PORTLAND, Maine — Bryan Wiggins, who works at a branding agency in Portland and has written several novels on the side, was in the office one day when a client named Lee Thibodeau came in with an unusual request. Actually, a request that bordered on a demand.
"He said, 'Bryan, you’ve got to help me write this book,'" Wiggins recalled. "I was going to blow him off. I was thinking of a nice way to do it. But I looked at his notes and found a way to make the story my own, and we were off and running."
The result is "The Corpse Bloom," a medical thriller that Wiggins wrote with Thibodeau’s assistance. That assistance was invaluable since Thibodeau is an experienced neurosurgeon who opened doors and brought Wiggins into his professional world.
"The first thing he did was have me into surgery," Wiggins said. "I stood behind his shoulder for four hours. I watched him operate. I got a sense of the milieu of the [operating room]."
Then came referrals and introductions.
"Lee would look at what I wrote and put me in touch with anesthesiologists, nephrologists, people who are into medical record keeping, all the people I needed to create a plausible medical thriller," Wiggins said.
Wiggins’ previous novels have been what’s known as literary fiction — that is, fiction with rather high literary aspirations that go beyond entertainment. With this project, he was taking a creative leap.
"I would never have attempted to write a medical thriller if Lee hadn’t convinced me to tackle this tale," Wiggins wrote. "I remain profoundly grateful for his faith in me."