Manuscript, book cover, song and video progress continued

I celebrated ten years of living a cancer-free after being diagnosed with a brain tumor in June 2000. Back then I had a 40% chance to live ten year. I did it! If you put your mind (yes, a pun was intended.) toward accomplishing anything in life, you can do it. I am living proof that it can be done.

Boy, am I a lot closer than I was six years ago. If you decide to take on a creative endeavor or three like I did, please be ready to be in it for the long haul. Creative is a large animal to sink your teeth into. I decided to stack the deck and write a song and shoot a video with my good friend, Jesse, after completing my book. The song is done and Jesse and I have a few more video scenes to shoot before he edits the video into the 2:49 minute song.

The song is awesome and will surprise everyone.

I re-formatted and fixed the grammar/inconsistencies in the manuscript which shortened it from 156 pages to 142 pages. I wrote more talking tumor dialogue to make the book more interested and injected more sarcasm and "you will die soon" back talk from my number one enemy.

I received an amazing endorsement last Sunday from the leader of brain surgery at UCSF, Doctor Charlie Wilson. Doctor Wilson trained my brain surgeon, Doctor Sandeep Kunwar, and the head of UCSF Brain Surgery and Pediatric Brain Surgery, Doctor Mitchel Berger.

Here is the quote: “The author has provided an insight into the mind of a patient told that he has a malignant brain tumor. His story of faith, courage and perseverance is from the heart, and if you will, the mind. He has an inspirational message that illuminates the human spirit from the inside. The audience for this story is everyone.”

Pretty awesome, huh! My endorsements so far: one from Harvard; one from UCLA; and three from UCSF.

I have been working closely with Jeremy Sosnick, brother of Andrew Sosnick, on a full-color book cover. After a few months of researching book covers and the specifics of how to sell a book or any product, Jeremy, created four pencil draft covers. I chose part of one draft and included my ideas. He created 14 draft color covers, and now we have moved on to colors and font ideas. We met last week and chose eight ideas which will include both of our book cover ideas. I am so excited that the book cover process is going well, mainly because Jeremy is a great artist and he is open to all of my book cover ideas and suggestions.

I will submit the manuscript to BookLocker for approval and will hopefully launch the book, song and video in early July 2010.