About four months into my chemotherapy for Hodgkins Lymphoma I woke up from a dream about sausage knowing I HAD to write a book. It was not a choice. I started writing and four hours later I looked at the clock. "Oh no! I need to go to work!" I bark at the dog as I rush around getting my macrobiotic breakfast ready (one of the many cleansing diets I tried).

Two years later I finish the book because again, I had no choice, a dream told me to do it.

Now here I am, with a finished book, and I think it is pretty darn good. I am at the icing on the cake part: what cover colors do I want? how many people do I want to ask their opinion about the formatting?

Ostensibly it is a "cancer memoir" but not really.

It is about meeting the witness to the Fear in my brain and the methods I used to shut Fear down. I truly believe all great stories arise from the same theme: love versus fear, the choice of choosing to be at peace versus choosing to be in turmoil (and all that might mean). Steinbeck's East of Eden, Lenin's great realization at the end of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, and heck, yes I will throw in some Hamlet - "there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so". That is what the book is really about. (and I smile as I sneak my efforts into the august canon of such titans.)

Me learning to shut down Fear was predicated on a traumatic event that derailed my comfortable, unexamined existence. I am hoping my story will help others recognize their own witness without having to go through the despair and trauma I did (though, it was all self created, which will make more sense when you READ the BOOK!).

The book is called, I Dreamt of Sausage

Below find notes on the book as well as notes on post-publication of same!