I think it was second grade, block letters, I believe. My first novel was "AAAAAAAAaaaaaaaa"

Sitting with friends at lunch or after work, we would swap stories about the funny, scary or bizarre things that happen in our vocation. I always had something to relate that was, to say the least, different. This usually left them laughing, crying, or staring in disbelief. One day someone said that I should write a book about all this stuff, so I did.

Small. Cluttered. If it were bigger, it would be more cluttered, bordering on a fire code violation.

Well, if you add it all up, I have about thirty years in the OR. The main source of it all is the fact that I never got trapped into one specialty for too long. I also once sat down and added up all the different facilities throughout the years and it came to about thirty! Not that I can't keep a steady job, I actually worked for a couple of years for a staffing service in a major metropolitan area that served about twenty hospitals and I think they sent me to each of them.

Yes, some are just too disgusting for the uninitiated, but mostly I left out stories and details that could identify a particular individual due to the unique circumstances of the case. Many of the occurrences in this book have been repeated several times in different locations, believe it or not. I'm not saying it happens all the time, but I sincerely believe my stories are not unique to any particular surgery. All I am saying is that they happened in front of my own eyes!

I think the hardest part was trying to remember everything while writing. I would start with a pencil and spiral notebook, writing about an occurrence, and suddenly another memory would spring to the surface. Afraid that I might loose it, I would flip to a different page and write a few notes about that to be fleshed out later. It seemed to keep me on track, but made for a messy notebook. In rewriting it for Smashwords publication I added a few more essays that came to mind after the initial publication. I guess that makes this the second edition.

Pay attention! Watching the operation is the most important task you have as a scrub. Also, you too will accumulate quite a few stories of your own. If I were starting out I would write down each night my cases for the day, any unusual (or funny) occurrences and a tally by discipline and particular surgery. I would probably be shocked to know how many tonsillectomies or appendectomies I've done in thirty years, not to mention A-P resections. Maybe I wouldn't want to know that!

I was driving to work (hospital OR) and heard about independent authorship on a talk show. It was the Kim Komando show about all things electronic and she was talking about Amazon Kindle and self publishing. I had all these stories I wanted to share, but knew it was impossible to get published in paper, so I thought I'd give it a try.

I first published on Kindle in March of 2012 using their file conversion from pdf to mobi. It didn't come out as expected, but was good enough to share with my very forgiving friends. Once I found Smashwords and reformatted it using their 'meatgrinder', all the little glitches were resolved and the book was then available for any ebook reader. They also distributed it to all the retail stores, including Apple's, which is very satisfying. The advise and technical guidance provided by Mark Coker has been invaluable. Now I am using the guiding principles in his marketing segment to find readers.

I am a voracious reader. I will read just about anything you put before me. Mark Helprin has a wonderful descriptive style, and often gives his readers a colorful twist on the end of a fully developed passage that gives it even greater insight. Orson Scott Card, David Brin and Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle round out my favorite sci-fi authors. For a good old fashioned thrill ride Tom Clancy is hard to beat. There are so many more!

I am currently writing a story set in the home town of my youth, Chula Vista. Like Hemostat!!!, it is based on my own experiences growing up in the late fifties and throughout the sixties in that wonderful place. The characters are real, the events, some actual, some 'enhanced', will be determined later.