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Oh, don't blame yourselves. A few of you actually DID purchase a hardcover or paperback or Kindle or ebook cover of either "Deep Brain Diary" or "No Doorway Wide Enough." And as soon as I get my meager royalty checks for those purchases, I'll cut a fancy check for $45 each to the National Parkinson Foundation and the Charles DBS Research Fund at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

My mistake was misunderstanding the market. And this would also explain why I had to take the selfpublishing route. Agents KNEW folks wouldn't be interested in a patient's first-person story about Parkinson's disease. Publishers KNOW your name has to be Michael J. Fox before they'd publish such a book because otherwise they'd be wasting their money printing a book written by some unknown mook where the ultimate outcome for the writer would likely be worsening disease, dementia and then death.

I mean, Jesus! Who wants to read a downer book like THAT when there are Vampire/ Werewolf movies and Harry Potter and self-help books about how you can stop dating the wrong kind of man out there?

I've written about this before. You don't see telethons for Parkinson's disease because there aren't any cute, chubby little children with Parkinson's for Jerry Lewis to roll out on a wheelchair to make you feel sorry for. You don't see a coordinated "Susan B. Kolman Race for the Cure" effort to raise money for Parkinson's research, because there aren't a whole lot of vigorous folks at this stage of PD who look bright, clear-eyed, and seem otherwise healthy and vibrant except for that killer cancer that your donations will help cure. You don't see a 34