Tule Author Q&A: Rebecca Crowley starts off Phoenix series with ‘Insider’

You delve into two pretty complicated industries: Journalism and Medicine. What kind of research did you have to do?
Being honest, I cheated on the journalist front – I’m married to one! But having a peripheral view of the fast-paced news industry for more than a decade now is what inspired me to write about it. There aren’t many jobs where people constantly try to balance profitability with serving the public interest, which is what journalism so compelling.

I guess the same could be said about medicine, which is something I have zero exposure to (English major, hello!) yet it fascinates me. I recently realized that Grace is the third heroine I’ve written with a medical background (I have an orthopedic surgeon and a clinical psychologist in two novellas). I haven’t quite figured out the reasoning behind this yet – maybe I like the idea of the otherwise strong, capable female healer needing to heal herself as well? Either way, I have to admit that my scientific knowledge doesn’t extend much past a teenage devotion to the show ER!

Oren and his brothers buy the London Phoenix — what this the name of the newspaper before they bought it or is it symbolic?
They kept the Phoenix’s name, but it is also symbolic of the paper’s long and storied life as a broadsheet.

We find out Grace’s exes are bad news. In the past, was Oren more often times the dumper or the dumped? 
Oren would only really consider himself as having had one capital-R Relationship, which his ex-girlfriend Natalie. She ended things with him which I suppose puts him more firmly in the dumpee category, but the truth is he’s steered well clear of ever being half of anything that could be considered a relationship since then.

Is there any particular incident growing up that drove Grace to pursue emergency medicine?
Perhaps surprisingly for someone otherwise fairly level-headed, the unpredictability and spontaneity of emergency medicine is what attracted Grace. And scratching the surface, it’s possible that she liked the relatively low commitment inherent in emergency medicine, as opposed to a specialism with long-term patient care. Just like she hesitates to confront her relationship with her father, in emergency medicine she doesn’t have to work on building or maintaining long relationships with her patients – she can patch them up and ship them off.

What are you currently reading?

For the last couple of summers I’ve started reading Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series so that I’m caught up ahead of the next season when it airs on Starz in the fall (I have a thing about reading the book before seeing the film or TV adaptation!). Per tradition I’m spending 1400 pages of my summer with Jamie and Claire and at the moment I’m about halfway through The Fiery Cross.

About the Author

Rebecca Crowley inherited her love of romance from her mom, who taught her to at least partially judge a book by the steaminess of its cover. She writes contemporary romance with smart heroines and swoon-worthy heroes, and never tires of the happily-ever-after. Having pulled up her Kansas roots to live in New York City, London and Johannesburg, Rebecca currently resides in Houston.