My book is almost finished. I expect to be finished with the first draft within the next few days. I have heard back from a few publishing houses. One of them offered me a contract, but I would have to front 1,000 bucks for their marketing services. The other company based in London has read my first 3 chapters and has now requested the full manuscript. If they like the rest they will give me a book deal. I still have to go through the arduous editing process, and the task of picking a publisher that will be best for my work. But the end is near, and that is exciting. Below are a few more excerpts to hold you over until the whole thing is published. I still haven't finalized the title, but the memoir will be about my experiences with dating, relationships, being broke, being in that quarter-life crisis stage and all the misadventures and foibles that go along with that. Again note that the following excerpts are not sequential and are more or less random selections. Enjoy, and as always, let me know what you think. Much love.
Excerpt I-
Her hair was the color of some dark wood I had never seen before. Her eyes were big and kind. Her body was five-star. But what I couldn’t keep my eyes off of was her face. You hear people talk about natural beauty, and the kind of beauty that makes you look twice. This was a hybrid of the two, with an extra portion of regal appeal. Her nose was hand-crafted by the gods, made with a kind of cartilage this world has never seen. Her skin was a light brown tone, hinting at an ambiguous ethnic background. Her features captivated me to no end. I finally knew how Adam felt when God placed Eve in the garden with him, for it was as if I was seeing the female species for the very first time.
Excerpt II-
The fantasy swiftly and mercilessly disappeared like a fallen contact lens in a crowded venue. From a distance I watched her laugh and caress his arm following what had to have been a magnificently told anecdote. I stopped staring and chalked it up as a loss. She certainly wasn't the first stunning and unattainable woman I had seen or met in my life.
Excerpt III-
When you break up with someone for good you always secretly hope that they will gain sixty pounds or that their teenage acne will return or perhaps they will lose all their teeth in a horrific dental catastrophe. Unfortunately this rarely happens. They usually look better. They look well-rested, better dressed and perky in all the right places. This makes us fear that the reason they look so good is because now we are gone. They look better because that diseased monkey is off their back. And that is a tough thought to entertain.
Excerpt IV-
I am pretty sure that no one had kissed this well in the history of kissing, be it French or any other nationality. We were two people with a rocky past and a precarious future, but our libidos knew nothing of betrayal or dubious forthcomings. So, we continued this quasi violent barrage of snogging, dismissing anything that dared to approach our minds. It is hard to think about the future when someone is kissing your neck and grabbing your thighs. You can try, but your focus will be invaded and destroyed. We laid on that thin carpet and kissed for hours. We would stop intermittently to look into each other’s eyes and remind ourselves how much we missed each other. It was something out of a young adult novel, it was lunatic love. Of course any utterance of the word love at this time would have sent fatal shock waves through the core of our relationship.
Excerpt V-
After I had typed every word, checked its grammatical accuracy and vacillated over alternative sentences and adjectives I pressed send. Right after a moment like this, you want and half expect a response within thirty seconds. You forget that the person on the other side of your correspondence might not be clutching their phone awaiting a life-altering text message. They might actually be living their lives. You know this, but you fear that they saw the text and simply decided that responding or even reading it was not a pressing matter. I often bemoan the fact that I did not live in the days where jilted lovers and hopeful romantics sent and received letters. I would kill for a mushy missive full of cursive lettering and flowery confessions. Instead I receive pithy text messages with smiley faces and superfluous letters to emphasize enthusiasm. No one would take the time to write an epistle that only said “yessss, I miss yooou, let’s hang soooon!!!!”
