Attention Fiction Lovers!

Hi Everyone,

If you’re reading my blog, I’ll go ahead and assume you have at least a smidgen of appreciation for my writing style. (And I thank you for that!) If you also happen to enjoy reading fiction, I’d like to present you with an opportunity to combine the two.

I’ve mentioned here and there in past posts that I’ve been working on a novel. (My undergraduate degree is in creative writing, in fact. While I do love talking about how the human body works, and introducing you to interesting and underutilized cuts of meat, writing fiction is my first love.) Well, I’m pleased to report that the very rough draft of this novel is complete. There are some weak spots, and the draft definitely needs work and revising, but there are also some lines that literally make me cry, and some sections that, upon re-reading, make me say to myself, “I wrote that? Damn, I’m good!”

So where do you come in? Well, what I need at this point is honest, unvarnished, unbiased feedback. I need a few people to give this thing a read and tell me what works and what doesn’t, preferably while providing suggestions on how to make the not-so-good parts better. Ultimately, a good professional editor will help me with this, but first, the draft needs to be good enough to catch the interest of a literary agent, who can then connect me with editors and publishers. I know I can self-publish if I want to, but I’d prefer to go the traditional route first and see if I can get this published through mainstream channels. (Including, one would hope, all the marketing bells & whistles and distribution channels that are not as easily accessible to me if I were to do it myself and sell it solely through, say, Amazon.)

If you’re intrigued enough by the idea of being a reader guinea pig for me that you’ve made it this far, I guess you might be curious what the book is about, huh? I’ll provide more details to those who end up taking this on, but in a teeny, tiny nutshell, the book tells the story of a man who discovers a half-sister he didn’t know he had. She had been left behind in Europe after the Holocaust, and they meet at a professional conference in Paris. (They’re both astrophysicists.) The book is narrated by two people, switching between the present day (which, in the book, is 2006), as well as through flashbacks to WWII. Present day is narrated by the son, and the flashbacks are narrated by the mother. The flashbacks to the Holocaust are not graphic, so if you feel that would disturb you, I think you’ll be okay with this. The book goes through how the son finds the half-sister, how and why she was left behind, and how they forge ahead. There are parts that drag a little, and parts that maybe rush over things too fast, hence me needing help to tighten things up. Are my characters believable? Is the dialogue flat and stunted, or does it sound like people really talking to each other? Is there anything good about this novel at all, or should I wipe it from my hard drive and pretend it never existed? (And then strap some concrete shoes onto my feet and go for a nice swim in the Potomac River? [But not before writing a will to direct the proper distribution of all the great meat in my freezer.])

The draft is 293 pages long in Microsoft Word. I’m not sure what that would translate to in “real book” format, but the word count is 167,427. (I’m pretty sure that, after being edited and undergoing significant revision, it will be quite a bit shorter, but that’s where it is for now.) Ideally, I’d like to have some feedback within 6-10 weeks. So if you think you could read my draft in that amount of time, and you’d like to help me with this, please contact me directly via email: tuitnutrition [at] gmail [dot] com. Serious inquiries only, please. If you’re interested in doing this, I’ll send you more information about what, exactly, I’m looking for when I say “feedback,” and what I’d need you to do as a reader.

Also, if you’re not sure whether you’d want to do this or not, feel free to email me, and I can send you the first few pages so you can get a taste of my “other” kind of writing.

Thanks so much, everyone!

P.S. Lots more in store for the blog in the coming weeks and months. I’m also going to start getting active on Facebook. More on that soon. (Were you even aware Tuit Nutrition has a FB page? I participate in social media kicking & screaming a bit, to be honest, but it does seem that lots of people interact on FB most often, and since I quit my day job [YES, I DID IT!], momma’s gotta start drumming up some more bid’ness!)

Remember: Amy Berger, M.S., NTP, is not a physician and Tuit Nutrition, LLC, is not a medical practice. The information contained on this site is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any medical condition.