Book Review - Working Stiff: Two Years, 262 Bodies and The Making of a Medical Examiner

Look what just came in! Working Stiff by @drjudymelinek #amreading #research #nonfiction pic.twitter.com/0tKInbDaNM

— Liz Madrid (@LizMadridauthor) October 6, 2015

Working Stiff: Two Years, 262 Bodies, and the Making of a Medical Examiner by Judy Melinek
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

One of the first shows I fell in love with a child was Quincy ME even if at that time I had no exact idea what a medical examiner's work really entailed. It was my mother's favorite show, along with Murder She Wrote and so we all sat in front of our one TV set on Sunday nights and watched it. If I had any questions about what an ME does and how he/she gets there, Judy Melinek, MD answered all my questions, and then some. I always knew that CSI and all those other shows depicted many of the job description wrong, but what makes for good work practice (bright lights, caps, gowns, face masks, and months before getting toxicology reports) doesn't necessarily make for good TV. But behind the Gil Grissom's and the Temperance Brennans of TV was dedication to their jobs, and I love seeing that in books like Working Stiff.

Working Stiff: 2 years, 262 bodies and the making of a medical examiner is Judy Melinek's journey to being a medical examiner where two months into the job, she is among those responsible for doing the autopsies on the 9/11 victims. I remember the containers she talks about because I remember walking past them among the throng of people making their way to "Ground Zero" then and always wondered what was inside. I still remember the makeshift memorials people put up months after.

I honestly could not put this down - although I did so I could make dinner and sleep and do some work in between. I finished it at about 3am and my only advice is, if you're at all squeamish, don't read this right before bed. The one death that stays with me the most is the one that gave Melinek nightmares and I won't spoil it for you - but you'll know it when you get there.

I'm giving it 5/5 because I love her style of writing. It's far from too technical and there were times that it felt like she were just telling me how her day went which brings back memories of my best friend telling me about what they did in med school that day while dissecting a cat cadaver in her backyard. I also felt for her whenever she talks about her father, who committed suicide when Melinek was just a teen.

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Can You Really Pitch Your Novel on Twitter? Apparently, Yes

A few months ago, I read about someone who sold her screenplay on Twitter for up to six figures.  When I told one of my massage client this, he asked, "how could anyone pitch anything using only140 characters?"

Well, I had no idea either.  And when an author pitch event happened on Twitter a month ago and everyone was telling everyone not to favorite any of the pitches (that's reserved for the publishing house; if they do fave your pitch, then be ready to submit your manuscript), it scared me enough not to even understand what was going on or how it worked.  Two fellow authors did do the event and their pitches got picked.

So anyway, as of this morning, I can now say that I do have an idea on how it's done.  And it's not as nerve-wracking as I thought it would be, though narrowing your blurb to less than 140 characters can be tricky and you'll need to craft a few versions of them to tweet out.  I only tweeted the best one I could come up with out of 6 versions.

What is nerve-wracking is when your pitch does get faved by a publisher, as mine did during this morning's pitch event.  It got faved five minutes after I tweeted it.

So what's next? Well, I'm supposed to send them the first four chapters of my manuscript and they'll let me know if it's good enough for them or not.  I still need to see what else they'll need besides those chapters and work from there.

And whether or not the outcome is positive or not, I did get to learn what all the pitch madness is all about on Twitter and not be overwhelmed or intimidated by it when it happens again.  And to answer that question whether someone can really pitch a novel or a screenplay in less than 140 characters?  Yep, it can be done!

Moving House

I'm slowly moving my blog back to Blogger simply because I miss having JavaScript add-ons like the ones from Smashwords and Goodreads. While I wish there was a Kindle option, too, I'm happy with the ones I have right now, which are along the right side. It just means that I have to get better with Smashwords formatting for novels, at least in a way that is aesthetically pleasing for me.

But while setting this blog up has been quite easy, I've been struck today by how much time is taken away by social media engagement and marketing from actual writing. I haven't written a word of my current work-in-progress, Collateral. Hopefully, I'll get to write 2k words tonight and move the story onwards.

But wouldn't you know it, I'm writing this while hanging out with my little one as he builds some Minecraft village because after all that work on Twitter and Goodreads and posting my short story on Amazon, I now need to spend time as a mom. After all, when everything is said and done, I may be a writer first, but I'm a mom first. Distracted most of the time maybe, but still a mom.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone