I was thrilled to see a review of SUPERBUG on the incredibly important blog BoingBoing.net, written by (my friend and fellow Minneapolis author) Maggie Koerth-Baker.

It’s so exciting to see people completely get the book, and twice that when it is people you know.

Sample quote:

Superbug is not about an entomological caped crusader.

It’s more like a grown-up version of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark.

The bug in question is MRSA, an antibiotic-resistant bacteria that kills more Americans every year than AIDS. Superbug is the story of how we created our own monster-under-the-bed, how it spreads through hospitals and communities, and why it’s damn near impossible to control. If you have a cut or a pimple while reading this book, you are pretty much guaranteed to freak yourself out. And I mean that in the best possible way.

I haven’t been posting it all here — because, you know, that’s why the book has its own website — but SUPERBUG has been getting lots of positive press and reviews. (Yay us.)

But a piece over the weekend was especially meaningful to me and I wanted to call it out: Flu blogger and DailyKos diarist DemfromCT featured the book on his DailyKos page. (And, behold the power of networks: 178 comments this morning. Wow.)

Liz Borkowski at The Pump Handle kindly reproduced Dem’s post.

This builds, of course, on early, consistent and indefatigable support from flu blogger Mike Coston of Avian Flu Diary.

As the book’s acknowledgments say (p. 218!), I am so grateful for our blog community’s support. Sincere thanks to all.

With a cast of other people much more distinguished than me.

See the program page, and access the audio when it’s posted, here.

Huge appreciation to the friendly folks at Eagle Eye Book Shop in Decatur, GA, who had me in to speak last night, and who also very kindly supplied books for the panel discussion at Danya International yesterday afternoon. Many thanks to all for your support!

In advance of the Fresh Air interview today, their tweeter(s) asked for suggestions for a MRSA playlist! Here’s some of the suggestions:
Fever, Peggy Lee
Countin’ On A Miracle, Bruce Springsteen
Ready or Not, the Delfonics (or as sampled by the Fugees)
Time to Get Ill, Beastie Boys
Hurts So Good, John Mellencamp (was he John Cougar Mellencamp then?)
Infected, Bad Religion
and of course:
I’ve Got You Under My Skin.

They also dug up this awesome music video from University of Pennsylvania, “Heroes Wash Hands.” Enjoy.

Sara Austin, Susan Raihofer, Emily Loose, Maura O’Brien, Ali Pisano, Dominick Anfuso, Martha Levin, Elizabeth Stein.
Andrew Dodds, David Ratner, Shirley Sandler, Chuck Monroe, Elise Bogdan.
Penny Duckham, Deirdre Graham, Matt James, Drew Altman;  Bruce Shapiro, Frank Ochberg, MD, Dorie Griggs.
Barth Anderson, Frances Katz, Quinton and Jean Gregor, Anne Edwards, MD, Joanne Kenen, Howard Gleckman. 
Michael Coston, Crawford Kilian, Scott McPherson, “Revere.”
Michael T. Osterholm, PhD; Kristine Moore, MD; Jim Wappes, Robert Roos, Lisa Schnirring; Kathleen Kimball-Baker; Nicholas Kelley,  Paul Mamula, PhD.
Coilin Nunan; Ramanan Laxminarayan; Donald Berwick, MD, Donald Goldmann, MD Frances Griffin, Joseph McCannon, Madge Kaplan; Lisa McGiffert.
James Sliwa, Steven Baragona.
Robert S. Daum, MD, Susan Boyle-Vavra, PhD, Everly Macario, SciD, Michael Z. David, MD, PhD, Susan Crawford, MD, Christopher Montgomery, MD, Ben Yoon, Lakesha Lloyd; Robert Bielski, MD, Stephen Weber, MD, John Easton.
Henry “Chip” Chambers, MD, Francoise Perdreau-Remington, PhD, Adam Hersh, MD, Binh An Diep, PhD, Kristen Bole; Rick Loftus, MD, Steve Gray.  Elizabeth Bancroft, MD, Nolan Lee, MD, Gregory J. Moran, MD, John Edwards, Jr., MD, Loren G. Miller MD.
John Bradley, MD, Bradley Peterson, MD. Don Janssen, DVM, Nadine Lamberski, DVM, Jeff Andrews.
Nicole Coffin, David Daigle, Rachel Gorwitz, MD, Jeffrey Hageman, Fred Tenover, PhD, Timothy Naimi, MD, Denise Cardo, MD,  Joan Brunkard, PhD, David Sugerman, MD, Roberta Carey PhD, Brandi Limbago PhD, Lonnie King DVM, Jennifer Wright DVM; Susan Sanchez, PhD; Arthur Kellermann, MD, Katherine Heilpern, MD, Henry Blumberg, MD, Leon Haley, MD, Michael Huey, MD, Andre Nahmias, MD; Tom Keating, PhD.
David Edell, Cathy Supak, Mike Carroll, Marilyn Felkner, MD.  Heinz Eichenwald, MD, Mari Nicholson-Preuss.
Gregory Belzley, Martha Sperling, Anita Alberts, Nate Wenstrup, Natalie Leonard, Carrie Takahata, Eric Balaban; John Clarke, MD, Luis Rivera, MD, Timothy Faloon, Rhonda Moore; Charles Alexander, Jr., Gary Benson, David White, Chris Pearson; Pierre Tattevin, MD, Jason Farley, PhD; Elizabeth Cumming, Katie Schwartzmann, Samuel Gore, MD.
Tara Smith, PhD, Michael Male, DVM, Abby Harper; J. Scott Weese, DVM; Andreas Voss, Md, PhD,  Jan Kluytmans, Md, PhD; Pat Gardiner.
Barry Farr, MD, William Jarvis, MD, William Schaffner, MD. Jeff Bender, DVM, BJ Anderson, MD, John Odom, MD, Marjorie Hogan, MD, Kirk Smith, DVM,  Patrick Schlievert, PhD.
Paul M. Wiles, Thomas N. Zweng, MD, Stephen L. Wallenhaupt, MD, James W. Lederer, Jr., MD, Suzie Rakyta, RN, Sandy Cox, RN, Patti Deltry, RN, Kati Everett. Keith M. Ramsey, MD, Kathy Cochran, RN, Delores Nobles.
Barry Eisenstein, MD, Richard Baltz, PhD, Grace Thorne, PhD Jared Silverman, PhD,  Kevin Tally, MD. Joann Lindenmayer, DVM, Robert Moellering, MD, Jeffrey Linder, MD. John Powers, MD,  Ron Najafi, PhD, Mary Beth Minyard,  Henry Shinefield, MD,  Lisa Bayne.
Allison Agwu, MD; Steven J. Barenkamp, MD; Gonzalo Bearman, MD; Benjamin Estrada, MD; Eugene L. Green; Brenda Hollier; Christoph U. Lehmann, MD; Nkuchia Mikinatha, DrPH; Michael Nagy, MD; Louis Rice, MD; Lisa Saiman, MD; Torrance Williams.
Rose Aliberti; Kepa Askenasy; James Bell; Michael Bennett; Laura Chen Davies, Robin Cook; Stephanie Crowell; Amber Don; Eva Ferguson and Beverly and Ernie Dieringer; Nick and Janet Johnson; Kevin Keller; Mollie and Brian Logan; Diane Lore and Richard Ross; Clarissa and Tony Love; Christina Marzullo; Jane McGuinn, Molly Donohue, Charlotte McGuinn Freeman; Steve, Sue and Pat McNees; Karen Moser; Carole and Ty Moss; Victoria Nahum; Melissa Quintana; Debbie Russ; Danielle Sheffler; Scott and Katie Smith; Andrea and Jay Sorensen; Jeanine Thomas; Suzanne Turpin Upton; Tom Wolff, Christine Fusco, Lourraine Stamets.
Samara Cummins, Krista Reese, Rich Eldredge. Lt. Col. Robert J. McKenna, Cerise McKenna Vablais, PhD, Zach McKenna. Rev. Robert E. Lauder, John J. McKenna. Matthew McKenna, Darla Albrigh, Davd Tuller, Randy Dotinga, Elizabeth McKenna.
Loren D. Bolstridge III.

From my heart, thank you all.

Folks, it’s Sunday, and SUPERBUG will be officially released on Tuesday. Press copies have been landing at last. Readers who responded to my plea for pre-orders (because pre-orders are very important to how the publisher and the market behave subsequently about the book) have been telling me they’re getting emails saying the book is on its way.

And a few reviews are starting to pop up!

Kirkus said: “A gripping account of one of the most devastating infectious agents on the planet… A meticulously researched, frightening report on a deadly pathogen.”

Booklist said: “Lays bare, often all too graphically, the ravages of a disease with the potential to do grievous international harm.”

But of most value to me today, my blog-friend and supporter Michael Coston of Avian Flu Diary said this morning:

I can think of a great many superlatives to describe this book; engaging, harrowing, fascinating, powerful… even terrifying at times.
But the descriptive term that keeps coming back to me is: Important. …
Superbug, quite frankly, should be required reading for every doctor, nurse, and health care professional, if for no other reason than to alert them to the changes they must make in order to help curb the spread of these deadly pathogens.
But it should also be on the reading list of parents, students, and teachers who need to be able to recognize the early warning signs of infection.
And just as importantly, read by those who make policy at the local, state, and Federal level.  We either make institutional changes or risk serious peril from these resistant bacteria.

The cheering of Mike and other bloggers including Revere of Effect Measure and Crof of H5N1 has meant so much to me as I’ve worked on this book (and also written about flu and other diseases at CIDRAP.) I’m grateful.

Constant readers: It’s two weeks to publication, and I’m starting to lose my grip on everything there is to do. (As you might be able to tell by my radio silence…) I’m very backed up on great research to tell you about.

First, though, let me share some book news:

EXCERPT: The first excerpt of SUPERBUG has been published on Simon and Schuster’s website! It looks like the entire Chapter One.


INTERVIEW: I was invited to Chicago the past few days to do a speech for International Women’s Day, and ended up doing some sneak-preview media appearances. Here’s the sound file of an interview with the fabulous Alison Cuddy of WBEZ-FM.

MORE INTERVIEWS: I’ll be listing forthcoming interviews and appearances on my page at BookTour.com. You’ll notice there isn’t much up there yet: We’re still working on publicity. So help me fill this page, OK? Here’s how:


TOUR, A PLEA: My publisher, Free Press, doesn’t really believe in sending authors around. They have some justification: As I can testify from my last tour, sometimes a book tour mean spending two hours making painful chit-chat in an empty bookstore whose entire population is the staff, the friend who drove you, and a street person who wandered in and is conversing quietly with her demons. (Twenty-Third Street Books, Portland, OR, thanks for asking. I hear they closed.) But that bad experience notwithstanding, I believe there’s value in getting out and talking to readers, victims, disease geeks and anyone else interested in this bug, and I’m willing to do it, if you’ll help.

So: If you’re a clinician, a professor, or a teacher, and you’re willing to host SUPERBUG and me at a class, a department brown-bag or a Grand Rounds, please get in touch. Ditto if you run a Cafe Scientifique, have a book club that wants to talk about science or medicine, have a church group, a kid’s group, a med-student society… you get the idea. If I can get there, I’ll come. I know already that I’ll be in and out of Minneapolis and Atlanta, my two home bases, and also in North Carolina, Iowa, Chicago, and I hope San Francisco, Portland and Boston as well. Help me add to the list!

Right, back to research tomorrow.

Folks, as with my first book, I’m having a website professionally built for SUPERBUG (by the awesome Book Report Network). But while we work on that, I’ve put up a proto-page on my own. Please come check it out!

You’ll see the gorgeous, scary cover, the hair-raising jacket copy, and links to pages about me and about the book. You’ll also see links for buying the book:  at a deeply discounted pre-publication price at Amazon, and also at IndieBound.com, the site for independent book-sellers.

There’s also a link through which you can check out BookTour.com, where I’ll be listing appearances and speeches, and where you can request I come speak. And finally — important for academics and teachers! — there’s a link through which you can order a free copy for academic evaluation.

Until we get the full site built, the page will be on my website. The URL is http://www.MarynMcKenna.com/SUPERBUG.html. Please come look.

Constant readers, apologies for disappearing unexpectedly. It’s been a challenging few weeks at Casa Superbug, with a death in the family and a sudden trip to a part of the country with, hmm, low connectivity.

But I’m back. And there’s so much to talk about. Here’s the first in a long list: The cover art for SUPERBUG!

(Let us pause for a moment while I jump up and down and hug myself with glee.)

My editor says it will be even more gorgeous in real life: There are glossy areas, and embossed areas, and color that will fly off the bookstore shelf, smack you in the eye and insist on being carried to the cashier.

(Or, alternatively, wing off the page. Such as this Amazon page, where SUPERBUG is available at a pre-release price that is 34% off.)

More to come soon, on the many stories that occurred last week, and an exciting paper in a medical journal later this week.

Constant readers — any of you who are Kindle users can now find SUPERBUG the blog in the Kindle store. I placed it there today; it may take 48 hours for it to propagate through the system.

SUPERBUG the book will of course be on Kindle as well, in March. Stay tuned!

Constant readers: To my complete surprise, SUPERBUG is up on Amazon!

Mind you, the page is almost blank. The cover image has not been added; the flap copy hasn’t even been finalized; and my bio is out of date. (For an up-to-date bio, visit my Amazon author page, where posts from here will soon be mirrored.)

Nevertheless, there it is — and at a lovely pre-release deep discount (34%!) too.

I had plans to roll out news about the book over the next two months, but this has scooped me, a bit. So here’s the first bit of news, which you’ll see confirmed on the Amazon page: We finally decided on a subtitle. So the full title of the book now is: