Before you know it, a year has flown by and you sit wondering how comes time flies by so fast!
Well, it's slightly more than a year now since my last post and i can barely believe it!
Unfortunately, the books still not yet out in the market, the reason being that my alter ego pretends to be a busy man and has been sorting out some professional things, which is now near completion, so i had to take a break from the writing.
Anyways, i'm back now. Well, almost.
Going through the post, i realise that there's still quite a lot of editing to do on the book. Quite a lot! May be that's what happens when you take a break and come back feeling fresh-you see things from a better perspective.
I can see clearly that there's still a bit of re-adjustments to be made to the book before it's ready for sending out to the professional editors.
Hopefully, i'll start working on them within the next two weeks, with a view to getting the book out by Christmas!
Get's me thinking whether i shouldn't change the title to 'another christmas story...'!
Friday, 27 March 2009
Wednesday, 6 February 2008
The revised prologue
PROLOGUE
24th December, 2000. Somewhere in London.
The on-call bleep, lying on the table just across from where i am sitting, has just gone off. I check my watch and I notice that it’s 9:08pm.I can still hear the footsteps of my colleague, whose shift had just ended 8minutes ago, walking down the corridor towards the lift. He has just handed over a patient who is ‘waiting to be cleared by the medics’ and as I look at the number that is flashing across the screen of my bleep, I am beginning to think that this is going to be another very busy night.
It is Christmas Eve again and as always it was very easy for me to arrange to be on-call. Most of my colleagues always wonder why I like to work on Christmas Eve but I find it difficult to explain to them that I just have to be working tonight. It’s something that just has to be because it was on a night like this, so many years ago that Tanya died. Tanya, the lovely half-Russian girl who loved me had killed herself on Christmas Eve.
I try not to think of it; I tell myself that time would ease the feeling of guilt but my soul remains restless and nothing I do seems to be enough to pacify her spirit that torments my soul. If only I had fulfilled my promises to her. If only I had ignored my own self-pity and told her the words that she so longed to hear from my lips; If only I could turn back the hands of time. But I too was young and so very foolish. And now the mistakes of my youth will live with me forever…
I was feeling cold on the last night I saw Tanya alive. Even though it was early spring, I remember a cold chill come over me as I had stepped out of the bus that had brought me on the twelve hours trip to Pyatigorsk, the Russian town, which is located on the foothills of the Caucasus Mountains, where she was studying English and German at the Pedagogic University. I had come in from Rostov-On-Don, the city where I was a second year medical student.
But as I remember that night, I am no longer sure if it was really the weather that was cold or if it was the cold breeze that blows over me whenever I think of that night. I have relived that night so many times in my mind and I know that there is so many things that I could have made to happen differently. I could have stopped her from killing herself. But I didn’t.
The taxi I took from the bus station had stopped me in front of her hostel, which is located just off Kalinin Avenue. I had gone up to her room on the third floor of the hostel and she had been alone that night. As she opened the front door, I first noticed that she had a bandage tied around her left arm and it was stained with blood. This meant that she had cut herself again.
Tanya had once told me that she cuts herself as a distraction from the inner pains. She said that physical pain is a lot more bearable than 'the thing' that she felt inside and that whenever she cuts herself, it feels as if ‘something is released and the pain is bled away in the blood’.After I saw the blood-stained bandage, I then noticed her eyes. And I knew that something had gone irredeemably wrong. I could not quite define why I felt that way, but I sensed something and it sent a chill down my spine.
It was also then that I knew that I had lost Tanya and that the person who stood in front of me was a total stranger-a cold life-form that was bereft of life.I could sense no more that hope, which had sparkled in her eyes, almost a life time earlier, when we had taken long walks through the romantic green avenues of Gorky Park, where we fed the squirrels and discovered a desire for each other that seemed so pure and so innocent. A desire that roused her to make the promise of love to me, after our lips had brushed in our first shared kiss, under the shower of the water-fountain as the music of Ala Pugachova had played so softly in the background.
I remember how we had gotten drunk in each others laughter as we watched other young lovers, walking by hand-in-hand with no cares in the world, whispering foolishness into each others ears. I remember the lovely sparkle in her eyes as she had asked me about how comes love has the power to make children out of adults and had then started laughing out of the joy of just having me there with her at that moment…
But those same eyes were now lifeless as they stared back at me on that night in Pyatigorsk. They had been staring inwards and had looked so frightened by what they were seeing. And when I had asked her what was happening to her, she had met my questions with the ghost of a smile and then started to respond in monotones; giving away very little and yet…and yet I knew that she was screaming out to me for help. But what she wanted of me I could not give to her because my life was so messed up at the time.
Later that evening, I had walked out of her hostel and into the cold Pyatigorsk night, thinking of the haunting smile that had lingered on her lips as she had shut the door of her room, quietly behind me. And as I walked into the night, I knew that I should not have left her alone.
When I came back to Pyatigorsk four weeks later it was already too late. I was told that she had packed her bags in the week of my previous visit and had left town. And after that nobody-not even her babushka-knew where she had disappeared to.
Eight months later, babushka had come to my hostel and informed me that Tanya had been found by some strangers. They said that she had been lying in the snow and was slowly bleeding to death from a deep cut on her left wrist. The strangers had called an ambulance, but by the time the ambulance arrived, she had lost too much blood and had died a few minutes later, in the early hours of Christmas morning. They say that before she died, she had kept on repeating one strange name, which babushka says sounded like the name ‘Kasi’. She had kept on repeating that name as she bled out her pain and then finally became still in death…
“Hello, it’s the duty Doctor here. Did you bleep me just now?”
“Yes. Is that Kasi?”
“Yes…”
“Did your colleague tell you about the patient in the A&E?
“Yes…”
“She’s been medically cleared”
“Okay, see you in a bit then…”
I have just stepped out of the long corridor of the main building and I have walked into the drizzling rain. I am walking briskly across the well-lit hospital car park and I notice that an ambulance has stopped in front of the large A&E building. As I approach the building, the back door of the ambulance is flung open and two paramedics have jumped out and are trying to lift out a patient who is lying on a stretcher. A very tall black man, wearing the green porters’ uniform, has wheeled out a hospital trolley up to the back of the ambulance, and the paramedics have hoisted the patient onto the trolley.
A male nurse who has just come out of the A&E building has been handed over a drip bag with an IV-line running into the right arm of the patient on the stretcher and as I pass by, I notice that the patient is a pale-faced middle aged white woman and she seems to be in a lot of pain.
I have stepped into the warm brightly lit reception hall of the A&E and I notice that it is crowded as always. A scruffy looking white man, whose offensive smell of alcohol can be smelled from the entrance, is talking at the top of his voice to a middle aged Asian man in a Sikhs turban. The unfolding commotion is disrupting the long queue of people, who had been patiently waiting for their turns to be attended to by the elderly female reception clerk. She was was now standing behind the glass security panel and looked quite flustered by the commotion.
‘Join the bloody line…!” The man in the turban is shouting at the disheveled gentleman.
‘No, you go back to your country you bloody paki!’
I notice that at the far end of the hall, two police men are standing next to a large black man in handcuffs. The man in handcuffs seems to have a swollen left eye and I can see what appear to be blood stains on the left side of his torn white shirt. The police men are talking among themselves and it looks like they are going to intervene in the unfolding commotion.
“Kasi…!” I hear the familiar voice of Kate, the Psychiatry Liaison nurse, calling me from behind and I turn to see her coming towards me, carrying some papers in her hands.
We have now walked into the restricted area together and have closed the reinforced glass doors behind us, shutting out the noise in the waiting area.
“Can you tell me a little bit more about the patient?”
“She is a sixteen year old girl with a recent impulsive paracetamol overdose”
“Has she been medically cleared?”
“Yes, she took twenty tablets and her bloods have come back okay…”
“Is she known to our services?”
“This is the second time she is presenting in the last few months. She has a past history of self-harming and attention-seeking behaviour, basically another PD-in-the-making…”
I winced when she described the behaviour as ‘attention-seeking’. A lot of the staff, working in the front-line services, has come to dislike the personality-disordered patients or the PD’s as they are called. These patients have been much traumatized in their childhoods are now finding it a difficult to cope with the challenges of interpersonal relationships. It is as if their feelings of emptiness and frustration are such that even the staffs, who work with them, eventually end up feeling emotionally drained from the realization that their lives are too complicated to really sort out.
“There she is over there…”
The person she is pointing out to me is a young girl of what looks like a mixed African-Caucasian racial background, possibly Asian. I notice, from her long legs that are pulled in under her chair, that she is quite tall for a sixteen year old. I suppose it’s her very slim frame, of somebody who has been starving herself of food that makes her to appear a lot taller than she really is. She is seated on a blue plastic chair with her head bowed and her long black hair is cascading over her slender fingers that are holding up her head.
As I approach, I can hear the sound of sobbing coming from her. I have checked the name on the case-note, which the liaison nurse has just handed over to me.
“Hello…” I say as she raises her head and looks from me to the nurse. Her face is slender and beautiful and her large brown eyes look so puffed up and tired…
“Amina, this is the duty doctor…”the nurse says“…Kasi, I really have a lot of work to do. Can I leave her with you?”
“You know what the policy is about male staff needing chaperones…I’m sorry”
“I’m Dr Obieze…” I say, addressing the young lady
“…I am the Psychiatrist-on-call and I have been asked to come and talk with you. Is that okay?”
“Yes”
“Can we go to the consulting room over there?”She is nodding and has slowly gotten up from her chair. She is now following me to the adjoining consulting room and the nurse is walking just behind us.
“Please sit down….” I say offering her a seat and deciding to wait for her to settle down a bit, but she remains standing.
“I know it must be difficult for you, but please sit down and let’s see how we can help you…”
“Amina sit down and stop crying so that the Doctor can ask you some questions”
She has decided to sit down, but her sobbing is not abating. The tears continue to stream down from her swollen eyes and I notice that the front of her sweat-shirt is already soaked in tears. I am reaching for the box of tissues on the table next to her.
“Here, have a tissue, okay and maybe you can tell me why you are crying…”
“I want to die and you cannot help me!”!” she declares and starts to sob again.
I have picked up her notes to flick through and have decided to allow her to cry a bit more. I notice that the nurse is glancing at her watch, but I am ignoring her as I flick through Amina’s notes, checking for any significant events in her life that may have been documented. She has already been here before and it is important for me to have an understanding of what her underlying psychological make-up is. I am reading that she was abandoned by her single-parent mother and then adopted by a middle-aged couple. She was then sexually abused by her adoptive father and has since been living in one care home after another for the past eight years. Poor girl.
What really can I do for her? What will my mere words do that will erase the stained slates of her troubled soul? Can I offer her anything that will give her a new beginning and make her learn to trust life again? I am feeling frustration already and I have not even started to talk to her. I am watching her sob and I see how her whole body heaves up and down in fits of pain from her unhealing life wounds.
“My boyfriend has just left me….” She says in-between sobs and starts to wipe her puffed up eyes with the fragmenting tissue-a metaphor for her life-that have now become so soaked with the streams of her unending tears.
“Here, have another one….”I say offering her another tissue.
I am watching her and as always I hear Tanya’s voice calling my name, crying out to me to save her.
What do you want me to do Tanya, that will be enough for you to set me free…?
Amina is groaning in emotional pain and I can hear the words of her unvoiced cry. I can hear her reaching out to me for help, but I am feeling so very powerless before her.
“I am here to help you…”
24th December, 2000. Somewhere in London.
The on-call bleep, lying on the table just across from where i am sitting, has just gone off. I check my watch and I notice that it’s 9:08pm.I can still hear the footsteps of my colleague, whose shift had just ended 8minutes ago, walking down the corridor towards the lift. He has just handed over a patient who is ‘waiting to be cleared by the medics’ and as I look at the number that is flashing across the screen of my bleep, I am beginning to think that this is going to be another very busy night.
It is Christmas Eve again and as always it was very easy for me to arrange to be on-call. Most of my colleagues always wonder why I like to work on Christmas Eve but I find it difficult to explain to them that I just have to be working tonight. It’s something that just has to be because it was on a night like this, so many years ago that Tanya died. Tanya, the lovely half-Russian girl who loved me had killed herself on Christmas Eve.
I try not to think of it; I tell myself that time would ease the feeling of guilt but my soul remains restless and nothing I do seems to be enough to pacify her spirit that torments my soul. If only I had fulfilled my promises to her. If only I had ignored my own self-pity and told her the words that she so longed to hear from my lips; If only I could turn back the hands of time. But I too was young and so very foolish. And now the mistakes of my youth will live with me forever…
I was feeling cold on the last night I saw Tanya alive. Even though it was early spring, I remember a cold chill come over me as I had stepped out of the bus that had brought me on the twelve hours trip to Pyatigorsk, the Russian town, which is located on the foothills of the Caucasus Mountains, where she was studying English and German at the Pedagogic University. I had come in from Rostov-On-Don, the city where I was a second year medical student.
But as I remember that night, I am no longer sure if it was really the weather that was cold or if it was the cold breeze that blows over me whenever I think of that night. I have relived that night so many times in my mind and I know that there is so many things that I could have made to happen differently. I could have stopped her from killing herself. But I didn’t.
The taxi I took from the bus station had stopped me in front of her hostel, which is located just off Kalinin Avenue. I had gone up to her room on the third floor of the hostel and she had been alone that night. As she opened the front door, I first noticed that she had a bandage tied around her left arm and it was stained with blood. This meant that she had cut herself again.
Tanya had once told me that she cuts herself as a distraction from the inner pains. She said that physical pain is a lot more bearable than 'the thing' that she felt inside and that whenever she cuts herself, it feels as if ‘something is released and the pain is bled away in the blood’.After I saw the blood-stained bandage, I then noticed her eyes. And I knew that something had gone irredeemably wrong. I could not quite define why I felt that way, but I sensed something and it sent a chill down my spine.
It was also then that I knew that I had lost Tanya and that the person who stood in front of me was a total stranger-a cold life-form that was bereft of life.I could sense no more that hope, which had sparkled in her eyes, almost a life time earlier, when we had taken long walks through the romantic green avenues of Gorky Park, where we fed the squirrels and discovered a desire for each other that seemed so pure and so innocent. A desire that roused her to make the promise of love to me, after our lips had brushed in our first shared kiss, under the shower of the water-fountain as the music of Ala Pugachova had played so softly in the background.
I remember how we had gotten drunk in each others laughter as we watched other young lovers, walking by hand-in-hand with no cares in the world, whispering foolishness into each others ears. I remember the lovely sparkle in her eyes as she had asked me about how comes love has the power to make children out of adults and had then started laughing out of the joy of just having me there with her at that moment…
But those same eyes were now lifeless as they stared back at me on that night in Pyatigorsk. They had been staring inwards and had looked so frightened by what they were seeing. And when I had asked her what was happening to her, she had met my questions with the ghost of a smile and then started to respond in monotones; giving away very little and yet…and yet I knew that she was screaming out to me for help. But what she wanted of me I could not give to her because my life was so messed up at the time.
Later that evening, I had walked out of her hostel and into the cold Pyatigorsk night, thinking of the haunting smile that had lingered on her lips as she had shut the door of her room, quietly behind me. And as I walked into the night, I knew that I should not have left her alone.
When I came back to Pyatigorsk four weeks later it was already too late. I was told that she had packed her bags in the week of my previous visit and had left town. And after that nobody-not even her babushka-knew where she had disappeared to.
Eight months later, babushka had come to my hostel and informed me that Tanya had been found by some strangers. They said that she had been lying in the snow and was slowly bleeding to death from a deep cut on her left wrist. The strangers had called an ambulance, but by the time the ambulance arrived, she had lost too much blood and had died a few minutes later, in the early hours of Christmas morning. They say that before she died, she had kept on repeating one strange name, which babushka says sounded like the name ‘Kasi’. She had kept on repeating that name as she bled out her pain and then finally became still in death…
“Hello, it’s the duty Doctor here. Did you bleep me just now?”
“Yes. Is that Kasi?”
“Yes…”
“Did your colleague tell you about the patient in the A&E?
“Yes…”
“She’s been medically cleared”
“Okay, see you in a bit then…”
I have just stepped out of the long corridor of the main building and I have walked into the drizzling rain. I am walking briskly across the well-lit hospital car park and I notice that an ambulance has stopped in front of the large A&E building. As I approach the building, the back door of the ambulance is flung open and two paramedics have jumped out and are trying to lift out a patient who is lying on a stretcher. A very tall black man, wearing the green porters’ uniform, has wheeled out a hospital trolley up to the back of the ambulance, and the paramedics have hoisted the patient onto the trolley.
A male nurse who has just come out of the A&E building has been handed over a drip bag with an IV-line running into the right arm of the patient on the stretcher and as I pass by, I notice that the patient is a pale-faced middle aged white woman and she seems to be in a lot of pain.
I have stepped into the warm brightly lit reception hall of the A&E and I notice that it is crowded as always. A scruffy looking white man, whose offensive smell of alcohol can be smelled from the entrance, is talking at the top of his voice to a middle aged Asian man in a Sikhs turban. The unfolding commotion is disrupting the long queue of people, who had been patiently waiting for their turns to be attended to by the elderly female reception clerk. She was was now standing behind the glass security panel and looked quite flustered by the commotion.
‘Join the bloody line…!” The man in the turban is shouting at the disheveled gentleman.
‘No, you go back to your country you bloody paki!’
I notice that at the far end of the hall, two police men are standing next to a large black man in handcuffs. The man in handcuffs seems to have a swollen left eye and I can see what appear to be blood stains on the left side of his torn white shirt. The police men are talking among themselves and it looks like they are going to intervene in the unfolding commotion.
“Kasi…!” I hear the familiar voice of Kate, the Psychiatry Liaison nurse, calling me from behind and I turn to see her coming towards me, carrying some papers in her hands.
We have now walked into the restricted area together and have closed the reinforced glass doors behind us, shutting out the noise in the waiting area.
“Can you tell me a little bit more about the patient?”
“She is a sixteen year old girl with a recent impulsive paracetamol overdose”
“Has she been medically cleared?”
“Yes, she took twenty tablets and her bloods have come back okay…”
“Is she known to our services?”
“This is the second time she is presenting in the last few months. She has a past history of self-harming and attention-seeking behaviour, basically another PD-in-the-making…”
I winced when she described the behaviour as ‘attention-seeking’. A lot of the staff, working in the front-line services, has come to dislike the personality-disordered patients or the PD’s as they are called. These patients have been much traumatized in their childhoods are now finding it a difficult to cope with the challenges of interpersonal relationships. It is as if their feelings of emptiness and frustration are such that even the staffs, who work with them, eventually end up feeling emotionally drained from the realization that their lives are too complicated to really sort out.
“There she is over there…”
The person she is pointing out to me is a young girl of what looks like a mixed African-Caucasian racial background, possibly Asian. I notice, from her long legs that are pulled in under her chair, that she is quite tall for a sixteen year old. I suppose it’s her very slim frame, of somebody who has been starving herself of food that makes her to appear a lot taller than she really is. She is seated on a blue plastic chair with her head bowed and her long black hair is cascading over her slender fingers that are holding up her head.
As I approach, I can hear the sound of sobbing coming from her. I have checked the name on the case-note, which the liaison nurse has just handed over to me.
“Hello…” I say as she raises her head and looks from me to the nurse. Her face is slender and beautiful and her large brown eyes look so puffed up and tired…
“Amina, this is the duty doctor…”the nurse says“…Kasi, I really have a lot of work to do. Can I leave her with you?”
“You know what the policy is about male staff needing chaperones…I’m sorry”
“I’m Dr Obieze…” I say, addressing the young lady
“…I am the Psychiatrist-on-call and I have been asked to come and talk with you. Is that okay?”
“Yes”
“Can we go to the consulting room over there?”She is nodding and has slowly gotten up from her chair. She is now following me to the adjoining consulting room and the nurse is walking just behind us.
“Please sit down….” I say offering her a seat and deciding to wait for her to settle down a bit, but she remains standing.
“I know it must be difficult for you, but please sit down and let’s see how we can help you…”
“Amina sit down and stop crying so that the Doctor can ask you some questions”
She has decided to sit down, but her sobbing is not abating. The tears continue to stream down from her swollen eyes and I notice that the front of her sweat-shirt is already soaked in tears. I am reaching for the box of tissues on the table next to her.
“Here, have a tissue, okay and maybe you can tell me why you are crying…”
“I want to die and you cannot help me!”!” she declares and starts to sob again.
I have picked up her notes to flick through and have decided to allow her to cry a bit more. I notice that the nurse is glancing at her watch, but I am ignoring her as I flick through Amina’s notes, checking for any significant events in her life that may have been documented. She has already been here before and it is important for me to have an understanding of what her underlying psychological make-up is. I am reading that she was abandoned by her single-parent mother and then adopted by a middle-aged couple. She was then sexually abused by her adoptive father and has since been living in one care home after another for the past eight years. Poor girl.
What really can I do for her? What will my mere words do that will erase the stained slates of her troubled soul? Can I offer her anything that will give her a new beginning and make her learn to trust life again? I am feeling frustration already and I have not even started to talk to her. I am watching her sob and I see how her whole body heaves up and down in fits of pain from her unhealing life wounds.
“My boyfriend has just left me….” She says in-between sobs and starts to wipe her puffed up eyes with the fragmenting tissue-a metaphor for her life-that have now become so soaked with the streams of her unending tears.
“Here, have another one….”I say offering her another tissue.
I am watching her and as always I hear Tanya’s voice calling my name, crying out to me to save her.
What do you want me to do Tanya, that will be enough for you to set me free…?
Amina is groaning in emotional pain and I can hear the words of her unvoiced cry. I can hear her reaching out to me for help, but I am feeling so very powerless before her.
“I am here to help you…”
Snail mail and other matters.
I got an email from one of the agents a few days ago. She wants me to send in the materials by snail mail.
I had to revise the prologue of the book to something more gripping. I like the new version, which i'll post later, a lot better.
I have sent out the materials and will see what happens in 4-6weeks time, the earliest time i can hear from the agent.
Unfortunately, my alter ego has an exam to prepare for and that will keep me very occupied for the next 2-3months. It means that the earliest time i can start working on the book again is i the summer...
I had to revise the prologue of the book to something more gripping. I like the new version, which i'll post later, a lot better.
I have sent out the materials and will see what happens in 4-6weeks time, the earliest time i can hear from the agent.
Unfortunately, my alter ego has an exam to prepare for and that will keep me very occupied for the next 2-3months. It means that the earliest time i can start working on the book again is i the summer...
Wednesday, 16 January 2008
Just another Day...
I have not gotten any more responses from the agents. Just as well, because i've seen some major changes that i need to make in the manuscript.
Okay, i'll be honest. You know that letter i mentioned that said something along the lines of 'not being gripped enough' or something like that. Well, that got me thinking: since i am aiming for an international audience, i think that the prologue has to reflect that.
I have already changed the prologue and i think it's a lot more gripping. I also realise that i should have written a bit more about the kind of stuff that we learn't in those indoctrination course; you know, the ones on political economics, philosophy, history of the communist party. Not that i should have bored people with ireelevant detail, but i could have given a flavour of what it felt like for Kasi and co. That kind of stuff.
So sometimes, delay may actually mean an opportunity to refine something unto perfection. I'm currently overhauling the manuscript. If i get any agent now, that would be okay but if not, that would be okay as well.
I am already planning a marketing strategy that should get people buying the book. Hopefully, once that's happened i'd have leverage to approach agents to represent me.
Okay, i'll be honest. You know that letter i mentioned that said something along the lines of 'not being gripped enough' or something like that. Well, that got me thinking: since i am aiming for an international audience, i think that the prologue has to reflect that.
I have already changed the prologue and i think it's a lot more gripping. I also realise that i should have written a bit more about the kind of stuff that we learn't in those indoctrination course; you know, the ones on political economics, philosophy, history of the communist party. Not that i should have bored people with ireelevant detail, but i could have given a flavour of what it felt like for Kasi and co. That kind of stuff.
So sometimes, delay may actually mean an opportunity to refine something unto perfection. I'm currently overhauling the manuscript. If i get any agent now, that would be okay but if not, that would be okay as well.
I am already planning a marketing strategy that should get people buying the book. Hopefully, once that's happened i'd have leverage to approach agents to represent me.
Friday, 11 January 2008
A workable idea...
Okay, i am not a businessman alright, so don't laugh when i say i am going to try to do it my self!
You see, yesterday i was thinking of waiting until i hear from all the agencies i have written to-i am still waiting to hear from about 6-and if nothing positive comes out, then i would send the MSS to writers workshop (you can google and find their contacts, they actually have some good services). The plan was to get them to read and edit the MSS for a fee and then recommend it to agents.
Well, that's what i was thinking yesterday.
Today, an email popped up in my inbox from lulu.com, which i am subscribed to, and i browsed through their site again. And...Voila!
Yep, you guessed it. Why not?
I am confident that i have something that some people would want to read (the polls and comments attest to it), so all i need to do is to get it publsihed...
And that's where the whole businessman thing comes up. Like i said, i am not a business man but sometimes providence nudges us along paths that we didn't really think we'd tread.
I can do it you know. I can get it published within the next month or two and then make use of all the marketing tools provided by the lulu people and also try out my own marketing strategies. And the more i think about it, the more excited i am becoming.
And i am thinking that my alterego may have to postpone what he wanted us to do for the next few months.
Getting Guilt and Redemption out in the market is the priority...for the both of us!
PS: It's Day 7
You see, yesterday i was thinking of waiting until i hear from all the agencies i have written to-i am still waiting to hear from about 6-and if nothing positive comes out, then i would send the MSS to writers workshop (you can google and find their contacts, they actually have some good services). The plan was to get them to read and edit the MSS for a fee and then recommend it to agents.
Well, that's what i was thinking yesterday.
Today, an email popped up in my inbox from lulu.com, which i am subscribed to, and i browsed through their site again. And...Voila!
Yep, you guessed it. Why not?
I am confident that i have something that some people would want to read (the polls and comments attest to it), so all i need to do is to get it publsihed...
And that's where the whole businessman thing comes up. Like i said, i am not a business man but sometimes providence nudges us along paths that we didn't really think we'd tread.
I can do it you know. I can get it published within the next month or two and then make use of all the marketing tools provided by the lulu people and also try out my own marketing strategies. And the more i think about it, the more excited i am becoming.
And i am thinking that my alterego may have to postpone what he wanted us to do for the next few months.
Getting Guilt and Redemption out in the market is the priority...for the both of us!
PS: It's Day 7
Wednesday, 9 January 2008
Day 6...
Today is day 6.
So far, i have gotten 6 responses; one of them was a failure of delivery. Apparently, the email address wasn't working! Two was from the same agency and they both sounded the same. Looks like they just sent me one of their generic responses. The next 2 were simply not interested!
Only one so far has asked me to send in my manuscript. And how am i feeling?
I am feeling kind of resigned, if you know what i mean. On sunday morning when i got the penultimate reply i had felt a bit low and all those things people feel when they are rejected but as the days have gone by i know that i will not be deterred.
What are my options?
Well, i'll wait until i hear from all of the agents. If nothing positive comes out, i'll consider the various other options to getting published. I'll do a bit of research and post my findings here.
Will i write again?
Hell, YES! But i will get this one puvblished, even if it means self-publishing.
I have learnt a lot while writing this first novel. And though it felt like it was my magnus opus-thats what they call it, isn't it: your best work or something like that-another story is bubbling up in me, which i'll start researching for once i've got this one published.
Unfortunately, my alterego needs my time for the next 3-4months so i won't be able to give Elias the time he needs!
I know, i'm begining to sound like somebody with multiple personalities but what do you expect from somebody with an alterego!
So far, i have gotten 6 responses; one of them was a failure of delivery. Apparently, the email address wasn't working! Two was from the same agency and they both sounded the same. Looks like they just sent me one of their generic responses. The next 2 were simply not interested!
Only one so far has asked me to send in my manuscript. And how am i feeling?
I am feeling kind of resigned, if you know what i mean. On sunday morning when i got the penultimate reply i had felt a bit low and all those things people feel when they are rejected but as the days have gone by i know that i will not be deterred.
What are my options?
Well, i'll wait until i hear from all of the agents. If nothing positive comes out, i'll consider the various other options to getting published. I'll do a bit of research and post my findings here.
Will i write again?
Hell, YES! But i will get this one puvblished, even if it means self-publishing.
I have learnt a lot while writing this first novel. And though it felt like it was my magnus opus-thats what they call it, isn't it: your best work or something like that-another story is bubbling up in me, which i'll start researching for once i've got this one published.
Unfortunately, my alterego needs my time for the next 3-4months so i won't be able to give Elias the time he needs!
I know, i'm begining to sound like somebody with multiple personalities but what do you expect from somebody with an alterego!
Friday, 4 January 2008
The letters come trickling in...
Day 2. One reply came in today and it read: ".... I considered it carefully but I'm afraid on balance it just doesn't quite grab my imagination in the way that it must for me to offer to represent it...."
But hang on, i don't remember having already sent this one the material! So what exactly did she read? In my sent-box, all i can see , which i did send to her was a letter of enquiry. Okay, i did send my CV and synopsis and the 3 chapters thing to to an associate of hers, who may have passed on the MSS, but is it likely that she just read my enquiry letter carefully and that it was that which didn't quite grab her imagination?!
Is it likely? I think i prefer a yes to that answer!
How do i feel? I feel like i need a therapist right now!
Well, it's only the second day in the first week of the new year, so let's see what will happen from next week...
Am i optimistic? I am not quite sure anymore....
But hang on, i don't remember having already sent this one the material! So what exactly did she read? In my sent-box, all i can see , which i did send to her was a letter of enquiry. Okay, i did send my CV and synopsis and the 3 chapters thing to to an associate of hers, who may have passed on the MSS, but is it likely that she just read my enquiry letter carefully and that it was that which didn't quite grab her imagination?!
Is it likely? I think i prefer a yes to that answer!
How do i feel? I feel like i need a therapist right now!
Well, it's only the second day in the first week of the new year, so let's see what will happen from next week...
Am i optimistic? I am not quite sure anymore....
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