When I first heard about a debut novel from Kimmery Martin that interweaves female friendship, medicine, and motherhood, I thought to myself, yes please! As a public health person who always wanted to go into medicine, I love books that have to do with the medical world; and as a working mother, I am here for good stories about women juggling work and family. In The Queen of Hearts, friends Zadie and Emma are both doctors, and were also med school classmates. When another former classmate moves to the area, it changes everything, and it turns out Zadie and Emma don’t know each other as well as they thought.

I love The Queen of Hearts. It’s not often that we get a realistic portrayal of a medical profession juxtaposed with the job of motherhood. But before we get into your book, what have you done to maintain a space for yourself and your writing within motherhood?

First, I regard my writing as a legitimate career, deserving of time and space and respect, just as the practice of medicine is. I carved out a physical space in our house to dedicate to writing by commandeering an old desk in the playroom. (I redecorated too, although the garish play kitchen and gigantic box full of princess costumes in the room did not quite gel with my vision J.)

I also strive to teach my children to love literature and writing. They’re supportive of my new career because they understand it: books are treasures and being able to create one is magical and they’re proud of their mom. That being said, we often have twenty kinds of dysfunction roiling around here when I have a deadline.

In your novel, Zadie and Emma are physicians in Charlotte, NC. You’re a physician in Charlotte. Was there a personal inspiration for the book?

There was definitely a personal inspiration! Initially, though, it started with my desire to write about a group of med school friends, because that was such a formative period in my life: that work-hard, play-hard camaraderie you feel with the people who share the intensity of medical training fosters a deep, lasting connection. Not many people know this, but I actually wrote the past chapters of the book—the ones set in medical school—first, and then decided later to intersperse the two main characters’ present-day lives as wives and mothers. I thought: How interesting would it be to see how these guys turned out? And that let me examine the long-term consequences of the big secret one of them harbors.

I know this seems like a huge question, and one that I’m sure everyone will ask, but genuinely, how do you do it all? How do you work as a physician, write, and parent three children? I’m exhausted with one child! Given that each of these is a job in itself, how do you make time to write?

Yeah, I get this question a lot! I’ll say it straight-up: I am no kind of superwoman. I’m a genuine catastrophe when it comes to organization, in fact. But I have restructured my life in order for this writing thing to work out. My kids are now all in school—huge blow for freedom there—and I changed jobs from working in the ER to working in an office, so I’d be able to write more. I also enlist help whenever I can. And still, with all that, I let a lot of things fall through the cracks. So I do the thing where I ask myself what’s the worst thing that can happen if I fail? And in the ER, the worst thing that could happen was that I’d kill someone; so now, no matter what I mess up, it doesn’t seem like all that big a deal.

How has motherhood affected your writing?

Ha! First: the fodder. I wish SO MUCH I’d kept notes on the crazy, adorable, hilarious stuff they say and do. Now that strangers are reading my book, I’m experiencing the usual range of reactions from people who think the book is brilliant to people who… don’t. And that’s fine, because there’s nothing more subjective than someone’s opinion on a book. But if there is one near-universal compliment I get from readers, it’s that they love the portrayal of the children, particularly the three-year-old, Delaney. She gets more attention than the protagonists in many reviews, in fact, even though she’s a very minor character. (See what I did there? Bad joke!)

Conversely, how does being a writer affect your experience of motherhood?

I think I remember—and analyze—more of my children’s actions. In general, writing enhances your perception, because you’re always trying to get into your characters’ heads, and it forces you to think about how other people see things and why they do the things they do. So in that sense, it’s good. Right now, though, I am feeling some unease about the amount of time I am spending on the launch of my book. Yes, I know men are less likely to guilt-trip themselves over their work obligations, and yes, women should be afforded the same leeway. But dang, I hate it when I can’t be there all the time for my kids. This is less of an issue in writing than it was in medicine, however. I love that I’m demonstrating to my children the value and reward of hard work.

How does writing affect your work as a physician, and vice versa?

Ah. So many ways. As I mentioned before, I’m on hiatus from the ER right now. But there could not be a more perfect place to experience the range of human emotion and drama than an ER. It’s one of the reasons I love the job so much: physicians have the enormous privilege of attending to the best and worst of humanity. As I wrote in my afterword in The Queen of Hearts, doctors are there when you enter the world and we are there when you leave it. We possess immeasurable gifts: we can ease pain, we can fix problems, we can assuage suffering and sorrow. Or at least we can try. And we have the blessing of sharing the most intimate moments of people’s lives with them; which, if you are a good doctor, you handle with sensitivity and compassion. But also, if you are a human doctor, you sometimes screw that up. So all of this experience lends itself well to writing.

How has motherhood affected your tastes as a reader? What books inspire you, and what are you reading right now?

I read across pretty much all genres, although my favorites are women’s fiction, literary fiction, pop-science texts, and thrillers. I generally read more than one book at a time, and right now I’m working my way through Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow by Yuval Noah Harari, as well as an ARC of Meghan McLean Weir’s terrific debut novel, The Book of Essie. Motherhood has given me a familiarity with some new genres, because my son is a voracious reader—and he reviews books on my website! He picks great stuff—usually graphic novels and these very adventure-y action books. I’m now a really big fan of Kwame Alexander because of him.

What advice would you give to a writer trying to juggle parenthood and writing?

Use what’s in front of you! Take notes on your children: what they say, how they make you feel, their appearances. You may or may not use it directly in your writing but it will influence you and broaden your talent. And give up some stuff that doesn’t matter to get more time. You might not have to take on every volunteer thing you do. Maybe you could watch less TV. Start with small projects and work your way up. If you find writing so compelling that you think about it all the time when you’re not actually doing it, you’ll figure out a way.

What’s next on the horizon for you?

I’m working on a novel about a peripheral character from The Queen of Hearts—Georgia, one of the med school friends—and also a character-driven thriller about an obstetrician and her husband, a biotech venture capitalist.

Jaime Rochelle Herndon graduated with her MFA in creative nonfiction from Columbia and is a writer and editor living in NYC. She is a contributor at Book Riot and a writing instructor at Apiary Lit, and her writing can be seen on Healthline and New York Family Magazine, among others.