Published: March 5th, 2012
Publisher: Twilight Times Books
A venture Capital Fund makes a risky investment to start a challenging new business that appears capable of reaching profitability with modest capital requirements. The real challenge: optimizing one of the most frequently performed surgical procedures in the world - abortion.
Roman Citrano, a successful entrepreneur turned venture capitalist, soon struggles with what he believes is his choice to establish the controversial new company. He soon realizes that he is just a pawn on a massive, ugly chessboard being manipulated to benefit a far larger, illicit market in human organs for transplantation.Unknowingly, hyper-enriched organs are spawned from the aborted fetuses and grown like vegetables.
An unfolding world of deceit, rape, human trafficking and assassination becomes deeply personal as Roman's love interest secretly uses one of his new abortion services to terminate her pregnancy. When she disappears, his frantic search becomes a hellish nightmare.
My Writing Process
Confession #1: I’ve never taken a business class… with the exception of “typing” in high school… does that count? Yet, during my fortunate career, I’ve started or co-founded eleven medical technology companies, wrote dozens of business plans, completed several mergers and acquisitions, sat on nearly two dozen Boards of Directors, and raised over a hundred million dollars in private and venture financing.
Confession #2: I’ve never taken a writing class but “think” I may have somehow slid through English Lit 101 back in college when I was a pre-med student. Yet, I’ve authored a couple medical journal articles, over 50 patent applications, and now working on the second novel of a medical thriller trilogy which I hope will become known as “The EQUITY Series”.
Ironically, there are a few common links here: 1) a vivid and open imagination with a hunger for new innovations, 2) the ability to tell a story – to whoever would listen, and 3) unrelenting persistence and passion. These probably describe most if not all authors, but they were essential components that enabled me to write and publish my first novel.
As I’ve stated in other blogs and interviews, I’ve been blessed with an exciting career as a start-up entrepreneur in the medical technology industry, which has given me access to some of the most brilliant, cutting-edge physicians, scientists and researchers in the world. Most of what they are “discovering and developing” initially appear to be more science fiction than founded science. So with both feet and not much to lose, I jump into the laboratories with these mad scientists to help them move their new inventions from concept to commercialization. Unfortunately, this usually takes many, many years and much, much money.
The first thing I do is learn every aspect of the technology and its application. We’re not talking about just redesigning a new heart valve, but rather constructing a dissolvable 3-D scaffolding of a patient’s own heart valve from MRI and CT-scans, taking stem cells from your bone marrow and “growing” a new valve in a special bio-chamber that replicates the patient’s original valve. How about small catheter systems that can be advanced through the umbilical cord of a baby that is still in the mother’s womb to repair a congenital defect before it is born? I’m actually currently working on an electro-active lens for inside the eye that autofocuses like the lens on your camera using a special liquid crystal that can be manipulated to change its power to provide 20/20 vision at any distance. You can’t make this stuff up! My job is to then determine how best to “tell the story” to attract investors, other skilled employees and eventually consumer interest.
My debut novel, Equity of Evil, is based on true events. Some of them could have been read directly from my journal (if I had one), some of them are slight-embellishments, and others are a result of simply asking “why not” or “what if”.
Writing was the easy part. It took me approximately a year to research and write my first manuscript; taking into account that I have a pretty demanding and time-consuming day job.
Editing was the frustrating part. I paid for two professional edits – the first turned out to be my learning process. I was schooled on basic writing structure, grammar, point-of-view, and story-flow. I seemed to have a knack for writing scenes, but putting them together was another story. The second full-blown edit was set as a challenge by a Literary Agency that I was pursuing, to see if we could turn the manuscript into a publishable novel… then and only then would they consider representing this “first time author”.
Understanding this industry was the challenging part. The statistics in this industry is demoralizing… less than 10% of authors/writers ever become published through a publishing house (not self-published), and approximately 2% ever generate any profits from actual sales. Good thing no one told me that before I wrote that first check to my initial editor! I even think he was the first one to tell me not to waste my money on self-publishing, “… unless you have a large garage to store you unwanted inventory”. THEN you learn that publishers won’t seriously consider your manuscript unless it’s submitted by a reputable Agency. Oh yeah… the Agencies then tell you that they don’t accept “first time writers” and that you’ve entered the market at a very bad time. Now I know why there’s a growing industry for self-publishing.
Overcoming all of this was the rewarding part. Nearly three and a half years have passed after starting the outline for Equity of Evil: a year of research and writing, a year of editing and re-writing, another year of stalking agents and publishers, and six months of additional editing. So here we are… kicking off a Virtual Book Tour with a Literary Agent (Trident Media Group), Publisher (Twilight Times Books) and Publicist (Pump Up Your Book)… all in tow… seeking reviewers, doing interviews, and preparing for a release on March 5th.
Equity of Evil Links
Nice trailer, looks like a good movie is coming next.
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