By Matt Skoufalos
Throughout his 35-year medical imaging career, Chris Beasley has experienced sweeping shifts in the job. From starting as a darkroom tech in an outpatient imaging center in the 1980s to running the radiology department at the University of Missouri Healthcare, he’s held a variety of positions at facilities across the country.
But the pace of such a career can burn out even the most stalwart of hearts. In 2019, Beasley decided he needed a break.
“After many years in the business, I was really tired,” Beasley said. “I took some time off and began looking after my health. One of the ways I was doing that was walking.”
His constitutionals took Beasley through the natural beauty of the Platte River trail systems in Casper, an 11-mile network of old growth trees, wildlife sanctuaries and mountain views. The scenery that surrounded him offered the freedom to let his mind wander, and when it did, Beasley found himself visualizing elements of a story that started to coalesce in his head.
“I started to get these scenes in my mind, and when I came home, I would turn those into chapters,” he said. “I think it was just a moment that I had in time where I wasn’t in the daily grind of imaging, and allowing myself to do something other than imaging.”
Beasley describes himself as a reader with a preference for audio books and an interest in science fiction and crime thrillers, especially plots that involve a heist. He counts Tom Clancy as his favorite writer.
And yet, for the clarity of the imagery in his mind and his interest in literature, Beasley was a novice writer who hadn’t ever tried his hand at fiction writing. So, he began to explore the mechanics of crafting a story from the outside in.
“You realize that sometimes getting your thoughts out is the easy part; developing and getting your thoughts across correctly is the hard part,” Beasley said. “I took a page from radiologists: I came home, and I sat down, and started telling the story through voice dictation software.”
“I would come home, describe the scenes, pull it back apart, and try to format it as a book,” he said. “I could verbally get all of my thoughts out quickly, and then turn around and become an editor.”
The support he received from his wife, Deona, who became his first editor, was invaluable in the early going, Beasley said. With her help, he had the initial draft of a novel completed in five weeks.
The tale, “Executing Justice: Concrete, Crooks, and Blood,” is a story of a group of local people who find themselves dealing with an organized crime outfit exploiting the corruption in their community. Its central character, the enigmatic Eli, is introduced as “kind of the guy who guides things from the side,” Beasley said, while the supporting characters, three ordinary citizens, find themselves drawn deeper into “a dark place.”
“The theme is that one of our basic human needs, no matter who you are, is justice,” he said. “We need things to be fair, and we need things that are not right to get set right. I think we as consumers of entertainment love that stuff because we see the injustices in our work and in society, and when we see heroes that can combat that stuff, we just love that.”
Beasley said the book reflects his own moral impulses, to “do the right thing and stand up for the right things when we see something that’s unjust.”
To polish up the work, he employed freelance editors from Fiverr, and quickly learned what every novice writer discovers: how to negotiate the relationship over your work with a colleague who’s not as attached to it in the same way. When he was satisfied with the finished product, Beasley published his story directly through Amazon.com as an independent writer. The book is available at https://a.co/d/5wAqUOP
“I really enjoyed the independent aspect of it, and not having to jump through the hoops of a publisher,” he said.
After the story was completed, Beasley promoted it with a cross-country motorcycle tour that doubled as an opportunity to visit some former colleagues and coworkers from throughout his career.
He rode his Kawasaki Concours 14, a sport touring bike, from Wyoming to North Carolina, Tennessee, and down to Florida; then back through Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas before returning home. In all, his journey took him through 17 different states over a month and a half.
“It was really a way to reconnect with folks that I had met over the previous 20 years,” Beasley said. “That was the best part. Any time I get a chance, I take my bike out when the weather’s good and I go for a ride.”
Although Beasley said he enjoyed the experience of writing, self-publishing, and promoting his work, he doesn’t believe he’ll have the capacity to revive the experience until retirement. The opportunity that presented itself to him the first time isn’t likely to come around again in his current work schedule.
“Doing what I do every day, I don’t have the emotional bank account to do it,” Beasley said. “Being in a very scientific career that is also financially driven; to escape all of that, I could escape into the story. You can take the fiction anywhere you want.”
Even so, Beasley said, the opportunity to stretch his mind and heart into areas outside of his vocation were invaluable life experiences, and he would encourage anyone else to follow their curiosity in the same way.
“I think that everybody needs a moment in their life to explore a world outside of their profession, and that’s what it was for me,” Beasley said. “Everybody needs a way out of the grind to feed their soul, and for me that is through writing.”
