were telling her to harm herself. She went to a hospital that was not the one where Rubinstein worked, and asked the psychiatrist who examined her to admit her. He was not convinced she was a danger to herself or others and told her to go home. He even gave her a token to take the subway. She begged him to admit her but he would not.

After she did indeed listen to the voices that told her to jump, Willa Mae wound up at Rubinstein’s hospital where her leg was amputated. He was asked to evaluate her and she told him her story.

Months later he received a call from an attorney explaining Willa Mae, was suing the doctor who sent her home for malpractice. Would Rubinstein be interested in testifying as an expert witness for her? He agreed and recounts the courtroom drama, “the thrusts of the attorney’s questions,” and his feelings throughout.

It was a path he would follow throughout his career as he was eventually asked to evaluate plane crash survivors, rape victims, car crash victims as well as more than 300 survivors of 9/11.

Life lessons

As for the stories in his book, Rubinstein considers them lessons in life.

“I view each as a mini-mystery — why does a woman say ‘I can’t stop washing my hands?’”

He has at least 300 more he could write about, which is why a second book is already in the works based on cases from his private practice.

Bedlam’s Door is published by Thunder Lake Press of Laguna Hills, Calif.

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‘Best. State. Ever. A Florida Man Defends His Homeland,’ A Talk with Dave Barry

September 6, 2016 by Mark Rubinstein Leave a Comment

Dave Barry is a Pulitzer Prize-winning and New York Times-bestselling author who lives in Florida. In Best. State. Ever. he offers a defense of his home state, countering the stereotypical image of Florida as “a subtropical festival of stupid.”

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You clearly feel Florida is everybody’s punching bag and have quoted an Internet site called Thrillist. Why do people have such a low opinion of the state?

We have done some stupid things. We’re still answering for the 200 presidential election. To this day, nobody really knows for whom we voted. Everyone in the country tried to figure out what Floridians meant to do with their ballots. We were doing everything but voting with them, perhaps even engaging in acts of personal hygiene. [Laughter].

There’s a steady stream of really bizarre stories coming out of Florida. For instance, somebody will do something stupid, but will do it naked. [Laughter]. There’s just an extra degree of weirdness in our behavior. I contend that a lot of that isn’t our fault.

We’re dealing with everyone’s weirdness. For some reason, everyone is attracted to Florida. They come down here and then can’t figure out how to leave even though it’s a peninsula and there’s only one way out. We end up with people from every state in the Union, so the entire nation needs to take some responsibility for the weirdness of Florida.

Speaking of weirdness, in Best.State. Ever. you describe weird things happening in Florida. Will you give us a few examples?

We had a truck accident where a truck blew a tire and went off the road. There was a fatality. In this case, the fatality was a shark. A live shark was being transported to New York and the shark was ejected onto I-95. I don’t know of any other state where you would have an airborne shark on the Interstate. It was kind of like Sharknado, but for real.

Not too far from where I live, a guy died in a cockroach eating contest held at a pet shop. The way other places have Starbucks, we have reptile stores. If you ever need a reptile on short notice, this is the state for you. The prize in this cockroach eating contest wasn’t money; it was a snake. The poor guy died trying to win a snake to give a friend. I don’t think that would happen in a normal state.

In the book, you devote an entire chapter to the skunk ape which is unique among Florida’s exotic wildlife and is heavy on the weirdness scale. What is the skunk ape and how can we find it?

The skunk ape is kind of like a yeti or the Loch Ness monster in the sense that it probably doesn’t exist, but lots of people believe it does. It’s an ape-like thing that roams the Everglades. People claim to have seen it. Of course, I don’t know how many drugs these people had ingested before spotting it. There are reported sightings every now and then. I visited the Skunk Ape Research Center located in the middle of the Everglades. Even if you don’t actually see the skunk ape, you can buy a skunk ape t-shirt. [More laughter].

Dave, you moved from Pennsylvania to Florida. How come?

I moved here because the Miami Herald hired me. Through incredibly poor planning, they located the Miami Herald in Miami. [Laughter]. I love Miami.

What do you love about living in Miami, Florida?

I love that it’s warm. It’s never boring. Things keep happening here. For instance, even though there’s nothing funny about the Zika virus, when it came to the United States, where did it show up? Florida, of course. [Laughter] Florida is a giant festival of weirdness and craziness. I just love it.

From reading the book, I understand you were able to get into Miami Beach’s hottest nightclub, LIV. Tell us about that experience.

I went to LIV, which is very difficult to get into. Now, I’m thousands of years old, but even if you’re a young, attractive person, which I’m not, it’s hard to get into that place. But I arranged it with a friend who covers nightlife for the Miami Herald. I showed up around midnight; usually by midnight I’ve been in bed for about four hours [Laughter]. There were all these hyper-attractive buff young people trying to catch the attention of the bouncers to get let in.

When I got in, the music was unbelievably loud. It was electronic dance music. Far be it for me to say the music sucked, but it really, really sucked.

I was blown away by the concept of a celebrity DJ. The same skill set required to operate a microwave oven renders the DJ an internationally valued talent.

Basically, if you want to stand around and listen to incredibly loud music played by a guy pushing a button, and if you want to purchase drinks for twenty dollars a pop, this is a fun place to go.

A fascinating chapter in Best. State. Ever. is “Lock and Load Miami.” Tell us about that.

Lock and Load is a place in Miami where you can go to rent a machine gun. They offer different packages. You pick your package and then go to the shooting area where a large, muscular man who makes you feel incredibly inferior in the masculinity department, shows you how to shoot the machine gun. I was terrified, but it was also an adrenaline rush like I couldn’t believe. There was a paper target about twenty feet away, and it was hard to miss when firing thousands of bullets. You end up thinking you’re an expert marksman. That was a fun feeling.

What would you say to people who negatively view Florida?

Well, you must understand that Florida has very low taxes. There’s no state income tax. The sales tax is reasonable. We have really corrupt and incompetent government. But in other states, you pay really high taxes and also get corrupt and incompetent government. So we’re getting the same kind of government as other states, but for much less money. [Laughter]

What’s coming next from Dave Barry?

I’ll write another book because I have no useful skills and don’t have a trade to ply.

Congratulations on writing Best. State. Ever. an uproarious defense of your much-maligned state. The book unearths the roots of why Florida has become ‘The Joke State’ and details why from beginning to end, you maintain ‘I love this crazy state.’

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Gizmodo Interviews Me About “Bedlam’s Door” and Mental Illness

September 3, 2016 by Mark Rubinstein Leave a Comment

Real Stories About Real People Show Complexity of Mental Illness

A Hungarian-born man is found ranting in the street that he is “king of the Puerto Ricans.” A perfectly healthy woman feels compelled to undergo over a dozen operations. A man in a straightjacket somehow manages to commit suicide while inside a locked psychiatric ward.

These are just a few of the compelling stories in Mark Rubinstein’s new book, Bedlam’s Door: True Tales of Madness and Hope. (You can read an exclusive excerpt here.) Rubinstein is a former practicing psychiatrist turned novelist who has drawn on his years of clinical experience to follow in the nonfiction footsteps of Oliver Sacks, shedding light on the complexities of the human mind with real stories about real people. Gizmodo sat down with him to learn more.

Gizmodo: What drove you to write this nonfiction book, after years of clinical practice and novel-writing?

Mark Rubinstein: It all came down to my wanting to tell the general public a little bit more about mental illness. When someone has a physical illness, people feel some kind of empathy, but they still respond to an obviously disturbed person with fear. It’s not just your heart, lung, or liver that’s sick—it is you. That is very threatening to people. And people don’t really understand the mental health dilemma, and the issues that mental health practitioners face.

Q: You brought a novelist’s sensibility to these stories, with composite characters and reconstructed dialogue. How much is fiction and how much is nonfiction?

Rubinstein: It is kind of a combination of fiction superimposed on a nonfictional layer of things that really happened. These were all real people and real cases—sometimes a composite of more than one person to protect their privacy. Oliver Sacks was accused of unwittingly giving away the identities of some of the people he wrote about in The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat.

I never wanted to be accused of anything like that, so I changed everything: times, places, people, venues, even races. I didn’t even use a real hospital. Of course, I couldn’t remember all the dialogue from 30 years ago, but I created dialogue consistent with the story line. But these were all real stories and real people from people I had treated. There isn’t a story in there that isn’t true.

But the overarching theme running through most of the stories is that even with the most bizarre cases, if time is taken to listen to these people and understand their stories and background, perhaps we can offer them help. It’s all about storytelling. That’s what novelists do, and in a sense that’s what patients do when they come to see a psychiatrist: they tell a story.

Q: I was struck by your statement that even people who suffer from the same diagnosed condition can have very different stories.

Rubinstein: [Mental illness] can affect almost anybody, given certain circumstances. Some of the most successful people on the planet have a touch of hypomania. I know physicians and attorneys who don’t have full-blown manic episodes but they are filled with boundless energy. They are restless. They feel bored and unhappy unless they are facing a challenge. And they are highly successful. Take that to a more severe degree, however, and it can be completely disabling. And 100 different people can have 100 different pathways to the same diagnosable psychiatric disorder.

You contrast two very different examples of PTSD in the book, for instance.

Rubinstein: In one case, a police officer was shot while sitting in his patrol car outside a store near Tompkins Square Park in New York City. A bullet smashed through the windshield and hit him in the armpit, ruining his brachial plexus—a complicated series of nerves that serves the entire arm. He almost bled to death in the ride to the hospital, and he was crippled for the rest of his life. The depression, the PTSD, the pain he felt in his right arm—the pins and needles and tingling—was directly related to the psychic impact of that half-second of impact.

Then there is the man I call Nathan, found ranting on Delancy Street that he was the king of the Puerto Ricans. He was a carpenter, born in Hungary, and that skill saved his life at Auschwitz. He watched people disappear into the gas chambers—his family, his entire village. He was the sole survivor. But his PTSD didn’t develop until 40 years later, when he was in America and fell off the ladder while working on a roof, breaking some vertebrae in his back. He could no longer work and began having horrifying nightmares. It’s called delayed onset PTSD. So these two men came by totally different pathways to the same condition.

Q: In both your preface and conclusion, you talk about how mental illness has always been stigmatized throughout history. Is it really any different today?

Rubinstein: Well, today we don’t torture people. As recently as the 1950s, they were lobotomizing psychotic patients. They removed a good portion of the white matter of the frontal lobes of the cortex, and turned those people into—for lack of a better term—the walking dead. They became blunted and unresponsive to most emotional stimuli. It was done to try to improve their lot in life, but it shows how primitive things used to be.

When I was in resident psychiatry, the cops would drag a guy in and tell me, “This guy belongs in the loony bin, doc.” Even if the person was just drunk, they wanted to dump these people off in the psychiatric emergency room rather than take them to the precinct. They didn’t want to be bothered with an agitated, fulminating individual who was obviously disturbed.

What’s really changed is there is a much more scientific and compassionate approach. The popular conception of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) still exists from a famous scene in the 1974 movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest—Jack Nicholson with the bulging eyes and convulsions and coming out of it like a vegetable.

But they now use unipolar leads, and very low, slow pulse electricity. They administer muscle relaxants, so there is no convulsion. There is hardly any retrograde amnesia and what little there is resolves with a matter of days. It doesn’t take 12 to 18 sessions anymore, it only takes between four and six.

Q: You end on a somewhat surprising note of optimism, given that these are such very sad stories. I am curious about why you see hope for the future.

Rubinstein: No matter what kind of progress we make, there will always be people slipping through the cracks. There will always be people who either don’t want to be helped, or can’t be helped for some reason. But transcranial magnetic stimulation is a noninvasive new treatment that, so far at least, according to preliminary findings, has tremendously good effects—with no side effects or ingestion of chemicals.

Then there is the promise of gene therapy. At some point in the not too distant future, neuroscience will advance to the point where blood can be taken from a newborn child, and based on that baby’s genome, scientists will be able to predict what mental dysfunctions or illnesses that individual will have a predisposition for. Imagine if you could do that for people with a high risk of schizophrenia or severe bipolar disorder, based on the genome analysis of a two-day-old baby? It would put every psychiatrist out of business.

So in the long run, if the human race survives as a species, I think the prognosis medically [for mental illness] is very good. I am not sure that I am optimistic about the survivability of the human species, but I am optimistic in that limited way.

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