Storytelling: a Matter of Life and Death with CJ Lyons - a podcast by Mark McGuinness

This week's guest on the 21st Century Creative podcast is CJ Lyons, a New York Times and USA Today thriller author who has sold more than 2.5 million books.







She has won numerous awards, including the International Thriller Writers’ prestigious Thriller Award, and the Daphne du Maurier Award for Excellence in Mystery and Suspense.



Once upon a time CJ was a pediatric ER doctor (for those of us outside the US, ER stands for Emergency Room) so she was helping children and their families facing medical emergencies. She has also assisted police and prosecutors with cases involving child abuse, rape and murder.



As she says in the interview, working as a doctor meant she saw people at their very best and their very worst. This experience has clearly been a big influence on her fiction. And in our conversation she has some compelling things to say about the value of art and storytelling in the face of the darker side of life and death.



I first met CJ about 10 years ago, when her career as a writer was starting to take off, and since then it’s been amazing to see her success, and inspiring to see how she has handled it, with good humour and generosity, inspiring others through her writing and speaking.



So asked her to come on the show and share some of the learnings from her extraordinary journey, and she kindly made the time to give me an extraordinary interview.



If you’re in the early phases of your career, as a writer or another kind of creative, you’ll find CJ’s story inspiring and instructive, especially in relation to dealing with adversity and setbacks. It’s sobering but maybe also reassuring to that a ‘big name’ writer didn’t have things all her own way, and that she had to fight to get where she is.



If you’re a more experienced writer or creative, then you’ll be particularly interested to hear CJ reflect on the ups and downs of a successful career, and on how to stay true to your inspiration over the long term, regardless of external circumstances.



CJ Lyons interview transcript



MARK: CJ, when did you first realize you wanted to be a writer?



CJ: That’s a question everyone asks, and like so many people, I actually started out as a storyteller very young. In fact, my earliest memory is of doing puppet shows with my mother’s hair curlers and telling stories. I went to a Catholic school and the nuns were always very distressed, and I was in time-out quite a lot. Because to their mind, I had difficulty discerning the difference between a lie and telling the truth, and really it was like, ‘Well, no, I know what the truth is, I just think it’s much more interesting if we go in a different direction,’ and I would tell stories.



So, very young, I wrote my first novel which was a young adult fantasy, total rip off of Terry Brooks' The Sword of Shannara when I was 14 or 15. But even before then, I always wrote short stories and poems and I had won awards for my writing in elementary and junior high. So I just always knew that was part of me, I just never dreamed of turning it into a career until I was much older.



MARK: Because your first career was as a doctor, right?



CJ: Yes. I was a pediatric emergency medicine physician, and I was a doctor for 17 years before I took a leap of faith to write full-time.



MARK: How did you get from writing to doctoring? Was it just a completely different part of you took over or was there a link in your mind?



CJ: Well, as I said, I was always a writer, and writing is really my way of, as an extreme introvert, of coping with the chaos of the world around me. And so I even wrote two novels while I was in medical school despite attending class and being on the wards and working 100-hour work weeks, because I needed to process.



MARK: Sorry, CJ.

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