It\’s been a while. Last I remember, we were freezing our assets near Lake Champlain, after six weeks of driving across the country in Rocinante, our tiny RV. As I write this, the snow is gone, and so is our lovely lake home. We traded it for a cabin in the mountains barely larger than Rocinante.

The good news? It\’s easy to find everything, from the fly swatter to the cat. The bad news? There isn\’t much left to find. The BMW is gone, so is the canoe, the exercise bike, the dining room, and just about every other comfort. Downsizing is not for the weak, and living small is an acquired taste, but we\’re trying. We\’re taking turns doing the dishes, and today we\’ll do our first laundry run in Lake Placid. We spotted the perfect laundromat in a parking lot with a supermarket, a liquor store and Marshalls.

Guinness trying out her new pack on the Jack Rabbit Trail. We have a deal: She carries the water, I bring the treats. 

The girls are loving it here. Guinness loves chasing chipmunks and playing outside all day long. Paxil luxuriates in the sun, watches the birds and sharpens her claws on trees instead of the sofa. She stole an onion – they live in the basket by the printer – and she played with it like she was a kitten. The tight space forced them together, so they play all the time. Guinness sniffs Paxil\’s butt, and Paxil pretends to bite her nose until she\’s had enough, and she makes the siren noises pissed cats do. Guinness leaves her be, then returns minutes later.

Steve misses his lake, and struggles a little, but he\’s been a good sport. He spends his days fighting with the internet, the falling towel racks and the car issues. I\’m fighting with the bugs, and I must admit they are winning. Since we moved, I spent most of my time scratching, and I\’ve become quite proficient. The other thing I do is write, and it\’s been an absolute blast. Just take a look at my new K-9 Heroes series. Aren\’t they awesome?

Book #1, Becoming K-9, is the heartwarming story of a puppy becoming a bomb dog. It was published in March, and it was supposed to be a standalone, but her friends stole my heart, so the K-9 series was born. 

Book #2, Bionic Butter, will be released this Sunday. It\’s the story of a yellow lab whose life falls apart after being wounded in Afghanistan, and she needs to finds strengths she didn\’t know she had to give her life a new meaning. 

Book #3, K-9 Viper, is now on preorder, scheduled for September. Viper, a Malinois, only cares about his job. Until he finds love.

All three are written from the dogs\’ point of view, and they seem to strike a chord in readers\’ hearts. Becoming K-9 is free on Amazon on June 16.  Try them if you like dogs, and leave a review if you love them. I\’d really appreciate it! 

That\’s it from us. I hope you\’re well. Please drop me a note – I love hearing from you. If you want my updates, sign up for my monthly newsletter at RadaJones.com since Facebook  is not playing nice – I can barely see my own posts.

Have fun, stay well and keep in touch! 

Rada

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Stay away from my ER: An excerpt. 

I’m an ER doc. I care for patients. All patients: Those who need to be in the ER; those who don’t; those who wouldn’t be there if they knew better. For them, for you and for fun, I’ve got some tips to keep you happy, safe and away from my ER. Enjoy.

1. Never, ever say “hold my beer and watch this!” Besides “I do!” they are the most dangerous words ever spoken. They’re a harbinger of disaster worse than “Winter is coming.” They have their own section on YouTube – great watch after a rough day. They’re better than kittens. Still, hold on to your beer.
2. NEVER drink and drive. It’s obvious, but it’s obviously not obvious enough. As per CDC, in 2016, 10,497 people died in alcohol-impaired driving crashes, accounting for 28% of all traffic-related deaths in the US. They’re still counting 2018.
3. Same with drugs. Any drugs. Legal, illegal, yours, or borrowed. Except for Tylenol. And Motrin. They’re OK.
4. Don’t tell your significant other that your life is no longer worth living, just to upset them. If they call 911, EMS will bring you to me. I’ll keep you until you’re legally sober if it takes a week.  By the time you’re sober, got your evaluation and went home, your significant other has had a chance to enjoy life without you. Speak wisely.
5. Shoveling the roof is overrated. Especially in winter. It comes with broken heels, fractured backs, and ER trips. The roof is for the birds.  And cats. You’re human. Stay on the ground.
6. Your motorcycle? The one you love? I love them too, but I sold mine. My first MCA patient came by ambulance. His leg followed in another car. I’ll get a motorcycle when I get terminal cancer. For now, I’ll stick with my car. Not your thing? At least wear a helmet.
7. Do not, I repeat, do not, stick your hand in your snowblower to clean it. You may never be able to play the guitar or tie your shoes again, and it may put a damper on your loving.  Yourself or others
8. If you’ve been coughing for a week and you smoke, go buy honey. Don’t come to the ER unless you have a fever, you’re short of breath or you have chest pain. You’ll cough for at least three weeks. There’s nothing I can do to stop that unless I kill you. That will stop your cough, but it’s illegal.
9. Your twelve-years-of-God-awful-back-pain? Unless something’s really different today, the ER is not the place for it.Especially now, that Percocet has become a 4-letter word. You’ll wait, and wait. You’ll get a lot of rotten looks and a script for ibuprofen — 600 mg every 6hrs — or acetaminophen — 650 mg every 6hrs. That’s Motrin and Tylenol. Go get them over the counter, and don’t overdose.
10. If you have an appointment with your doctor, don’t cancel it to come to the ER instead because you’re too sick to see your doctor. Unless your doctor is Dr. Seuss, Dr. Pepper or a plastic surgeon, caring for sick people is what your doctor does. Keep your appointments.
11. Don’t separate fighting dogs with your bare hands. Dogs can handle dog bites better than you can. They come from wolves. We come from monkeys. We’re out of their league. Stay out of it or use a prop.
12. Don’t throw gasoline on an open flame unless you’re looking for a Brazilian wax.
13. NEVER EVER stand around minding your own business. It’s one of the most dangerous things known to man. 90% of my assault victims were doing just that.

STAY AWAY FROM MY ER, and other fun bits of wisdom is a collection of my rants medical humor essays, previously published on my website, KevinMD, and Doximity, and reproduced  – usually with permission – on other venues.

People are again dropping like flies in Dr. Steele\’s ER. She is facing another string of unexplained deaths, but this time it\’s even harder.

Why? Because she doesn\’t mind seeing them dead.

They are the worst of the worst: wife beaters, child abusers, pet killers, and downright psychopaths that the law failed to punish. Even worse, it fails to protect their innocent victims. Can this be God\’s work? Did God get busy cleaning their community of evil? Emma doesn\’t think so.

She finds the answer disturbingly near. It isn\’t God; it\’s a human, way too close for comfort. As she struggles to decide, she finds herself engaged in the fight of her life to protect everything she holds dear. Will she destroy the evil, or will it crush her first?

This is an excerpt from POISON, an ER thriller.

“Put me down. Put me down, you motherfuckers. I’m gonna kill you all. Every one of you. I’m going to stab you in your sleep. Put me down!”

The kid was tied to the stretcher, his hands cuffed in front of him. The EMTs pushed the gurney. The police officers walked behind, their heads low.

Really? Cuff a kid? What’s he? Nine? Ten? That looks like overkill.

Judy came in just as Emma finished sewing.

“The kid.”

“Yes.”

“We need to sedate him.”

“Will he take a pill?”

“No. He ripped apart the mattress. He’s now hitting his head against the wall.

“Give him 5 of Haldol IM. Make sure he’s not allergic.”

Judy left. The closed door muffled the screams, making them even eerier.

“Let me go, you fuckers. I’m going to kill you all. And your babies. And your mothers. And your cats.”

The Haldol didn’t touch him. He peeled the paint off the walls, put it in his mouth, then spit it against the door.

“This young man has issues,” Emma said. “What happened at home?”

The police officer was a former EMT. “Hello, Dr. Steele. His mother called us. He killed the cat.”

“He killed the cat?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“He stabbed her with a knife.”

“Wow! That’s different.”

“Not for him. Last week he set the dog on fire. He poured gasoline on him and lit him up.”

Emma felt sick.

“The mother called us because he threatened to kill the baby.”

The urge to vomit became overwhelming.

“Excuse me.” She rushed to the bathroom to splash cold water over her face. Something is wrong with this kid. No normal kid would set the dog on fire or stab the cat. What the heck do I do with him?

The speakers called her before she could figure it out.

“Dr. Steele to Room 1. Code 99. Code 99 Room 1.”

The code in Room 1 looked familiar. She leaned over to see him better.

“It’s yesterday’s drunk driver,” George said, looking up from the IV he was placing. Joe continued CPR.

One hour and many procedures later, the patient was still dead. Police came.

“I thought you took him into custody?” Emma asked.

“We did. They let him out yesterday.”

“Why?”

He shrugged. “The judge did. His lawyer got him out on bail.”

After he left, George and Emma looked at each other.

George shrugged. “God’s work.”

“I don’t know, George. It’s getting hairy. I’m not that religious. It’s hard to believe that, suddenly, God decided to fix our community. We need to look into what’s happening.”

George disagreed. “We’re not the police. It’s not our job.” He glanced around, checking that nobody listened. “Listen, this guy already killed two people—his mother, and the kiddo the other day. Maybe the kid’s mother too. We don’t even know yet. He was a danger to society. The world is better without him.”

Emma couldn’t disagree, but she couldn’t pretend that nothing had happened. The screams coming out of Room 6 reminded her. The kid. He had set the dog on fire, stabbed the cat, and threatened to kill the baby.

What if the world was better without him too?

Rada Jones MD  is an Emergency Physician in Upstate NY where she lives with her husband, Steve, and his deaf black cat, Paxil. POISON is Book 3 in her ER thriller series following OVERDOSE and MERCY.

People are dropping like flies in Dr. Emma Steele\’s ER, and nobody knows why. A new disease? Medication errors? Poisoned oxygen? She must find out, even though her job is in peril, her daughter disappeared, and she\’d rather be home, drinking wine.

A mercy killer? But why would he kill a healthy patient? Are they framing her nurses? Or herself? A patient dies by stolen medications, her orders are corrupted by lethal mistakes and her nurse is killed. What happens to her daughter is worse than death.

Dr. Steele risks her career and her life to stop the murders. She gets closer and closer to the answers. Until she gets too close.

Angel

I love kids.

Pretty kids. Nice kids. Normal kids.

Not this. This is not a kid.

This is thirty pounds of human flesh kept alive by devices. Peg tube, trach, vent.

He’s got contractures everywhere. He’s so folded he’d fit in my carry on. Not that I’d want to take him anywhere.

I check his chart. Evan. He’s twelve. He can’t see, he can’t talk, he can’t eat, he can’t breathe.

What’s the point of being alive? If you call this alive. He doesn’t know he’s alive. He can’t think.

Can he feel? Let’s find out.

I stick a #18 needle in his heel.

He pulls away and tries to scream. He can’t. He snorts.

He feels pain. That sucks. I wouldn’t have my dog live like this! Any dog! And he’s human, if only in name.

I look around. They’re busy.

I turn off the alarms and I detach his tracheostomy from the vent. I cover it with my palm, pretending I’m cleaning it. I wait for the heart to stop.

It takes forever.

I reconnect the vent and leave.

Bye-bye, Evan. If they ask, tell them Carlos sent you!

This excerpt is from MERCY, Book 2 of the ER Crimes, the Steele Files. Book 1 is OVERDOSE, and Book 3 is POISON.  Find out more at RadaJonesMD.com

My second thriller in the ER crimes, MERCY, was the hardest one to write. Like every middle child, it got ignored a lot.

OVERDOSE came out with a bang. I obsessed on it like a mother on her first child. Nothing else mattered. I made sure no harm would come to it. I combed through it again and again. I changed my mind a hundred times. About the title. About the cover. About the narrator. I put it out for preorder three months early. I reviewed it seven times. I marketed its every coma.

I thought it would be my only book.

I was wrong.

The morning after I published it, I found myself wondering what happened next. Where did my characters go? What did they do? What happened to Emma? To Taylor? To Umber?

I had to find out, so I looked for the sequel. There was none. I had to write it.

I sat down with my old friends, looking for the answers.

The beginning was easy. I knew the characters. I knew the place – did I know the place! I knew the problems. I started writing. It was like going home after a nasty shift and telling your spouse stories about your day.

It took about fifty pages for things to turn bad. I was running in circles. Nothing was happening. I didn\’t know how to make it happen. I was stuck.

That\’s what they call the sagging middle. It\’s an affliction common to writers and beer lovers. Not to me. I don\’t drink beer. Like Emma, I drink wine.

I muddled through the doldrums, struggling to put down my fifteen hundred words a day, no matter what. I wrote things I didn\’t want to read. Even I found it boring.

Then, all of a sudden, it came to me. I knew who had to die. I just had to kill them. The end was fun. The fights were awesome. I went back to the beginning to plant the seeds, making everything fall into place. I made the villains worse and the heroes better. I wrote in old memories: the rocking chair, the dog leash, the knife. Even the fries.

What was the best part? Getting my old friend, Gypsy, back.  I\’ve been hurting since she left us. Having her back, even if only on the page, gave me solace.

The worst part? Emma had to suffer. A lot. Looking back into your pain isn\’t easy. It hurt her and it hurt me. But it made Mercy a better book.

The first draft finally over, I put Mercy away to ripen.

Since I had to have something to do, I wrote Poison. That was a joy to write from the beginning to the end. I pushed Emma and Taylor even harder. The greatest surprise was Amber. She became real, threatened, and human. And, in case you never played computer games, so you don\’t know, killing villains is a lot of fun.

So, since play is play and work is work, I put Poison away and I got back to Mercy. Like every neglected child, it misbehaved. The sagging middle kept sagging, so I had to operate. In case you don\’t know, I\’m not a surgeon.

I cut out the boring parts.

It got too short.

I cut out the slow transitions and unnecessary words.

It got rough and hard to follow.

I started over. I smoothed the corners, softened the transitions, killed a few more. It looked like I was on my way.

Six drafts later, we got there.

The heroes are heroic. The villains suck.

The ER is still the ER. Traumas, dramas, codes, JCAHO. They can\’t have drinks on their desks, they don\’t get time to pee, and they\’re pissed with the administrators. By the way: Any resemblance to real places or real people is purely coincidental, OK?

I hope Mercy gives you joy. Thank you for reading it. If you love it, please leave a stellar review. It makes all the difference in the world. If you don\’t, pretend it never happened.

Rada Jones MD is an Emergency Doc in Upstate NY. She lives with her husband Steve and his deaf black cat Paxil. She authored ER thrillers: OVERDOSE, MERCY, and POISON. Find more at RadaJonesMD.com

There comes a time in an author\’s life when she stops authoring and starts marketing. After all, if you write a book and nobody reads it, does it still exist?

A book signing is a perennial tradition. It\’s practically mandatory. So, like any aspiring author, I started jumping through hoops to make it happen.

I tried the hospital first. I knew they were going to be excited about the opportunity! They are my book\’s world! I\’m about to make them famous!

I asked about using a table in the cafeteria after lunch.

If you offer a donation, they said.

I make $1.59 for a paperback. The average book signing sells 3-4 books. Do the math.

I tried the gift shop.

They belong to a franchise. They have their own vendors. I\’m not one of them.

I was feeling hopeless when I tried the library. They said yes. Sarah kindly showed me around, assigned me a table, and advised me to bring some wrapped sweets rather than my very special brownies.

Therefore on Saturday, July 13th, 2019,  2-4, I\’ll host my first book signing at the Plattsburgh Public Library. I\’ll be signing – and selling –  OVERDOSE if anyone stops by.

I\’m starting to get the hibie-jeebies. What if nobody shows up? I\’ll sit alone, looking dejected, waiting for somebody to speak to me!

Actually, it sounded kind of good. Everybody wants to speak to me in the ER: Patients wanting a script, families wanting an admission,  Etown sending me a patient, pharmacy telling me the patient is allergic to something he takes every day, the radiology tech telling me I\’m X-raying the wrong leg.

I\’m awful popular in the ER.

Not in the library.

How do I fix that? Wine, I thought. Emma and I, we love wine.

Not allowed.

I went for the next best. I got chocolate.

As to being alone, I invited my sister-wife, Sharon.

You didn\’t know I had a sister-wife? I do. Sharon\’s number one. I\’m number three.

Sharing a husband,  even at different times,  creates a special kind of kinship. She understands where I\’m at. I understand how she got where she\’s at.

Back to the signing. Steve printed posters.

No place to put them up. For a country proud of her freedom of speech, there aren\’t many places you can post stuff. None at CVPH. Nothing at Walmart. Nothing at Price Chopper, the post office or Sam\’s.

The Co-Op was good to me. So were Condo Pharmacy, Dame\’s wine store, and the cozy Keene library. Friends helped. There may be posters in places I don\’t know of.  Or not.

Promoting a book is a lot like motherhood: You gestate her for a year, you birth her, then you try to find her playdates, while you\’re pregnant with her brother.

I\’m working on the raffle  – I have Audible codes to give away in exchange for reviews. I\’ll buy flowers. I\’ll put on makeup. I\’ll do my best to look both comfy and professional, pretending that I don\’t really care if anybody shows up.

Stop by will you? I\’d love to see you there.

I\’ll tell you about Mercy. Maybe even read a scene.

If you don\’t get a book, I\’ll autograph you a card. May be worth money someday!

Thanks for being here.

Be well, and, as always, keep in touch, will you?

Art is art and money is money, no? Sort of. They’re interchangeable.

From Leonardo, who didn\’t have to work for a living, (the Medicis subsidized him to create,) via Van Gogh, who had to use both sides of his canvas because he couldn’t afford to buy another, to the $86 Mil that James Patterson made in 2018, the relationship between art and money is complicated. One begets the other. Or not.

Unlike painting, writing is cheap. Free, if you don’t count the liquor. Publishing is not.

I have no patrons, so I had to strategize. Having somebody pay for my book looked good but not likely. Twelve publishers rejected Harry Potter. You think that’s bad? Thirty-one rejected James Patterson. How many would reject me?

Finding a publisher is harder than ever, since they\’re almost extinct. The rage of self-publishing –  Amazon, Ingram Spark, Book Baby, Kobo, – squeezed them out. The few still left cater to their A-listers. The B-listers work hard. The no listers? We’re out of luck.

My experience with editors is marginally less unpleasant than a root canal. They exceed in leadership, not common sense. Their interventions sanitized my work into an oatmeal-like, bland product I can hardly recognize! They even changed the freaking titles!

Funk this, I said. I’m going indie.

I researched, I read, I learned. What a publisher does – or should do. Editing. Book design. Formatting. Proofreading. Trim sizes. Covers – matte vs. glossy. Paper – cream vs. white. Cover design. Marketing. Audio production. And more.

To pay back – I learned it all for free – I\’ll share this with you, my fellow frugal writers.

Step 1: Write the best book you can write. Never forget who you’re writing for. Who\’s your market? Some writers, like Jack Cavanaugh, recommend picking your market before deciding what to write. Check out his outstanding free podcast “Let’s talk novels.” I disagree. I think you need to write what you need to write – whatever\’s in your soul and wants to come out – but the market is important.  Good news: Writing is free and time-consuming. If you have expensive hobbies – shopping, traveling, tennis, golf or skiing – you may discover that you\’re saving money.

Step 2: Your first draft\’s done? You need a Beta reader. My friend Joanna MacLean,  a published author and photographer, kindly suffered through the first, rather premature version of Overdose. Her suggestions were invaluable.

Step 3: Implement what you agree with.

Step 4: Editing. You can edit yourself. Everybody advises against it. Hiring an editor is expensive. The cost is calculated per double-spaced page. It\’s all over the map, starting in the four-figures. Joanna Penn\’s website, The Creative Penn, is a great resource for everything publishing: book designers, cover designers, editors, proofreaders, software. You can find everything you need – at a cost. Check out her excellent podcast. It\’s free.

I chose Writer’s Digest 2^nddraft critique services. They charge three to five dollars/double spaced page. For $5/page they’ll analyze your characters, your plot, your pacing. They’ll do a thorough job telling you what works and what doesn’t and suggest how to fix it. They don\’t fix it for you. I went for the line editing at $4/page, but I only sent the first half of my manuscript. It was cheaper, it took less time, and I figured that most potential readers only look at the beginning. The feedback was rough. The comments were polite but pointed and well-deserved. Recovery required wine. Lots of it.

Step 5: Implement the editor’s suggestions. I got myself together and made the changes. I had neither the gumption nor the budget to send it back.

Step 6: More beta readers. They uncovered more errors and omissions. Thank you, Mauri, Joyce, and Sharon.

Step 7: Back to work, fixing things.

Step 8: Proofreading. You need a professional. For me, it was \”Writer’s digest\” again. At $2/page, it took 10 days and cost me $500. Worth it.

Step 9: Formatting. You can hire somebody. I bought Vellum, a book formatting program. It does eBooks and paperbacks. It’s intuitive and fast. $250 well spent.

Step 10: Book cover. I tried to do my own. It was a riot – and a flop. Your cover is your most essential marketing tool. It has to be good.  I found custom book covers from $500 to $1500. Too much. I found stock covers for 80 to 120. Still too much. I discovered Fiverr, a marketplace for creators. I hired a cover designer. For $25, I got a unique book cover that I love.

Step 10: Printing. I looked at Book Baby and Ingram Spark. They print on demand and they have a wide distribution. They offer support and services, including formatting and book covers. At a cost. KDP, on Amazon, is free. They’ll even give you a free ISBN – your mandatory book ID.  That, alone, is 80 plus dollars. I loaded the book, I loaded the cover, and Voila! OVERDOSE came to life on January 18.

Step 11. Marketing. That was rough. There are writers who seem to make a living by selling book marketing strategies instead of selling their books. There\’s a whole thriving industry catering to Indie authors. Beware! I tried an Amazon campaign. It’s a pay-per-click. I bid too low. I spent $1 and a lot of sweat to make $1.05. My $35 Facebook campaign bought me a lot of likes and new friends in India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Nigeria. They message me daily: “Hey, beautiful!” My husband loves that. They want to know me better. He disagrees. This is great for my ego, but it did nothing for my book. My mistake: when defining a target audience, I chose to maximize book exposure, not book sales. Still, I never expected it to be my exposure.

After wasting $36, I decided to stick to content marketing. I’m a writer, therefore I write. I write travel pieces and medical humor pieces on my blog, RadaJonesMD.com, and on the web. I include links to my book. Some pieces flopped. Some were shared 100K times. They nudged the book along. Thanks to “47 tips to stay away from my ER,” Overdose got to #12 in Medical Thrillers.

Step 12. Audiobook, you say? That’s where the future is. Not cheap though. At the tune of a few thousand dollars or shared royalties, you can have your book narrated by a professional. You can distribute it on Audible, Apple, Nook, and Kobo. I went back to Fiverr. I bid Overdose for $500. I chose the best audition. It flopped. Fortunately, Fiverr returned my money.

I had also advertised on ACX. Shared royalties, no money down. My narrator, Meghan Kelly, is professional, reliable, fun and more knowledgeable than me.

Step 13: Audiobook cover: Back to my old friend Fiverr. $5 modified the Kindle cover to the audio cover specs. Worth every cent plus the $5 tip!

OVERDOSE audiobook is now on Amazon.

Good news: I broke even . In two months, my royalties covered my costs. (Royalties are not the same as sales. My royalties are $1.59 of the $9.99 price of a paperback. The rest goes to printing, distribution, overhead and profit.)

I didn’t expect Overdose to make money, but paying for a vanity project is not my thing. This was not about having my name on a book. It was about having something to say, and seeing if somebody\’s willing to spend $2.99 and a few hours reading it. Priceless.

I enjoyed the process. Most of it. I learned a lot. Editing, publishing, marketing – that was all mumbo-jumbo a year ago. I\’m now looking at niches like large print.

It was fun. So much so, that Mercy, the sequel, is on its way. The first draft\’s sitting on the shelf, ripening, while I’m working on #3, Poison.

I\’m looking forward to introducing them to my new friends: my narrator, my cover designer, my proofreader, and even my editor – bless his heart.

Rada Jones is an Emergency Doc in Upstate New York, where she lives with her husband Steve and a black deaf cat named Paxil. She is the author of three ER novels: OVERDOSE, MERCY, and POISON.