What’s Been Going On

Hi everyone.  I have to apologize for a couple of things.  First, the past couple of blog posts were kind of heavy.  Unfortunately, over the past few months, several people I knew died in an untimely fashion, and some very tragically.  Although I always try to see the blessing in each situation, needless to say when these things happen the solemnity of them creeps into the blog.  Also, I have been pretty lax about adding to the blog site recently;  a lot has been going on.  But hopefully I will be better about it in the coming weeks.

Work (my legal work) was extremely busy this summer, with a particularly large and important brief that had to be filed at the end of August.  After that, it was off to Florida with my family; three days traipsing around in the heat and long lines at Universal Studios (my girls loved the Harry Potter parts of the park), a couple of days in Daytona Beach (with a fascinating side-trip to the Kennedy Space Center), then back to Miami to see family and for a bar mitzvah.  Then it was back to New York and the wedding of the daughter of friends of ours.  My elder daughter got her driver’s license (yikes) and is starting to get into the college application process.  Incredibly, my younger daughter, who was all of 1 when I got out of the hospital following my initial cancer treatment (see the picture at p. 114 of my book), started 10th grade.  In short, there was a lot of fun times and celebrations packed into a short period.  But if we have to pack in some things, these are the ones we want to be crammed up with.

Things have also been active on the book front.  The Layman’s Guide to Surviving Cancer has been featured in some of the local press (http://issuu.com/thejewishstar/docs/star_web_06_20_2014); we had a launch party in Manhattan with Sen. Joe Lieberman as our guest speaker (http://issuu.com/thejewishstar/docs/star_web_07_25_2014, see p. 11); and I was invited to Authors Night 2014 at the East Hampton Library (where I sat back to back with Dick Cavett, who is truly funny and a true mensch, and was honored to be counted among many other authors, including Nelson DeMille, Bill O’Reilly, Giada De Laurentiis, Tom Clavin and Eric Van Lustbader, among many others; http://www.27east.com/photo-gallery/article.cfm/74781#93104).

Although I don’t want to mention specifics before things are confirmed, I have been contacted by additional media and hope to be giving more interviews in the coming weeks.  There will also be more appearances and book signings over the next couple of months.  The book also has started to pile up positive reviews on Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/The-Laymans-Guide-Surviving-Cancer-ebook/product-reviews/B00LBMY5ES/ref=dp_top_cm_cr_acr_txt?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1) (if you haven’t added yours yet, please post one so we can get the word out to people who can benefit from it). 

Most importantly, I am getting feedback from patients and others who have purchased the book and are finding in it the guidance and encouragement they need.  That makes all of the hard work and research to make it a reality worthwhile.  Stay tuned!

In healing,

Howard