I’ve Been Away on a Long Trip down Memory Lane

Or should I say, Liberty Lane? That’s the creative-fictional place where I’ve spent the last few years…tripping through the avenues of my memory map. I finally completed my creative-non fiction book titled “Root. Sprout. Blossom: Life Bag of a Flower-Child”… weighing in at 400 pages, and 120, 851 words. It was an enormous undertaking to follow my main character, Robin “Birdie” Lormand through her tragic, yet ridiculously funny life story, letting her take me places I never thought I’d go to…again. It was difficult not to lose myself….but in all honesty, and for the most part, Birdie’s life was my life. So, if I lost bits of myself in the book, I found pieces along the way that made the trip worthwhile.

I wish I could say that the manuscript was snatched up by some brilliant agent who is brave enough to champion this sensitive storyline that follows Birdie’s 50 years in the deep south as a liberal feminist hippie chick who refuses to conform to any normal paradigm, like religion, marriage, motherhood, family or even romance. Birdie does, however, have a quirky anti-romance with Sam St. Germain, who is one of the most adorable characters I’ve ever created! Sam kept me in stitches the entire time I wrote the book…Sam was modeled after a real person I knew who died a few years ago…I took the liberty of extending his life. In fact, all the male characters in the book are modeled after treasured friends who are no longer alive…I enjoyed bringing them back to life to join me in my quest to scrape the root barnacles from my lifebag. We had fun…I got to say things to them I didn’t get to say…

Birdie’s non-conformity and social issues run deep….ranging from abandonment by her father, to molestation by her neighbor, to wild nights with her “adopted” hippie family where Birdie was the chief joint-passer for the circle before she was 10 years old…these things leave deep impressions she can’t shake as an adult. And apparently these same issues leave the white-bread publishing community a little nervous, as well. I need a ballsy agent and publisher who will fight for the right of  a woman to tell her real story…even if she does change the names to protect the guilty and the dead….

So far, it’s been a rocky roller coaster ride. Most agents have asked for the entire manuscript and tell me they love the writing, love the story but can’t quite find a pigeon hole to place the book into… ugh…..I think I have officially been rejected by every agent in America, a few in Canada and one in Europe…haha But it’s not going to stop me from getting this book out to the world….it’s a good story, it really is.

Okay folks….I’m going back to Liberty Lane to see if I can’t make this square peg fit into a round hole. I will have an offer for this book before 2012 is over. I am determined.

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