Gussin retires Nelson character in new novel

For many, retirement on Longboat Key means relaxing on the beach, golfing and playing tennis.
But for Patricia Gussin, retirement on the island meant starting a publishing company and writing bestsellers.

Gussin isn’t retiring any time soon, but she plans to retire one of her best-known characters: Dr. Laura Nelson, who is the subject of a four-part series of novels.

Gussin published the final book in the series, “After the Fall,” on Jan. 6. Each story takes place seven years after the conclusion of the previous book. Here’s what to expect in the latest book:

“Laura slips on the ice and falls, shattering her arm,” Gussin said. “A big pharmaceutical company has been trying to recruit her, and now she can’t go back to her real love of doing surgery, so she takes the job and runs into a really terrible situation with an FDA employee who is doing everything he can to stop the development of a drug for his own reasons.”

Like Laura Nelson, Gussin was a physician; her husband, Bob, was chief scientific officer for Johnson & Johnson. They retired on the same day — Feb. 1, 2000 — and moved to Longboat Key that year.

In 2005, the couple started Oceanview Publishing, which publishes mystery, suspense and thriller novels.

“What got us really involved was going to a lot of writers’ meetings,” Gussin said. “We met a lot of authors who were either very unhappy with their publisher or who were having trouble getting an agent or publisher.”

Oceanview Publishing started with the goal of working with three or four authors at a time but expanded to its current 95 clients. It publishes one book each month.

Gussin has also published six books with Oceanview.

“I never had any intention to write a book,” she said. “What got me started was in one of my last jobs, I had to do a lot of international traveling, and I had a lot of time on airplanes. I started reflecting back on my life as a medical student at Wayne State University in Detroit in the 1960s. I just pulled out a notebook on one of the flights, and that ended up as ‘Shadow of Death.’”

In 2014, Gussin’s novel “And Then There Was One” reached bestseller lists of the New York Times and USA Today and reached No. 1 on Barnes & Noble’s website, bn.com and No. 12 on Amazon.

“I’m very happy with my retirement,” she said. “The writing piece of it is great, and I love the publishing piece of it also. We have a great life here on Longboat Key.”