Tess Gerritsen
Tess Gerritsen
Tess Gerritsenis an American novelist and retired physician...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth12 June 1953
CountryUnited States of America
becomes closer hardest
The hardest part of writing is the first draft, and the closer you get to your deadline, the messier your workspace becomes - but that's the same with any creative outlet.
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I met my husband, Jacob, in medical school. We married and went to live in Hawaii where his family lived. It was very beautiful, but I wasn't used to being on an island and needed wide open spaces. Eventually we moved to Maine, New England.
encouraged strongly
My father said writing was a nice hobby. He strongly encouraged my brother and me to become doctors.
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My brother often complains to me about the 'angry Asian male' in the United States. As a female, I haven't encountered this, but Asian-American men are angry. They're angry because, for so many years, they've been neglected as sex symbols. Asian women have it much easier, I think; we're accepted into various circles.
connect good key matter physicians sides
I think that, for physicians who want to become writers, they have the material, the smarts, they have the logic, they know the stories; it's just a matter of being able to connect with their emotional sides - that's the key to writing good fiction.
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Throughout most of my life, I've tried to downplay my Chinese heritage because I wanted so much to be an American. I was the only Asian kid in my elementary school, and I longed to be like everyone else. I insisted on American food; I was embarrassed by my mother's poor English.
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I think of myself as a fairly logical, scientific and somewhat reserved person. Maura Isles, the Boston medical examiner who appears in five of my books, is me. Almost everything I use in describing her, from her taste in wine to her biographical data, is taken from my own family. Except I don't have a serial killer as a mother!
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I have minor characters who are Asian-American, and I've been using them throughout my career, but they've never taken center stage, they've never been really powerful, they've never expressed some of the experiences I had growing up in the U.S. Johnny Tam is the first one.
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'I am a bad mother.' Every Christmas, this is what I think because the holiday season fills me with such anxiety. I'm sure that other mothers are happily baking cookies, decorating trees, and finding perfect gifts for everyone.
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'Ice Cold' is the eighth in my 'Rizzoli and Isles' thriller series. It was inspired by a true occurrence in the 1960s, now known as the 'Dugway Incident,' in which 6,000 sheep mysteriously died overnight in a remote area of Utah. I thought, 'What if it happened instead to people? What if the inhabitants of an entire village vanished overnight?'
explain people trying
I think fiction, for me, is a way of trying to understand why people do the things they do - and trying to explain what is, at heart, illogical.
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My mother is an immigrant from China, and she filled my head with stories about ghosts and fighting monks in China, so the world of 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon' was a very familiar one.
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Because I never plan anything out ahead of time, I'm always in the process of learning about my characters. Without a biographical sketch to guide me, I discover things about my heroines as the stories unfold. Only in 'Body Double' did I discover that Maura's mother was a serial killer.
chinese fit san school understood
I'm Asian-American, and I was the only Chinese girl growing up in a white school in San Diego. So I understood what it was like to be different, to always want to fit in and never feel like you ever could.