Author R&R with Joshua Alan Parry

 

Joshua Alan Parry is a medical resident at the Mayo Clinic and and holds a B.S. in molecular and cellular biology from the University of Texas at Austin. Over the years, he has worked as a guide for at-risk youth in the Utah wilderness, a metal worker in Montreal, a salmon canner in Alaska, and a molecular genetics intern.

Joshua puts that background to good use In his debut novel, Virus Thirteen, in which scientists James Logan and his wife, Linda, have their dream careers at the world's leading biotech company, GeneFirm, Inc. But their happiness is interrupted by a devastating bioterrorist attack: a deadly superflu that quickly becomes a global pandemic. Linda's research team is sent to underground labs to develop a vaccine, but security is soon breached and Linda is in danger. To save her, James must confront a desperate terrorist, armed government agents, and an invisible killer: Virus Thirteen.

Joshua stopped by In Reference to Murder to take some "Author R&R (Reference and Research)," although his research apples don't fall very far from the tree:

 

Little did I know at the time, between my undergraduate degree in molecular and cellular biology and my medical degree, I had spent the last eight years incidentally researching the novel Virus Thirteen. I have spent an extraordinary amount of time sitting in lecture halls, passively listening to the drone of higher education. Even the best students, and I am not including myself in this category, will have minds that eventually wonder in such a setting. My own brain, always teetering on the precipice of full-blown attention deficit hyper activity disorder (ADHD), has had plenty of opportunities in these scenarios to dream of a future where all of this wonderful science and potential technology has become established.

Immediately after I graduated college I went on a personal journey, driving across the country by myself. There in the silence of the individual, my mind did wander yet again, with its newfound knowledge base and cathartic desire to vent itself. What would the world be like in a future where scientists have the ability to tinker with mankind’s genome as easily as an artist at a blank canvas? What would be the repercussions of this science if completely unrestricted? Judging by history, it would be only a matter of time before the less scrupulous among us took it too far, and quite literally created a monster. Forget about humanoid monstrosities though, when this technology is applied to man’s last great predators, microscopic bacteria and viruses, you have the potential to create the Frankenstein of the year 2200 A.D., a sinister creation whose miniscule size is inversely proportion to its ability to do harm. At the end of my journey, these questions had become the seeds of a story. In order to realize their potential these seeds would need plentiful amounts of metaphorical water and sunlight.

So in summary, education will build the knowledge base needed to write coherently on a subject, this is no different from anyone, intense mental isolation will provide the spark of ideas, and most importantly, like a nurturing gardener, countless tedious hours must be spent cultivating the story in order to develop it into a finished product.

--Joshua Alan Perry

Virus Thirteen is officially launched next Tuesday by Tor, but available for pre-orders. You can find Joshua on the publisher website or via Facebook.