Ix-nay on the Death Cookies

A lot of days I like being a nurse. It's like you can speak the secret language of medicine that's a mystery to most people. And you can make people feel better. In oncology, the patients check-in and stay for weeks. Their families become like my family, for better or worse. Usually better. Recently we've had a spate of deaths, each followed by the arrival of pounds of baked goods. Like, enough cookies and cakes to feed a wedding party. I don't mean to be ungrateful, but your family member just died! You don't have to buy us pastries.

Rejection...

So, a couple weeks ago I got a rejection on my full from awesome agent Joan Paquette. She was very sweet. She said she just didn't connect with the main character (basically agent talk for 'not for me') and that the main conflict started too late in the book. I got on the carousel of self-despair and doubt for a couple of days and then hopped off and went back to my current WIP. I've got a fantastic idea for how to improve my rejected MS, but right now I'm focusing on my current project, which is flashier and more commercial, but still very meaningful to me.

She did offer to look at my future projects and EMLA is normally a closed house, so I got that goin' for me, right? Right?

My ABNA Publishers Weekly review

“Weird” kid Rin, and her devoted but stoic drummer boyfriend, JB, embrace their quirky, alternative personas in a tale that threatens to sink into the well-covered territory of high school social groups in sunny California. Instead, Rin, who’s already parenting herself, thanks to an alcoholic mother and a druggie gamer brother, is thrown for a loop when she becomes pregnant. Meanwhile, popular tennis ace and “pretty” Allison Field finds herself in the same situation and also must deal with the intrusion of the gorgeously exotic exchange student, Kem, who literally beats Ally at her own game. Allison, Rin and Kem foster an unlikely friendship, bonding over their efforts to recapture a sense of security. While the plot is thin, the characters are likeable and well developed, and their self-discovery involves moral issues and personal beliefs. Maturely handled complicated themes peppered with some sexuality provide an authentic view of modern teenagers.


Not bad actually, considering that the reviewer read a much older draft than I currently have being reviewed by an agent. I'll post whatever feedback I receive on my full once I hear back

The beauty of tears

Another day. Another cancer patient removed from a ventilator only to fade gracefully into the night, leaving behind wise-eyed stoic adults and inconsolable teens.

Teens who slump down to the floor like broken dolls. Teens who weep, openly, with no thought at all that they'll be viewed as 'making a scene.'

There's something gorgeous about the raw emotion of children, the sheer human responses elicited before people are programmed into believing that feelings are meant to be kept private, or at least in check.

It's not the dead people that get to me, it's the dying...

Him: I don't understand. I'm confused.
 Me: What the hell did I screw up now? What don't you understand, sir?
Him: I don't understand what I did to get cancer twice.
Me: Oh crap. You didn't do anything. The treatment from your previous cancer increases the chances of getting lymphoma. You were just unlucky.
Him: But why did I go through all the treatments five years ago if I was just going to get sick again? Why do I deserve cancer twice?
Me: It does seem like an awfully unfair burden. Would you like to talk to someone from social work or pastoral care?
Him: A priest? No, I'm Catholic. I can talk to God without a middleman.

Seriously, religious-type of folks, it does seem awfully cruel to make someone go through hell to beat cancer only to afflict them with a totally different cancer a couple years later. WTH is God thinking?

The New Job

Still within the ginormous cityscape of Award Winning Teaching Hospital, but a different building and a different department. What a difference a few hundred yards can make. Hilarious coworkers, approachable physicians, minimal blackstabbing and shit-talking.

First day=first ever chest compressions. I think I'm going to learn a lot.

Holy Crap

Running into Allison has advanced to the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award Quarterfinals. I should be thinking "Holy crap, that means my manuscript is in the top 5% of everyone who entered, and that includes published authors." But somehow, after insane amounts of revision on it in the last week (including a switch from past to present tense) all I can think is "Holy crap, someone legit from Publisher's Weekly is going to read that stinking pile of dog doo. They're going to read the parts that reek of propaganda, the graphic parts, the cliche parts, the lazy parts where I abandoned making each individual sentence come to life because I was in a hurry to get to the next juicy scene."

People say I'm too hard on myself. Sadly, this isn't a post of false modesty. This is a post of "Oh no, I've improved the story 300% since I entered it. I've fixed all those issues above and I'm working on the pacing." Oh well, all feedback from industry professionals will be helpful, right? Even if it leaves me broken and bleeding...