Cardiologist ~and~ novelist! Shirlene Obuobi, BETWEEN FRIENDS & LOVERS
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[0:42]Charlene Obuobi is the author of Between Friends and Lovers, a novel.
[0:47]Charlene is a Ghanaian American cardiologist, cartoonist, and author who grew up in Chicago, Illinois,
[0:53]Hot Springs, Arkansas, and the Woodlands, Texas.
[0:56]She appeared on Good Morning America to promote her debut novel on rotation and is regular contributor to The Washington Post.
[1:02]When she isn't in the hospital, she can be found drawing comics, writing on her phone, and talking to everyone who will listen about women's heart health.
[1:10]Welcome, Charlene. Thank you so much for coming on Momstone.
[1:13]Have time to read books to discuss between friends and lovers. Congratulations.
[1:17]Thank you so much for having me, Zibi.
[1:20]I was just raving before we started about how much I'm loving your book, so this is such a treat to get to discuss all the details.
[1:27]Tell listeners what Between Friends and Lovers is about, please.
[1:31]For sure, so Between Friends and Lovers is about my main character, Josephine Botang.
[1:36]She just finished her medical residency and is unable to really move forward with a typical job because she's dealing with a lot of mental health issues and burnout.
[1:46]And so instead, it sustains herself through a career as an influencer.
[1:50]She's also very much enmeshed in a family of wealthy socialites and his best friends with one of the male leads, Ezra,
[2:00]has been in love with him basically for the last 10 years, but it seems to be unrequited.
[2:05]And in the beginning, the book kind of decides that, you know what, I really need to just move on from this.
[2:10]And she moves right on right into the male lead Malcolm, who is kind of everything that Ezra isn't, but probably everything that Joe actually needs.
[2:19]Love that. Oh my gosh. And Malcolm, of course, is a novelist, best-selling novelist who you do such a good job of a, you know, physically, I feel like I can see him in my head in every scene, like the way you describe him, be like his whole personality.
[2:36]And, you know, by alternating the points of view in the book, I feel like you're really letting us, you know, get this backstage view.
[2:44]Like it's mostly Joe's book, but with Malcolm, we're like, you get to see, you know, all the things that she doesn't get to see, it's like this, which I love, and develop like so much affection for him too, right?
[2:57]And seeing, because you wouldn't know, I'm sorry for rambling, but like if you were just reading Joe's point of view and like in a scene where he decides not to kiss her right away, you might not know why he was doing that, but now we know completely why and respected and all of this.
[3:11]So tell me a little bit about choosing how you had to tell the story.
[3:15]Oh, for sure. So it has a little bit of a different structure that I think a lot of other romance novels in the genre.
[3:21]First of all, to dual point of view, which might confuse people who walk in thinking it's going to be a love triangle.
[3:26]I tell people it's not really a love triangle if you, they have to focus on what's important for Joe and Joe's growth in her journey.
[3:32]And Joe's point of view is in first person past and mouses in third.
[3:38]I did that very intentionally as well.
[3:40]It's just kind of direct people to the point that, you know, I know Mal is Mal's perspective is here, but it's there to help inform as you very astutely picked up on inform readers that this is really still about Joe, right?
[3:52]And we're getting background on Mal.
[3:54]Specifically because Mal's personality is, I call, he's a lot more understated.
[4:00]He's very anxious. He's introverted, right?
[4:03]He keeps to himself.
[4:06]He's undergone a growth arc himself off page.
[4:09]He's a little bit older than Joe by, I think, three years or so.
[4:12]And he's already kind of gone through what Joe is going through right now.
[4:16]And so he is not someone who would otherwise be very loud and seen, especially what compared to Ezra who takes up as much space as possible every time he shows up.
[4:28]So I think I did that so that you could see a little bit of Mal's interiority as well and kind of understand why he is the one who's good for Joe.
[4:36]And also to kind of big people, kind of focus and remember that this is, it's a romance that I always write women's fiction-y romance. It's still about her.
[4:46]Yep. Yeah. I could see that.
[4:48]Well, it's also interesting, even with Mal's backstory, which you referenced, even his past relationships with women and like sort of the toxicity of some of his choices and all of that.
[5:00]Really going into that with the point of view of his friends as well, like sort of showing him and pointing out like, okay, you know, beware and you have a type and, you know, like, look before you leave and all of that.
[5:14]And we get even more of an insight into into that, which I also found fascinating. So yeah.
[5:20]Yeah, I know. I think that it would be really easy to read Mal as I've seen people be like, oh, he's so perfect. I'm like, he is not perfect. Jumping it is actually the way that he even is jumping in with Joe is not necessarily, it's a little ill-advised, right?
[5:38]Considering his history. He just trusts himself a little bit more and also has gotten to the point where I think several times in his narrative. I have him directly say like, if this doesn't work out, I will be okay.
[5:50]I will go home. I will lick my wounds. I've been by myself for a while. I will be fine, right? Like just kind of like that is he hasn't changed dramatically from who he was, right?
[6:00]But he does know how to recover. And I love that you made him a novelist who's like getting a film deal and that you have the whole like, we're reading a book, but it's about a novelist and, you know, all that. So that was also very fun.
[6:16]So fun there to include. I always say that I because I'm a physician and I'm a writer. And so my my characters are often what I do.
[6:25]Because I'm not lazy.
[6:29]Well, I love the medical stuff in here as well, you know, even the scene in the zoo where, you know, the man falls off a carousel and not only does not you, but Joe and Mal, you know, help in trying to save this man and having to break the ribs, break his ribs and saying like, you know, sometimes you have to hurt people to save them.
[6:50]And I feel like that's like a metaphor also for the whole story.
[6:55]Oh, yes. Yes.
[6:57]How do you pick up on that? It's one of my favorites.
[7:00]It's awesome. Not to mention why they're even in the zoo to begin with, which is like one of the more outlandish.
[7:06]So media, you know, situations as well. I'm like, they're not really doing this, right?
[7:13]Wait, tell me more about Joe as influencer because she was a doctor is the doctor, but was dissatisfied emotional like was not working for a mental health standpoint.
[7:25]And, you know, she's feeling conflicted, even with these job offers that keep coming. Should I go back, should they not go back and is being an influencer enough.
[7:34]I want to earn money, but blah, blah, blah. So tell me a little bit about that. And as a physician yourself, like, are you given opportunities to, you know, you said like what's the word like promoting snake oil and basically different things.
[7:47]So tell me about that point of view.
[7:49]Yeah, for sure. So I draw comics and I have a large platform to talk about comics and it's called graphic medicine basically, right.
[7:58]I have a large platform. So I do sometimes get offers from different companies. And most of those offers indeed are from supplement companies.
[8:06]Things that aren't really tested that don't have rigorous science behind them, but they offer me a lot of money, right.
[8:13]They offer a lot of monies because having like you being able to say o cardiologist says that this this supplement will save you from XYZ has a lot of power behind it.
[8:25]And you can drive a lot of sales.
[8:27]But there are a lot of physicians, a lot of people, they don't hear spaces and a lot of people who are on professions with some degree of power that a lot of companies are kind of in trying to engage with in order to sell products.
[8:39]And there's questions about the ethics behind that, right. And for Joe who Joe went into medicine for several reasons, one of those like one of the prominent ones was that because, you know, she has to rely on herself and it's a reliable source of income.
[8:53]But that's a very slow way to get there. It's also because she really cares.
[8:57]And that's a central part of her character. I think when people encounter her at first, they might think she's very brash. She's extremely blunt.
[9:04]But she's quite compassionate as well. And so she goes into this field for this purpose and then can't quite hack it.
[9:12]And doesn't really able to dive herself back into it. So the influencer thing is kind of her way to still keep her foot in the door, right.
[9:22]She still gets to do the stuff that she likes. She still gets to do the education about how, but she does also feel a lot of guilt about that because it's not a lot of it's not very patient facing and in a lot of ways.
[9:32]I'm trying to show kind of this other lens, right. Where, yeah, like someone, she tells somebody she's got an MD, but all she's doing is content creation.
[9:42]People are probably going to judge her for that. She's going to judge herself for it. She's going to feel like she's not using her talents or her skills as a greatest degree.
[9:50]And she struggles with that. There's, you know, on top of that, there's the insecurity that comes with that, right.
[9:56]Because you may make a lot of money when you have a deal.
[10:00]when you go a long stretch of time without one,
[10:03]then you kind of lose your stable ground,
[10:05]which is she has several conversations with her agent,
[10:08]for example, that are kind of around that.
[10:11]So do you have an agent for social media for your platform?
[10:16]I only recently got one and it's really funny.
[10:18]I got one, a lot of what I've done on my platform
[10:21]was kind of, or things that I was writing this book
[10:24]and was like, I should probably do that.
[10:26]No, I was reading it and I was like,
[10:27]am I supposed to be doing anything?
[10:28]Like, I didn't like that.
[10:29]Yeah.
[10:30]It's really funny.
[10:31]Like a lot of her health education,
[10:33]because I started writing this book in 2022.
[10:35]And I used to draw exclusively comics
[10:37]and then I started writing Joe making these videos
[10:40]where she's educating people about things.
[10:41]And I was like, that is a good idea.
[10:43]I'm saying with an agent,
[10:46]I did not have an agent until like a month or two ago.
[10:49]And I'd had a friend who had been offering
[10:51]to represent, like, hear me with a representative
[10:53]and I was like, I was fine.
[10:55]And then I wrote this book and I was like,
[10:57]maybe I should have just talked to them.
[10:58]I was fine.
[11:01]Did she read the character?
[11:02]What's her name, Olivia?
[11:03]Is that right?
[11:04]Denise.
[11:05]Denise?
[11:06]No, no, no, no, no, no.
[11:07]I don't know whether any of them have ever read
[11:09]or intend to read this book.
[11:12]I'll give it that way.
[11:15]Okay, okay.
[11:17]Well, I did really enjoy that whole thing
[11:20]and having to constantly be thinking about how to turn
[11:24]your life and work into content
[11:27]and yet maintain some sort of barrier
[11:30]between your private life and not.
[11:32]I also really appreciated that, Joe.
[11:34]And I really like Renata, the older,
[11:37]you know, the mom, Ezra's mom,
[11:39]who you also develop as a character.
[11:41]And there aren't often moms in, like, rom coms
[11:45]and books like this.
[11:46]And I feel like we got to know her
[11:48]and how important Joe is to her
[11:51]but have things happen with her professional
[11:53]and her personal life and tell me about that character
[11:57]and the decisions to make her,
[11:59]I mean, she could have easily been just like in the background.
[12:02]Oh, yes, I love Renata.
[12:04]She's one of my favorite characters.
[12:05]And I think I was thinking about a few things of her.
[12:08]Number one, I think that the wealthy white mom
[12:12]was usually gonna be the villain character, right?
[12:15]The one who's like, stay away from my son
[12:17]or like, it's very snoochie and looks down on Joe.
[12:20]But I really wanted her to be the Joe's mom, basically.
[12:23]She's her maternal figure, right?
[12:25]She is full of love, right?
[12:28]She's feisty.
[12:29]She has this own career of her own,
[12:31]but she's also made her own choices
[12:33]and almost her own mistakes.
[12:35]See her in those moments.
[12:37]I'm one of my favorite things to do with Renata,
[12:39]show her in those moments of vulnerability, you know,
[12:42]where she is not just this superstar,
[12:45]supermodel project runways.
[12:48]Yeah, right, and she's also not just Ezra's mom,
[12:52]Joe and Renata have their own completely separate relationship,
[12:56]right?
[12:56]And I just wanted to put that there.
[12:59]I also felt that it was really important for Ezra
[13:03]and Joe's relationship to have more weight
[13:05]that Joe would still feel as though if she were to lose Ezra,
[13:09]she may also lose his mom, right?
[13:12]And lose the one family she sort of has.
[13:15]And so I wanted to maintain the note like this fan,
[13:18]like this love that they have for each other is so genuine
[13:20]that honestly it was not ever gonna be a possibility.
[13:24]They were always gonna have to bond that they do.
[13:26]So.
[13:27]Did you know from the start the emancipation sort of plotline
[13:31]that Joe has been on her own since age 16 and all of that?
[13:35]Yes, yes.
[13:36]I always knew that Joe's would have come from a piece
[13:39]of household.
[13:40]I didn't exactly have the structure for what it looked like,
[13:43]but I always had the piece of, she has not really,
[13:45]she's been kind of alone in an unforward
[13:48]for a long time and that is her status quo.
[13:50]Yeah, interesting.
[13:52]So how did this idea come to you?
[13:55]And how, what was going on with on rotation
[13:58]when this, give me the timeline of everything?
[14:02]On rotation was about to come out.
[14:04]So my first book was about to come out.
[14:07]And I sold between friends and lovers on proposal.
[14:12]I call it my burnout book.
[14:14]So when on rotation or when I sold
[14:17]between friends and lovers, that was 20 June, 2022,
[14:22]I just finished my first year of cardiology fellowship.
[14:24]And I had just also finished residency.
[14:28]I didn't turn on medicine residency.
[14:30]COVID had, you know, I was in total medicine residency
[14:33]during COVID, so that was very traumatic.
[14:36]And the morale amongst myself and a lot of my friends
[14:38]was extremely low.
[14:40]We were, they were running jokes amongst all of us
[14:43]but what kind of antidepressants we were using, you know,
[14:46]and we were just very burnt out.
[14:48]So I always, I call the about my burnout book, right?
[14:51]Which is like, if I weren't to do this,
[14:53]like what else could I do, right?
[14:56]I also, I'm a big fan of love triangles,
[14:59]but I'm cursed with second lead syndrome
[15:03]that I always read for the second lead.
[15:05]I think the second lead is always healthier, right?
[15:07]He always teaches the female leads something about herself.
[15:10]She always chooses the exciting one.
[15:13]And I wanted to turn that trope on its head
[15:15]because I wanted there to be, I wanted to really focus
[15:18]in a romance on the female lead.
[15:21]I wanted to be like, what does she actually need out of this, right?
[15:25]And so those two kind of ideas at the same time
[15:30]sort of meld it into what we see now
[15:33]between friends and lovers with Joe's central conflict
[15:36]as well as kind of the relationship she has with these two men.
[15:39]Wow, so interesting.
[15:42]Have you had anything like this in your own life?
[15:45]Not that it's any of my business,
[15:46]but the center of a love triangle.
[15:49]Yeah.
[15:50]No, I have not.
[15:52]I have had, I've had several friendships
[15:54]like the one with Ezra and I've also,
[15:57]I know a lot of men like now as well.
[15:59]You know, it was actually that was another part of it too,
[16:01]is that like I feel like a couple of things,
[16:04]you know, we'd rarely get to see black men depicted
[16:07]as kind of softer characters and authentic characters.
[16:11]And I know, I know like four mouths.
[16:13]I actually, one of my friends,
[16:14]who I think in the back of the book,
[16:15]I had him almost sensitivity read for mouth.
[16:18]See what I was getting him, right?
[16:22]Because he's very similar to him.
[16:25]I'm just very kind, very, keeps to himself.
[16:29]There's also always in the gym.
[16:31]That's what I was like, I know these guys.
[16:35]My little brother is a lot like now as well.
[16:37]I did craft them based off of some familiarity
[16:41]with people like that relationships like them,
[16:43]but not exactly.
[16:44]Interesting.
[16:45]And tell me your whole backstory,
[16:48]like where are you from?
[16:49]And when did you decide to be a doctor?
[16:51]And then how did the writing come into it?
[16:53]And like what's your whole life story?
[16:55]My life story.
[17:00]So I was born in Ghana.
[17:01]I came to the States when I was six.
[17:04]We started off in Chicago.
[17:05]I went to Arkansas in Texas.
[17:07]I went to Washington for undergrad
[17:08]and Chicago for medical training.
[17:10]And I've actually just recently moved to Providence
[17:12]Rhode Island to start my job.
[17:14]So I moved around quite a lot.
[17:17]And my mom is a physician.
[17:18]My mom is a neaterologist.
[17:20]So I was exposed pretty early on to medical medicine.
[17:23]She had residency and fellowship
[17:25]while I was in elementary and middle school.
[17:27]So I saw her in training as well.
[17:29]And she, so like when we moved to Arkansas,
[17:33]we moved to a very small town.
[17:34]And that was part of a part of a waiver job.
[17:37]For immigration, you go to a place that's underserved
[17:39]for a number of years.
[17:41]And so because we were in this,
[17:43]anybody to have valve in Arkansas,
[17:45]I was also helpful as all hands on deck in the hospital.
[17:48]So I kind of like lived there, right?
[17:50]And you know, like every kid sees their parents
[17:54]and is like, I'm going to be like you someday.
[17:56]That was definitely me.
[17:57]And then as I got a little bit older,
[17:59]I really started to feel,
[18:02]I think that the reality of it is
[18:04]that it's very hard to motivate me to do things.
[18:06]It's hard to motivate me to get up every day
[18:09]without a very clear like mission or purpose.
[18:12]And within medicine, you're needed in a way
[18:15]that it's hard to be needed in other professions, right?
[18:18]In a very visceral way.
[18:19]I think I really like belonging to a family network
[18:23]when being a part of a patient's care journey
[18:26]is almost like being led into their family in some way.
[18:29]and that is something that was very appealing to me.
[18:32]And then I like the science says,
[18:33]but I've always written and I've always drawn
[18:35]since I was a child.
[18:36]And like 10th birthday party,
[18:37]I asked for a book signing event at my parents.
[18:41]I wrote that, yes, yeah.
[18:43]Yeah, well, and when I was 14,
[18:46]I self published a book that is embarrassingly very easy
[18:49]to find, right?
[18:51]And so it's something that I've always kind of done.
[18:54]And in my bed, in the time of right before on rotation,
[18:57]I wrote on rotation during the pandemic
[19:00]and kind of in my oft times between stints and the ICUs.
[19:03]And it really became, especially romance in particular,
[19:07]it became a source of comfort for me of anything
[19:10]to be able to kind of dissociate from the horrors
[19:12]that I was experiencing in real time
[19:14]and the exhaustion and everything.
[19:16]And to a story that's still used elements of it.
[19:19]And a very much a way to process the things
[19:21]that I was seeing, the encountering and these new,
[19:25]because when you're one of the things about being in medicine
[19:28]is that you meet so many people on the worst days
[19:32]of their lives and you see so many different families,
[19:36]so many different people under pressure.
[19:39]And it really informs how you think about love,
[19:44]how it manifests in the hardest moments.
[19:46]And so I felt like a very,
[19:47]people would be like, why do you write romance?
[19:49]I'm like, I kind of felt very natural
[19:51]because it's not necessarily the genre
[19:52]that I read the most.
[19:54]But I felt very natural to kind of explore these ideas
[19:57]and how people come to love to each other
[19:59]and how they show it.
[20:00]So that's kind of eye. It's my feel. Wait, what genre do you like to read?
[20:05]I read a little bit of everything. I read sci-fi fantasy. I read lit thick. I've recently started
[20:12]dipping my toe into thriller as well lately. It's been I haven't read as much as I want to
[20:17]lately because I'm studying for exams as well. But but I actually before I grew on rotation,
[20:24]and I didn't eat much room. So when are you do you have any downtime where you're not
[20:31]working on something or other? I have a little downtime before I start my job. I do have an exam
[20:38]in a week. And so like a really big one. Then I have another one on October. So it doesn't feel
[20:43]exactly like downtime right now just because I'm grinding. But you know, I find my little pockets.
[20:50]Wow. Well, I'm very impressed. Do you miss these characters? Like will there be a future life
[20:56]for them in other books or are you writing something new? I am writing something new. It depends on
[21:01]how BFL does. I would love to write an Ezra book because I love Ezra. He's meant to be,
[21:07]I think some people will love him too and some people will hate him. He's not meant to be a villain.
[21:11]And so I'm not I'm not rooting for him as much. I have to be honest. But okay.
[21:16]Which is which is totally fine. I actually it's very interesting to see who was for him and who
[21:22]doesn't. Some people really root for Ezra. They're like, I don't really see the chemistry with
[21:26]Mal and Joe. And I would rather have something with Ezra. And I'm like, okay, that's interesting.
[21:31]I don't agree. But I do like Ezra as a character and I would love to explore him growing.
[21:38]And so I would write an Ezra book. I've already figured out how it would start.
[21:42]A little more interesting. Awesome. Well, what advice do you have for aspiring authors?
[21:50]And what advice do you have for time-starved people who can't seem to be as productive as you?
[21:58]I think for aspiring authors, I will say the cliche, the one first, which is that you just
[22:02]have to finish the thing. I think it's when before I finish it on a rotation, I would always
[22:07]get into a cycle of going back and editing things I'd written. Like chapters I'd written before
[22:13]to try to get everything perfect. But you really have to move ahead before you can zoom out and
[22:17]see what you need to fix and move and wear. And then the next thing is to really really try not
[22:21]to be too precious because sometimes we get super attached to the words themselves as sentences,
[22:26]the prose. And they may be beautiful, but they may not actually serve the story the way they
[22:31]they need to, or they may not even serve the reading experience. And learning one of the big
[22:37]things I had to learn was how to cut, how to cut, how to trim, how to think about my audience as
[22:44]I write while still maintaining my own artistic integrity. So those are kind of the two things
[22:51]I'd say. Amazing. Well, Shirley, I'm so fun. Thank you so much. Really love this book between
[22:58]friends and lovers. Congratulations. And yeah, I'll be following along. Thank you so, so much
[23:04]as such a delight, Libby. Okay, you too. All right, bye. Thanks for listening to momstone
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