I’m a real person. I swear.

I mean, this isn’t me. It’s what I think a Channing Peterson would look like, if he existed. Someone by the name of Channing Peterson would write Life Support. A guy that looks like this is a good Channing Peterson.

While this photo was generated with AI, I can assure you that all the words that make up this and future novels come from my own brain, inspired by the movies and books that were a huge part of my adolescent and young adult years.

My actual name is Peter Chan. I’m not that ashamed of it: I quite like it, in fact. So why bother hiding it? People, if they actually cared, would figure that shit out in 5 minutes. But who would read a medical crime thriller by anyone named Peter Chan? I did a Google search: so far, no one. Not a very promising start.

I needed a better name. One that evokes Robin Cook or Jeffery Deaver or Elmore Leonard or Michael Connelly. No middle initial. Caucasian, boring to look at, but with a massive 10-inch Y-chromosome just unapologetically on display, just hanging out there, flapping in the breeze. People on the subway will be forced to look at it whether they want to or not. A man’s name for a man’s book, to be sold at airports, left in the common room at backpacker hostels and read on the way to work. Channing Peterson.

And fine. Not just for men. It’s not a hair dye. I would very much like people who identify as any gender to want to read this book. It’s a medical thriller, set in post-COVID Melbourne. It aspires to be the medical equivalent of a Liam Neeson movie, and the literary equivalent of Doritos. Like Doritos, it will be something almost everyone will enjoy, even though most people will never admit to that. It will be well constructed, tasty, but ultimately empty literary calories that can be purchased at any newsstand or K-Mart checkout. It may also give you indigestion.

When people ask what I had for dinner last night, I tend to lie and say “kale salad” (Jasper Fforde) instead of the truth (Buzzfeed). I want this book to be the whole, unapologetic truth for you: that you spent the entire night on the couch eating Doritos because they were meticulously constructed to be impossible to put down, and that you could forget about your poor life choices for the nine hours it took to consume them.