Around this same time I was offered the chance to become a contributing editor and book reviewer for BarnesandNoble.com and I was having something of a midlife crisis, so I let go of all the nonfiction stuff I was doing, packed my bags, and moved from Virginia to Wisconsin (a whole other story in itself). Shortly after that, my agent decided to retire and I suddenly found myself back at square one with my novel writing. I used the opportunity to write something different from my first three novels. I was intrigued by all things Wisconsin and aching to stretch my funny muscles and lighten things up a little. So I penned a humorous mystery featuring a nurse in a small Wisconsin town who changes jobs and becomes a deputy coroner. While writing it, I realized how much I missed the excitement and camaraderie of working in a hospital setting, specifically the ER, so I took a part-time job as an ER nurse at the local hospital.

Shortly after that, the economy took a hit on the heels of 9/11 and the work at BarnesandNoble.com started drying up, forcing me to go from part-time to full-time at the hospital. I finished writing the mystery and began querying with it, hoping to find a new agent. I did sign with an agent for a couple of years but we weren't able to sell the book and eventually we parted ways. Yet I loved the book so much I couldn't bear to toss it in the closet with my other reject. So I decided to conduct an experiment and self-publish it. It went the way most self-published books do, racking up dismal sales and relative obscurity. Eventually I pulled it off the market and shelved it for a while.

During that time I wrote two more novels, neither of which has yet seen the light of day. Then one day I decided to drag that mystery out of the closet and give it one last shot. This time I got lucky. I found a new agent who sold the book to Kensington as part of a three-book deal - a mere seven years after I wrote it. Because Kensington wanted the series and the author to be "new and fresh" and my real name was basically "done and gone" they asked me to come up with a pseudonym. So I reversed my legal first and middle names and altered the result slightly, then added my son's first name for the last name. Thus Annelise Ryan was born.

You work as an emergency room nurse, how has that influenced your writing?  Do any of your patients end up in your books?

Anyone who has worked in an ER knows that it's a never-ending source of characters, excitement, and drama. It can be pretty entertaining at times but it can also be physically exhausting, horribly sad, and emotionally draining. I'm a strong believer in the power of laughter and one of the most common coping mechanisms we all use is humor. Some of the funniest things I've ever heard or seen happened while working in the ER and some of the funniest people I know are those who work in an ER, with cops coming in a close second. It definitely keeps my creative juices stimulated and my funny bone well honed.

I've never used a specific patient in a book and I never will. But I've used amalgams of various patients and situations to create characters. And the genesis of the plot for my first published novel came about because of a patient I took care of in an ER back in the eighties who had metal shrapnel in his head that he thought gave him ESP-type powers.
 
Any adventures in research while working on Working Stiff?

No adventures per se, but the whole idea for the book came about while observing an autopsy years ago. It was my first and I was nervous about how I would handle it. I had observed surgeries before and that never bothered me, but this seemed different. I did fine, as it turned out, and once the body was cut open, I found myself thinking that the inside of a dead body didn't smell much different than the inside of a live one. A moment later I realized what a great first line that would make. A plot and the rest of the book followed, but not right away. I carried that first line around in my head for years before I finally put it to use. It's the only book I wrote that way. With all the others, the basic plot came first.
 
How does being a writer help you be a better nurse?

I try to keep up with the latest research, not only to enhance my nursing practice, but to find new plot ideas. In one of my earlier novels, I came up with an idea for a medical device and procedure to restore eyesight in certain types of blindness. Today the device and procedure actually exist.

Another way I think writing helps is because it often makes me think outside the box. There is a saying in medicine that when you hear hoof beats, think of horses, not zebras. It's a way of reminding us to first look at the most obvious sources for symptoms rather than the more obscure ones. But as a fiction writer I'm always looking out for the zebras. And every so often, I find one.

What's up next for you?

I've finished Scared Stiff, the sequel to Working Stiff, and it is scheduled for release in September of 2010. I'm currently working on book #3 in the series as well as a YA novel  I've been playing with.

Where can readers find you on the web?

I have my official author web site at www.bethamos.com and I've recently launched a new web site -- www.mattiewinston.com -- centered around the main character in the Stiff series. I also maintain a blog called It's Mind Bloggling that I don't keep up with as often as I should, but I'm trying to do better.

As a pediatric ER doctor, CJ Lyons has lived the life she writes about in her cutting edge suspense novels.  Her debut, LIFELINES (Berkley, March 2008), became a National Bestseller and Publishers Weekly proclaimed it a "breathtakingly fast-paced medical thriller."  The second in the series, WARNING SIGNS, was released January, 2009 and the third, URGENT CARE, is due out October, 2009.  Contact her at http://www.cjlyons.net