Pages

Monday, March 31, 2008

doctor writer

From: anonymous

Hello Nicola. I wanted to ask you for some advice. I'm a 36 y/o doctor who is about midway thru writing my first, and hopefully not last, book. I recently developed rheumatoid arthritis and want to write a book about it for people (and their families) who have the disease written from the perspective of someone who is both a doctor and has the disease. Do you have any advice about how to market the book? Should I get an agent or just send copies of the finished product to various publishing companies? Should I copyright it first before doing any of the above? Thanks.
P.S. I hope your MS is doing ok. I can sympathize with your plot: MS and RA both can be quite disabling to one's body. When I first got diagnosed, I went from lifting weights and playing sports one month to having a lot of difficulties with even simple tasks, such as retrieving my keys out of my jeans and opening bottles the next. Anyway, I am doing so well now on meds that I feel almost normal. I hope that you are doing as well as I.
I read Slow River years ago and really liked it. I am a big sci-fi fan and ran across your web site while looking to see if you had any new fiction out. I'm buying The Blue Place today. Perhaps if my writing career takes off, I can write sci-fi one of these days. I think that would be a huge challenge, however, especially for a guy who always fared better in the math and sciences than in the literary fields. Good luck and keep up the writing.


The time to think about selling a book is after you've finished it. I'm sorry to say that unless you're incredibly famous, or the eyewitness to a newsworthy event (the invention of fire; the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand), or you already have a writing track record, publishers and agents won't be the least bit interested in your book. Lots of people have nifty ideas, lots of people start books. Very few finish them, or, having do so, find that what they've written is publishable.

Essentially here's how to do it: finish the book, find a book like yours, find out which agent represented the author of that book, then write a query letter to that agent. It's a tedious, multi-step process; there are no shortcuts. My parter, Kelley Eskridge, has written a very helpful article, "From the Beginning: Advice for Aspiring Pro Writers" that will take you through the process in more detail. When the time comes to write a query letter, you might find Nathan Bransford's blog very useful. He's an agent with Curtis Brown and is endlessly patient. Fossick about in his posts for a day or two. You'll learn a lot.

I sympathise with your RA. What drugs are you taking? Some kind of Cox 2 inhibitor? I've taken just about all the MS drugs out there; they're all expensive, painful and, for me at least, useless. They all operate roughly the same way: down-regulating the immune response. The theory behind this kind of treatment is that MS is a demyelinating disease caused by an overactive immune system: the body attacks its own myelin sheath and eventually the axons beneath that myelin start to die. But this theory has never quite convinced me.

A few months ago I started thinking about it another way: what if it wasn't an overly aggressive immune response, but a confused one? Also, what if something was attacking the axons and then the myelin died? What if the best way to deal with this immune muddle was to regulate the whole system, yes, but to slightly up-regulate it, not down-regulate. So I dug into research on a drug called low-dose naltrexone (LDN), an opiate antagonist. It's an old drug, repurposed.

Back in the 1980s, naltrexone/Naloxone was used in high doses to treat people with alcohol and opiate dependencies. But at a very low dose, i.e. a tenth of the usual amount, it has a different effect. It blocks endorphins briefly, which then means that the body produces more endorphins to compensate. The endorphins then do a better job of orchestrating the entire immune response. (For a good layperson's explanation of some of this, visit the LDN homepage.)

When I first heard about LDN I scoffed. Some of the claims made it seem like a miracle drug and therefore definitely suspicious. But it's cheap (about $40 a month), it doesn't hurt (oral, no injections) and the only side effect is slight weight loss :) So, hey, what did I have to lose?

So I started using it and, well, it's a fucking miracle drug. I've had more energy, have recovered some function and strength, and I feel much, much less tired. (Haven't lost weight though. And there is one weird side effect: I don't want to drink as much.) So I encourage anyone with autoimmune disease--RA, lupus, MS, Crohn's, Parkinson's, IBS--to at least check out the information. It might not be for you, but it's unlikely to do you any damage if you try it...

...which is way, way more than can be said for most of the immunomodulatory/suppressive drugs out there. Those drugs literally kill people. They've certainly damaged me. Most of the side effects--blood count crash, for which I needed rescue shots (and until your bone marrow has been artificially expanded overnight you don't know pain); destruction of taste buds (I couldn't eat eggs for a year, didn't enjoy wine, even chocolate tasted weird); terrible weight loss; and more--have passed now that I've come off that crap, but I still wonder if I'll wake up with leukemia one day (a known side-effect of one of the nastier immunsuppressants I was on for a while, along with--woo hoo--heart damage).

So if/when your Cox 2 inhibitor stops working, or the side effects get to be too much, read up on LDN. Start with the website but then check out all the stuff that isn't available publicly on the web, e.g. 'Low dose naltrexone therapy in multiple sclerosis', Y.P. Agrawal, Medical Hypotheses (2005) 64, 721-724, and 'Low-Dose Naltrexone for Treatment of Multiple Sclerosis: Clinical Trials are Needed', Priti N Patel, The Annals of Pharmacotherapy, 2007 September, Volueme 41 p.1549.

And good luck.

This blog has moved. My blog now lives here: http://nicolagriffith.com/blog/

Print

Sunday, March 30, 2008

nosy question

From: anonymous

Kind of a nosy little question...in The Blue Place the character of Julia is many wonderful things...she also seems to have a somewhat jealous streak in her. Is this reminiscent of Kelley? Just curious...:)

I've been answering questions online for twelve years, and it shouldn't surprise me when some readers confuse 'accessible' and 'mostly amiable' with 'foolish' and 'confessional'. It does, though.

I'm often willing, when asked a truly interesting question, to go deep, to explore and then reveal my personal feelings on a variety of subjects, particularly those related to my work. However, for the record, I don't talk about my sex life, and I certainly don't presume to speak for Kelley. We've been sweeties for almost twenty years and I know her pretty well--but there's just no percentage in putting words in someone else's mouth. But, hey, feel free to ask her yourself.

This blog has moved. My blog now lives here: http://nicolagriffith.com/blog/

Print

do my homework

From: Bloom

I am reading Slow River at the moment, and it's a wonderful book. though i must say, it is a bit confusing for me.. What would the concepts be in the novel, and would they ever be possible? thanx


I'm glad you like it.

However, I don't have a Cliff's notes version of Slow River. If I thought I could condense what I had to say in a paragraph, I wouldn't have bothered writing a whole book. Also, it always bothers me when people want to know about 'themes' or 'concepts'. It makes me wonder if I'm being asked to help with homework. As far as I'm concerned, Slow River isn't a paper waiting to be written, it's a story. Having said that, of course, I'd be fascinated by a precis of the novel. It would be a rare opportunity to see it through another's eyes. Speaking of which, last year I discovered a haiku version of Slow River at Smart Bitches Trashy Books.

As for whether any of what I describe in SR is possible, yes, I think people will continue to be kidnapped, parents will continue to abuse their children, profit will continue to be made (especially from monopolies; look what amazon.com is trying to do with POD), people will love and protect each other, we'll have great sex and tender moments.

But perhaps you want to know if all the cool skiffy futuristic stuff will actually occur. Well, bioremediation is already here, in unglamorous ways (oil-gobbling bacteria, for example). As for the rest, we'll just have to wait and see.

One thing I raised in SR--or, rather, than my character, Lore, touched on, in passing--is the notion of a digital divide between generations. Apparently this is now a big issue, particularly with regard to pedegogy. But I'm not convinced the digital immigrant/digital native metaphor is as useful as many believe. Yes, it's an interesting starting point, but that's all it is, a beginning. Sort of like all good stories, when you think about it: they trigger the reader's imagination and let her build whole worlds to play in.

This blog has moved. My blog now lives here: http://nicolagriffith.com/blog/

Print

Saturday, March 29, 2008

map of Jeep

From: anonymous

I am rereading your book Ammonite which I found when I relocated my home shortly and decided not to throw away. I would like to see a map of the world GP. I am a very visual person and I understand a travel story better visually.

Do you have a map (even only hand-drawn) and could you send me a scan of the map?


Well, you could spend $14 and buy the new edition of Ammonite which has a map and a glossary and all manner of spiffy extras, or, hey, just because I'm in a good mood, here you go:


(Click on the image for a bigger version.) Enjoy.

This blog has moved. My blog now lives here: http://nicolagriffith.com/blog/

Print

gum-snapping, pony-riding...

From: Nicola Griffith (bubblegum_freak8@hotmail.com)

Hello this is just a little note to say we share the same name! Yes my name happens to be Nicola Griffith as well. I hope to find out more about you so until then this is Nicola Griffith saying hello Nicola Griffith.

Okay, I did a search. The only other 'Nicola Griffith' I could find was a pony-riding, tennis-playing schoolgirl. Is that you? Oh, wait, there's a 'bubblegum freak' profile on Yahoo, someone who works at the makeup counter of Bloomingdale's. You? No?

I could spend time digging deeper but, well, you haven't asked me anything interesting, and given that I had to wade through nearly three hundred spam messages to get to this perhaps you'll understand my impatience.

This blog has moved. My blog now lives here: http://nicolagriffith.com/blog/

Print