I know for a fact people take more away from reading my books than just the stories themselves. For instance, lots of people told me how much they liked Grandpa Jeb’s meatloaf the recipe of which was printed in the back of Field of Bones.

A woman wrote to say that when she went to a dealership to purchase a new car, she was faced with a keyless ignition for the first time. Remembering Latisha’s dilemma, also in Field of Bones, she put her foot on the brake before pressing the button. She said the salesman was impressed.

So I’m writing the following as a public service, in hopes that readers of the blog will take my words to heart and apply them should a similar situation arise in their own lives.

Okay, so I said I wouldn’t go into detail about Bill’s health situation. Guess what? I lied. Gory details to follow, but first a word about writing.

My next Ali book, The A List, was written over the course of the summer and fall, with most of the editing coming about while Bill’s situation was deteriorating before our very eyes. I’ve gone through this process before. I write the manuscript. Bill, my first reader, and my agent, read the story and make suggestions, and I install same. Then the manuscript goes to New York. My editor(s) make their suggestions and send the manuscript back, so I can install their edits and suggestions. This is known as the “editorial letter,” and only after I make those changes do I get the D and A check—delivery and acceptance. Next up is the copy-editing process. Just remember your most challenging English teacher—the one who covered every page of your paper with layers of red ink to say nothing of a bad grade at the top of the first page. That’s what copy-editors are like. They’re required to find every comma splice, every missing quotation mark, every repetitious word. (By the way, I repeat words a lot!) The copy-edited manuscript comes back and I go through it word by word again, either approving or disapproving of the copy-editor’s changes. Next come the galleys. By then the manuscript has been typeset so it looks like it will look in the book. Again I go through the manuscript making additions and or corrections. This is referred to in the publishing world as the “first pass.” This time, and for the first time ever, they sent the galleys for The A List back for a “second pass.” Because the editing process had been done under such trying circumstances, I sat down and went through the book again, word by word.

Spoiler alert. Kidney disease comes into play as an important part of the plot in The A List. I spent a lot of time researching that to get all the details just right. So here I am, last Saturday, reading along with my own red pen in hand (actually my iPad’s stylus) when I got to the part where one of the characters is describing her daughter’s unexpected death as a result of acute kidney failure, and I read off the symptoms: loss of appetite, nausea, sudden weight loss, lethargy, frequent urination. All of a sudden the hair was standing up on the back of my neck. I had put all those symptoms into the book, but I had failed to recognize them when they were sitting right beside me. By the time we got Bill to the doctor, a blockage in his bladder had him down to 20% kidney function. Not only were those Bill’s symptoms, a good friend of ours—someone who’s always been super physically fit—had the same symptoms some four months ago. By the time he got to the ER, his kidney function was 14%. Both Bill and our friend are in recovery mode, but believe me, what these two guys know about catheters you don’t want to know!!

I’ve always suspected that when the question about sudden weight loss is asked in the course of a routine physical, the powers that be are just trying to get the goods on you to see if you’ve succeeded or failed at the most recent fad diet. The truth is, sudden weight loss, even a supposedly welcome one, may be an indication of a life or death situation.

So I’m sending these words of warning out there in blog form, and during the second pass, I detailed a few more symptoms in The A List as well.

Who knows? By virtue of reading about them, the life you save may be your own.