Interview with Stephen Lovely

I’ll be honest. When it comes to organ donation, I’ve been a little leery. There are so many unknowns surrounding the entire process. For example, what if I’m really not dead and the doctors start to harvest my organs? Or, who’s to say that the criterion used to determine if my time here on earth is officially over is truly foolproof? There’s no do-over. That’s for sure.

Then a little over a year ago, my hip replacement needed to be re-done. During the process, I received a cadaver bone transplant to restructure a weakened section of my hip. If it weren’t for the generosity of a stranger who obviously did not share my fears, I wouldn’t be walking today. That’s a fact. Needless to say, my attitude has changed.

This month’s Jen’s Jewels, Stephen Lovely, tackles this very issue is his debut novel entitled IRREPLACEABLE. It’s a poignant story depicting the emotional journey of not only the donor’s family, but also the recipient’s. Through tears of compassion and joy, I fell in love with this story. After reading it, I know you will, too.

As part of the interview, Hyperion Books has generously donated five copies for you, my readers, to win. So, don’t forget to look for the trivia question at the end. And as always, thanks for making Jen’s Jewels a part of your reading adventure.

Jen: As a debut novelist, your ability to carve out a niche in the publishing business rests solely in the hands of your readers. So that they may have a better understanding of the man behind the book, please tell us a little bit about your educational and professional background.

Stephen: I was born in Texas and grew up in Minneapolis, Chicago, New Jersey, and Connecticut. I spent most of my childhood in Ohio. I attended Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, and began writing fiction during my senior year. For 2 years after graduating from Kenyon I worked in Boston for a journal of cell biology and continued to work on my writing. I moved to Iowa City, Iowa in 1990 to attend the Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa, and after that spent 7 years working as a night clerk in the pediatric intensive care unit at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics. That’s where I got the idea for IRREPLACEABLE.

Jen: I was quite impressed with your choice to tackle such a controversial subject, organ donation, in your first release, IRREPLACEABLE. From start to finish, I felt as if I, too, were going through the experience due to your innate ability to expertly depict your characters’ emotions. First of all, how did you arrive at the premise?

Stephen: I was working in the pediatric intensive care unit one night when a boy was admitted who had been hit by a car. The boy was brain dead, and his parents decided to donate his organs. I spent the next few hours watching the process unfold and assisting the nurses and doctors involved. I was impressed by the courage of the boys parents, who had to make a difficult decision—to donate their boys organs or not—in the midst of harrowing circumstances. I began thinking about where the boy’s organs might go, and who might receive them. I wondered what kind of relationships might develop, and what emotions and complexities might arise, if the recipient of one of these organs—the heart was most interesting and resonant—tried to get in touch with the donor’s family. How would the donor’s family react? What if reactions varied or clashed? Would being contacted by the recipient be an annoyance or could it have the potential to be therapeutic? Also, I knew there was a person out there who was responsible for the boy’s death. What if that person were able to find out that the boy he had killed—accidentally or perhaps recklessly— had donated his organs? How would that person react and behave? All of these ideas and possibilities started working in my mind.

Jen: Secondly, how much research was needed in order for your story to ring true? And, how emotionally intense was the discovery process for you?

Stephen: I did substantial research on heart transplantation and heart disease. I read a lot and spoke with cardiologists, surgeons, and patients with heart disease who were waiting for transplants. I’d also spent a lot of time working in a critical care environment so I had a good feel for the way a hospital worked and what the atmosphere was really like. All of that helped me to be accurate in writing the novel. As far as the emotional intensity of writing the book, I’d say that it got me down from time to time, but that what was really happening was that I was dealing with my own fear of death, and my amazement at life and its fragility, by writing about these things, by continually experiencing death and loss and its ramifications on the page, which was maybe some kind of preparation.

Jen: I thought it interesting that you gave the reader just a brief glimpse into Isabel’s personality and then used Alex’s point of view to fill in the missing links. What was the most challenging part of developing her character in this particular way?

Stephen: I wanted Isabel to have a distinct personality, and for the reader to have a sense of who she was, and have affection for her, so that they would share to some degree Alex’s and Bernice’s grief. A lot of the novel’s success depends on the reader actually caring that Isabel is dead; otherwise the reader is unlikely to care how Alex and Bernice respond to her absence and navigate their grief.

Jen: The grief Alex experiences at Isabel’s bedside as he prepares to say goodbye is so emotionally raw that I literally felt every inch of his pain. (Well done.) As far as organ donation protocol is concerned, what is the normal time frame in which the decision to end the donor’s life is made? Who makes that final decision and is the family present until the very end?

Stephen: I’m glad you felt this scene was compelling and moving. It was based closely on the actual scene I experienced at the hospital, and that inspired the book. It’s my understanding that typically there’s no decision made to end the donor’s life, certainly not by the hospital staff. When a patient who’s had a serious accident is brain dead, and there’s no activity in his or her brain, an organ procurement person is often called in to discuss the issue of donation with the patient’s family members. If the patient is a donor, if they’ve signed a donor card and informed their family of their decision, the process can go very smoothly. But if there’s some ambiguity about what the patient may have wanted, or what the family wants, the process is more difficult. In the end, the family must consent before the patient can become a donor, even if that patient has indicated as much on his or her driver’s license or signed a donor card, which is why it’s so important to tell your family if you want to be a donor. This is my understanding of how it works, anyway. After the family consents to donation, a procurement process begins, and the patient is eventually removed from life support in the operating room.

Jen: What I liked best about IRREPLACEABLE was the way in which you weaved two stories into one. Not only did I sympathize with Alex, but also my heart (no pun intended) went out to Janet, the recipient. Initially, what was your game plan in relation to navigating two storylines within the framework of the plot?

Stephen: Actually my game plan was to follow and interweave 4 storylines, those of Alex and Janet, and also those of Bernice—Isabel’s mother— and Jasper, the man responsible for Isabel’s death. This was the trickiest part of writing the novel, arranging and integrating the stories of these four people and their four points of view across time and space. There was a lot of trial and error involved. It was also important to me to make all of the characters more or less equally interesting and compelling, so that when you’re reading about one character you don’t get bored and hurry forward to get back to a character you’re more interested in. This may be impossible for any writer to pull off, though, since every reader comes to a novel with his or her own interests and subjectivity, and will always be drawn to certain characters more than others.

Jen: Secondly, whose story wound up being the more difficult to portray and how so?

Stephen: Jasper was by far the toughest character to understand and calibrate. In my earlier versions I tried to portray him much more sympathetically, as someone who had killed Isabel almost completely by accident— my idea was that he’d been no more negligent than any of us are, driving, just very unlucky—and who was a decent, considerate person. But I realized that a decent, considerate person would never insinuate himself into the private lives of others to the extent that Jasper does, to the extent that I needed him to, and so I had to make him more narcissistic and oblivious to the feelings of others, a self-deluding fellow with little regard for social boundaries.

Jen: Let’s talk about Janet and her family. First of all, her husband is most certainly the core of her support system leading up to the transplant. Why then, does he crumble after the fact? Is this something you discovered to be commonplace during your research?

Stephen: David, and David’s relationship with Janet, was also hard to write. At first I portrayed David as very supportive throughout, but it seemed boring. Over the years working in the hospital I’d seen or heard of so many relationships that came apart around a sick child—often one parent just can’t hack it—and I began to want to write about this. I felt it made the novel more interesting. For instance, that Alex and Janet share the experience of losing their spouses, or that the very stubbornness and focus that enable Janet to survive also makes her somewhat blind to the needs and feelings of her husband.

Jen: As for her children, I was impressed with the way in which you chose to make them strong, yet vulnerable at the same time. Having experienced a hip replacement with two young children at my side, I could totally relate. With that being said, was the motivating factor behind Janet’s transplant purely for the sake of her children? Why or why not?

Stephen: I’m glad you could relate to Janet and her children. I don’t have children of my own, so I was a little anxious about portraying Janet and her kids and making it all lifelike. I wouldn’t say that Janet wants a transplant purely for the sake of her children, though. Janet is more selfish than that. I think she loves her children deeply, but in pursuing her various agendas—especially pursuing a relationship with Alex and Bernice—she at times, not necessarily intentionally, puts them second.

Jen: In my opinion, there are two twists to this story. Let’s talk about each one. Bernice, Alex’s mother-in-law, for all intents and purposes is a very needy individual. Why does Alex choose to continue his relationship with her after his wife’s death? Besides the obvious, what common bond holds them together?

Stephen: Yes, Bernice is needy, but she’s also a cool, interesting woman, and Alex has a strong relationship with her even before Isabel dies. With Isabel gone, both Alex and Bernice find themselves somewhat isolated— Bernice probably more than Alex—and, probably because they’re able to understand each other’s grief more than any outsider, as well as both tolerate and minister to each other’s damage, they begin keeping close company. Alex feels a deep custodial concern for Bernice’s well-being and Bernice feels equally deep concern for him. They each want to make sure the other survives.

Jen: My hat is off to you for including Jasper, the driver of the truck that killed Isabel. Initially, I thought you went too far because I didn’t feel as if he merited my thoughts and emotions. He killed her. Case closed. How could I sympathize with him? Then, you did the unthinkable. I wound up feeling sorry for the guy despite his circumstances. (Bravo!) How were you able to humanize Jasper’s frailty?

Stephen: I’m glad to hear you feel this way. As I mentioned above, Jasper was very hard to get right as a character. I find him irritating and calculating and reckless, and I fault him for killing Isabel, as well as for the way he goes about inserting himself into the private lives of Isabel’s family. On the other hand, isn’t any one of us just as likely to strike down a pedestrian or cyclist when we’re driving a little too fast and momentarily distracted by a child in the back seat, or a cell phone? Jasper wasn’t killed, but his life was severely damaged by his accident, and all he’s trying to do is repair it, however ineptly. And many of the claims he makes—that he is responsible for saving Janet’s life, that the organ procurement system depends on him and other “agents of death” —are, however distasteful and problematic, hard to deny.

Jen: Lastly, I felt as if Isabel’s memory was violated in some way when Alex began dating again. Of course, that is not true. Alex has to move on. Do you think he’ll ever truly love again? Or do you think he believes we all have only one true love in a lifetime?

Stephen: I think Alex will love again, and believe that most men and women in his situation can recover and find someone else and love again, though they will always have scars. The idea I like most about this book, an idea that attracted me from the very beginning, was that Isabel, by signing her donor card, unwittingly provided Alex with a path out of his grief, a path that leads through Janet, and that at the end of the novel...well, let’s just say that Isabel’s heart isn’t the only thing that gets transplanted.

Jen: A question I just have to ask…are you an organ donor? Why or why not?

Stephen: I am. Though I’ve always been superstitious about such things— even life insurance is hard to think about—I believe that each person needs to come to terms with the inevitability of his or her own death and with the sad but wonderful fact that the world will go on without them. Donating organs, in my view, is a noble way of contributing to the larger human effort. On the other hand, it’s too bad there’s not another way to save people with end-stage heart and liver and kidney disease, a way that doesn’t require a violent human death in exchange. True, violent human deaths are inevitable out there in the world—motor vehicle accidents, shootings—but this isn’t something we should be blithely content with, or rely on. It would be a better world if these kinds of deaths were less common.

Jen: Do you have a website? E-mail notification of news alerts? Do you participate in author phone chats? And if so, how would my readers go about scheduling one?

Stephen: My website is www.stephenlovely.com . You can go to the "Contact" page and sign up for the e-mail list and/or get in touch with me about participating in your book club. Or you can just tell me about your experience of the novel.

Jen: What’s on the horizon for you? Are you busy at work on book two? And if so, what can you share with us?

Stephen: I’m trying to get started on another novel but don’t feel sure enough of its viability to talk about it yet. Ask me again in a few years!

Jen: Thank you so much for making Jen’s Jewels one of your first stops on your inaugural book tour! IRREPLACEABLE is an outstanding work of fiction that I highly recommend to all of my readers. I look forward to hearing more from you! Best of luck! You most certainly have found your calling.

Stephen: Thanks Jen. I’m so glad you like the novel and I appreciate your interest and enthusiasm.

I hope you have enjoyed my interview with Stephen. Please support his launch into the publishing business by picking up a copy of IRREPLACEABLE today. Better yet, would you like to win one to help spread the word? You could be one of five winners! Answer the following trivia question for a chance to win.

What is the name of the recipient of Isabel’s heart?

Later this month, I will be bringing to you my interview with New York Times Bestselling Author Peter Robinson. You won’t want to miss it.

Until next time...Jen