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Today, we have author M. C. Soutter featured on the blog’s ‘Indie Saturday‘ for his Great Minds Thriller series – Charcot’s Genius and Undetectable.

In M. C. Soutter’s universe (Great Minds Thriller Series), a scientist has developed a device with which he can unlock fantastic mental abilities in his test subjects. Charcot’s Genius deals with an asylum inmate and a first-year Dartmouth student who discover powers after receiving treatment. And in Undetectable, a private-school teacher becomes a test subject of the new neurological technique called scrubbing.

M. C. Soutter writes :

First things first: Undetectable is FREE today in honor of my visit to Indie Saturday. Obviously it will not stay free for long (a man has got to eat), so get it quickly and then come right back.

A non-writer friend of mine recently asked me, in tones both respectful and perplexed, where I found the discipline required to produce novels. The clear implication – that writing was an unpleasant process – did not surprise me. I have been asked the same question in various forms many times over the years. What did surprise me was the follow-up. This same friend asked if I could give him some advice on how he might take up writing as a profession.

“What does it take?” he asked.
“Loving it,” I answered at once.
He rolled his eyes. “Fine, but what are the actual steps?”
I did not press the issue. He wanted a checklist, a sort of writer-recipe, so I fed him the standard stuff: carve out some time every day; write what you know; find someone willing to give you honest feedback; persist.
“Okay, got it,” he said.

I almost laughed. I wanted to grab him and shake him. You’ve got nothing, I thought. This is not like learning how to dance the rhumba.

I know writers who work at all hours of the day. Many (myself included) take advantage of the 4-6AM shift, that brief window when your head is clear, you don’t have to be at your regular job for another few hours, and the rest of the family is not yet awake. If you find yourself cringing at the idea of working at four in the morning, then you are on your way to seeing what my friend could not, or just would not. I do not know if anyone cares, but since you are here I will tell you: I loved writing every book I have written, even the ones that did not do anything special when it came to actual sales. And I am not talking about love like the way you feel about a beautiful day, or fresh-baked cookies or Labrador puppies. Because that is a soft love. That is a weak love. No, this is a frantic, wild-eyed, obsessive thing, a thing that I call love simply because it is the only socially acceptable term I can come up with.

Consider: If I showed up in your bedroom and shook you awake at four in the morning, you would glare at me as if I had poured a bucket of cold water on you.

“No, it’s okay,” I would say. “I’ve got a bunch of Lab puppies out back. They’re ready to run around and play.”
“Get out of here,” you would say. “I need sleep.”
“But I thought you loved puppies.”
“How’d you get into my house? I’m calling the police.”

Now try to picture what I could say to you instead of puppies, what I could offer that would make you sit up, rub your eyes, and nod happily.

It would have to be something incredible.

So if you ever hear someone talking about wanting to become a writer, feel free to insert yourself into the conversation. Tell them the first step is to develop a fixation, a cultivated disorder that will make people whisper and point when they leave the room. That guy has a problem, they will say.

And they will be right. It is a problem, and all writers suffer from it. But nobody seems willing to get up at four to stage an intervention with any of us, which is probably why so many writers keep happily working away into their seventies and eighties, and beyond.

I know that is my plan.

So by now I hope it is obvious that I enjoyed writing both Charcot’s Genius and Undetectable (the first two books in the Great Minds Thriller series), and that I am having just as much fun working on the third, which will be ready by the end of the year. I have been especially taken with the preparation involved; research is, for me, an indispensable part of the writing process, and neurology has become my favorite fictional playground. It is an endlessly fascinating subject, made more so by the enormous gaps of understanding that still exist in the field. The more you read about the human mind, the more you realize how little we really know about the fundamental mechanisms at work inside our skulls. We can look at MRIs and point and nod, but we are really still just feeling around in the dark.

And that is what makes it exciting. Most of what I have put into these books about mental processes is true, and the rest may be true.

Could be true.

You might be amazed to find out what your own brain can do.

Enjoy the read.
– M. C. Soutter

M. C. Soutter was born and raised in New York City. He studied Computer Science and English at Dartmouth, received his Masters from Cornell, and now teaches high school and writes in Boston, where he lives with his family.

The Great Minds Thriller series are available in Kindle format: Charcot’s Genius and Undetectable. Check out M. C. Soutter’s Amazon author’s page for more info!

To learn more about M. C. Soutter, follow him on his website: mcsoutter.com. Drop by and say hi!

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Read an embedded sample of “Undetectable” after the jump!

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