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HARK!
I hear a … buzzz….
That would be a new novel, “Where No One Should Live." The buzz is almost literal, as one plot point revolves around the smallest of villains...
As her bio notes, “Sandra Cavallo Miller is a recently retired family physician in Phoenix who has always been a writer in her secret heart.”
Dr. Miller
The busy writer’s latest novel tells the story of Dr. Maya Summer, an Arizona Public Health worker who advocates for a motorcycle helmet law (which makes her an enemy of a biker gang) and studies mosquitoes, those little flying thugs and potential deadly disease carriers.
This is a very-Phoenix novel, plunging deep into the dark horrors of the time the rest of the world calls “summer.” (We have other names for it…)
Miller’s fourth and latest novel was published Sept. 21 by the University of Nevada Press. Miller celebrated it with a Changing Hands Bookstore reading--the first “live” reading there in quite some time.
Which is a good starting point for a HARK Valley Q&A:
Q: What were some of the challenges of the reading—like you said, Changing Hands’ first live event in a while. From a medical viewpoint, did you have any concerns about going live in a confined space?
A: We required masking and the majority of attendees were medical people, who all wore masks without even thinking. We asked that people be vaccinated but we didn’t police it. I did have concerns, of course, but the staff were exceptionally careful and aware. Kudos to them.
Q: Dr. Maya Summer vs Dr. Sandra Miller: Compare and contrast, please!
A: My characters are conglomerates of people, sometimes including myself. But never assume. Because of my Grand Canyon novels, I’m often asked about when I worked there, although I never did. But I know women physicians who did.
Most doctors are detail-oriented, compulsive, and tend toward perfectionism. Those are traits you want in your doctor, but they also breed anxiety and stress so beware that your doctor is probably neurotic. Sure, me too.
I’m pretty atypical in the medical world. My college major wasn’t in science but creative writing, with a minor in anthropology/paleontology.
Q: Describe your own personal relationship with … mosquitoes.
A: Ha ha! Those sneaky little devils. Of course they’re not really evil, they’re just going around surviving and humans are available and tasty. Most people don’t realize that only female mosquitoes bite us; the male is just there to mate (insert your own joke). I was hiking last week when a mosquito landed on me and I found myself shouting at it—or at the smear of blood on my leg after I smashed it: You’d better not be carrying West Nile!
I’m all about capturing beetles and lizards that get in my house and turning them outside, but the mosquitoes can die. The ICUs in Arizona are filling with more and more cases of West Nile these days.
There have already been 14 West Nile deaths here this year. Last year there were 2.
Protect yourself.
Q: Where did you grow up and what brought you to Arizona?
A: Grew up in central Illinois surrounded by corn and soybean fields. You could drive miles to find anything resembling a big hill—those Pleistocene glaciers plowed the land flat. I had dreamy visions about coming West and they’ve pretty much proved true. I love it out here, the brittle canyons and precious creeks. I came here in the 1970s for my internship/residency at Good Sam and never looked back.
Q: Did you write while you were practicing medicine? When did you retire and where do you live now?
A: I was in private practice for ten years, back when folks saw my white coat and asked “What kind of nurse are you?” I’m pretty sure there were only two or three women docs in family medicine in Phoenix then. Then I discovered how much I enjoyed teaching and spent the rest of my career as faculty at the family medicine residency.
I wrote short pieces then: essays, poetry, a few medical articles. You can find examples on my website. I encouraged doctors to take up reflective writing as a way to rant and reduce stress and nourish their creative souls. Still do.
I retired at 65 because I didn’t want to be the teacher they whispered about (“Don’t ask her, she won’t know”). Keeping up with medicine and doing it right is demanding and exhausting and I felt weary. I wanted to go out still strong.
I live on the north Phoenix-Scottsdale border with my husband and an insanely cute new rescue puppy.
Q: You seem to be HYPER PRODUCTIVE. What is your writing routine--and what motivates you to put pen to blank paper (or click on blank screen)?
A: I write anywhere, anytime. No routines. In the middle of the night when I can’t sleep, first thing in the morning, or afternoons on the porch. I write in my head when I’m hiking or riding a horse. Some days not at all, some days for hours. I’m used to being crazy busy all my life, so this doesn’t feel that demanding. I’m also getting old and my clock’s ticking loudly, which makes me write like my hair’s on fire. I no longer have the luxury of time.
I feel I have things to say and I enjoy creating stories with momentum. I like revealing the daily work and strain a physician faces, the good moments and the awful. People are fascinating and we’re each a mixed-up mess of strengths and flaws. I also love our physical world, the rocks and sky and trees, which I weave throughout. My latest hobby is volcanology and if I were young today I’d probably go into that field. When I was in college, we barely understood tectonic plates and volcanology wasn’t a thing.
Q: You say you’ve created a "science-based medical adventure”: don’t you think that will SCARE PEOPLE—or are they receptive to this?
A: It’s critical to me to portray science and medicine accurately. There’s so much misinformation and so many unreliable sources, and I want people to know they can trust this. I mean, more or less—by the time a novel makes it to publication, the medical knowledge might have shifted. That’s what science does, gathering new information and forming new conclusions. We should celebrate it when guidelines change, not deride it. It’s called progress.
If science scares some people off, they probably wouldn’t understand my characters and their conflicts anyway.
Q: Who are some of your writing influences, both recent and when you first got serious about reading?
A: Probably my all-time favorite novel is “Remains of the Day” by Ishiguro, a masterpiece of character development. I love dynamic lyrical science writing like Loren Eiseley and (Bill) Bryson’s “A Short History of Nearly Everything.” There are too many varied authors to name, from Wallace Stegner to Sherman Alexie. My favorite book of the last few years is “The Ends of the World” by Peter Brannen, beautifully written about mass extinctions. Apparently I enjoy feeling like a blip. When you look at our current chaos, it’s downright soothing that we're mostly meaningless. Well, that came out dark....
Q: Why do YOU think so few novels are set in Phoenix? Do you know any?
A: I actually went to my public library branch and appealed to a librarian to help me search this, since I found so little on my own. We discovered “Getting to Happy,” a sequel to “Waiting to Exhale” by Terry McMillan, published in 2011. And we found a mystery series by Jon Talton. That was it. There must be more, right? I mean, we’re the 5th largest city in the country.
It mystifies me why. I really treasured setting this novel during a Phoenix summer, describing the heat and how we deal with it. One reviewer said the weather was like a character itself, which made my day.
For more on Miller, visit https://www.skepticalword.com/