For New Readers:
This website, newnovelstory.com, has been up and running (meandering?) for about two years now, sadly coexisting with the covid epidemic. The website describes my travails in publishing a first novel. Baby Doe is about a mother who expects to have a normal baby. Of course, it doesn't turn out that way. Published in March, 2021, Baby Doe is a fictional account relating to actual events in the mid 1980's resulting in headlines like, "Are Doctors Pulling the Plug of Babies With Birth Defects?" You can buy the ebook or paperback for Baby Doe HERE.
However, I'd prefer if you bought it from Rachel who runs the Rehavia Book Store on HaPalmach, and/or from her husband, David, who runs the Katamon Bookstore on Emek Refaim, both in Jerusalem.
The good news is Baby Doe has been ranked under 100 in medical fiction on Amazon (seller of about 70% of all books sold anywhere/year) in four of the past eight weeks with an overall ranking indicating a couple of sales per day.
My goal is to sell 1000 ebooks/paperbacks by the end of March 2022 and happily it’s been selling at a clip indicative of possibly reaching that goal. And I've made my goal of 50 Amazon reviews in the first year.
Loyal blog readers already know that Baby Doe is the first in a series of medical novels involving neonatal ICU's. The novels follow Eli Kurz MD along his rather rocky road in academic medicine. Aspirational goals for the series: a first draft of the second novel, now tentatively entitled, The Discovery, will see publication by the end of 2022. The third, Saving Julian, is complete and will be published soon after The Discovery. The fourth, Ethiopian Rift, has been drafted, as has the fifth, Blood Loss. In addition, a book of already written short stories may appear in the next couple of years.
The website, Newnovelstory.com was designed using Wix with the help of Benny the Wixmonster. Both highly recommended, though the website now needs slicking up. it's on the to-do list.
The blogs have been both a distraction and fun. Almost 80 have appeared over the past two years. My qualitative analysis shows the most interest is with my involvement with craft of novel writing, followed by my experience with the writing business (publishing status, publication costs, royalties, and marketing), and last, with a couple of short stories. Here's a list of the fifteen most popular blogs, each title followed by the number of reads.
You can find these blogs posted on the website.
1. New Novel Published 430
2. Singular Sin of a Novelist 390
3. Editing Your Novel: Stern Advice 173
4. Baby Doe Gone Girl 109
5. Powerlessness and the Fiction Writer 95
6. What's Next 71
7 Story Board: First Draft 64
8. Five Rules for Writing Novels-- during a year of Covid 60
9. Christ is King of Coalinga 57
10. Structure of New Novel 55
11. "Profits" From Sale of New Novel 54
12. Less Than Honest Biomedical Research 53
13. Kill All Your Darlings 48
14. Pantser to Planner to Puzzles 48
15. Why I'll Never Leave Facebook 48
Summary of what I've learned: There's still a lot a lot to be learned in all categories. As Dr. Kurz's life illustrates, I've a continuing need to be more thoughtful and organized--more professional if you will--about how I go about all this. At the same time, as in life, I don't want rigor to suck all the fun out of it. And yes, sometimes I'd rather be sailing.
