No, thank you

I got my first literary rejection in June 2005 at a table for two. This was no anonymous letter, either. I was seated on a white folding chair, poorly balanced on a grassy hillside of our writer’s retreat, wearing scratchy slacks and stiff sandals bought for the occasion. The tanned lady flipped through my first five pages with the casualness of a seasoned Los Angeles literary agent, which she was. “I won’t drag this out,” I remember her saying. “It’s not ready. I’m the wrong agent for this.” Was there a right agent for a work that was not ready? I din’t know, but I was willing to find out. Over the next 8 years, I sent copies of my manuscripts to 72 agents, editors, and publishers. Each one, in their own special way, said “Thank you, but no.” Here are some of the most memorable rejections: “We do not feel strongly enough about your project to pursue it further.” “I honestly don’t feel that I could represent your work with the requisite enthusiasm.” “You have a good idea, but I am not the right agent for this.” “Although you propose an interesting book idea, I did not feel I would be the best agent to represent you at this time.” “After considering your material, we have decided your project is not something we feel we can successfully represent at this time.” “That you for letting us review CONTROL GROUP, which we read with great interest. Unfortunately, we have determined that we are not the appropriate agent.” “I’m sorry to say it’s not right for me.” “I’m afraid I must pass.” “While the idea was interesting and thought provoking, the thriller just did not grab our attention.” “I’ve had a good first reading of CONTROL GROUP, so I’ll be reading the novel myself in the next few weeks” [November 2005] “I’ve finally had a chance to read CONTROL GROUP. The premise is good and the background material is solid. In the end, the tone is too Cincinnati—medical thrillers have to be so slick, even if the reality is not.” [December 2005] and finally… “In my view, I don’t think I—or any agent—will succeed in New York with CONTROL GROUP. It does have a surface readability and some tension, too, but I just didn’t get involved with the characters.” [December 2008] Wow. What a long list of literary shortcomings. And...
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It’s Good to be Back

When I signed my first book contract in the spring of 2012, my publisher and I envisioned Control Group as the third book in the Cooper McKay series. We set a target date for publication of February 2015. “Plenty of time to get it right,” we thought. Indeed, I had completed the first draft ten years before that projected date. But time has offered me a perspective that has helped to reframe—and to improve—the story. Those two additional years have given Control Group what it has needed to be the novel it should be. A run down of the last 13 years in the life of Control Group looks like this: 4 months writing the first draft 1 week wondering if this was the next great American novel (All of the remaining weeks since realizing it was not) 1 month workshopping the novel (in four 1-week blocks over 4 years) at the Santa Barbara Writer’s Conference 5 years improving the narrative arc, character development, plot, pacing, and writing technique After that, 5 more years sitting on the shelf, making way for Blood Money and Command and Control Then, a book contract and a rebirth 1 year eviscerating the original manuscript, extracting the first protagonist, dialing back the story twenty years, inserting Mackie’s storyline, and stitching it back together by re-typing it 1 year editing, including adding in “Meredith’s” story line and the “Present Day” framing Sprinkled throughout, lots of corrections, rephrasing, word-smithing, and editing. Had Control Group come out when I wanted it to, months after completing the first draft of what was then my first try at writing a novel, I never would have known what kind of a writer I could become. It is unquestionably improved because of the editorial advice I have received over the years. It is also better because it was given time to grow into the novel it could become. I’ve learned that there are seasons of writing that don’t always involve new words. Seasons of creativity and seasons of revision. Seasons of preparation and seasons of release. I’m now moving into a season of publication. It’s good to be back....
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So You’re Exposed to Ebola. Now what?

America’s worst microbial nightmare stepped through the looking glass and into our lives this September when a patient arrived at a Texas hospital harboring the first U.S. case of Ebola. In the months preceding this index case, news organizations had tracked the West African death toll of this unforgiving virus. A plane carrying an infected American missionary to Atlanta this summer put the nation on high alert. Now that the Ebola patient in Texas has died and his caregivers infected, the obvious question had to be asked: could an Ebola outbreak happen here? Surprisingly, this is not the first time the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has had to contain a deadly virus imported from overseas. In the last decade, rare cases of infections from Ebola’s dirty cousins (collectively known as hemorrhagic fever viruses) have washed up on our shores. What makes those pathogens different, however, is that they slipped into the country outside of the white-hot glare of international attention. Richard Preston’s 1994 bestseller, The Hot Zone, chronicled the earliest Ebola outbreak. Now twenty years later, public health officials are asking what might happen if Ebola spreads in the United States. Medical Perspective: In my own corner of the medical world, I spend large portions of my day interacting with patients and their viruses. For most of those who bring viruses in to see me, over-the-counter medications and a dose of reassurance are prescriptions for improvement. But Ebola is no ordinary virus. And these are no ordinary times. Imagine being one of the staff members who first interacted with the infected Texas patient. Two days before he was diagnosed, he visited a local emergency department with non-specific symptoms. Like thousands of patients before him, he was sent home with the diagnosis of a viral infection. Unknown to everyone at the time, though, he had a rapidly replicating Ebola virus ticking in his blood stream like a biologic bomb. Everyone who interacted with him—from the staff who checked him in to the nurse who checked his vital signs—is probably fearful for their own health. If one of the exposed patients came to my office, what help, besides words of comfort, could I possible give him? As it turns out, public health officials already have advice for those exposed but not infected: Don’t Panic: Exposure to a person with Ebola is perhaps the second greatest fear for the general...
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Gone With the Wind: Part Three

GW2 Day Six: Great stories generally have great settings. As I mowed my way through the first four hundred pages of Gone With the Wind, I had convinced myself that the great setting of the story was Tara. After all, Scarlett’s father won the land in a poker match, built the plantation with his own stubbornness, then raised his daughters and buried his sons there. Understandably, Scarlett’s affection for Tara motivates her sell her own happiness to maintain it and then sustain it. Having come to a stop tonight around page eight hundred, I realize my mistake. The great setting of GW2 is not Tara but the South itself and Scarlett’s relationship to it. [Scarlett] “wasn’t like these people who had gambled everything on a Cause that was gone and were content to be proud of having lost that Cause, because it was worth any sacrifice,” Margaret Mitchell writes. “They drew their courage from the past. She was drawing hers from the future.” The great settings that serve as a backdrop for this epic drama are the many faces of the South. Afternoon parties at Twelve Oaks Plantation. Wartime weddings in Atlanta. Dusk at the saw mill. Each of these scenes relies upon inlaid detail of the physical setting and the characters interacting on those various stages. Tara may well feature prominently near the end of the book, but that location alone has not been enough to sustain Scarlett. With the last hundred and fifty pages ahead of me, I think Mitchell is too coy to allow one physical location to dominate the story. I suspect that even Scarlett, who is quick to rail against other southerners if it suits her ambitions, cannot function outside the setting of the South.   GW2 Day Seven: How much pain can one person endure? After nine-hundred-fifty pages of this epic story, Margaret Mitchell crams a miscarriage, the death of a child and then a sister-in-law, plus lost love in the last fifty pages. “Now, [Scarlett] had a fumbling knowledge that had she even understood Ashley, she would never have loved him; had she ever understood Rhett, she would never had lost him.” Poor Scarlett. I started this novel one week ago with an eagerness to understand what makes Gone With the Wind so remarkable, so enduring. Certainly great characters that are well paced and believable are key ingredients. Plot twists carried by...
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Gone With the Wind: Part Two

GW2 Day Three: Ellen is dead! Bullets in battle cut down the Tarlton twins! Doc Meade’s shoeless son Phil was killed, too. Am I really subjecting myself to this literary assault? After offering up a complex female lead and submerging her in the wiles of war, Margaret Mitchell is holding my head in the pages of her book and not letting me come up for air. Only four hundred pages in and I feel as if she’s hijacked my imagination. Mitchell’s success (so far) in GW2 resides in a six-syllable word that supports the best stories. It’s one of my favorite pompous writing words: verisimilitude. By training her eye on the details of the Civil War, and by moving her characters against the backdrop of battles, Mitchell has painted a realistic world on the tapestry of her story. To be sure, she may have taken literary license with life on the plantation or with regional dialects, but my interest doesn’t stumble on the fiction as it is so closely woven into the fact. I’ve become a part of the story, and I cannot seem to help it. In my mind, there was no way Scarlett would make it through the wagon road back to Tara after Rhett dropped her off. But when she proves me wrong, her reward is a demented father, a dead mother and a decimated house. Of course it has to be this way—verisimilitude in a time of war requires it—but I ache in seeing her expectations dashed against the rocky shores of war. I willingly started down this primrose path this week, and it has led to that delicious literary heartache and disappointment that great fiction can provide. Can Scarlett rally to revive Tara? I certainly hope so, or else Margaret Mitchell has a lot of explaining to do. (To be fair, she has 600 more pages to do it.) GW2 Day Four: She shot the damn Yankee in the face! Are you kidding me? “Like lightening, she shoved her weapon over the banister and into the startled bearded face. Before he could even fumble at his belt, she pulled the trigger.…Yes, he was dead. Undoubtably. She had killed a man.” It took me a moment to digest that passage. I didn’t see it coming. But I should have. Great stories seem to make readers squirm with character threats, plot twists, and unmet expectations. The...
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