Q&A with Dr Cynric Temple-Campe
As part of the Whanganui Literacy Festival, Dr Cynric Temple-Campe is hosting his lecture, A Potpourri of Death. Margaret Samuels caught up with Dr Cynric ahead of his event.
Can you tell us a little about your most recent book,
The Quick and The Dead?
These are some of the stranger or more poignant tales of both the living and the dead and they expand on my first book The Cause of Death.
No one expects to die or really knows the exact time of their death and there are few who can realistically plan their passage onward. Sometimes people expect to die, or perhaps they should have died and I try to convey the element of chance.
I hoped this book would also show the closeness pathologists have with surgical and other clinical colleagues in the endless pursuit of a diagnosis. These stories highlight that pathology may also be applied to the living.
What do you hope readers will take away from your books?
People are often taken aback when I tell them am a pathologist. At times I suspect people’s involuntary reaction is because it causes them to contemplate their own inevitable death. We all think it will never happen to us.
Most people have a sanitised idea of what pathologists do from television or thrillers. Others think I spend all my days dismembering bodies or splashing around in the remains of a floater dragged out of the river.
People are always surprised when I tell them that 90 per cent of my professional life is working with the living to find the cause of their ills. The other 10 per cent is on routine autopsies for those dead of unexpected disease or disaster and only a minute fraction on extraordinary or suspicious deaths and murder.
What inspired you to start writing for publication?
I have been writing constantly for 30 years and began by writing two novels, both of which were exciting but na¨ıve. When I started my pathology memoirs I was encouraged to publish them by my friends Keith Butler (The Secret Vindaloo) and Dr Dave Baldwin (The Flying Doctor, Bushman’s Guide to The Bible and others).
What is your routine or process when writing? Do you have a typical writing day?
I write mostly at night when all is quiet. Like all writers, I find it hard to begin and then hard to stop until the wee hours. I always have two labradors lying at my feet, and they have become like going to bed with your favourite teddy bear.
What do you enjoy the most about writing your books?
The best part about writing a book is finishing it and getting it off to the publishers! Second is the tours and meetings that follow. I love these and the moving around provincial New Zealand and meeting my readers.
What is the most challenging aspect?
Rewriting what I thought was already perfect! All good editors edit and criticise, often requesting sections be rewritten many times. It is galling but inevitable and a little like having to drill your own teeth.
Do you have new books planned?
Yes. I’m currently writing a third book. It’s also based on true tales of pathology, but with some differences. There are stories from the mortuary but lighter on gruesome details and murders.
There are also stories about patients and doctors and strange events. All of these happened in my time but I have anonymised the characters to protect patient identity. I want to give the reader a feeling for a side of pathology other than that purely based in the mortuary.
Have you had time for your own personal reading recently? If so, what is the book you’ve most enjoyed in the past year?
I’m addicted to reading and love my books. I’m always buying more and I have a house and garage stuffed with more books than I can realistically read in my lifetime.
I thought the psychological thriller Consent by Leo Benedictus was seriously gripping, but many think it is appalling, Try it and see, but be warned it’s not for the fainthearted.
All good editors edit and criticise, often requesting sections be rewritten many times. It is galling but inevitable and a little like having to drill your own teeth.
What do you like to do when you’re not writing or working?
I have a delightful 7-month-old daughter Stephanie. Need I say more about how all the spare hours are filled?
What’s next for you?
I am on a tight timetable right now to have my next book in by August, still work fulltime at pathology and I have no intention of retiring although I am 70 next year. We want to visit my daughter and my new grandson in London as well seeing Ireland, the home of my mother’s father.