Meet DP Lyle
Please tell us about your current line of work and how you got started in it. Please include any awards or upcoming projects.
For the past few decades, I've had two jobs. For 45 years, I practiced cardiology here in Orange County California as well as expanded my writing, teaching, and story consulting careers. I recently retired from medicine and now devote my full-time to writing and to the development, along with Kathleen Antrim, of the Outliers Writing University. It is an online school where we teach the next generation of writers to produce publishable manuscripts. We have an excellent group of working, award-winning, best-selling authors who teach in our programs. Our Online Ongoing Writing University consists of two classes per month, every month, month after month, in an ongoing fashion. I just published UNBALANCED, the 7th book in my Jake Longly series, and next month will release TUNICA, the 4th in my Cain/Harper series. I try to complete two novels a year, one in each of my active series. I also had a short story published in the recent Bouchercon 2024 anthology and was a nominee for Killer Nashville's Silver Falchion Award in the Comedy Category for CULTURED (Jake Longly #6).
Do you have any mentors or sources of inspiration?
My mentors are the books I read. Writers must read and they must do so broadly. Not just in the genre that they write, but in others as well. There is something to learn from each type of story. Like medicine, fiction writing is an apprenticeship. In medicine, you learn from other physicians who know more than you, while in fiction writing you learn from other authors. Therefore, reading is essential. Many authors have influenced my storytelling and writing ability, but if I had to pick two that were the most influential it would be James Lee Burke and Elmore Leonard. There is a great deal to learn from each of them.
What parts of your work do you enjoy most? Why?
I love creating characters and scenes, and ultimately a completed manuscript. It's the storytelling part that is the most fun. I am a pantser so I don't outline. I simply have a couple of scenes in mind when I start a story, I begin writing, and see where it goes from there. The fun part is the things you discover along the way. To me, that's the most enjoyable part of writing. Secondly, I truly love teaching. Outliers Writing University offers many opportunities to do that.
What are your favorite things to do when you have free time?
I read, play golf, and travel.
Are there any dream projects you'd like to pursue?
Right now that would be the Outliers Writing University. I love to teach and so Outliers produces many projects for doing that. One of the things I'm most excited about is that we are just now kicking off our first Outliers Boot Camp, where we work hands-on with a small group of students on their current manuscript. We are also establishing Outliers Publishing to offer writers another path to publication. Fun stuff.
How can we learn more about you?
Website: https://www.dplylemd.com
Outliers Writing University: https://www.outlierswritinguniversity.com
X/Twitter: https://x.com/DPLyleMD
FB: https://www.facebook.com/dplylemd
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dp-lyle-md-5368a816/
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/4519359-dp-lyle
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