Last month I finished the first draft of my book, with a working title of More Every Day: Finding Love Even In Loss, and ever since, I’ve been editing and writing and asking family and close friends to read the draft and offer feedback. It is such an exciting–and frightening–process.
The book is a memoir about meeting my second husband, Ed Godleski, in unusual circumstances, and then losing him to metastatic lung cancer. It is a very personal story, in part, because I was married to my first husband when I met Ed, and my separation and early relationship with Ed is something I will always feel both anguish and joy over.
Because it is personal, the book is raw and emotional because the road toward marrying Ed was a long one fraught with guilt and sadness for my two daughters, who struggled with my relationship. As soon as we all came together as a family, Ed was torn away from us, and the loss was overwhelming, stunning and life-changing.
While writing is a struggle at times, finding a publisher has also proved a challenge. The only book agent I approached about handling the book for publishing purposes was John Talbot of the John Talbot Agency, Inc., in New York City.
John loved my writing and said the story was “conveyed with excellent craftsmanship.” However, John also said, “The memoir genre seems to me to be nearing saturation point, and I’m not confident I could place this with the large, commercial publishers on which my agency depends for suitable advances.
John suggested I go directly to Beacon Press in Boston, but instead my next stop was a local commercial publishing company. The overseer there found the book too spiritual.
And that it is, and that it is meant to be.
So, I am now considering reaching out to Beacon Press, but I may decide in the end to turn to myself to publish the book. I think it would be appropriate because after Ed died, my friends were of critical support, but eventually, I had to turn to myself to survive.
My hope is that the book will help those who have lost a loved one. I want the book to be a companion of sorts. More Every Day is the kind of book I wished I had to read in those first six months after Ed’s death, when I would cry and stare at his photo on my nightstand and wonder when he was coming back to me.
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