When you’re a doctor running a thriving family practice, there’s never the time or the energy to sit down and write that novel you’ve had bubbling away inside you. When you also start teaching medicine to aspiring doctors, that dream seems even further away.

Something always keeps popping up, like being asked to help build the curriculum for a new medical school in the middle of a desert in faraway Dubai. Or working an eight-year stint as vice-president of the American Association of Medical Colleges in Washington, D.C.

Who’s going to say “no,” when the University of Toronto offers you the position of associate dean of medicine, or when McMaster University — in your hometown of Hamilton — invites you to chair its continuing education program in health sciences?

Then there was that consulting gig in Australia. It was nice living in Melbourne for three months.

If it wasn’t one thing, it was another for Dave Davis.

He did get to write — more than 150 peer-reviewed academic papers — and edit three scholarly books on continuing education. But not that novel.

Thank goodness for retirement. (Well, it’s actually semi-retirement, since Dave is still listed as a visiting professor at that medical school in Dubai. After all, he’s only 77.)

“He’s had this story in his mind, ever since he was a little kid,” says Maureen Davis about the publication of her husband’s first novel “A Potter’s Tale,” a 325-page thriller written in the style of bestselling authors like Dan Brown.

Maureen ought to know what’s in Dave’s mind. The couple has been married for 54 years, meeting in Grade 13 at Westdale high. Maureen is exactly 15 days younger than Dave. They have a son, a daughter and two grandchildren.

Westdale was also where Dave got the writing bug. He was a high school reporter there for The Spectator back in 1960. He loved the way the sports columnists painted their scenes with words.

“I’ve always wanted to be a writer,” Dave says. “The Spec started me off.”

Dave went on to Western studying English and history, with dreams of entering journalism. But he switched to medicine. It seemed like a more direct way to make the world a better place. That’s the sort of guy Dave is.

Maureen and Dave are sitting in their Creekside condo in Dundas, chatting about how Dave finally got around to write that first novel. A copy of “A Potter’s Tale” sits proudly on the coffee table. It’s published by California-based Story Merchant Books and available on Amazon.com.

The book’s plot is grounded in history, but drips with interlocking conspiracy theories and sci-fi improbabilities.

Somehow, Dave manages to weave together the mysteries of the ancient Mayan calendar with global warming, the Kennedy assassination, a secret Vatican society, the big bang theory (not the TV show), master decoder Alan Turing, and former vice-president Dick Cheney. Meanwhile, two intrepid reporters (one holds a medical degree) race to save the world from extinction.

It’s a bit far-fetched — did I mention the parallel universe?— but loads of fun. Even disgraced ex-president Richard Nixon plays a role.

When Dave sorta-retired five years ago, he couldn’t stop talking about this book he had inside him. His daughter Deanne finally put her foot down, telling him to put up or shut up.

To keep things on track, Maureen bought Dave a five-day writers’ retreat in Carmel, Cal., for his 72nd birthday. There, he wrote all day and got critiqued at night. The writing coach liked his work and found him an agent.

It took a year to finish the first draft. Then he went through the brutal process of editing, chopping the original down from 600 pages to the current 352. His agent shopped the finished product to traditional publishers. In the end, however, Dave settled on Story Merchant, helping to finance the book’s publication himself.

Dave found the experience exhilarating. He kept on writing and has become a regular contributor to the Spectator’s opinion pages, writing humorous columns often drawn from his 40 years as a family doctor.

And he’s already three-quarters through his second novel. And what is it about?

“I don’t believe the great pyramid was built as a tomb,” he answers with a wry smile.

grockingham@thespec.com

905-526-3331 | @RockatTheSpec