Medical Romance

Anyone here write medical romance?

Okay. . .

OK, nobody seems to be writing Medical Romance on this board, but does anybody here like to read it?

Well. . .

I'm writing the typical nurse-seduces-doctor plot, but with a twist---the doctor is a raging SOB jerk with a dark past and the nurse tames him by turning the power tables on him.

From what I can tell, Harlequin still runs a pretty successful medical romance category; they are advertising for manuscript submissions for that line on their website. An Amazon search turns up most of their medical romances as being by British authors. At this point, I am not sure if this one that I'm working on will be for Harlequin's category line (50,000 word requirement) or if I'll make it a bit longer as a single-title contemporary. Thoughts?

Thanks. . .

Thanks Susan. Then it's probably best for me to do it as a single-title contemporary, then.

An argument can be made that the entire romance genre is sexist. But it's an argument I don't necessarily buy if the author has done the hard work of writing characters that have depth, emotions and real human flaws---which both the man and the woman each helping the other to resolve and improve upon. Plus, I think the story where a woman helps "tame" and reform a "bad boy" makes the woman more powerful of the two. That's the kind of story I'm writing right now---it just happens to take place in a medical setting.

Restarting thread

I'm restarting this thread because my WIP is shaping up (more than half finished with draft 1) and wanted to run a few things by folks.

It appears my WIP (working title, "Passion: STAT!") will fit perfectly into the Silhouette Desire line. (i.e., heroine is a tough nurse---with Army/Desert Storm experience, no less---who tames the successful-Type A-rich-and-powerful-SOB hero by seducing him and cutting him down to size on her own terms, all in 57,000 words or less.)

I've been researching this line and haven't found any medical plots in their recent titles. Most of them involve heroes who are CEOs, lawyers, cowboys, and other typical "tough guys", but not surgeons. Perhaps there are earlier titles with doctors/surgeons in this line that are out of print. Anyone read Silhouette Desire with any regularity? If so, would the following synopsis appeal to you?

Passion: STAT!
Joanna Watson, thirty-six, is a seasoned nurse in a small, cash-strapped North Carolina rural hospital. She may seem tough as nails on the outside, but on the inside she's coming apart at the seams---the hospital's so short-staffed she's been working nonstop double and triple shifts in the OR for months; she's deep in debt; and the divorce she's fought her meddling ex-husband three long years in court to secure is being held up due to a "technicality."

Enter Harlan Wilkinson, MD, Covington Community Hospital's new Chief of Surgery. For reasons nobody is quite sure of, this world-famous surgeon---a veteran of many glamorous overseas assignments with Doctors Without Borders---abandoned his high-paying, big-city surgeon's post to work in a small hospital in Statesville, North Carolina. Dr. Wilkinson is a rude, crude, obnoxious SOB both in and out of the operating room, and Covington Community Hospital's nurses are quitting their jobs right and left rather than put up with any more of his nasty verbal abuse. Joanna thinks she sees through the cracks of his brash exterior to the wounded, gentle man within----but can she tame him before he drives her mad?

Yes. ..

Yes, I've done my best to keep things as realistic as possible. My day job is in the medical research field so I know first-hand how hard a job nursing is. Hospital nurses frequently work in excess of 80 hours a week due to the nursing shortage, and nursing today is highly complex, skilled, and often thankless work. Hospital nurses also earn very little money when you consider the amount of training required for the job and the long hours they put in, plus their responsibility for patients' lives. Once nurses get their masters' degrees, they often leave "floor" nursing in favor of higher-paying administration jobs---no wonder, because patient nursing is so grueling. The heroine in this novel is a surgical nurse who supervises an operating room; she has combat nursing experience and is highly skilled in surgery herself; she even stands up to the hero in the OR when he almost makes a big mistake while operating on somebody. Surgical nurses are especially tough, not just because their job is so hard, but also because they have to put up with surgeons---who are often egotistical, abusive jerks.

It is indeed my aim to have the alpha-male-SOB-from-hell tamed by the heroine into a well-balanced, confident, and considerate person---and he helps make the heroine whole, too. Hopefully all will work out in the ending, just as soon as I write it.