Guest Post & #Giveaway: Deadly Vision by T.D. Severin
- Archaeolibrarian
- 5 hours ago
- 11 min read
Book Details:
Genre: Medical Thriller, Cyber Thriller, Psychological Thriller
Published by: Penmore Press LLC
Publication Date: March 6, 2025
Number of Pages: 466 pbk
ISBN: 9781957851945 (ISBN10: 1957851945)
@T.D. Severin - Author @penmorepress @partnersincrimevbt
@tdseverin @partnersincrimevbt
A revolutionary medical breakthrough. A technology, so advanced, people will kill to prevent its discovery. Dr. Taylor Abrahms, rising above his troubled past, is an expert in the burgeoning field of Medical Virtual Reality. A gifted researcher, he's created an experimental fusion of virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and microsurgery that will revolutionize the way surgery is performed. With the Virtual Heart Project (VHP), Taylor can enter a virtual recreation of his patient's beating heart and perform critical, life-saving surgery entirely within the realm of virtual reality. But in the political war zone of San Francisco University Medical Center, not everyone is thrilled.
With a health care crisis threatening to bankrupt the nation, advanced biotechnology is a flashpoint in health care reform. Taylor's research is scapegoated and he finds himself caught between warring factions in medicine and politics that will do anything to shut his project down, a battle that rages all the way to an upcoming Presidential election. Soon, Taylor finds himself the target of nonstop attacks: the destruction of his career, scientific sabotage, and murder, as those associated with the Virtual Heart Project are killed, one by one.
Fighting for his medical career and eventually his life, Deadly Vision tells the tale of Taylor's battle against overwhelming odds, political machinations, sabotage and murder, to bring this modern technology to reality and save the life of someone he loves.
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Prologue
Thursday, October 12
4:59 p.m.
Robert Chan froze in place, staring at the shadows in his hallway.
From the bedroom where he stood, Chan couldn’t see the shadows’ origin, just the elliptical darkness, spreading across the walls, creeping down the hall. As the sun descended beyond the distant Golden Gate Bridge, a chill seized the air, but Chan didn't feel it. His eyes were fixed on the hallway, studying the growing shadows, searching for signs of movement, or a flicker.
A sign they came from something alive.
Shadows had always terrified Chan. As a child, long after his parents had gone to sleep, he’d lie motionless in bed, his face half-hidden by the blankets, staring at the ceiling. Moonlight, filtering through the branches scratching outside his window, cast a dance of light and darkness above him. Lurking within this specter of shadows, he’d see the spirits of his grandmother’s tales, the kuei-shen -- the phantoms of the deceased trapped between the world of the living and the dead. Too frightened to move, he’d lay immobilized, watching as the shape-shifting kuei transformed, taking the forms of lions and dragons. He’d see the kuei-shen as they descended upon him, feel them as they entered his flesh, melting into his soul. The chill of their deathly presence within.
He’d carried those visions throughout his adult life.
Still, no number of childhood nightmares could prepare him for what he faced now.
Chan’s eyes shot from the hallway to the suitcase lying upon his bed, lid propped half-open, socks and underwear dangling over the edge. He rushed to the case, stuffed in two pairs of grey slacks, then dashed back to the closet. Glancing at the rows of cotton shirts, he shoved the stripes aside and grabbed the white Oxfords. Less eye catching, he thought, more anonymous.
Anonymity had never been one of Chan’s concerns before. As a young and hungry engineer in the Medical Applications Division of CyberTech Systems, he’d done everything in his power to avoid it. In the cutthroat world of Silicon Valley, anonymity in the corporate workplace was the high-tech kiss of death. In order to advance to the high-paying executive levels, Chan had to stand out, be noticed. And he did. Clocking in a string of over fifty consecutive 80-hour weeks, his work habits routinely drew the notice of the upper levels of CTS management. His ascent through the ranks of engineers was unprecedented.
But that was before he found the files.
Now, all he hoped for was to get out alive.
Shoving the Oxfords into the suitcase, Chan glared at the manila envelope on his bed. His stomach tightened. The envelope looked so mundane, so ordinary, like it contained any number of IKEA catalogs or Publisher’s Clearing House winner entries. There were no outward clues as to what it contained. The deception. The hidden discovery that was causing his once carved-in-granite life to crumble around his ears.
He wanted to grab that envelope and rip it to pieces, shred it; pretend he’d never found the files; get back to his life of deadlines and coding assignments, his twice daily visit to Starbucks with Elizabeth, his routine afternoon stop at the Porsche dealer where he’d been eyeing the new Boxster, dreaming of himself behind the wheel.
But it was too late for that. He’d been working on AI programing for a team of researchers at San Francisco University Medical Center, a special project assigned to him by the CEO himself, Reginald Erickson. All the engineers knew he was working on this assignment. His cyber-trail through the CTS database easily traceable. Every keystroke monitored and replicated. Each step readily apparent to someone who knew where to look.
The ringing of the phone snapped Chan to attention. He jerked from the bed, his eyes darting to the receiver then beyond to the digital clock on the far wall.
It was 5:00 P.M.
Panic seized him. No one should be trying to reach him at this hour. Not here. Normally, he'd still be at CyberTech logging in another eighteen-hour day pounding out code. No one should know he was home.
The phone rang again. Chan winced. His eyes shot to the envelope. He had to get out of there. Get the files to the Federal Building; get the evidence into the hands of the Justice Department or the FBI or whoever, get filtered into the witness protection program and hope to start a new life as an elementary school teacher in Wichita or Amarillo or someplace else he'd never heard of. Let the Attorney General, the world, see what he’d discovered before it was too late. Maybe they could put a stop to this.
But how do you stop a Presidential election?
The phone rang a third time. Chan ignored it, shoved the folder deep into the suitcase, covered it with a sweatshirt and slammed the lid closed. Yanking the suitcase off the bed, he rushed to the front door.
At the doorway, he paused, for just a second, turning to take one last glance at his apartment, his home for the last six years. The delicate Chinese watercolors, the bonsai he’d trimmed each morning, the wooden crucifix above his bed for his daily prayer. It all seemed like such a waste of time now. His plans to become a chief engineer, create his own start-up, propose to Elizabeth next Valentine’s Day were worthless. Vanished like rain drops that never reached the ground.
He swallowed hard and ran into the hall.
He didn't get more than two steps before the first shot rocked him. The force of the gunfire lifted him off the ground and sent him hurling backwards through the open doorway. He collapsed onto his back, his vision dimming, descending into a miasma of swirling reds and greys. Pain, like fire, ripped across his belly. A metallic smell filled his nostrils followed by the coppery taste of his own blood.
Chan tried to swallow the blood bubbling into his mouth, but couldn’t. He became vaguely aware of the gaping hole that now occupied his lower abdomen. Warmth flooded down his flank, collecting at the small of his back. Pools of blood gathered on the white carpet. His eyes half-focused, Chan watched, as each crimson pool began to morph into vague shapes, like clouds taking patterns. In the blood, he saw the faces of his mother and his father, both dead for years. He saw the face of a long-lost uncle, and his childhood friend, Wong, who’d died in a car accident. He saw Elizabeth.
The pain sank deeper into his belly. He fought for breath. With the last of his strength, he craned his head towards the door where he could just make out the silhouette of a lone figure, a bald man, standing over him. He concentrated hard, trying to cement the image, and slowly, a vision came into form. His eyes locked on the muzzle of the silenced 40 caliber H&K pistol now aimed at his chest.
Chan sighed and allowed his head to fall back. Around him, the bloody pools gathered into new shapes, like the shadows of his youth, forming lions and dragons.
Despite himself, Chan smiled. He closed his eyes and allowed the darkness to seep into his veins, bringing with it a quiet peace, the realization that he wouldn't have to run anymore.
The kuei-shen had arrived.
Gems Amongst The Dust
I'd been working on Deadly Vision for more years than I care to count and received more rejection letters than you'd care to count, or would reasonably subject yourself to. But I believed in the story and knew that others would too, if I could only write it in a way that would capture their imagination and attention.
So, as part of my process, I went to countless writing conferences, took classes, read many books, and constantly worked to improve my writing and my storytelling skills.
But one surprising place that provided an immeasurable amount of guidance and information was rejection letters.
In general, I never accepted rejection letters as a rejection of the story -- just where I was with it at that moment in time, with that particular agent. I even went so far as to file my rejection letters not in a file named "Rejections" but in one I named "Try Again." Once the story was better, they'd hear from me again, whether they wanted to or not.
But before I filed those letters away, I'd scour the rejection letter for any possible feedback that could help me. Now, usually, there's none to be found. Just a form rejection letter or a stout, "didn't connect with me" or "too busy to take on new projects" response. But every once in a while there was a gem to be found amongst the rejection dust.
To that regard, here are the three main tidbits of feedback I received from three different agents or editors, lost in the midst of their rejection letters, that helped me transform my book into the final draft that has now won several major writing awards like the Clive Cussler Adventure Writers Competition, the American Fiction Award, and the Grand Prize at BookFest.
"Despite the gripping opener, I wasn't drawn into the narrative." While this might seem like a horrible bit of feedback to receive, it was great. Taking it purely at face value, it meant that my opener was good, or rather, "gripping." Believe it or not, to me that was validation that I actually could write something interesting and tell it in a compelling way, something every writer doubts about themselves at one point. So, it was inspirational, really, not a downer. Further, it meant that what I had as my beginning, the shooting of someone who would turn out to be a lynchpin character, was riveting, and I needed to move the rest of the story along quicker to maintain that gripping intensity. This was huge and led to a major rewrite. I chopped out scenes that proved to be unnecessary, shortened others, sped up the pace, and moved forward the Point of No Return, the moment our hero, Taylor, gets launched upon his ultimate journey. This is the moment the reader wanted to get to, so why have it so far back into the book? Let's get the story moving.
"Until “so and so character” was killed, I didn't get a sense that our hero was in danger." This refers to the murder of one of our main characters at the Hospital where our hero works. Now, I'd started the book off with a home invasion/shooting, but “so and so” doesn't get killed until about 1/2-way in. So, it meant to me that between the gripping opener and “so and so's” death, I need to up the intensity. Up the threat. Up the danger. This led me to creating several scenes that focused on the mindset of the hired killer, Edgar Ross. Getting into his head, his past, his motivations, his obsessions; crafting these scenes became some of my favorite, if not most disturbing, parts of the book.
"I liked the premise, but your antagonist is cliched." This was huge and well-deserved. My antagonist in the early drafts of the novel was cliched, nearly a mustache-twisting Boris who wanted world domination. This happened because I was so focused on the protagonist's story that, to me, the antagonist was merely a place keeper to throw obstacles onto our heroic journey. How bad is that? With this bit of feedback, I rethought the entire book. I needed a villain who was likeable in his own way, if not at least realistic and internally consistent. His reasons for opposing our hero had to be legitimate and founded in his own sense of morality and his ultimate goal. He had to believe in what he was doing and believe he was in the right. That led to the creation of Randolph McIntyre, the Senator from Georgia who was the republican nominee for the upcoming Presidential election. To heighten the stakes, I made him the father of our hero's wife, Sherilyn. This created a multi-layered story with political intrigue and family dynamics that really helped to enliven the story, add verisimilitude, and launch Sherilyn from being a minor supporting character, to a major aspect of the book with her own story arc. In the end, it's her strength, that saves our hero's life.
Never accept rejection. Dig deep for any small kernels of advice, even if they aren't really presented as such. And never stop believing in your story. Just keep working to make your story better.
T.D. SEVERIN. MD., is a physician/surgeon and the author of the award-winning medical thriller, DEADLY VISON.
T.D. Severin, is an internationally renowned professor of medicine, who has been publishing both fiction and non-fiction since 1994. His writing has appeared in national and regional magazines/journals around the world. At the same time, his first novel, Deadly Vision, was the winner of the 2025 American Fiction Award. The 2025 International Impact Book Award, and is a Finalist for the Clive Cussler Adventure Writers Award, the 2025 Global Book Award for Fiction, and was an award winner at the SEAK National Medical Fiction Writing Competition.
T.D. Severin has been named one of the Nation’s Best Ophthalmologists by Newsweek Magazine, and has been honored to receive the prestigious Telly Award, the Oscars of public access television, for his work on medical television programming.
T.D. has trekked across Tibet, scaled Mt. Everest, scuba dove the Great Barrier reef, white water rafted through the Australian Rain Forest, and delved into the mysterious ancient history of Malta, Istanbul, and the lost kingdom of Siam, all of which makes it's way into his writing.
T.D. lives with his wife and two pups in the San Francisco Bay Area and Florida, where he is currently at work on his next medical thriller. A former radio disc jockey, he also runs the heavy rock record label Ripple Music: www.ripple-music.com.
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