TV Tango: What was your motivation for venturing out of your comfort zone in TV to write a fictional book?

Neal Baer: Just to really have that experience of not having to collaborate, which I love doing. It's a truly collaborative process in television, but when you're writing a novel, it just falls on you. You're the makeup artist, the wardrobe person. You're describing everything, and doing it all in that sense. It all rests on your description. In television it starts with the script, and then it moves into many, many artistic arenas.

It was a challenge, and appealling to try something new in terms of telling a story.

TV Tango: How did your experience telling stories on TV help prepare you to write a book, especially a book series?

Neal Baer: Certainly writing for SVU and Mariska's character, Olivia Benson, was a great asset, because we had done so much research on different types of serial killings and forensic psychiatry. And we talked to so many experts that it was a natural place to go to. And also, the story structure of designing interesting twists and turns that are satisfying is something we always strived to do on SVU. That was good preparation.

ER was certainly good preparation for writing character, and now my show, A GIFTED MAN, is about character as well.

TV Tango: Is the film version of KILL SWITCH with Katherine Heigl still in development?

Neal Baer: It's still in development, and she's still attached.

TV Tango: Any chance of turning the concept into a TV series?

TV Tango: When do you plan to release the second installment of the book series?

Neal Baer: Next Winter. We have the next one coming out with the same characters, namely Dr. Claire Waters, who is a little further along in her fellowship and some of the other characters who didn't die in the first book. No one comes back as a ghost, like in A GIFTED MAN.

TV Tango: How was your research for the book similar to your research for SVU?

Neal Baer: What was weird, and this actually happened in the book too, we would go to experts and ask them, "What's on your mind? What are you thinking about? What are you worried about? What's on the horizon?"

Familial DNA, for instance. We were writing about it way before anybody else was talking about it. We did a show where Mariska looks for her brother by submitting her own DNA, and looking for a 50% match. Well, that's how they caught the Grim Sleeper in Los Angeles two years later, because they picked up his son. They didn't look for a 99% match, they looked for a lesser match. And they found that he matched in a way that they thought it was likely the Grim Sleeper was some close relative -- a brother or uncle or son. We would say the headlines were ripped from us.

TV Tango: What about A GIFTED MAN appealled to you after doing SVU?

Neal Baer: Well, I'm a pediatrician and I started on ER -- the first seven years; so I was interested in doing a medical series again -- but different from ER. I loved the high-tech world of the neurosurgeon who has access to every gizmo and gadget available and can perform miraculous surgeries, but they're limited to the people who can afford to see him and have the best insurance.

That's the upstairs aspect, but I love the downstairs aspect of Patrick Wilson's character working at a free clinic. There are two worlds of medicine, one mile apart in New York City. That epitomizes the medical system in the United States where people have various degrees of access, and we never talk about it. We just show it.

TV Tango: Had you been looking to incorporate the spiritual aspects of A GIFTED MAN into your previous shows?

Neal Baer: In some ways that's newer. We certainly didn't do it on ER, and not so much on SVU either. That is a new element that I am really interested in -- what constitutes healing? It's not just giving people medication and operating on them, there are a lot more complexities. I think that's a really appealling part of the show.

TV Tango: The dialogue with Michael Holt and his conscience, was that something you had in mind for a while?

Neal Baer: It came out of the pilot that he was conversing with Anna, and I didn't do the pilot. I had to figure out who was he really speaking to. Was he speaking to a ghost or was he speaking to his consience? I leave that up to the viewer -- the viewer may feel that she is a ghost, or the viewer may feel that she is his conscience.

I tried to develop that as we progressed through the season.

TV Tango: Does A GIFTED MAN have any big guest stars or stunts planned for Feb. 17 and later, when it switches to a 9pm time slot?

Neal Baer: We have a lead-in! [A GIFTED MAN had occupied the 8pm time slot, but starting February 17th, UNDERCOVER BOSS airs immediately before A GIFTED MAN, which moves to 9pm.]

We have Eriq LaSalle coming back big time for February 24th. He also directed the episode with Christina Milian [on February 17th]. I love that Michael Beach is in it, because that's a reunion for Eriq and Michael and me. We all worked together on ER.

TV Tango: You are bringing back a lot of people you've worked with in the past. If CBS renews the show, who would be near the top of your guest-star list for Season 2 of A GIFTED MAN?

Neal Baer: When you work with great actors, you want to find ways to work with them again. Like Mike Doyle. When we killed his character on SVU, I promised him when I did a new show I'd bring him back to life. He plays the anesthesiologist, Dr. Lance.

I'd love to work with Tony [Anthony] Edwards again. We've talked often about working together because I haven't worked with him since ER. George [Clooney] is busy. I've worked with Gloria [Reuben]. I've worked with Alex Kingston. I've worked with Kellie Martin, Eriq [LaSalle]. Many people from the show, but I haven't worked with Anthony.

TV Tango: You worked with Mariska on SVU and her husband, Peter Hermann, on A GIFTED MAN. Can we expect to see [their children] August, Amaya or Andrew working with you next?

Neal Baer: [Laughs] Maybe. Peter Hermann is a very good friend of mine. We definitely have Peter, and he's in some very emotional scenes.

TV Tango: Have you kept in contact with Mariska and others from SVU? I know you haven't watched SVU, but both shows do film in NYC...

Neal Baer: Yes, definitely. I talk to Mariska all the time. I see her when I'm in New York. I've been in touch with [Christopher] Meloni, and I've been in touch with Ice-T and [Richard] Belzer. And I saw Dann Florek not too long ago.

I have some of the directors directing my show, like Peter Leto, David Platt, Gus Makris, Jonathan Kaplan. That's four of them. It's great. David did three shows. Jonathan did two shows. Gus did two shows. Peter did one. Eight out of 15 shows were SVU directors.

TV Tango: If you had to compare your own bedside manner to one doctor on ER, which one had the most similar interactions with patients?

Neal Baer: [Without hesitation] Oh, I'd be a cross between Noah [Wyle's Dr. John Carter] and George [Clooney's Dr. Doug Ross]. I wrote so much out of my own life as a pediatrician for them. George's character was a pediatrician. We had an emergency physician on the show with me for the first three years, and we would fight about how to portray the doctors. He would pitch stories that were sort of the hard-edged side of being an emergency physician that might be more Tony Edwards' character and Eriq's character, and I would pitch the stories that were more focused on Noah or George.

TV Tango: In a recent interview on THE DOCTORS, you said you had helped many people who fainted at The Emmys? Can you share the names of anybody you helped?

Neal Baer: [Laughs]. No, I don't know who they were. Beautiful women in tight dresses, who were dehydrated because they had to fit into these dresses. It happened numerous times. Fortunately, no one had a serious problem. Typically, people are getting ready, and they want to fit into some beautiful, slinky, tight number, and so they don't eat and drink for a couple of days. Then bad things happen in the 100-degree heat.

TV Tango: What TV series are on your DVR, besides A GIFTED MAN, SVU and possibly ER?

Neal Baer: DOWNTON ABBEY, because I've loved Elizabeth McGovern forever and I put her on SVU. When she was kind of on hiatus and not working much, raising her kids, I begged her, "Please come and be a psychiatrist who teaches torture techniques." And she did. I'm really thrilled now that Shirley MacLaine is going to play her mother. That's the best. I love Shirley MacLaine. I love that show.

I really like HOMELAND. I think Claire Danes is terrific. It's a powerful show.