Yes, The A List, Ali Reynolds # 14, is due out in paperback on January 28, 2020. I may have typed 2020, but my fingers still want to start out with 19 something. Get used to it!<\/p>\n
So yes, to my loyal paperback readers, The A List is finally coming out in a mass-market, pen-and-ink edition. I\u2019m sure you think it\u2019s high time, and it is. So today, I\u2019d like to take this opportunity to give you a little background on not only the book but also on how that book in particular has intersected with my life.<\/p>\n
In December, a little over a year ago, I was busy putting the final touches on the manuscript. In the story, we encounter Ali Reynolds as she is now, but also as she was while still a news anchor in LA and dealing with one of the biggest stories of her TV newscasting career.<\/p>\n
Writing the manuscript hadn\u2019t been easy. In July I developed a frozen shoulder, and in October my husband had back surgery. Initially he recovered well, but by mid-November, the recovery process had stalled out. He wasn\u2019t eating properly. Nothing I cooked suited him, and he wasn\u2019t at all himself. He was grumpy and not quite with it mentally. The only good thing about the situation was that, since he wasn\u2019t eating, he was losing weight which he dutifully posted each morning on a weight-management app on his phone. On December 17, shortly after he posted his weight for the day, the app sent him a text: YOU ARE LOSING WEIGHT TOO FAST. CALL YOUR DOCTOR!<\/p>\n
Bill is a retired electronics engineer. This was the computer speaking to him, and having the God in the Machine tell him to do something was a lot more effective than having someone else \u2026 namely his wife \u2026 tell him the same thing. He called his doctor and made an appointment for the following day. After an examination, the doctor ordered an ultrasound. As soon as he saw the results, the doctor said, \u201cGo directly to the ER!\u201d which we did. By the time we got there Bill, was suffering from acute kidney failure with his kidney function at 14%. Whoa! Had it not been for the app\u2014had we waited one more day\u2014I might well have lost him.<\/p>\n
But I didn\u2019t. It\u2019s been a long slow process. He\u2019s recovered enough that we\u2019ll be going on a cruise the end of March. YAY. I love cruises. By now, you\u2019re probably thinking, she\u2019s really flipped her lid this time. Nice story, but what on earth does this have to do with The A List?<\/p>\n
For one thing, although the book is a murder mystery, a major subplot is all about \u2026 well \u2026 kidney disease. In creating the story, I read about kidney disease. I researched kidney disease. I wrote about kidney disease.<\/p>\n
Between Christmas and New Years, days after we ended up in the ER, my editor sent me a second pass of the galleys for The A List. I had already done the first pass, but there had been so much chaos in our lives at the time that I thought they deserved a second go-down. In the book there\u2019s a scene where a bereaved mother tells Ali about losing her daughter to kidney disease. In the process she relates the daughter\u2019s symptoms shortly before she died of acute kidney failure. As I read through that passage, the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. I had been describing a fictional character\u2019s symptoms without recognizing that the very same real life symptoms were sitting beside me, right here in our family room!<\/p>\n
So, if you\u2019re a paperback reader, by all means, go out and pick up a copy of The A List. But thank you, too, for reading this combination newsletter\/blog all the way through, because I want to get the word out. Kidney disease is dangerous and subtle. The symptoms sneak up on you, and sudden unexplained weight loss is one of them. I always thought that questions on physicals about sudden weight changes in the past six months was nothing but a sneaky way of finding out if people were sticking to their diets. Properly functioning kidneys sort out and dispose of all kinds of poisons that pass through the human body. When kidneys quit working, bad things happen. You lose mental acuity right along with losing your appetite. Your personality changes. And it\u2019s not something where a physician can prescribe a medication and you\u2019re suddenly good to go.<\/p>\n
So, if you\u2019re reading this through and if any of the above mentioned symptoms seem to fit what\u2019s going on with you or with someone you love, CALL THE DOCTOR and ask to be tested for kidney function. This isn\u2019t your wife or husband speaking\u2014it’s the VOICE IN THE MACHINE, SO PAY ATTENTION!<\/p>\n
Thus endeth the daily reading. As for coming attractions? I\u2019m currently doing copy editing on Ali # 15, Credible Threat and working on the next Joanna Brady book, Missing and Endangered, due out this fall. So I\u2019m still writing, and I\u2019m incredibly grateful that so many of you are still reading. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Yes, The A List, Ali Reynolds # 14, is due out in paperback on January 28, 2020. I may have typed 2020, but my fingers still want to start out with 19 something. Get used to it! So yes, to my loyal paperback readers, The A List is finally coming out in a mass-market, pen-and-ink […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1994","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3nsBA-wa","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1994","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1994"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1994\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}