Is the World Ready for "A Foreign Affair"?


After a seven year journey, I've FINALLY completed the manuscript for my Iraq War memoir A Foreign Affair. It's a book I primarily wrote for myself and for my daughter. Something to leave behind and pass down through the generations. My personal story of war, injustice, and an epic romance.

Although my story is pretty unique, the question constantly at the back of my mind while writing it was, "Will anyone aside from my family and close friends find it interesting?" I guess this is a lingering question in every author's mind - especially when it comes to their debut work. Another question that swirled around in my mind throughout this seven-year process was, "Do I really want to share the intimate details of this book - basically two years of my diary - with complete strangers?"

Living this story was nothing short of an emotional hell on earth - even writing about these events years later was still emotionally tumultuous for me. There were numerous occasions when I simply had to step away from this manuscript - sometimes for months at a time - because writing about certain events was still too difficult. The wounds were still raw and I just had no desire to dig up and relive many of those horrid memories in order to get them down on paper.

When I completed my first rough draft I came back to the question, "Will anyone want to read this?" I forwarded some copies of the manuscript to some family and friends just to get some feedback - which, ironically, I found even more embarrassing than sending it to compelte strangers to read. If a person you don't know from Adam reads your diary so what? When your grandma and dad read it that's a different story! Of course I got positive feedback from the first few who read it. (They're family that's their job right? If your mom reads your manuscript and tells you to burn it there are most likely underlying issues of some sort at work that you should probably delve into - but I digress.)

A couple of months ago I decided to forward my VERY rough draft to a few agents - just to throw out some feelers and see what would happen. I got a slew of the standard "Thanks for thinking of us but..." rejection letters in return. I was actually quite impressed to even get ANYTHING back and fully expected to be straight up ignored by most. I was about to shelve the manuscript when I received an exciting email just last week from one of the literary agents to whom I sent a submission packet. Jeanie of Loiacono Literary Agency informed me she was half way through my MS and LOVED it! I was so excited I almost peed myself. (Actually I might have - just a little.) She forwarded me a contract and TAH-DAH! I officially have an agent! We are hoping to hear back from a publisher soon and hopefully very soon I will be a published author.

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