Screw It - I’m Self-Publishing

Hey there. Welcome to my very first blog. Are you really willing to sit through this? If so, you have my thanks. I’ll keep things short if not sweet to take it easy on you.

It’s liberating to just sit down and write the first thing that comes to mind. I’m used to working off a rigid story plot. That’s how I write my novels. More about that in a few moments.

I’m blessed to have a successful career in medicine. I love what I do and plan to continue for many years. My practice challenges me and rewards me with a sense of purpose and accomplishment. Not to mention it keeps the lights on. But writing has always been a part of my life, and now it, along with self-publishing, are the areas in which my creativity can expand and flourish.

Looking back at my life, I see a pattern. When things get rough, and I mean really rough, and I am stressed, I write to relieve the pressure. I think I’ve done it since I was a child and kept on doing it, not even realizing why I felt compelled to write at certain times.

When I began my surgical internship at the age of twenty-six, I had no idea how difficult it would be. It was the year from hell, full of exhausting work and no appreciation or support from the power structure that employed (enslaved) me. HIV had just hit the world and we had no idea how to deal with it, so the risk of death, literally lurking around every corner, didn’t help make life easier. I’m writing about this period now in my second novel, The Big Prick, and I’m about three-fourths of the way through it. TBP’s forty scenes are carefully laid out on yellow index cards, pinned to a giant cork board that sits next to my desk and screens me from the rest of the world. My little writer’s nook in my home is a place of peace and creativity. I crave it when I’m away too long.

Anyhoo…by the end of that internship year, full of death, feces, and thirty-six hour shifts (now illegal, thank God), I was angry and frustrated. I questioned the direction my life was taking after so much hard work to get there. So I wrote: Surgical Survival Guide: A Manual for Interns and Precocious Medical Students. I published it myself before self-publishing was really a thing. I enlisted the help of my mother, and together we started and ran The Bluebelle Medical Company, named after my first dog. We sold the Guide at every medical bookstore in the US and Canada and turned a modest profit. I bought her a Judith Leiber purse and myself an exercise machine with the proceeds.

Much later came the time of my divorce. It was incredibly stressful, as I imagine divorces are for most people. I didn’t want it, I fought it, and I was steamrolled by it. Funny how things that seem terrible turn out to be blessings down the line, isn’t it? Skipping ahead a lot, things turned out well. I’m happy. More about that down the line.

I dealt with the stress by working out like a madman and losing the fifteen to twenty pounds that may have contributed to the breakup in some way. At least I imagined it did. And I began to write. I wrote Fighting Gravity, a 95,000 word novel about a fifty-ish plastic surgeon who has just gone through a divorce and must deal with the world of modern dating. You write what you know, right? Would you like to read the elevator pitch for FG? You would? I’m imagining you enthusiastically nodding your head at this point. Well, here you are:

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Fighting Gravity Long Pitch

Have you ever wondered what it’s like to be on the other side of the knife or the needle?

I know.

I cut faces for a living. I pull necks hard. Hell, sometimes I even burn people.

But it’s my life that’s on fire.

Marriage over, practice in trouble; I’m so alone.

I need the booze to sleep and the pills to function.

What am I going to do?

I turn to the nurse and ask for the scalpel.

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If you’re my patient, remember, this is FICTION! It has to be dramatic and interesting to sell. Nobody is going to buy a story about a nice happy guy who does good work. So please, don’t take anything in the novels to be autobiographical.

Back to the story of my first novel: I hired an experienced editor in New York and rewrote it twice. I learned to make the characters' stories arc and raised the stakes. I increased the dramatic tension. I cut the extra scenes and characters, which is just as painful as everybody says it is. I tried to launch it out in the world. What happened next led me to explore the world of self-publishing and write FG’s prequel, The Big Prick. And doing all of this has led me to starting this blog.

Stay tuned if you like or email me to cease and desist sending you these things. Thanks for listening.

– Michael