Tim Wendel

In this column, I write about an important conversation I had with Dr. Donald Pinkel while researching "Cancer Crossings: A Brother, His Doctors and the Quest for a Cure Childhood Leukemia." Dr. Pinkel was the first director of pediatrics at Roswell Park in Buffalo and went on to build St. Jude Hospital in Memphis. Here he's shown with the hospital's founder, actor Danny Thomas.
Pinkel's insights helped me understand the dynamics within my own family during the years my brother was battling acute lymphoblastic leukemia.
The new column is entitled "No Time for Conversation."  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 

It usually falls to the writer to secure the permissions for artwork and photographs in a book. Invariably, one or two images can prove elusive. When I was writing CASTRO'S CURVEBALL, I had heard about a photo of Fidel Castro running to first base with his baseball team that toured the island after the  Read More 

I received an email last week about Bob Gibson's scoreless streak in 1968. In my response, I returned to some of the points I made in SUMMER OF '68: The Season That Changed Baseball, and America, Forever. The scoreless streak belonged to the Dodgers' Don Drysdale in the Year of the Pitcher. Bobby Kennedy's assassination  Read More 

After much discussion, we've decided on a subtitle and a slight alternation to the main title. The entire package is now -- CANCER CROSSINGS: A Brother, His Doctors and the Quest for a Cure to Childhood Leukemia.
That sums up this part family memoir, part medical narrative pretty well.
Next up? The final edits  Read More 

With the manuscript into Cornell Press, the production phase is now underway. There will be 15 photographs in the book, placed within the text instead of the usual insert. The permissions from the various hospitals and outlets have been secured. In addition, several family photographs will be used.
At one point, the working title was " Read More