Don't Give Up Dinah

There is a very talented writer out there who is getting very frustrated. Well, I guess that description fits more than a few people. Let me be more specific -- Dr. Dinah has a blog. Read her plaintive posting here -- http://psychiatrist-blog.blogspot.com/2007/05/does-anybody-out-there-know-good.html

I tried to email Dinah, but couldn't find the right email address. So let me put what I said to her on my blog in hopes that she will see it. If anybody wants to add anything to what I have said or to the comments in Dinah's blog, feel free. I've got a feeling the world will lose a great novelist if she gives up.

My email to Dinah:

I am assuming this is Dinah's e-mail address. If I am wrong, delete it. Dinah, it will be almost impossible to find an agent for your book because it already was self-published.

Live, learn and move on. You may get it published, if it wins an award, so get it entered into contests. That's how my friend John Shors got his novel, Beneath the Marble Sky
published. The book was first published by a smaller house then Penguin picked it up when it got the award.

Dan Brown wrote two other books before his big one. The DeVinci Code created an opportunity for him to sell the two manuscripts he had sitting on the shelf. That could happen
to you as well. But keep writing. And as I said before, get coaching and advice from professionals. My wife has been a professional journalist for more than 20 years, she still
seeks out, uses and appreciates the advice of novelists and agents. I have been writing for money off and on for nearly 35 years. My book was self-published in 1998 and I
sold almost 5,000 copies in less than two years. My marketing was totally my creation and it wasn't easy. I am seeking an agent and publisher for the revision, which is made
up of more than 50% new material. Publishers will take on revisions of nonfiction that is significantly different from the first edition.

I can't emphasize the importance of joining a good writer support or critique group. But joining is not enough. Participate and appreciate criticism. A good site you can use is goodreads.com, but Writers Digest has good stuff too. Google "writer support groups," there are dozens to choose from. Do all of this and write a boffo second novel that is betterthan the first. You'll manage to find an agent and perhaps sell both books and a third you will have an outline for. A trilogy!! You may get a 7-figure advance.

Out of the Cocoon

Out of the Cocoon is must reading for anyone who has nice little ladies ringing their front door bell passing out free religious literature. That's exactly what happened to Brenda Lee and led to a nightmare of a life. Anyone who believes the Jehovah Witness religion is not a dangerous cult need only read Out of the Cocoon to dispel that myth from their mind. This true story of woman's grueling and terrifying entry and life in the JW's will bring tear to anyone's eyes, yet the book, like life, also has its lighter moments. Brenda Lee provides a warning to all people that this doesn't just happen to somebody else and you don't necessarily have to be a believer to have a cult adversely affect your life.

http://www.outofthecocoon.net/

Sherry isn't Fine

My search for a literary agent continues and as I surf the net for the one who thinks he/she is right for me, I keep running into the URLs for sites set up by someone who calls herself Sherry Fine. These websites are designed to relieve unsuspecting would-be authors of $60 to $90.

The most recent find is http://agentliterary.info/ , a page that Google sends you to if you conduct a search on "agent literary." Sherry's no dummy. She knows where to find desperate and innocent marks for her game of bait and switch.

Three of the five sites you will find when you click on this offering are poorly disguised clones of each other. Click on "Literary Agency Seeks Writers" and your browser will take you to www.wlwritersagency.com. Click on "Screenplay Literary Agency Seeks Talent," and you will end up at www.wlscreenplayagency.com. "New Literary Agency -- Childrens Books" will take you to www.WLChildrensAgency.com.

I wonder if Sherry is fooling enough writers to make her scam worthwhile? If anyone has been a victim of Ms. Fine's unethical enterprise and has a story to tell, I hope you will share it with us on our forum. In the meantime, if WL LIterary Agency, WL Literary Agency and Marketing Companym WL Childrens Agency or any similar sounding venture catches your eye, reboot your computer to get the cooties out of it and keep on looking for a legitimate literary agent.

17 Months and Counting

With the 30th anniversary of the Jonestown Massacre still more than 17 months away, the events of November 18, 1978, in that American enclave in Guyana, still conjure up references even today. It only takes a trip through Googleland to find citations referring to the mass murder/suicide three decades ago.

An Ontario Canada punk/thrash band, whose members no doubt weren't even born yet at the time of the massacre, has named its latest album for it. "Radar Hate drink the Kool-Aid and record Jonestown" shout out the headlines at Canada's ChartAttack.com website.

Of course, the alternative rock band Brian Jonestown Massacre has been around for nearly two decades. It has kept the name Jonestown alive as much as any other entity.

Documentarian Stanley Nelson's Jonestown: The Life and Death of the People's Temple, debuted on PBS in April and is slated to make the rounds in the country's art cinemas during the time leading up to the 30th anniversary of the massacre.

Another bizarre indication that Jim Jones, the Peoples Temple and Jonestown are as popular as ever are the "Jim Jones" ringtones for sale on the Internet. Why anyone would want a cell phone that plays the last words of a cult leader urging his members to kill themselves is beyond me.

Then there is Fox News's Bill O'Reilly. This parody of a journalist not only uses "Kool-Aid drinker," as a term for people he disagrees with, whenever he says it, the cute little Kool-Aid icon comes on the screen. I can't imagine why Kraft Foods allows him to get away with this trademark infringment, especially when this disparaging of the beverage is not at all accurate. The actual powder used to create the potion that the residents of Jonestown partook of was Flav-Or-Ade, a product made in the United Kingdom.

I suppose we may as well get used to more tasteless marketing of Jim Jones and Jonestown memorabilia the closer we get to the 30th anniversary. Already on this blog we have warned readers about fake Jim Jones trinkets being touted on e-bay.

The worst that will happen in these coming days will be the misrepresentation of what really happened in Jonestown on November 18, 1978. One inaccurate reporter at the Chico (CA) Enterprise Record, wrote an article comparing the event to the Buddhist monks in Vietnam who set themselves afire to protest an unjust war. That comparison would have been valid had Jones self-immolated himself and not forced his followers to kill their offspring and themselves.

Jones was just another mass murderer who managed to kill, what at the time was the largest number of victims of a mass murder. In 2000, his 914 deaths were surpassed by a cult leader who managed to kill 1500 of his followers. Let's hope there is not some other warped cultist waiting to break that record.

Charles Huff -- A Legend in His Own Mind

Many conspiracy theories abound about the Jonestown Massacre. Some of them seem to have a basis in fact, like the discrepancy in body count that was due to the infants and children being placed in a mildly concave area and then layers of older children and adults laying over them. If you were not there, this seems like an unbelievable story.

But many conspiracies have been fueled by the statements made in a letter by a man named Charles Huff who purports to have been one of seven Green Beret troopers who were the first Americans to arrive in Jonestown after the massacre. I know that claim to be false because I was the third American soldier of the task force in Jonestown. My commander and brigade surgeon were the first two, but they didn’t stay any appreciable amount of time.

Huff’s story was printed in the Church of Scientology International’s Freedom Magazine in 1995. The cult, in an attempt to seem more mainstream, had taken over the Cult Awareness Network, whose newsletter first published Huff’s sensational lies.

Mr. Huff’s excerpted letter follows.

“I was assigned with the 3rd Battalion, 7th Special Forces Group, 1st Special Forces Panama. On November 18, 1978, we were alerted by the State Department to “rescue” American citizens in Guyana.

All the information we knew was that a U.S. Representative Leo Ryan and his staff were killed or wounded and American lives were in danger. Within five hours of the request of the U.S. embassy in Georgetown, Guyana, and the State Department we were “on site” in Jonestown.

This claim is patently ridiculous. The State Department was not even aware of the massacre until late Saturday evening. Unless Huff and his team were sitting in a hotel at Timheri International Airport, they could not have flown to Jonestown and arrive on November 18. The task force’s helicopters were not ready to fly until Monday, November 20. So right from the beginning of his letter, Huff, whose bona fides as a Green Beret have yet to be confirmed, is a liar.

For the next 30 days we stayed to return the compound back to the Guyanese government. When we arrived at Jonestown, we were met by the local Guyana Defense Force (six local policemen).

This is Lie #2. The GDF did not arrive in Jonestown until the morning of the 19^th and there were more than a half dozen troopers in the security force. I met them and rode in a helicopter with some of them.

We found one elderly woman who had slept through the murders.

The elderly women, Hyacinth Thrush, was discovered Sunday morning, 19 November, by GDF troopers who found her wandering in shock through the enclave.

Sixteen American personnel committed suicide upon their return to Panama and other places. Three were murdered. One year later, those of us still alive were recalled from the Nicaragua Civil War to hear a CIA briefing on all the events which led up to Jonestown. As a veteran of Vietnam, Nicaragua, El Salvador, the invasion of Panama, the Persian Gulf and Somalia, I have never been more affected than the Jonestown murders.”

I was stationed in Panama for another two years. There were no American personnel that I knew of who committed suicide. Some became alcoholics, but I knew of no one who died at their own hand or anyone else’s. As for this fantasy CIA briefing about events leading up to the massacre a year before, that doesn’t even sound reasonable. Why would soldiers be recalled from their duties in a combat zone to receive a briefing about something that happened a year earlier?

Another Nice Rejection

I received another nice rejection today. This agent had my query and book proposal for more than a week, so she actually had plenty of time to review the material. Her reply was upbeat and most considerate and gave me the impression it was not a form letter. Here it is:

Dear Mr. Brailey,

Thank you for your query, but I’m afraid I’ve decided to pass on your project. Since you will want to find an agent with complete enthusiasm for your work, unfortunately I am not the right person to represent you.

You should know that my decision is based on my workload and the type of material I'm currently representing. It is not in any way a reflection on the quality of your work, and I encourage you to continue to seek representation.

Thanks again for the opportunity to consider your project.

Best wishes,

It's rejections like that that give a writer the motivation to keep on contacting agents.