What’s New for Me in 2023?

These were my thoughts entering 2022: https://bit.ly/3Q50YtD

My optimism was clearly justified. There was one significant personal loss in our family. But also 2022 brought exciting changes to my writing. Let me share these with you.

I felt my stories were not ready for prime time. And that I could do better.

So, I took all my books off the market.

It was a monumental decision, since, suddenly, my webpage became a front of the empty bookstore. The friends and readers kept asking what had happened? I had to fend off the questions like, ‘So, when is your opus magnum coming?’

But all this time I was working.

I crystallized the theme of my story. It was a saga of Muranos’ family. Three generations of joys and struggles with the common life problems. Dr. Jack Murano is a busy heart surgeon, who tries to balance a desire to have a fulfilling professional life, and, while being on the hospital call every other night, still raise a family. The story line includes his father before him, and his son now. And, who knows, I may also want to include a fourth generation of Muranos in the future.

First, I had to define my genre. And it wasn’t easy. I knew my story didn’t fit any of the popular categories. It wasn’t a romance, sci-fi, mystery, detective manual, certainly not a horror. As an author, I had to know where the readers were. So, for years, my writings didn’t have a home.

All this changed after I read ‘Cutting for Stone’ written by Abraham Verghese. It was like a satori, a sudden awakening. I found a close kinship with this man, a little younger than I, born and educated in a faraway country, coming to the United States and here dedicating to the grueling training and practice of surgery. Later, he changed the specialty to infectious diseases, but the spirit of his journey became the same.

Initially, I didn’t like the book. Too long, too many characters, too difficult to follow.

But I found a theme of his writing the same as mine. Verghese wrote about the complex father-son relationship while striving to have a fulfilling professional life, while he trained and worked as a surgeon. The same topic which I struggled with throughout all my professional and family life.

Suddenly, I found the direction for my writings, and my path became clear.

So, while writing this blog, I just got a message that my first book, “Drama in the Operative Theater” got published on Amazon Kindle. It’s a short story about what’s going on in the operating room when the patient is asleep. The story will give a reader the taste of what I am writing about, and will serve as an introduction to my writing.

Then will come “Pals Forever“. It’s a first part of my trilogy. That starts the trilogy of the life of Dr. Jack Murano. The story is already written, and needs to be uploaded for publication.

Next, the second short story is almost ready. “Fighting the Devil” describes the harrowing battle with a terrible addiction to alcohol.

Then comes “The Resurrections“, a saga about losing everything, personally, professionally, including the life. And about miraculous returns from the dead. I’m waiting for the final edits from my editor.

There will be another short story to follow (“Kate’s Wedding?“), and then a final book of the trilogy. “The Eighteenth Camel” is a tribute to optimism, sacrifice, and humanity. The novel is plotted and is in a stage of advanced drafting,

Then I have another short story. “To Hell and Back” is an example of how far a father can go to save his son from a mortal danger.

I will publish all the books myself. I didn’t think any publisher would invest time and money in an author of my age. And I don’t have time to wait and wrestle with their recommendations, most time probably even well-meaning.

So, here is the first story of the saga of Dr. Murano life.

And here’s the link to Amazon https://bit.ly/3WEDNsx

Hope you’ll like it as much as I do.