Patricia Magdalena Redlin

NEWS & EVENTS

 

The latest "news" is that I finished my memoir ("Gringa Apestosa - Stinky Gringa") in January 2016. I then emailed a literary agent who had expressed interest in it at a writers conference I attended in 2015, letting her know that it was finished and asking if she was still interested in possibly representing me as a literary agent to sell the memoir. She wrote back and said to send her the first 50 pages, so I did....and unfortunately, in her reply,she said it "doesn't have enough of a hook" for her to feel as if she could represent the memoir well enough to get it sold to a publisher (or something like that). It was actually one of the nicest emails I have ever received - even though it was a rejection!

I then decided to reorganize the memoir to put the key surprising and funny chapter at the start of the book, instead of much later on. I had originally started the memoir with that chapter, but a professional editor who worked on the first half of the book with me told me it might be best to just tell the story in the sequence that events happened during that year in my life.

I no longer agree with her advice, partly because I think that chapter is a good "hook" for readers to be intrigued and want to read the rest of the memoir, and partly because this particular editor accepted a payment for 10 more hours of editing work a year ago...but never replied to my emails regarding the additional chapters I wanted her to edit. Flakey, unprofessional and a thief! I will not mention her name, but neither would I ever consider recommending her to other writers who ask me for recommendations for good edtors. She did help a lot with the first half of the book, advising me on removing unnecessary, boring and repetitive parts. But taking money and then never replying to emails from your client again is NOT cool.

So I decided to ignore her advice and put the key chapter back at the start of the memoir. I then had to edit other chapters (and renumber them) to make sure everything still makes sense. So now the memoir is - in my humble opinion - more interesting, funny and intriguing to read.

However...I have been researching finding a literary agent to query about possible interest in representing a memoir (which is in the genre of narrative non-fiction) and it seems I need to have a "platform" as a support. This means that I have to be able to prove that I am an "expert" in the subject area of my book. Ways to prove this include a blog about the subject area that has lots of followers, lots of followers on social media, speaking engagements on the subject area, published magazine and other articles on the subject area, etc.

Since there are two main focuses of my memoir - 1. learning a language and culture and 2. dealing with a parent's mental illness as a child - I assumed I would have to be an expert in both of these subject areas and have two platforms. I do consider myself to be an expert in learning languages because I am fluent in five (including English). But I am not an expert in mental illness. I did eventually learn how to deal with my mother's illness, but I don't think it was a very healthy way, mainly because I had to figure out how to do this on my own, without the help of a trained mental health professional. I suppose I would have to be a psychologist or psychiatrist in order to be considered an expert in mental health.

So...if I am going to develop a platform to support my memoir (and help sell it if it ever gets published), I think it should be based on my expertise with languages and cultures. I cannot claim to be an expert in dealing with a parent's mental illness as a child, although my memoir does offer hope for the future for any readers who are dealing with this issue (pre-teens and teens) and positive affirmation and hope for adults who had to deal with this as children/teens.

So my platform of expertise in language learning means that I have to get followers - of my website, blog, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram presences - who have an interest in learning languages and cultures.

And lucky you! If you are reading this, it means you have at least looked at my website and you can be (or have already become) a follower of my blog here (see Blog page and read!).

I also need to start posting on Faceboook, Twitter and Instagram about languages, cultures, etc., and see who reads my posts and then comes to this website and reads my blogs, etc.

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More news about this to come after I stop "hiding" in the social media world and start SHOUTING about my knowledge to the world...well, posting anyway. I promise I won't post things in all caps - very rude and unprofessional. Kind of like a flakey editor I once worked with...