COMM Post--Still Hammering Out The Book Agent Query Letters

After getting a total of four positive responses from twelve book agent query submissions, I still manage to email a few more before I go to bed or go to work. My job has been crazy this week, long hours and a lot of people contact, but I do like it. This weekend will be filled with getting my carpet cleaned on Saturday, welcoming a new bed frame, and box spring and mattress, and sending out parts of my book for review by book agents. Yippie, tomorrow is Friday!!!!!!!!!

My blog main page has been revamped with nice new colors and formats. Killer job, Jesse!

COMM Post--Glimmers of Success

After a few days away from the book agent-query letter mass emailing, I decided to give it another go, and email out six query letters. I received two out six positive responses. After going one positive response out of fifty query letter emails, I am two for six, with a chance to get a few more positive responses out the four unanswered emails.

I talked to my comrade, Jesse, and we are meeting in the next week to talk about and plan out the shooting for the two videos I would like to shoot and post on YouTube.

Ever since I saw YouTube, I wanted to post something with good subject matter, my book, and help people cope with brain tumor survival and diagnosis.

Above all, do what makes you feel good in life.

COMM Post--Steady As I Go.. Forward March...

As of April 13, 2009, canceronmymind.com is now linked to my blog.

I have received 30 email "No" responses out of the 50 emails queries I sent out in the last three weeks, seeking book agent representation.

I received an envelope from Oprah, with a letter enclosed, "We do not take manuscripts", and my manuscript.

I will send my manuscript to Steve Case of Revolution Health and Accelerated Brain Cancer Care (ABC2) to see if anyone can use the inspiration and hope from my survivor story.

I will keep my head down and keep charging forward.

COMM Post--Welcome to Walter's Cancer On My Mind Query Letter Machine

I received a positive response back from a literary agent in LA on Friday, who asked for the first three pages of my manuscript. I sent the pages and received a reply, "Thanks for letting us look at this. Your story is remarkable but alas, this project isn't right for us. Best of luck. "

So, now I am one for 25 in book agent email representation submissions.

Hell, their are probably a thousand book agents in the U.S., so I have my work cut out for me.

After the email submissions, come the snail mail submissions with the enclosed SASE.

Still no word from Oprah Winfrey or Senator Kennedy.

COMM Post--Walter versus the Publishers

I started the second hardest thing next to completing a manuscript, publishing the manuscript.

I can't complain about the positive comments I have received from doctors all around the U.S.

I received another kick ass comment from a prominent neurosurgeon from UCSF. It took me five emails and a lot of patience to get this comment.

Dear Walter,

I’m glad to offer a brief comment.

"This is a riveting account of a patient’s own journey through the many challenges of having a potentially fatal disease. It points out that perhaps the most important medicine in life is determination and perseverance that this illness can be beaten and controlled. Congratulations for an outstanding account of your experiences. "

I hope this is what you had in mind.

Sincerely,

Mitchel S. Berger, MD, Kathleen M. Plant Distinguished Professor, Chairman, Department of Neurological Surgery, Director, Brain Tumor Research Center
University of California San Francisco, 505 Parnassus Avenue, Room M786,
San Francisco, CA 94143-0112

I started my query letter email campaign to 10 book agents on April 1. By April 2, I received three denials. I sent out five more on April 3, and received a reply from Betsy Amster Literary Enterprises, in Los Angeles, requesting the first three pages of my manuscript. Yippie!!!!!!!!!!

An actual positive reply. One out of 15! Not bad for a two day start.

I know that I have a long year ahead of me, filled with hundreds of email and SASE query letters until I find someone to represent me.

I will toss all the rejection responses to the side, keep my head down, think positive, and continue to run into the burning building, naked, and with gas cans and dynamite strapped to my body.

To me, this sounds just like trying to survive a grade two and three brain tumor.

From here on out, it is me against the rest of the cancer survivors trying to publish a book about a battle between a talking brain tumor and a guy that will never give on trying to live.

I bought Always Looking Up, by Michael J. Fox, and am excited about cracking it open this weekend. I loved his first book Lucky Man, and he will always be an inspiration to never give up on anything that you want to accomplish.

COMM Post--Dream or reality mailings...

I have read a few similar sayings over the years:
Doers do, doubters don't do;
Dreamers sit on the fence and dream, and risk takers jump off the fence and build their dream one day at a time, until it becomes a living and breathing reality.

I finished Cancer On My Mind in Jan 2009 and have not taken the time to celebrate its completion. I jumped head first into a new phase of book publishing, which I have no experience in.

Publishing a book is hard, but not as hard as completing a manuscript. A writer (and the significant others who still believe in him or her) must work on a plan (book proposal and query letter) to hook a book agent to represent him or her.

I finished constructing my plan, complete with four awesome reviews from prominent doctors from UCLA, UCSF, and Harvard Medical School, and am ready to send my query letter to 20+ book agents, seeking representation, toward a book publishing contract.

I bought a new Brother 2140 monochrome laser printer, installed the driver software this morning, and printer three formal letters, two to Senator Kennedy in Boston and Washington D.C., and one to Oprah Winfrey in Chicago. I am not begging for them to help me publish my book, but to share my book with cancer patients or those suffering from life threatening illnesses, and people who would like to read a fast-paced saga about a brain tumor patient who uses positive thinking to defeat cancer.

I know what some of you must be thinking...is this guy crazy!!

No, I am not crazy, but I do believe in myself and the impact my book will have on newly diagnosed cancer patients, looking for a glimmer (and hopefully a lot of hope) to beat their illness, and live a long and healthy life.

Eight years and fours months ago, I wished that I could have stumbled upon a book like mine, to inspire a newly diagnosed cancer patient, to use the strength that I already possessed in my mind and body to beat cancer.

I discovered this quote by Steve Jobs in a quote web site in January 2009:

We don’t get a chance to do that many things, and every one should be really excellent. Because this is our life.
Life is brief, and then you die, you know?
And we’ve all chosen to do this with our lives. So it better be damn good. It better be worth it.

I am happy to still have my life and I know my book is damn good.

Look out world Cancer On My Mind is getting published in 2009!

COMM Post--Another Feather in My Cap

I received an awesome book blurb from Jorge Lazareff, M.D., Geri and Richard Brawerman Chair in Pediatric Neurosurgery at UCLA.

“There are a large number of cancer patients who had the courage to share their feelings and travails after the diagnosis of a ghost evoking disease. I have derived a lesson from each one of the many memoirs I have read. What makes “Cancer on My mind” stand tall among its peers is its prose, bordering with the profane, always witty, closer to Bukowsky than to Dr. Phil. I congratulate the authors for his triumphs.”

I am still trying to figure out what Charles Bukowsky and Walter Kornichuk have in common, but I am very happy with the praise for Cancer On My Mind. Bukowsky wrote the script for Barfly, starring Mickey Rourke and Faye Dunaway, and I am content with a glass of Merlot, and sliced Brie and Hi-Ho crackers. Is that a connection?

Tim is helping me connect my domain, canceronmymind.com to my canceronmymind.blogger.com site. I hope to launch my web site this week, containing brain tumor information sites and a few inspirational Lance Armstrong videos.

I am editing the double-spaced 211 page manuscript into a compact single-spaced 84 pages, to mail off to Oprah Winfrey at Harpo Productions in Chicago, and Senator Kennedy in Washington, D.C. and Boston.

I say, Never aim to high when you wish for something.

Here is a quote from Steve Jobs, Chairman and CEO of Apple Inc.

"We don’t get a chance to do that many things, and every one should be really excellent. Because this is our life. Life is brief, and then you die, you know?
And we’ve all chosen to do this with our lives. So it better be damn good. It better be worth it."

I say, "Run away from the doubters, and laugh and create the unknown with the dreamers."

In November 2008, Harpo Productions, Inc. announced that the Oprah Winfrey show will continue through the 2010-2011 season. We would certainly welcome and hope that The Oprah Winfrey Show would continue in syndication beyond that, but that is a decision only Ms. Winfrey will be making,” said a CTD spokesperson in a statement. (http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2128545/posts)

This gives me a lot of time to construct and get my promotional monster, canceronmymind.com, up and running.