Coattails of Success

Around this time — no, maybe a bit before — another friend of mine was working on her own book and had asked if I would proof/edit her chapters for her.  With every encounter, she would poke and prod me into believing that I had a book in me — even more than she did — and I should just sit down and write it.  She’d follow up this statement with the promise that, once her book makes it big, she’ll help get my book published.  She had friends in the publishing business… in New York, no less!

So, we struck up the deal.  I’ll edit her book for the promissory note of getting my nonexistent book published once she makes it big… somewhere down the line.

It wasn’t until I started working on her fifth chapter that I thought I had better put some serious thought to my own book, just in case she did make it big.  I couldn’t let the opportunity of jumping on her coattails of success pass me by!

It wasn’t hard to get my book together.  I already had the idea and outline formed and about 75% of the pieces had already written themselves by this time.  I just had to organize and formalize them into a book setting.

I really liked the format that I had developed with the Rock Opera project, so I followed that design.  I know using that model of mixing formats and focusing on emotions was not commonly seen in published materials, but I thought it would be the best model to use.  It gave me the ability to infuse the book with as much feeling as its pages could hold.  The freedom from standard formats gave me the freedom to create intimate settings and emotional dialogues that spoke more deeply to the reader than motionless, traditional text could ever do.

It was a risk I was willing to take.  Then I got to thinking…

My book was on friendship.  A lot of what was in it came from my interactions with friends over the years, but most of the recent entries/pieces were spurred on by my discussions and interactions with Katherine.  I wondered if she would be interested in making this into a joint venture.  We worked on that Rock Opera project, so why couldn’t we do this together?