Writers' Dreams

Writers' Dreams

The Million $$$ Ghost, Heide Kaminski , Pamela Lawniczak, Dorothy Thompson

It took two years to write the book, another year to polish it and then began the search for a publisher...

There are thousands and thousands of writers in the US alone. Some dabble with it in their spare time; some spill their guts onto the keyboard. .

By Citizen Correspondent Heide Kaminski

Date Posted: 05/14/07

Reader Rating:

There are thousands and thousands of writers in the US alone. Some dabble with it in their spare time; some spill their guts onto the keyboard, putting bandaids on their sore fingertips and keeping a box of toothpicks handy to keep their eyelids apart. Those are the writers whose hearts ache for recognition, fan mail, long lines at the autographing sessions, phone calls in the middle of the night from the ultimate followers. Their road to holding their printed book is plastered with rejection letters. Most of their roads have multiple detours and dead-ends.Very few reach the light at the end of the tunnel and for most of them, it remains a flickering flashlight. Very, very few get to experience the blazing glory of fame and riches.

In 2003 eight women, bonded via a spiritual yahoogroup, decided to write a book together. Inspired by James Randi, an international magician and escape artist (http://skepdic.com/randi.html), offering a million dollars to world-renowned psychic Sylvia Browne if she could prove that her psychic abilities are for real, "The Search For The Million $$$ Ghost" was born.

One woman soon dropped out of the group. Being from the U.K., she had a hard time following along with the U.S. "humor" of the rest of the group. Soon, another woman dropped out as she lost Internet access. Two more said good-bye; they felt that their being spare-time-dabbling writers was out of place with the remaining four, who had some publishing experience on their resumi©s.

As it is often the case, too many people on one project may present more of a problem than a benefit; four were still too many.
When one author came up with the idea for a rather spectacular ending, two others jumped with joy and the fourth thought it was entirely unacceptable. Several weeks of vehement arguing and the group settled down to three authors.

We threw ideas around, did research to write believable chapters involving things such as tealeaf readings, ouija board encounters and traveling to Charlotte, North Carolina from five different locations in the U.S.

Finally, we hired two editors to iron out mistakes, inconsistencies and absolute impossibilities. We were ready!

Two years after the first words hit the paper, we sent out the manuscript. As most writers know, getting your baby into print is as hard as real childbirth, including many Braxton Hicks pains.
One thing we did not want was to go the vanity publishing route. We wanted a REAL publisher.

In April of 2007, I anxiously ripped the tape off a box that UPS had left on my porch.