Dr. Kevin Shuey shares his journey from a jukebox-filled childhood to becoming a renowned oncologist and celebrated author. With a unique blend of science fiction and historical accuracy, ‘Bad Love Tigers’ delights readers and critics alike. Angie Austin dives into Dr. Shuey’s process of balancing his demanding career while pursuing creative endeavors, including his entrepreneurial efforts in skincare and his ongoing legacy in oncology.
SPEAKER 01 :
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SPEAKER 03 :
Welcome to The Good News with Angie Austin. Now, with The Good News, here’s Angie.
SPEAKER 07 :
Hey there, it’s Angie Austin here with The Good News. And The Good News is Dr. Kevin Shuey is back. He is an entrepreneur. He is an inventor. He is a doctor, a cancer doctor, an oncologist. And also, he is an author. And we are talking about his new book, Bad Love Tigers, part of what he calls the Bad Love Gang. Welcome back, Dr. Shuey.
SPEAKER 05 :
Hey, Angie. It’s so great to be with you today. I’m really excited to visit with you.
SPEAKER 07 :
You know, I have been going through, I’ve followed you since I interviewed you a few years back, and you’ve been all over the world, and you’ve been traveling all over the world to, interestingly enough, not practice as a doctor, which you do full-time. You’ve been going all over the world to get awards for your books and your screenplays. It’s mind-blowing. Yeah.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, so Bad Love Tigers that we’re kind of talking about today has won over 400 international awards. I wish I could say that I traveled to 400 different destinations to accept all those, but the reality is I still work full-time as a radiation oncologist here in Indiana. Yeah, I try to go when I can, and otherwise, you know, the awards have just kept coming in. And even Bad Love Strikes, I’ve rewrote the screenplay to the first book last year, finishing just at the beginning of this year and started putting it on the circuit, and it’s now winning awards. So it just won at Cannes. in France for best surprise ending. I mean, come on. I’ve never won that award before. I’m really excited about how this is working out.
SPEAKER 07 :
You know, I just actually read that you won for Best Surprise Ending, and I saw you were in Cannes, and I was like, oh, did he win anything? Did he win anything? Because you do little movies or reels, you know, on your Instagram. And so I don’t know at the beginning of the reel, and I’m like, come on, come on. I’m trying to click through faster, but you can’t do that on your movies. I had to wait.
SPEAKER 05 :
It’s so cool that you follow me on Instagram because I always put music, you know, because the books all have, the books and screenplays have soundtracks and it’s all great music from the 60s and 70s. And so that’s really fun. I always keep the Instagram folks in suspense for a little bit as it starts so that they don’t see what I won right out of the gate. So you actually, yeah, you have to actually watch it.
SPEAKER 07 :
Well, I see you were in my neck of the woods not long ago. I saw what I believed to be the Broadmoor in the background in Colorado Springs in the back of one of your photos and one of your film awards trips.
SPEAKER 05 :
I’m so glad you mentioned that. So actually, The Broadmoor is featured in Bad Love Tigers, the screenplay and the book. And I have had a relationship with The Broadmoor for literally almost two decades. And I really hope that when this movie gets put together and on the screen that we actually do some shooting at the Broadmoor. And it’s just so historic there. I love it. It’s kind of mind blowing to me that people that live out in Colorado maybe haven’t even been to the Broadmoor yet. I mean, you can just go and park there and walk around. It’s like going to Austria and there you are in Colorado. So but anyway, I just love that place and the history of it. And hopefully that’ll be part of the big screen production of this screenplay.
SPEAKER 07 :
You know what else I think is really neat about the Broadmoor, on a side note, even though we’re talking about your book, that Penrose, I believe, who was the big mucky muck at the Broadmoor, built a zoo up above the hotel. And the fact that it’s become the only mountain zoo, I believe, if my understanding is correct, in the world – And that it has improved so much over the last few years. It is one of the best zoos I’ve ever been to. And a mountain zoo, I mean, you’ve really got to be in for some hiking because it is not straight terrain by any means. And it is phenomenal. It started as his little fun zoo.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, it’s the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo. And actually, you can pet the giraffes there and feed the giraffes lettuce there. And, you know, one of my if you look back on one of my Instagram posts.
SPEAKER 04 :
You’ll see me feeding one of the giraffes over my shoulder, and the giraffe just stuck its nose right over my shoulder and grabbed the lettuce. It was a great pick. It wasn’t really planned.
SPEAKER 07 :
Yeah, I saw that. It reminded me. I took my kids. They’re teenagers now, but when they were toddlers, we used to go feed them. And if they lick your hair, it’s quite a hairdo that you get when you’re done because if you haven’t been licked by a giraffe, I mean – It’s definitely, you know, it’s like a wet broom. You know, it’s a big tongue.
SPEAKER 05 :
It’s a drenching experience.
SPEAKER 07 :
All right. So as we start into you, you know, you bring an author, you mentioned your cancer doctor. Tell people what else you do as well. And then we’re going to get into Bad Love Tigers because I think there’s some neat things besides you, you know, going to these famous hotels like the Broadmoor. So tell us about you and your background.
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, really, I’m a native of St. Louis, Missouri, and grew up in the 60s and early 70s. So the screenplays actually go back and forth from 1974, 1975 to World War II. And my dad served under MacArthur in the Philippines in World War II. And I And so we grew up with a jukebox in our basement. My dad at that time was a jukebox vendor in St. Louis County. And we had all the latest 45 RPMs that came out. I have two older sisters. and they would listen to all that music and dance um dance the night away and i would sit there and watch all that when i was a little boy and i was imprinted with this music brain from growing up that way and my oldest sister kathy she and i were just time travel fanatics we would watch any movie or tv show about time travel growing up and um You know, it was in November of 2018, Kathy was being treated for breast cancer, and I read this story of the Phantom Fortress, which was a B-17 bomber in World War II that landed at a British air base in Kortenberg, Belgium, and there was no one on the plane. I mean, and so I thought to myself, you know, time travelers could this was all documented, by the way, we would we would call it fake news. But, you know, your listeners can Google the Phantom Fortress. It is part of the history books of World War Two. and um and i thought to myself well time travelers could have been on that plane and zap back to the future before it landed and honestly um angie that was the that was the bolt of lightning that struck me and got me writing my first book and so um that’s kind of how it all started now um you’ve got uh
SPEAKER 07 :
an interest in history, time travel, and writing, and then of course a doctor, but you kind of put this all together. I love that you take some, it’s fiction, but you have some real history facts within there. In fact, President Roosevelt plays a big part in this book. I’m assuming you did a lot of research on him in addition to other history that’s included in the book?
SPEAKER 05 :
Oh, yeah. You know, you talked about me traveling. So I spent some time in Warm Springs, Georgia, at the Little White House, which is where Roosevelt would go to take time out in the springs. You know, he either had Guillain-Barre syndrome or polio, but he didn’t have much use of his lower extremities. But when he would go in those those mineral springs in warm springs georgia that was the best he felt and he literally built the little white house uh custom built that in warm springs i encourage all the listeners to to go there sometime because it’s just a marvelous national historic um place and so yeah i I really, so I’m a radiation oncologist. I was really good in math and physics growing up and went to medical school and did a rotation in radiation and realized, oh, this is a natural fit for me. And when I started writing the time travel, I really brought my background in physics forward with the writing. And so there’s been, there’ve been some pretty cool things that have happened along the way, specific with Bad Love Tigers, which we’re visiting about. I don’t know, Angie, if you remember this, but about a year ago, it could be two years ago, there’s a decorated Afghanistan Air Force veteran named David Grush, And he worked for the National Reconnaissance Office on Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon, otherwise known as UFOs. And he was a whistleblower in Congress that he’s seen these crashes and actually has seen, quote unquote, UFO pilots. And so… That, coupled with the Oppenheimer movie coming out about two years ago about the Manhattan Project, just all so totally ties in with the story of Bad Love Tigers.
SPEAKER 07 :
Yeah, I love it that you put some, you know, facts in there with the fiction. And I had been reading that that whistleblower said the government knows about these alien visitors and had covered it up. You know, there are some light night radio shows that people, you know, listen to. They’re fascinated by this topic, but there’s so much mystery surrounding it that it isn’t something that’s. On the main page of the newspaper, you know, it’s all kind of covert when people talk about these things. So I love that you had a little bit about the whistleblower background when I was reading about the book. And you – when we talk about Bad Love Tigers, you mentioned your sister. The book is dedicated to your sister. Can you talk about – you know, how she influenced your writing, your story. And I know that you do put real people in your books. You, Kevin Bubblebutt Shuey, that’s you. So I know you’ve got some real characters. Tell us about her influence and is she in any of your books?
SPEAKER 05 :
So actually both sisters. So I dedicated the first book, Bad Love Strikes, to my sister Kathy, who was going through breast cancer treatment at that time. For the listeners, she had actually a virulent form of breast cancer known as triple negative breast cancer, and it was stage three at diagnosis. And being a cancer doctor now for I’m starting my 39th year in the practice of cancer medicine, Angie, on July 1st and for all these years. So I really supervised and handpicked her medical team. And I’m happy to say that it’s nearly eight years now and she’s cancer free and cured.
SPEAKER 07 :
But hey, Doc, let’s take a break and we’ll come back because I want to hear more about your sisters and that dedication. We’ll be right back.
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SPEAKER 06 :
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SPEAKER 07 :
All right. Welcome back to Good News. Continuing our discussion with Dr. Kevin Shuey. He’s been on the program before. And if you are just joining us, we are speaking about the latest in his series of books, Bad Love Tigers. And we were talking about your sister, your sister who was being treated for breast cancer and how you oversaw that as you are an oncologist and an author. And you were talking about how each one of the sisters you’ve dedicated a book to. So go ahead and continue that train of thought.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, so Kathy had to go through six months of chemotherapy and had double mastectomy with reconstruction. She was BRCA1 positive, so she was carrying the gene for breast cancer. And anyway, it was triple negative in stage three. But after chemotherapy and mastectomy, they could not find a single viable cancer cell. Thank goodness. Ever since that time and her reconstruction, she’s been in remission and just doing great.
SPEAKER 07 :
It helps to have a brother in the oncology business, apparently.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, I think that it really did come in handy. And so the other sister, Denise, also proved to be BRCA1 positive. And so she had never been treated for breast cancer before. And so she did prophylactic mastectomy and reconstruction. And so both sisters have played a big role in my life. I started out earlier by talking about how they loved music as we were growing up. And so I got imprinted with this music brain of songs from the 60s and 70s, which are really fun. And For those folks out there that read the books, the Bad Love Tiger book, I tell them, tell Alexis to play You’re So Vain by Carly Simon, because I call the songs out as they appear in the book, and it makes it a more immersive experience. Yeah.
SPEAKER 07 :
Yeah, I like that you have that link to the song so that it is like a soundtrack to the book, which, of course, puts you in a perfect position to be turning these books into screenplays. And if you didn’t hear at the beginning, over 400 awards, was that just for this book or was that for the last one?
SPEAKER 05 :
No, that’s just for Bad Love Tigers, and so Bad Love Strikes is now out there winning, including the latest one, as you saw, the press release for the Cannes Script Festival with the best twist ending. And, you know… all of the books and the screenplays are full of action. They’re really crossing genres, Angie. I mean, they’re historic fiction with a twist of science fiction and then action adventure. It’s kind of like, you know, I would say Teenage Goonies meets Raiders of the Lost Ark. It would be our, you know… Back to the Future thrown in there as well, and maybe Stand By Me.
SPEAKER 07 :
I’m really excited for them to be made into movies, and it seems inevitable with all the awards that you’re getting. And just on a side note, if you don’t mind my mentioning that books aren’t the first thing you’ve written. I understand that every year you write a skit for cancer survivors since you are a doctor and you’re treating so many cancer patients that you put on with the other doctors. That’s hilarious. Could you tell us a little bit about that? I mean, I know you’re not getting awards for that, but I love it.
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, it actually, I did that all the way up until COVID, but not since COVID, but I did that for about eight or nine years. And I would write a skit and the answer to the questions that the doctors would pose to each other, playing the roles of, you know, we did Guardians of the Galaxy one year.
SPEAKER 06 :
Oh, I love it.
SPEAKER 05 :
And so so they would ask the questions and the answers to the question would be clips from songs from the 60s, 70s and 80s. And then we would all dance and make fools of ourselves.
SPEAKER 07 :
Oh, my gosh.
SPEAKER 05 :
In front of a thousand people. And, you know, the patients really love that. They love to see that their doctors are just regular people and, you know, regular flesh and blood and out there having fun. So it really was an amazing run to have done that. But you’re right. That was more the genesis of my writing than even my books.
SPEAKER 07 :
That is so funny. I could see that they would love it. And you must work with a great bunch of doctors for them to play along with your shenanigans.
SPEAKER 05 :
Absolutely. And and, you know, they’re they’re not going to do it unless they’re actually willing to. We can’t exactly hog tie them and make them do it. So they have to have a little bit of be a little less than shy, let’s say.
SPEAKER 07 :
You know, you mentioned your award at Cannes, which is one of the more recent ones. And, you know, we’ll give you the info to follow Dr. Shui on social media. But when I looked at all the different places you went, including France, to receive these awards, and I know you haven’t gone to every location for the over 400 awards just for this book. How do you balance that with your medical career? And then I know you’re quite an entrepreneur, so you’re going to tell us about your other businesses as well, but you’re pretty busy.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, you know, it’s better than the alternative. Yeah. The alternative would be to be bored. I don’t know, Angie. I think that God blessed me with a high energy level, and so I really do stay busy. I mean, I write at night and on weekends, and whenever I get a spare chance, if I’m on a plane, I’m usually writing or jotting down or recording ideas. And So I think it has to do kind of with the way that I’m genetically wired. And my parents both lived into their 90s. And really, my sisters and I, we look back at my parents’ lives, and they were really very active until they were 85. And it really was about 85 when they slowed down. And so I just don’t really have any plans to slow down.
SPEAKER 06 :
Does your family get to see you?
SPEAKER 05 :
Oh, sure. Yeah.
SPEAKER 06 :
I saw them on some of the trips. Is that beautiful blonde one of your daughters?
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah. Yeah, that’s Ashley. She lives out in the Beaver Creek Vale area.
SPEAKER 06 :
Oh, not far from me.
SPEAKER 05 :
And the other daughter lives in Laguna, California.
SPEAKER 06 :
That’s like my dream place to retire.
SPEAKER 05 :
And one of the sisters in Charlotte, Virginia, and the other in Colorado Springs. And so we’re scattered about, but we do get together, absolutely. And so life is good.
SPEAKER 07 :
That is good for you. Explain what you do as an entrepreneur. Tell us about your other businesses because it’s hard to believe you could do anything else. And again, you’ve got to follow us on social media. It’s fun just to kind of live vicariously through what you’re doing now.
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, I did start Elite Therapeutics, which is a skin care company. And I’m a big believer in vitamin E. And so, um, you know, vitamin E is a scavengers, a free radical formation. And so, um, and it has hyaluronic acid, which draws, um, water into the tissues and, um, All the antioxidants. And so I got interested in that being a radiation oncologist for my breast cancer patients. I wanted them to have a good therapeutic vitamin E cream skin care to prevent radiation reactions. And that’s how I got involved in that.
SPEAKER 07 :
That’s super cool. And is there anything else I’m afraid to ask?
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, for a while I was involved in a green energy company called Biospace, but we actually closed that company about two years ago because we just couldn’t seem to get it to gain enough traction with competing with the oil companies. I can imagine. Yeah. But that doesn’t mean I’m not open to something like that in the future. So, yeah, I think with my books and screenplays right now, they really keep me in my full practice of medicine. That all keeps me plenty busy.
SPEAKER 07 :
All right. I want to make sure we’ve got a few more minutes left, but I’m interested in the skin care line. So tell us how to find that and to find your books and your social media.
SPEAKER 05 :
Elite therapeutics dot com is the Web site for the skin care. And for the books, I have a website. And so it’s www.kevinschewy.com. And it’s spelled K-E-V-I-N-S-C-H-E-W-E. And it’s really a fun website because there are – I’m sure you’ve looked at it. There are – uh, um, the, the clips of, um, each of the, each of the books, uh, has, you know, a little mini movie, um, or a book trailer, if you will. And those are really cool to watch and they’re on the front page of the website. So www.kevinshuey.com and then real Kevin Shuey. Um, I’m at real Kevin Shuey on Instagram and on Tik TOK. And so I do my posting on Instagram, as you know, but I do also have a presence on TikTok.
SPEAKER 07 :
Excellent. Yeah, I follow you on Instagram. I haven’t done the TikTok, but I know with my kids, it’s extremely popular. You’re getting up towards 100,000 followers. That’s pretty cool. Is most of that through your books? Yes.
SPEAKER 05 :
You know, I think it’s been organic through the books and the screenplays, you know, because of all the wins all over the world. I do, I have followers from probably just about every continent on the globe right now. And a lot of that has been from 400 international wins from the screenplay, which is just so hard to believe. I mean, I don’t know. Sometimes I just have to pinch myself about that.
SPEAKER 07 :
Yeah, I mean, and it’s not something that you start. I mean, you actually started writing the books, at least more seriously writing, you know, later on-ish in life.
SPEAKER 05 :
And you know, Angie, it’s not like you know these people, and so therefore they like you and they choose your screenplay to win these awards. I don’t know any of these people. I mean, these awards are winning because they really love the screenplay. And that’s what keeps me motivated to find the right fit and team in Hollywood to make these movies, because Hollywood Um, that is my ultimate goal is to see these movies either as a Netflix series or to see them on the big screen one way or the other.
SPEAKER 06 :
And is that looking pretty promising?
SPEAKER 05 :
That will happen. Well, I do have a company that’s shopping the screenplays to the studios out in Los Angeles and Hollywood. And, um, I get a lot of traffic on Inktip, which is another way to get your screenplays out to the international community to read them and to see if they’re interested. And I even have a profile on IMBD, and that’s the the database that Amazon actually started IMBD, and so I get traction there as well.
SPEAKER 07 :
Well, I have to tell you, Dr. Kevin Shuey, I just get such a kick out of having you on the show. You’re invited back any time, and I love this review as we wrap things up. A mind-blowingly historically correct time travel adventure, and that’s about bad love tigers. Thank you, friend. Can’t wait to have you back on again, and congratulations on all your success with the book.
SPEAKER 05 :
Thanks, Angie. It’s been so great visiting with you. Thanks so much. You bet.
SPEAKER 03 :
Thank you for listening to The Good News with Angie Austin on AM670 KLTT.