April 7, 2005
Maybe my mood isn't really grumpy. I don't know, I guess I should go for the CUSTOM category: STIFF-UPPER LIP or something like that.

Anyway, another work day. I've got an assignment with a magazine to write an article about negotiations going on between insurers and drug companies to place drugs on the new formularies for the Medicare prescription drug benefit. It's a tough one. Nobody really wants to talk about it. Part of the problem is negotiation strategies may be proprietary. And the negotiations are currently on-going. I knew this when I pitched the article and I knew it might be a problem, but it's a very good-paying mag and sometimes with these places you have to be ambitious and try these things. I've bit off more than I can chew in the past and managed to make the articles work, and I will this time, too. But man! Thought I was about to get an interview with somebody at Eli Lilly and it got shot down. Thought I had an interview with somebody at Kaiser Permanente and it got shot down. I thought I had something going with somebody at Wyeth and I can't get through to them to follow-up. Other calls seem to be to voicemail over and over.

When this happens, the thing to do is work the phones, call as many people in the industry as you can. What seems to happen then is everybody goes slow, but eventually you get what you need--and sometimes more than what you need. I'll get back to it shortly.

I've been tinkering with my novel synopses. One or two of them had an international flavor to them, and I'm reluctant to go to that route because my international travel experience is, well, pretty much zero unless you count Canada. (Ey?) And although I would love to have the time, opportunity and money to travel the world, it's never been our top priority. And my fiction writing seems to work a little better if I've been to the locations or can get to them. So I messed around with the one synopsis I was worried about because it was going to start in Seoul, South Korean and move to Europe. But I decided that might be a mess. So I checked plane flights from Seoul to the U.S. and found you can take non-stop flights from Seoul to San Francisco or L.A. That might work. Get my hero to get the person he's escorting on a plane to the U.S. and let all hell break loose once they're in the U.S. Yeah, I like that. As they say, more than one way to filet the feline.

Oh, just got a call from an insurer's media person; she's going to try and set me up with their VP for this article. Hope it works.

Best,
Mark Terry