A Tart Interview

Sequential Tart, a Web magazine about the comics industry with a focus on women creators and issues, has been kind to my work in the past. Now they've done it again.

Writer MK Czerwiec has posted a new interview with me in the Tart's July issue and I think it's great. MK's experience as a former cancer nurse gives her unique expertise and perspective, I think, which makes me value her opinion all the more. She asked questions I don't think I'd been asked before and I really enjoyed corresponding with her.

As I post this, I see that the interview cuts off in mid-sentence. I assume that's an Internet or coding glitch they'll iron out soon (if the last words you read are "...commitment to be a," come back later for the rest).

Thanks, MK, I'm grateful.

Even More Things Considered

I just heard the NPR interview. My first impressions include relief, plus something unlike relief gnawing in the pit of my stomach. Urk.

As I mentioned, at least 45 minutes of interview were distilled into the "All Things Considered" piece. It's interesting to hear what they chose and how they put it together. Some of my quotes were seamlessly assembled from longer quotes. Big sentences got condensed into little ones. In one case, they saved me from embarrassment when I mis-read from my own book. I'm not complaining I was misquoted; I can tell that most of the edits were done to streamline stories or omit details Melissa Block and her producer thought were extraneous. My meaning was represented faithfully, if abbreviated. I'm just fascinated by the process.

I wish NPR had picked different samples from my book to accompany their Web posting. They chose four panels from Mom's Cancer in which I rail angrily at weak, selfish smokers who deserve whatever they get (the same sequence Melissa asked me about in the interview). I'll stand behind the truth of those panels but they're not representative of the rest of the book. Nor, frankly, are they a very attractive inducement that'd make someone want to rush right out and buy it.

But no complaints. I'm not ungrateful. It was a great experience, hits on my website and blog are soaring, and I appreciate the opportunity. Mom would have loved it.

More Things Considered

I just got home from KQED radio in San Francisco after a great interview with NPR's Melissa Block for "All Things Considered." After stewing in the lobby for a bit (Miriam and I are both the type of people who'd rather get somewhere one hour early than five minutes late) we were set up in a small studio with microphones and headphones, and were soon talking long-distance with Melissa. Despite being a disembodied voice in my skull, she did a nice job of putting us at ease and interviewed us for about 45 minutes. I thought it went very well.

Of course it'll be edited to a much shorter piece (I don't know how short) and, depending on which few minutes of our conversation Melissa and her producer pick, we'll either sound like the most talented, compassionate, funny and wise people you'd ever want to meet or complete twits. Thinking back, I'm only wincing at one or two things I said, which is a pretty good average for me.

They couldn't tell us when it would run--either today or tomorrow, I think. Melissa promised that her producer would call when they knew, and I will update this post when I find out. Meanwhile, here's Miriam and me in the studio, photo courtesy of sound engineer Howie, who was a friend of Miriam's and a great guy.

The best part was getting to know Miriam. I think we had a good rapport both off and on the air. If we worked up an act, we could take it on the road.

UPDATE: We're on today! The time will depend on when your local NPR station plays "All Things Considered." It's a two-hour program, and I understand from the producer that we'll be on at 10 minutes before the end of the first hour. So if "All Things Considered" starts at 5:00 p.m. in your market, we're scheduled to be on at 5:50 p.m. No promises.

All Things Considered

It looks about 87% certain that Miriam Engelberg and I will be on National Public Radio's "All Things Considered" tomorrow, to be interviewed by Melissa Block. Miriam and I are scheduled to meet in a San Francisco radio studio in the morning, where I gather we'll talk with Ms. Block long-distance from wherever she broadcasts.

This is another big deal and another first for me.

Among the things I don't know: how long the interview will go, what we'll talk about, how it'll be edited, and when it'll run (tomorrow, I guess, but I'm not certain). Since we're meeting in the morning and "All Things Considered" is broadcast in the late afternoon whenever I've heard it, I assume we're not live but I don't even know that for sure. As they say, check your local listings. I'm comfortable playing it by ear.

I had the pleasure of meeting Miriam Engelberg in person last night. We've exchanged a few e-mails in the past and she conveniently had a book signing less than an hour from my home, so I thought I'd go watch her work and steal ideas. She gave a good, funny talk and invited me to spend tonight on her futon before our radio
appearance--one of the nicest offers anyone's made to me in a long time, although I didn't take her up on it.

I'll let you know how it goes.

Final Comic-Con Plans

I'm still very busy on deadline and hope to write more interestingly soon, but meanwhile wanted to post my final schedule for Comic-Con. I'm really looking forward to this. Here's what I'm doing:

Comic-Con International
July 20-23, 2006
San Diego, California

- Thursday, July 20, 5 p.m., Room 1B:Spotlight on Brian Fies. An hour of solopsistic self-absorption that I'll make as interesting as I can.

- Thursday, July 20, 6 p.m., Room 3: Developing Your Webcomic. I will be one of several people in this panel discussion, which is part of Comic-Con's three-day "Webcomic School."

- Saturday, July 22, 10:30 a.m., Room 2: What Is Mainstream? A panel discussion about how the definition of mainstream comics literature is evolving in the market. Or something like that.

I'll also be signing books at the Harry N. Abrams booth at every opportunity. Don't know where it is yet, but I'm sure we'll be listed in the program.

Hi, Larry.

Unsolicited Testimonials

I don't do product placement* and will never put advertising on my website, but I've gotta say that if you've got a cat who enjoys barfing many times a week like I do,** you must get one of these. It has improved my quality of life approximately 650%. I'm sure it would work great on dog stuff*** too.

I've been very busy with a couple of big work deadlines lately and apologize for my dearth of postings. Not much is new in bookland, I'm just looking forward to an interview I expect to show up on the Sequential Tart website next week and preparing for Comic-Con next month.

And Happy Birthday to Kid Sis, Nurse Sis, and my wife, whose birthdays all fall within the last week of June. Or, as I call it, Hell Week.

* Powerpuff Girls excepted.
** That is, the cat barfs many times a week, not me.
*** If you know what I mean.

Merci

Bonsoir, Brunmarde.

Wednesday Note: I know the link's not working today. Not my fault.

San Diego Comic-Con Schedule

My plans for the ginormous Comic-Con International in San Diego are firming up. Program Director Gary Sassaman has me set for two panels, interestingly and perhaps unfortunately scheduled back-to-back. Gary apologized for it but I actually think it'll work out fine ... even better than fine. It'll be a tough day but I like the idea of taking care of both at once. Here's what I'm doing:

Thursday, July 20, 5 p.m.: Spotlight on Brian Fies. This will be 50 minutes for, by, and about me during which I can talk about anything I want. Mostly me, I gather. I'm working on a presentation that I hope will be interesting and non-drowsy. There will be no karaoke, which I hope will be sufficient incentive to attend because I'm not sure what else I can offer.

Thursday, July 20, 6 p.m.: Immediately afterward, I will dash across the hallway to be part of a panel discussion on "Developing Your Webcomic," part of a three-day Comic-Con series on Webcomics. I'm not sure who else is participating but I have some thoughts on the panel topic and hope to contribute. I'm sure I'll learn much more than I can teach.

My publisher Abrams will be staffing a table on the boundless convention floor this year, packed with a great assortment of artfully produced comics-themed publications. I'm sure I'll schedule many book-signing opportunities at that table but mostly look forward to just wandering about as a fan.

The San Diego Comic-Con is truly a staggering collection of comic book, comic strip, science fiction, gaming, movie, and any other kind of genre-related people you can imagine. You will either feel like you have fallen into the warm embrace of others who finally understand you, or you will wonder whether something has gone dreadfully wrong with the human race. Or both. And if you don't already have a hotel room and parking space reserved, it's way too late to think about going.

I was extraordinarily happy and proud that Mom's Cancer won an Eisner Award for Best Digital Comic last year (if you're interested in how that went, I wrote about it here), and am very flattered they asked me back as a special guest this year. It's an honor. I'll try to do a good job.

The Art of the Interview

Newsarama, one of the Internet's leading comics-related websites, posted an interview with me today. The piece is by Daniel Robert Epstein and I appreciate it very much. It also got me thinking.

I worked as a newspaper reporter a long time ago and have since interviewed more people and written more articles than I can recall. (That's literally true; I'll often find published work of mine just a few months old and have no memory of writing it. Maybe I should see a doctor.) There are a lot of ways to do an interview, each with their pros and cons, each yielding different effects and results.

The old-fashioned way is to sit down with a subject face-to-face with a notepad. One of the pros of this method is that you actually meet the person, ideally in their own environment, and the interview can be more of a conversation that meanders in interesting, insightful directions. One of my favorite examples was a retiring school teacher I interviewed for a newspaper feature. When I entered her living room I saw that she'd installed built-in custom-made racks filled floor-to-ceiling with magazines on a wide array of interests from around the world. That was my key into the lady's career and personality right there.

One of the cons of this method is that very few reporters write as fast as a subject speaks. You can miss a lot. When I do a face-to-face interview I prefer to use a tape recorder backed up by notetaking, but that has some drawbacks, too. First, you have to trust the technology. It doesn't happen often, but I have lost entire interviews to bad batteries. Second, you've got to transcribe the darned thing later, which takes a long time. Third, a tape recorder really makes some people nervous. Fourth, there seems to be an old-school journalism ethic against taping, like that's not what real reporters do. I never understood that, and maybe some of the more experienced journalists who read my blog (I know who you are!) can explain it or correct me if I've got the wrong impression.

An alternative to a face-to-face interview is a phone interview, usually the most practical option. You lose some personal connection and whatever first-hand observations you might make about a person and their environment, but you gain a lot of efficiency. It's also easier to tape a subject (with their permission) via phone without throwing them off their stride. For most purposes, a phone interview is just fine.

Today's Newsarama interview was done by phone. In fact, as best as I can recall, it's a pretty straight transcript of our conversation ... which illustrates one of the hazards of the oral interview: no one speaks in neat sentences and paragraphs. Everyone talks in fragments and run-ons with dicey grammar and misfired vocabulary. Thoughts wander. When you see someone quoted in the newspaper, unless they were reading from a prepared speech, that's the cleaned-up version with all the "uhs" and "y'knows" snipped. You're not trying to make someone sound better, just comprehensible.

More and more interviews are done via e-mail and are often published in a Question and Answer format. After the writer thinks up their questions, their job is pretty much done and the answers are almost irrelevant. Although these writers often ask if I'm available for follow-up questions and I always am, in practice no one has ever followed up.

The con of this method is that there's almost no give and take. Everything depends on the quality of the initial questions. The interview never goes in unexpected directions. There's nothing for a writer to observe themselves, as even a phone interview can sometimes tell you something about a subject they didn't intend to convey. I think that's a pity. However, e-mail interviews have several pros. They're very time-flexible. If the writer knows the information they're looking for, it's a direct way to get answers. Subjects can think about their reply and say exactly what they want how they want. Like many people, I write better and smarter than I speak. And there's almost no danger of being misquoted or taken out of context.

As a writer, I don't think anything beats meeting a subject face-to-face on their home turf, preferably with a notepad and tape recorder. I figure my job isn't just to write down what people want to tell me, but to observe things they don't realize they're revealing and maybe coax them into saying things they weren't planning to say.

As a practical matter, the phone interview is my favorite "go-to" tool. Frankly, unless you're doing a real in-depth feature, the phone is a great way to get the facts and quotes you need while still having some personal interaction that allows for spontaneity.

But as a subject, I must admit I really enjoy the e-mail interview, which gives me total control over its content and lets me sound as smart as possible. Pros and cons, different methods and results.

Mutter Hat Krebs

After a bit of a wait, Editor Charlie was finally able to get me a few copies of the German edition of Mom's Cancer, titled Mutter Hat Krebs. It's pretty cool.


I was very happy to see that the book's production and print quality look every bit as good as they did in the English-language edition. The German publisher, Knesebeck, made an odd choice to use a reddish-brown cloth on the spine instead of the original blue-black. I can live with that. The fun part is picking through the pages with my high-school German and seeing the choices they made in translating my colloquial American. Some are pretty interesting.

Did you know that American snoring goes "Zzzz" while German snoring goes "Chrrr"? Me neither.

Anyway, my compliments to whoever was in charge of quality control (it wasn't me) because I think the German version turned out great. My foreign language collection has begun.

Medical Humanities Review

Giskin Day teaches a course on medical humanities at Imperial College London and contributes to the blog "Medical Humanities," which bills itself as "a conversation about the intersection between medicine and the arts." As a person who's spent a lot of time thinking about the intersection between science and the arts, I find that fascinating.

Ms. Day recently wrote a review of Mom's Cancer and, as self-serving as it may sound for me to say I found it to be extraordinarily perceptive, I nevertheless did. Of course I'm happy she wrote nice things, but she also picked up on details most readers miss. Her review concludes:

Mom’s Cancer is an inspirational work of great love and care. In spite of its serious subject matter, this is not a pathos-saturated book. Fies’s ability to universalise his particular and personal situation affords an authentic, original insight into the realities of coping with serious illness.

Aside from people who've been through the cancer mill themselves, no one's opinion means more to me than that of educators and medical professionals who deal with these issues every day. I didn't expect my book to strike a chord with everyone--no book does--but mine is getting great responses from all the right people. Many thanks to her.

MSNBC Review

Reader Louie left a comment alerting me to a new review on MSNBC.com dated June 9. I didn't know about it, thanks Louie.

Reviewer Gael Fashingbauer Cooper summarizes Mom's Cancer and writes, "Many readers won't be able to get past the title, and even if the book rings true, it's not exactly a cheery gift--although it should become required reading in medical schools. But those who do pick it up will find it a brave and honest tale. Meeting 'Mom' and her family will help you appreciate and understand your own."

Cooper also notes that Mom's Cancer "may be a hard book to market." I suspect that is more true than I anticipated.

Congrats to the Class of Ought-Six

Tomorrow my two little baby girls graduate from high school, both summa cum laude ("it ain't braggin' if you can back it up"). I'm posting this photo of them at the age of two weeks solely for their embarrassment and my amusement:

I remember when they were that old and we did the math, and the idea of them graduating in the Class of 2006 sounded as distant and futuristic as lunar colonies. Of course my girls eventually grew hair, and looked something like this when I snuck them into Page 82 of Mom's Cancer:

When I was 18, I wondered why everyone made such a fuss about graduation. It really seemed like the slightest of accomplishments to me--just put in your time and they give you a diploma (though I understand and respect that it's not that easy for everyone)--and I perceive the same annoyed vibe from my girls. "What's the big deal and why does everyone keep asking me how I feel about it?" I get that.

At the same time, looking back from across the generation chasm.... Man! That paper is inked in hard work, pride, disappointment, friends, adulthood, independence, the beginning of an exciting but frightening future. Also undeniably my own middle age, my wife and I looking at each other across the table and asking, "All right, that went better than expected, now what?" A parent might understand, although a kid would not, why I get a little weepy when I find a ream of three-ring-binder filler paper that'll never be used. Graduation encompasses a lot.

I was wrong when I was 18. It's a big deal. For now, my girls will just have to accept my word for it. And my congratulations.

University Researcher Still Wants You

Semi-regular visitors with good memories may recall an April post about Deborah Chung of the University of Kentucky, who is researching "the use of new communication technologies and their potential to empower information consumers." Professor Chung is interested in examining how health information seekers, particularly cancer patients and their families and friends, adopt blogs.

She posted a comment on my June 1 entry saying that she's still looking for interested people to take a survey about how they use the Internet. For more information, visit her site at https://wintis.mowsey.org/survey/. If you've got a few minutes, I think it'd be cool to help her out.

Why Babelfish Needs a Hebrew Translator

I'm very happy to see that an interview I recently did with Nirit Anderman of Israel's Haaretz Daily has been published. Just wish I could read it. I really enjoyed talking with Nirit, who posed a few questions I hadn't been asked before.

This is the kind of thing that completely astounds me when I spend more than a few seconds thinking about it. Right now, on the other side of the world, people I'll never know are reading my family's story in a language I can't understand. Some of them are visiting my website and this blog. (Hello and thank you!) We are connecting at the speed of electrons.

Amazing.

Three Things I Have in Common with David Hasselhoff

1. I am mysteriously beloved in Germany, just like David Hasselhoff. Well, "beloved" is too strong a word, but the very popular magazine Die Zeit Wissen recently published a story about Mom's Cancer, for which I was interviewed by Anne Kunze several weeks ago. My high school Deutsch is rusty but I think she said some good things about me. The book is available in German as Mutter Hat Krebs, perhaps the most lyrical title I've ever heard.

2. I have a car that is smarter than I am, just like David Hasselhoff. (Mine doesn't talk to me, but it does have a computer onboard and definitely ... knows things.)

3. I wept like a little baby girl when Taylor Hicks won American Idol. Just like David Hasselhoff.

Character Design

Yesterday a friend on an Internet newsgroup I frequent jokingly (?) accused me of making my cartoon counterpart in Mom's Cancer look 20 years younger than I actually appear to be in photographs. Ouch. That, along with an interview I recently did with an author writing a book about designing characters for comics, gave me the inspiration and material for today's post. If you don't like it, blame my friend Peter B. Steiger of Cheyenne, Wyoming.

As I prepared to do Mom's Cancer, I put a lot of thought into what the characters would look like. Making them exact likenesses of my family was not my top priority, which is one reason Editor Charlie and I decided not to publish a photo in the book: as cartoon characters, we're abstract stand-ins for the reader rather than concrete, specific people. Also, we didn't want to pull readers out of the story by giving them a reason to flip back and forth comparing the drawings with reality. But for today's purposes, here's a side-by-side:


Mom’s Cancer took more than a year to draw and I wanted my characters to be recognizable and consistent from the beginning of the story to the end. I sat down beforehand to make sure I understood the fundamental shapes underlying my characters, could move them around in space and make them work from every angle, etc. I didn't spend a lot of time on it and wasn’t trying to accomplish anything more profound than come up with characters who could do everything I wanted and express every emotion I needed, and that I could stand to draw over and over again.

Mostly, I tried to apply some basic cartooning principles to help the reader subconsciously know my characters before they opened their mouths. In Mom’s Cancer, the characters of Nurse Sis and I are in our forties while Kid Sis is about thirty. Nurse Sis and I therefore have stockier necks, rounder faces, thicker body shapes, and more often than not a bag under an eye. Nurse Sis is a take-charge person who leans forward and leads. My character is more passive and reflective, leaning back. In contrast, Kid Sis is more angular and attractive, with a thinner neck, smaller nose, bigger smile, and better posture.

Of all my characters, Mom is the one that looks least like her real-world counterpart. The Mom character is in her sixties, sick, and tired. Both her head and body are pear-shaped, her posture is poor. Gravity is dragging her down. She has no neck, her eyes are baggy. When she had hair, I drew it with a lot of waves and points that would contrast with her smooth bald head later. Her striped shirt gave me something graphically interesting to play with that stood out against both white and black backgrounds, while her black pants were a negative space I knew I could use effectively once in a while. I was much less interested in creating a character who looked like my mother than one who could help me tell the story.

Despite my initial groundwork, I found that the look of my characters gradually evolved over the course of drawing them dozens of times over several months. That's pretty common for comics characters: Snoopy changed a lot between 1955 and 1995. I actually had to go back and redraw Mom in particular as she became quite unrecognizable. The “Moms” in about the first 20 pages of my book are all paste-up corrections inserted much later because the way I drew her character changed as I grew more comfortable with it and demanded more of it.

Mom's evolution, pre- and post-paste-up.

I consider that design evolution an interesting failure on my part. If I had put a little more thought into what I expected of the character at the start, I might have been able to design her to hold up better in the long run.

And though I wasn't necessarily aiming for photorealistic accuracy, at least I was honest about my gray hair.

Amber

I own a stupid cat. That's not a slander against the cat, whose name is Amber. It is a medical fact.

A Good Samaritan found Amber when she was just a couple of weeks old, comatose in a field, almost dead, and took her to a veterinarian friend of ours. He saved her, barely, but whatever happened to her in that field took its toll. He started asking around: Anybody want a brain-damaged cat?

He played us like fools.

Amber isn't cool and graceful like our other two cats. When she jumps, she's as likely to overshoot her landing as stick it. Gravity is always a delightful new discovery. She knows her name--about half the time--but never seems able to figure out where it's coming from. She's kind of an oaf and about half a beat slow, a trait often undetectable in a human but hilariously evident in a cat.

She's also not very good at grooming herself, which is unfortunate since she turned out to be a very long-haired tabby who hates being brushed. So once a year, in the spring when the weather turns warm, we take Amber back to our vet friend and he shaves her tangled, matted coat into a "lion cut." For a few weeks afterward she's the most pathetic, trembling, sorry, ridiculous creature ever born. Her bobble head is five sizes too big for her body and she's got a pom-pom stuck at the end of every extremity. The other cats tease her mercilessly--I hear them snicker.

Or perhaps that's me.

New Reviews: Villalon and Nonanon

That title kinda rhymes....

I just learned of a terrific audio review of Mom's Cancer by San Francisco Chronicle book editor Oscar Villalon. The review was done a week ago for "The California Report" magazine, a weekly radio news program produced by KQED in San Francisco. I appreciate it very much.

Y'know, I put a lot of thought into how I structured my story, its tone and style, how I portrayed the characters, which parts I included and which I left out. The story is all true, but within the boundaries of telling the truth (as I saw it) I still had a lot of choices to make. So I'm happy when someone who really knows books and understands how a story works says I chose well. It means a lot to my insecure inner writer.

Mom's Cancer also got a nice review yesterday on the "Nonfiction (Readers) Anonymous" blog. "Nonanon" is an opinionated, sardonic online critic who, I gather, doesn't shy away from scorching earth when necessary. That makes her "Wows" (I count five of them) that much sweeter. Thank you.

USA Today Today

I like Miriam Engelberg. Which is good, since we seem to be in an arranged marriage neither of us volunteered for.

Miriam wrote a book titled Cancer Made Me a Shallower Person, released in April, which tells the story of her breast cancer diagnosis and treatment in comic form. Some journalists, including Liz Szabo of USA Today, have noted the coincidence of two cancer-themed graphic novels hitting the market around the same time. That makes it a trend, and journalists love to spot trends.

Miriam and me in USA Today, May 23.
Click on the picture to read the story.

Miriam and I made e-mail contact a while ago when one of the first such articles came out. We exchanged a couple of notes, commiserated over some shared frustrations, and basically said, "I guess we'll be seeing each other's names a lot in the next few months." She couldn't have been more friendly or personable. I liked her a lot.

I sometimes get comments from people expressing sympathy or frustration that I have to share my press with my competition. I don't see it like that. First, it's not "my" press in the first place. More likely, without Miriam's book many of the stories written about both of us wouldn't have been written at all. We get more attention together than either of us would alone.

Second, I don't consider her my competition. Her perspective, approach, writing voice, and drawing style are very different from mine (although it's interesting to see similarities where they occur as well). I suspect we attract different readers. Unfortunately, there's enough misery in the world for a multitude of takes on it. I'm not competing with Miriam; I'm competing with all the other ways people can spend $12.95.

So, while I probably wouldn't have chosen to have Miriam's book come out so soon after mine, I think it's working out fine. On balance, we're probably good for each other. I sincerely wish her and her book the best, and I look forward to treating her to lunch someday. We should have a lot to talk about.

USA Tomorrow

If you ever wanted to start reading USA Today, tomorrow might be a good day to begin.

WSJ Review

If you ever wanted to start reading the Wall Street Journal, today might be a good day to begin. I especially recommend Page W6.

Laura Landro wrote a nice review of Mom's Cancer for one of the world's great newspapers. An excerpt: "...Mom's Cancer works on several levels: The stark black-and-white drawings, with the occasional burst of color, convey the drama of a family battling the fear and uncertainty of cancer treatment, and the illustrations help explain technical matters--such as how chemotherapy and radiation work against a tumor--that might make readers' eyes glaze over in traditional text-only format."

I continue to be amazed by the press attention my book is getting, both reviews and features. The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Entertainment Weekly, Publishers Weekly, Daily Telegraph (U.K.), Associated Press, others on the way that I'd rather not say. Hundreds of thousands of books are published every year, and most go unnoticed by big media outlets; most remain unreviewed by anyone at all. I'm grateful.

From my vantage point behind the wizard's curtain, I see three things happening: Some media discover the book on their own or receive review copies from my publisher, Abrams, and simply find Mom's Cancer worth writing about on its merits. Other media notice that my book is the first of a little cluster of cancer-themed graphic novels coming out this year and want to cover what they see as an interesting trend (the "Pow! Bam! Comics Aren't Just For Kids!" stories). And some media notice my book because people at Abrams work very hard and exercise their professional and social connections, sometimes for months, to get their attention. I'd guess that the press Mom's Cancer has gotten to date has derived about equally from those three sources.

I won't know for months whether that exposure translates to sales. Bookselling turns out to be a murky, mysterious business of orders, returns, discounts, forecasts, and unholy voodoo that makes it hard to reckon where you stand. I recently wrote that it feels very strange to put a book out into the world and realize it has a life completely independent of me; it must be like sending kids off to college (which I'll be doing in a few months) and not knowing if they're studying hard, flunking out, or staggering about in drunken debauchery. Almost all I know is that the reviews are good and people I talk to at Abrams seem happy. So I'm happy.

LiveSTRONG Day

Today, Wednesday May 17, was designated LiveSTRONG Day by the Lance Armstrong Foundation. As part of that effort, a representative of the foundation wrote and asked if I would blog today "about (my) experience with cancer or on a specific issue (I) feel most passionately about.... What would have made Mom's cancer experience a better one?" I'm happy to participate but fear I won't be very inspirational. However, I'll be honest.

I once thought the phrase "They're inventing new and better treatments every day" was an empty platitude employed to inject false hope into a hopeless situation. I don't believe that anymore. Ten years ago, my mother wouldn't have gotten the brief remission and approximately two extra years of life she worked so hard to win. Today, medical science has treatment options that weren't available to my mother even a couple of years ago. Cancer treatment is improving incrementally, with revolutionary therapies--gene therapies, nanotechnologies, custom chemotherapy that targets only cancer cells, other stuff I don't understand--on the realistic horizon.

At the same time, cancer patients are more than meat and bones to be repaired and sent on their way. What would have made Mom's cancer experience better? Continuity of care: one physician who understood the entire picture, pointed Mom to the right resources, smoothed the path for her. As it was, Mom faced too many specialists concerned only with their little piece of brain or foot, and no one who seemed aware that cancer can affect the whole body no matter what particular organ it attacks. When Mom had one physician championing her cause, she got good care; when she didn't, she didn't. Family can fill some of that role but not all. I think it's important to build a history with a pro who knows who you are, not just what's wrong with your parts. If you're not satisified with the care you're getting, complain or shop around until you do. No one else will care more about your welfare than you do.

I get e-mails from people going through terrible ordeals, cancer and otherwise. I'm always quick to say I'm not a healthcare professional and can't give medical advice, but most already seem to know that. They're just looking for someone who understands... who's maybe been down the path they're standing at the trailhead of and can draw them a rough map of the hard climbs and switchbacks ahead. That's the main reason I wrote Mom's Cancer, and I think that's part of what the Lance Armstrong Foundation and similar organization are about.

I tell people who write me that Hope is never in vain. It has to be tempered with realism--I never advocate false hope--but I sincerely believe that it's reasonable to be optimistic. Reasonable to anticipate a better treatment or alternative therapy or acceptable quality of life. Sometimes the best you can hope for is a graceful, painless end--which after all is the best any of us mortals can hope for--and medical science can help that happen, too.

I'm no spokesman for any particular organization or cause. But in general, I think the road to surviving cancer has two parallel lanes: scientific progress and advocacy for those afflicted. Any person or group engaged in either or both is doing right.