Tim Wendel

It's official: "Cancer Crossings: A Brother, His Doctors and the Quest to Cure Childhood Leukemia" will be published this weekend.

Thanks to so many people for believing in the project, which was a departure for me in many ways.

The great group of editors at Cornell Press, starting with Dean Smith, Fran Benson and Suzanne Gordon, made this a much better book than the original manuscript.

Also, thanks to the doctors who spoke with me and took the time to explain what it was like to take on this shape-shifter of a disease. We lost Dr. James Holland, one of the giants in this field in recent weeks. But his words and philosophy live on in these pages.

And, finally, special thanks to my family. We've been through a lot together and we continue to sail for the far horizon.  Read More 

Thrilled to be asked to do a monthly blog for Psychology Today. We kick things off with an excerpt from "Cancer Crossings: A Brother, His Doctors and the Quest for a Cure to Childhood Leukemia."
A reminder that the official book launch will be at Politics & Prose, the great independent bookstore in Washington, D.C., on Sunday April 22. The events begins at 1 p.m. with amazing novelist and good friend Mary Kay Zuravleff moderating the discussion. More events coming soon. Keep an eye on the Calendar section on this web site.  Read More 

Thanks to Ken Burns for endorsing Cancer Crossings: A Brother, His Doctors and the Quest to Cure Childhood Leukemia.
He says, "For as long as I have followed his work, Tim Wendel has always chosen a distinct path of intimate stories within big topics, those subjects revealed by his superb way of getting at  Read More 

Thanks to the good people at Cornell Press, especially designer Scott Levine, for this great cover for Cancer Crossings: A Brother, His Doctors and the Quest to Cure Childhood Leukemia. I love how it pops.
To go along with it, I recently received a gracious endorsement from filmmaker Ken Burns: "For as long as  Read More 

Coming down the homestretch. These edits need to be back to the publisher by mid-September.

Since January, I've been working with a voice coach, improving my delivery for the classroom at Johns Hopkins and with an eye on the next book tour. It's been fun to take on some commercials, animation and narration. Learning how to vary the pitch, cadence, dare say the feeling of what I'm saying.
In the course of the lessons, with the amazing Mark Neely, I realized the audio for several of my books (Red Rain, Night on Manitou Island, Down to the Last Pitch) has yet to be done. I think I'm now going to tackle them myself.
Last week, I did a demo tape at Bias Studios in Springfield, Va., where Danny Gatton, Emmylou Harris and my friends Eddie From Ohio have cut albums. It was a bit unnerving to walk into Studio B and go through multiple takes of my scripts for commercials and narrations. But, all in all, it went pretty well.
Meanwhile, the good folks at Cornell Press, the publishers for Cancer Crossings: A Brother, His Doctors and the Quest to Cure Childhood Leukemia, sold the audio rights to the new book to Blackstone Audio.
In a nice twist, Blackstone is interested in having me do the narration for Cancer Crossings. At the very least, I have a quality demo to send their way. Read More