Melissa R. Collings is the author of the new novel The Love Operation. Her other books include The False Flat. She is a former spine surgery physician associate, and she lives in Nashville.
Q: What inspired you to write The Love Operation, and how did you create your character Dr. Cordelia Wren?
A: The book grew out of my fascination with memory, but also with how obsessed we are with the past. We replay old conversations, imagine the paths we did not take, and wonder whether we would make different choices if we could return to certain moments with everything we know now.
I began asking what would happen if the past were no longer murky and we could revisit our memories exactly as they occurred.
Once I decided to use my medical background as part of the story, Cordelia appeared almost fully formed. She was a brilliant, ambitious spine surgeon who trusted science more than sentiment and believed discipline and hard work could solve nearly any problem.
That made her exactly the right person to have her carefully controlled life disrupted by a technology that asks her to reconsider her past.
Q: Can you say more about how your medical background influenced the writing of the novel?
A: I worked as a physician associate in spine surgery, so the hospital setting and Cordelia’s career were shaped by a world I knew very well.
I wanted the medicine to feel authentic, but I was equally interested in the emotional culture of medicine—the ambition, sacrifice, hierarchy, and pressure to remain composed no matter what is happening internally.
That background also helped me write Cordelia as a complete person rather than simply “a woman doctor.” She is very good at what she does, and her career is not just a backdrop. It is part of her identity and one of the great loves of her life.
Q: What do you think the novel says about memory?
A: I think the novel suggests that memory is both powerful and unreliable. We build our identities around the stories we tell ourselves about the past, but those stories may be incomplete, distorted, or shaped by who we were when something happened.
Even if we could remember every detail perfectly, we would still be interpreting those moments through the person we are now. The facts of the past matter, but so does the meaning we choose to give them.
Q: Did you know how the novel would end before you started writing it, or did you make many changes along the way?
A: I knew a great deal about the book when I began, at least the general storyline and memory aspects, but I was not entirely sure how I wanted it to end, especially the romance aspect of the story. I love leaving room for my characters to surprise me and allowing myself to discover what happens—or what should happen—as I write.
My stories almost invariably evolve along the way. Characters reveal things I did not anticipate, relationships deepen, and new developments send the original plan straight out the window. For me, that discovery is one of the most exciting parts of writing.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I write romantic books as Melissa R. Collings and psychological thrillers as M. R. Collings, so I’m working on two projects at once.
I’m excited about a really fun romance idea that once again plays with memory, but in a completely different way. I’m hoping my publisher loves it as much as I do!
I’m also working on my next psychological thriller, a dark, medical tale that is scheduled to come out September 2027, following my first thriller release January 2027.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: Although The Love Operation is romantic and funny, I hope readers also find it thought-provoking. It explores ambition, friendship, identity, and the strange ways we allow the past to shape the lives we build.
At its heart, it asks what happens when the life you carefully planned collides with the life—and the person—you once left behind.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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