Awaiting Agent, Editor, or Both

I am currently in a holding pattern until I can obtain a literary agent or catch the eye of an editor at a publishing house.  Meanwhile, back on the farm, I am endeavoring to reach out to various memoir editors and at least see what types of memoirs they have published.  Out of eight editors that I contacted, only one, yes one, responsded to say she still needed me to have a literary agent before she could look at my material.  I told her I fear I may not be able to obtain one until the afterlife.  Seriously!  Meanwhile, back on the farm, I continue to endeavor to read a selection of memoirs I wouldn't normally or otherwise read.  I am doing this with the notion that I can hone my craft or at least get a feel for my competition.  Will be back with another memoir review shortly.

Review: Proof Of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Jouney into the Afterlife

Because I am in a holding pattern until an editor or literary agent acquires my own memoir, I am reading several memoirs I wouldn't normally choose to read on my own.  A writer hones his/her craft by reading in their genre and reading their competition.  My dad was the person who brought the book Proof Of Life to my attention after realizing this doctor's experience mirrored mine at age four and also watching Dr. Alexander speak of his experience on a local television station.  Essentially, Dr. Alexander contracts a rare form of bacterial meningitis originating from E. Coli bacteria.  He awakes one morning to a tremendous headache and unbearable pain in his back.  By mid-morning he has started having seizures and his wife calls 911.  The doctors at the hospital are perplexed by his condition, but continue to conduct tests.  It is determined after a lumbar puncture that he has bacterial meningitis.  The originating bacteria is E. Coli; however, initially the doctors think he picked it up during a trip to Israel.  That didn't turn out to be the case.  And I never actually learned where he acquired the E. Coli bacteria.  My theory is that he picked it up from the meat he ate at the barbecue he attended in his neighborhood the night before all the trauma begins.  Dr. Alexander spends seven days in the ICU with no signs of life.  He experiences what most people I know call a Near Death Experience whereby a person is in between this world and the great beyond or afterlife.  His experiences are quite similar to many others that I've heard or read about with great light, seeing someone who has gone on before you, a lush landscape, and a general feeling that it is not the person's time to enter the great beyond as well as a feeling of unconditional love.  Most people having this kind of experience also relate that there is no fear of going on to the great beyond.  I have never heard of anyone having a near death experience while having contracted meningitis; it's usually when a person has a cardiac arrest or the brain goes without oxygen for more that four minutes.

I will say that Dr. Alexander goes to great lengths to communicate that his is the only known recorded case whereby a person does not die given the type of illness he has.  He doesn't appear to suffer any residual damage after the experience either.  Well, guess what?!  Never say yours is the only case of its kind.  Why?  Because whether recorded or not, there is usually somebody somewhere that has experienced what you have.  When I was four years of age I contracted bacterial meningitis from a preschool I attended while my parents worked.  Another girl in the same preschool also came down with the same form of bacterial meningitis. My dad said he knew something was seriously wrong with me when I walked into a wall at home, fell, and my eyes rolled to the back of my head.  So I was in the hospital for 37 days and specialist among specialist was brought in to try and help heal me.  And this is back in 1973, a whole lot earlier than when Dr. Alexander was diagnosed, so there was even less known about how to successfully treat bacterial meningitis.  The other girl from my preschool who had contracted the same form of meningitis died.  I survived, but doctors warned my parents I could have residual side effects like going cross-eyed or suffering developmental disabilities.  Everything was fine up until I turned 17 years of age.  I never went to a preschool program again.  At age seventeen, I was diagnosed with Meniere's disease and its development was attributed to damage I suffered during my bout of bacterial meningitis.  At age sixteen, I developed Uveitis, a serious eye inflammation that later led to glaucoma at age 32.  The Uveitis was also attributed to damage I suffered during my fight with bacterial meningitis.  I have to say that I don't remember any near death experience; it freaked the hell out of my parents, especially when the other girl from the preschool died.  My dad has always said that it wasn't my time to go and there's something I am meant to do here.  Hopefully it is to get my own book published and become a successful author who can help people through her own weird, wildly unusual experiences.

And yeah, I believe in near death experiences even though I haven't experienced one.  There are so many common characteristics among all the people who have experienced one and also, I've seen my dad be within a pinch of death and come back completely healed.  Let's hope I get to tell my story one day.

Getting Published Is Like Teaching 8th Grade English

Dear Literary Loves,
Okay, first, I have not written on this blog in over a week because I have been too blessedly perturbed with publishing and literary agents. I had a literary agent that I had submitted my full manuscript to and on all fronts it appeared to be a match.  And then she sent me a pass on the book saying it was a difficult decision for she and her literary agent partner.  They thought the life lessons I included in the book were to simplistic or nothing they hadn't heard before and they were perplexed as to how to make my manuscript stand out from other books like it.  I knew I wasn't taking the news well when I could hear my teeth grinding and my nostrils were flaring.  It took me three days to calm down enough to send a reply.  I have been attempting to land an agent for this book, which is quite personal, for two years.  It is quite difficult to know as a writer that your book is needed because you probably have read more memoir than the literary agents considering it.  I have well over 100 memoirs on my shelf.  No, I didn't attend Harvard, Northwestern, or Columbia.  No, I didn't grow up in the northeast and go to a boarding school for girls.  My parents didn't live in a country club.  I'm from a small town.  No one where I grew up was really expected to do anything special.  None of us were rich.  So when I decided to go to college I majored in teaching middle school.  And then I decided I would teach English and Social Studies.  I never wanted to teach in a private school because that is such a foreign concept to me.  I made it a priority to teach in the public school system and then was assigned to teach in an inner city school.  Dangerous would be an understatement.  I did teach one year in a private school, but honestly, I loved the students; it was most of the parents who drove me crazy. 
So trying to get my first book published has reminded me a lot of what it is like to successfully teach sixth, seventh, and eighth graders:  you've got to have loads of patience, you have a backbone of steel, and occasionally, you just have to imagine round-housing a wall.  Then my family came to visit for my birthday this week and well, the memoir is about them and it just frustrates the hell out of me that no one among the literati appears to be able to recognize a diamond in the slush pile even if it got up and hit them on the side of the head.  And on top of it all, I got called for jury duty on my birthday!  I did buy three new memoirs this week and I will be reading and reviewing them on this blog, but I don't think they are anywhere near the quality of my memoir.  I don't write for Joe and Jane Smith who were born with silver spoons in their mouths darling.  I write for the casual, normal, everyday, get with the program, and put up or shut up members of society.  Cause you know what? They are the heart and soul of this country.