On Leaving Nigeria

I love Nigeria. Having worked in this country off and on since 1995, I guess I would either have to love it or be one of the most mercenary workers in the world. Well, I admit it, the money has had a lot to do with my returning to work here for 28 days and then flying home on the longest commute in the world for my time off. But the people and friends I have made here are the major incentive for returning time after time to this very dysfunctional country.

To be sure, there have been a great many positive changes since I first set foot on West African soil some 12 years ago. The airport alone is the first major improvement one notices. Not only is the air conditioning comfortably cool throughout the building, the people movers actually work almost all of the time. The second improvement at the airport is the absence of would-be "helpers," scrambling to carry your bags for tips and there are absolutely no immigrations or customs officials with their hands out asking for dash money.

Until the recent elections, the roads were relatively easy to travel. There were no roadblocks of soldiers and policemen every few kilometers trying to extort money from passing vehicles. Once in 1997, when I was returning from a four-day trip to London, when I had to accompany a very sick American to the Hospital for Tropical Medicine there, my car was stopped when I returned. My driver, liaison and I were summarily removed from our vehicle and our the army lieutenant in charge asked to see my papers.

Unbeknown st to me, the military dictator at the time, General Sani Abacha, had arrested some of his generals a few days earlier and accused them of plotting a coup. Incidentally, the current president, for at least two more weeks, Obasanjo, was one of those generals arrested. At any rate, I was asked if I had returned to Nigeria to destabilize the government. Was I a CIA spy, the lieutenant wanted to know.

As our vehicle and my bags were searched, I tried to explain why I left and returned. Finally, a private pulled a stethoscope out of my bag and showed it to the lieutenant. "You are a doctor?" he asked.

"Yes I am," I answered in a Jon Lovitz tone of voice.

"Sorry for the misunderstanding, you may go," said the suddenly apologetic Nigerian officer.

I have worked very closely with some of the finest people I have ever known in Nigeria. I have been made an honorary chief, been given an Igbo name, and have been made to feel welcome and wanted by almost every regular Nigerian I have come in contact with. I've had the pleasure and honor of meeting Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka and I have had the privilege of working with some very dedicated and proficient Nigerian physicians and safety officers. I wish I could keep working here.

However, a combination of personal health considerations and the increased actions of a militancy I find myself for the most part in total agreement with, have forced me to tender my resignation to the company I am consulting with. It is truly with a heavy heart that I physically take leave of Nigeria on May 31. My soul and spirit will never leave this country though and I hope to return here when their is a more equitable and just government run by statesmen instead of arrogant goons who care only for themselves.

I plan to write a book about my experiences in Nigeria. I am told this book is part of my destiny and it will change the core of how things are done in this country. I don't really know if I have the wherewithal to accomplish this or not. I am no where near the point where I feel I can start such a monumental project. Maybe leaving Nigeria will provide me prospective.

Ten Steps to Getting Published

1. Turn a collection of thoughts and ideas into 50,000 to 100,000 words that are formed into sentences, paragraphs and chapters, that are interesting, well-paced, grammatically correct, pieces of information people will find readable, enjoyable, educational, entertaining, informative, satisfying, shocking, funny affirmative and/or new and unique.
2. Rewrite and proofread and rewrite and proofread until you can no longer find any problems with syntax, character development, tense, continuity, repetitiveness, and grammatical form.
3. Give the manuscript, either a chapter or two at a time or as a whole, to a friend or acquaintance who is the closest thing to a professional writer that you know and ask him or her to edit and proofread all problems with syntax, character development, tense, continuity, repetitiveness, and grammatical form.
4. Don't rely on spell-check. Get a human being, preferably one who can proudly complete the Sunday New York Times crossword without using a dictionary or thesaurus to check your manuscript. Then find another friend who says he's a better crossworder than the first and have him/her do it again.
5. Join a writer's group and ask its members to critique your work and offer you suggestions. Have very thick skin and be ready to defend your decisions or be ready to make changes in syntax, character development, tense, continuity, repetitiveness, and grammatical form.
6. Take your manuscript to a writers conference and bravely read part of the best chapter to a group of fellow authors and would-be authors in the presence of a professional editor from a major publishing house who will critique your work in front of God and everybody.
7. While you are at the writer's conference, attend all of the query and pitch session workshops you can and network amongst the literary agents there.
   
8. Come home from the writer's conference and rewrite and proofread and rewrite and proofread until you can no longer find any problems with syntax, character development, tense, continuity, repetitiveness, and grammatical form.
9. Study the all the literary agents you find when you google "literary agent" and find 100 agents who say they accept manuscripts of the genre you have written in and construct individual, concise query letters to those agents.
10. Repeat steps 5 thru 9 until you are successful and your agent manages to find an editor who is interested in your work, but wants you to make just a few changes...

These are only the minimal things you need to do to get published. You also will need a well-written synopsis of your book, a marketing plan that keys on the contributions you will make toward marketing your book. If you don't discouraged completing steps 1 - 10 over and over until you get published, you should have no problems writing a synopsis and marketing plan.

The Next Jim Jones?

Jose Luis de Jesus Miranda, a 61-year-old Puerto Rican preacher
who or a few years has been creating himself for several years now, is quickly gaining notoriety as the cult leader most likely to succeed Rev. Jim Jones as the leader of the most dangerous doomsday cult in America.

The strange and apparently charismatic de Jesus Miranda, began his cult activities benignly enough by simply declaring himself "Jesus Christ." This pronouncement didn't exactly stop the presses. It's not like no one has ever done that before. But this time, Jesus Christ accompanied the announcement of his presence with the great news that with his return to earth, Satan has been defeated and for his followers, there is no such thing as sin.

Gullible Latino believers have come to this cult in droves, giving the man who calls himself Jesus money, jewelry, cars, boats, houses and even a multi million dollar business. There are now said to be some 300 congregations across the USA, Central and South America, who believe in de Jesus Miranda. With more Rolexes that one man can wear and his own private jet, the would-be Jesus decided to take his new religion to yet another unbelievable height -- he declared himself the anti Christ and had the number "666" tattooed on his body. That should have sobered up some of his followers drunk on the prospect of an end to sin, right? After all, the anti-Christ, he's muy mal, no?

No, his claim that he is both Christ and anti Christ only increased the fervor of his believers. They began getting "666" tattooed on their bodies.

de Jesus Miranda tells his followers that the Catholic Church, which a good many of them used to belong to, was evil. Proof of that was the fact that celibate priests participate in pedophilia and other sexual perversions. Perversions members of de Jesus Miranda's Growing in Grace cult movement are exempt from -- no more sin, remember.

He encourages his followers to picket and demonstrate outside traditional churches from other religions and they do. They even have been known to disrupt services. De Jesus's tactics are not unlike Jim Jones, who also used his temple members to protest as well as to support politicians, an activity de Jesus has yet to get involved in.

But he obviously exhibits control over his sheep much the same way as Jim Jones did over his Peoples Temple. Could Growing in Grace become the next Peoples Temple? There are many who believe it already has.

Three Central American countries have banned de Jesus from visiting their countries and having meetings there. However the thousands of followers de Jesus has in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras still can see their leader by satellite.

Growing in Grace bears watching. If a cult leader can convince his congregation to get the anti Christ's number tattooed on their bodies, what is keeping him from telling them to whip up some cyanide laced grape ade and partake? Or worse yet, what's stopping him from getting more physical with his actions against traditional churches?

Satan In A Box

I've got so many writing projects in the mill, I don't know which one to start next. My latest idea has already resulted in the title story of a book tentatively titled Satan in a Box, A Collection of Nightmares. Here is the title story, for your enjoyment and to critique. Please comment. I want you to give me the good, bad and ugly.

Satan in a Box

By Jeff Brailey

The hotel was 13 floors of dreary unimaginative sameness. Frayed crimson carpeting with green vines and golden floral patterns had Marriott written all over them. Drab brown walls with numbered doors of a darker brown left no question in my mind, although it didn’t say it on the marquee outside, this was a former property of that famous hotel chain.

Actually, there was no floor marked 13, that number being missing from the elevator doors. The floors ran from 1 to 14, with the unlucky 13^th skipped altogether. Yet there I was, wandering the elusive the hall of a floor I knew did not exist in this hotel.

Some hotels call the first floor “Ground” or “Lobby,” and number the floors above it 1 through 12, eliminating the stigma of 13 floors. It is not as easy for hotels with 14 floors or more to avoid the dilemma of a 13^th floor, so they simply deny its existence.

I don’t know how I arrived on this invisible nonexistent floor. I remember chasing some unknown but eerie entity out of the penthouse on the floor above. Unsure whether my prey was a real person or a ghost, I simply wanted to find him or her to ask what he or she was doing in my hotel suite while I slept.

Suddenly, the being I had barely been keeping up with a moment before, stopped, turned, and grew about two or three times its previous size. Cleverly disguised with heavily platted dreadlocks that literally became slimy snakes, even the aroma of a body too long without a bath could not cover up the acrid odor of sulfur permeating from this evil Rastafarian. The smell instantly identified who he really was – Satan.

As the realization of his identity registered in my mind, I instantly knew the 13^th floor was not the place to be. Suddenly, the hunter became the prey as this wild eyed Rastafarian bore down on me. Not a sound passed between us. The silence of the devil’s movement was terrifying enough. I fought the urge to cry out, saving my energy for fleeing instead of futile screaming.

Turning down a perpendicular hallway, I was completely lost. Only the numbers on the doors distinguished this hallway from all of the others. I came to a bank of elevators. As the devil closed in on me, I frantically pushed the “down” button and the car immediately opened. I looked at the numbers on the wall of the elevator. They all read 13.”

A totally pissed off Rasta-Satan blocked the door of the elevator. As I contemplated my next move, the old demon jumped towards me, leaving me no other choice but to dive under him. As he crashed into the far wall of the now-empty car, I opened the door that led to the stairwell.

Sure that the frustrated supernatural Rastafarian was one step behind me, I began running upstairs. My plan was to make it back into my penthouse suite and call hotel security to have my pursuer ejected from the hotel.

The next landing had a square black sign with white letters on the wall. It read “13.” I knew I had left the thirteenth floor a minute ago but the stairway continued to climb so I kept running up it in hopes of finding the fourteenth floor. It never happened.

Out of breath, I finally took a chance and opened the door on yet another landing marked “13.” As I did, a black-robed Rev. Jim Jones handed me a cigar box full of Havana’s finest. I told him it was not legal to have Cuban cigars in the United States. “It’s for the devil,” Jones said with a leer.

“Uh, he wants my soul, I don’t think he really will be placated by a box of stogies, even if they are the best in the world,” I told the Reverend.

“The cigars aren’t for him, the box is,” he shouted, thrusting the decorative container into my hands.

As I took hold of the box, Jones literally faded into nothingness and his form was replaced by Rasta Satan’s. I opened the box and he immediately turned into a rather acrid smoke and joined the cigars. I then quickly closed the box and found myself in the lobby of the hotel.

As I quickly assessed where I was, two ladies walked by. They looked like something out of the 1950s, crisp starched white blouses and navy blue skirts that extended below the knees. They both wore sensible walking shoes and their plain hair was worn in matching buns. Neither woman wore make-up. I recognized them to be Jehovah Witnesses and as they passed me several back issues of the Watchtower, I passed them the cigar box, shouting, “Satan in a box! Satan in a box!”

I then woke up and found my roommate’s overbed light on. “Was I having a nightmare?” I asked.

“You were definitely having a nightmare,” he replied.

“Why didn’t you tell me to wake up?” I asked.

“What and miss the entertainment?”

Editor’s Note: Jeff Brailey is a freelance writer who lives near Indianapolis. He just finished a two year contract working as a safety adviser in Nigeria, West Africa. He takes a medication for Parkinson’s disease that causes him to have vivid and memorable dreams. He attributes this nightmare to having completed reading the book Out of The Cocoon, by Brenda Lee, the story of a child and her mother caught up in the Jehovah Witnesses.

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/