Jennifer Lauck's new memoir, Found, is coming out in March 2011 (Seal Press) and is available for pre-order on Amazon.  She is the New York Times Bestselling author of Blackbird, Still Waters, and Show Me the Way.  Follow her musings each week as she stares down her pub date, creatively engages the community, and embarks on the quest to spread word. 

Every year, I purchase (for a buck) the “countdown to Christmas calendar” for the kids. For twenty-four days of December they open a colorful door decorated with snowflakes and are rewarded with a tiny piece of waxy chocolate thus getting them that much closer to the BIG day. As I picked up the calendars this year, I thought about my own countdown—not to Christmas—but to the publication of my fourth memoir.  I imagined up my own little countdown calendar pre-set with doors that read “blurb day,” “first pass pages day,” “cover decision day,” “gone to print day,” and “great review day”.   Why not toss in some bonus doors like: “appear on Oprah day,” “New York Times Bestseller list day,” and “your book gets made to a movie day.” Behind every day there could also be a nice wedge of dark chocolate, perhaps laced with orange peel or a touch of lavender. Why not? It’s my fantasy calendar, right?

Alas, there is no countdown calendar for authors and Santa won’t be showing up on release day with a bag of goodies to reward my year of goodness. This is the real world and a writer has to make her own magic as she counts down those last grueling, exciting, terrifying and agonizing days to the release of her book.

Then along came SheWrites.com and it seems there is some magic in the world afterall! I now have a wondrous opportunity to tell you, in detail, some of the stories of my countdown as a way to help us all become savvier in making the transition from being the creative force who wrote our books to the promotional dynamos who get the word out and make our books a hit!

My fourth memoir, Found: The True Sequel to Blackbird, releases March 1, 2011. This book, long in coming, is an end to an 18-year journey that began in the mid-90's and kicked off with the book Blackbird: A Childhood Lost and Found which released in 2000.

I began my memoir writing life wanting to get the answers to some very specific questions. One, I wanted to know who I was and two, I wanted to know who my mother had been. Initially, I thought I had been asking after my adoptive mother, Janet, who had died when I was seven years old and under mysterious circumstances.  But in fact, I was searching for much more than I knew. That story is contained in Found and includes a stunning reunion with the woman who gave birth to me and had to relinquish me under the most heartbreaking conditions a woman can imagine.

Back in 2000, I was published by Simon & Schuster and watched Blackbird take its spot on Oprah, achieve international sales and land on The New York Times Bestseller List. Blackbird was followed by two not-so-successful sequels, which were “pressure creations,” meaning the publisher and my agent were eager to latch onto the success train that was being lead by the engine Blackbird.  While these were fine books and I stand behind them, they were not true sequels.
 

And this is one of the first points about releasing a book verses creating a book. The call to write comes from a deep place in the soul and the soul—as we all know—is timeless. Publishing, marketing, selling and making money—capitalism—is on a deadline and part of a culture that has a very short attention span. As a seeker-of-truth and a writer-of-my-discoveries, I had to straddle the world of the soul and the world of capitalism. It was a messy walk sometimes and I fell down. Hard!

My second and third book, Still Waters and Show Me the Way, did not get the attention Blackbird enjoyed and they did not earn back their advances. This meant, when I did finally finish my creative process last year and produced Found, no one in New York was interested. The book was lovely, my agent was told, the writing was “breathtaking” and the story was “stunning” but “Jennifer didn’t earn back her advances,” and “we cannot take the risk on her again.”

How can a writer overcome what might appear to be a terminal blow to her career?

In my own case, the answer was this: “never say die.”

Yes, it was painful to be rejected by New York, especially after having such a stunning run of success, but once I cried, moaned and complained, I decided to toss out the old story and begin setting new goals. I told myself I would get published, period and if I had to do it myself, I would make it happen.   This “can do” attitude led to a series of synchronistic decisions which included attending the Associated Writing Programs conference in Denver, meeting the editors of smaller presses and talking until I lost my voice.  A few weeks later, a deal was struck with Seal Press and since my book was truly finished, Seal decided to push the book out for a Spring 2011 release. In less than six months, I went from being a writer who had “no hope of ever getting published,” to “having a book out in a few months.”

This is what is now happening: My agent works to sell foreign rights, Found has been beautifully laid out, made into galleys and has gone out to major American media publications for review. I have met the media rep for Seal and she is booking my speaking events in the Northwest.  And on my own, I am setting up events in Florida (for the American Adoption Congress), at Sitka Center on the Oregon Coast and in Minnesota, Pittsburgh, Palm Beach, L.A. and Georgia.  Finally, I am writing and submitting for publications around the country.

Over the last few weeks, we have also gathered a solid collection of blurbs from Hope Edelman, Cheryl Strayed, BJ Lifton, Nancy Verrier, Adam Pertman and (soon) Karen Karbo. It must be noted that the Lifton quote came just two weeks before this remarkable woman passed away. I feel both blessed and baffled. How lucky could I be, to have a quote from one of the pioneers in the area of increasing awareness around issues of adoption, and more so now that she is no longer with us.

There are just a few weeks ahead, so many opportunities to fly or fail. As I embark on this remarkable journey—which I am delighted to share with you—I wonder about you my sister-writer. Have you had a time in your own writing life when you fell down and had to pick yourself up? How did that work out?


Jennifer Lauck lives in Portland, Oregon with her two kids, thirteen-year-old Spencer and eight-year-old Josephine. She mentors, teaches memoir writing and is just wrapping her MFA with Pacific Lutheran University.

Connect with Jennifer at her SW profile page, via Twitter , or Facebook.