From Nursing Home to Published Author

I’m told the average author doesn’t query publishers from a hospital bed in a nursing home.

I’d like to think, then, that I’m not your average author, because that’s what I did in the summer of 2020. Since that time, I’ve had two novels published and a novella releasing at the end of May. 

Not too shabby for someone who wasn’t even thought to be able to survive a two-week coma.

Yup. That’s why I was in the nursing home. Let me explain.

Sometime in the beginning of March 2019, I woke up from the coma. It was, it seemed, quite a surprise to the doctors. As my daughter describes it, I “defied all the odds.” I had entered the hospital several weeks earlier. Of course, I don’t remember any of this. The coma was a combination of several factors, but it appears I wasn’t breathing properly. 

What I do remember is waking up and needing to talk. I had an urgent desire to tell my family I didn’t want to die. But with a trach down my throat, no words came out. My daughter handed me a pen and paper. I wrote: “I want to do so much.”

And I meant it. To say that the experience changed my world view is an understatement. I wasn’t ready to leave yet. 

My first stop on the road to recovery, and getting the chance to do so much, was naturally a nursing home. And I definitely needed it. I was so weak I couldn’t get in and out of bed myself. In fact, the first month or so, the staff had to use a Hoyer—basically a crane for people—for that task. I didn’t even have strength enough to push the handle down on a toilet to flush it. 

But I could pick up a pen and notebook. And my first two or three months there I entertained myself by writing stories in between physical therapy sessions. Gaining enough strength to walk was a priority. 

 Deep down, I probably knew these particular tales wouldn’t see the light of day, but it kept me busy. And I still did want to do so much.

Was I depressed at times? Yes. Did I cry until no more tears would come? Also, yes. I knew I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life in a nursing home. But the road to recovery seemed so long. 

By June 2019, though, I was getting better and my daughter brought me my laptop and I had gained enough strength that I could wield it pretty well. I had a nearly finished novel that I had ignored for too long. I had focused on my nonfiction freelance work. 

Now was the time to open that document to see what it looked like. Of course, I was still in a wheelchair. Getting back on my feet would be several months away, it turned out. (And I was impatient about it.)

But by now I could at least wheel myself around the facility. There was no need to wait for an aide or nurse to get me. So some days I’d wheel myself down to the lobby, sit at a table and write. Some days I’d climb into bed (which I was doing pretty well on my own) and write.

Every so often an aide peeked over my shoulder to see what I was doing. And I told them: I was writing a novel. And I would get it published. Did they believe me? Probably not.

An entire year later in June 2020, I felt confident enough in the story and its quality that I queried a publisher (maybe two). 

That story was Heartquake, published two years later by The Wild Rose Press. Not only did I get it published but it earned a crowned heart review from Ind’Tale Magazine, which makes eligible for a Rone Award this year.

Not too shabby for a 60-something year old woman who put the finishing touches on and edited the manuscript from a nursing home.

The coma wasn’t my first brush with a serious, potentially life-threatening illness, though. Nearly a decade prior, the doctors diagnosed me with ovarian cancer. The same cancer that killed my mother when she was only fifty-six. I was fifty-five and a half at the time of my diagnosis. 

Curiously, at the time, I had just begun to seriously pursue fiction writing. I had my first novel nearly completed. The year-long regimen of chemotherapy, blood transfusions for anemia, and later, daily high doses of antibiotics for a blood infection, kept me from finishing it. 

But a year later, not only had I finished it, but I had found a publisher for it. It was called Out of Character. The publisher was swallowed up by Simon and Shuster and my book, though, on their website, didn’t get any attention.

When I signed with The Wild Rose Press, I took my rights back to this story, edited it (boy, it needed another good round of edits) and re-titled it to Rewrites of the Heart. It came out in February of this year. 

The Universe talks to each of us differently. It definitely got my attention when I realized a survived a coma. Today that note I wrote in the hospital room—“I want to do so much”—sits framed on my end table. I look at it often and I think where my writing career would be had that never happened to me.

Come to think of it, I still want to do so much.

My message to everyone: It’s never too late to pursue your dream. You still have so much to do.

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Two things you should know about me: I have an offbeat sense of humor and characters are constantly talking to me, trying to get me to tell their stories. Other than that, I’m a normal person.  I write paranormal romance novels set in small fictional towns in northeast Ohio about things I love—like coffee. I’ve been writing most of my life and have been the editor-in-chief of a national health publication. My last gig of some 20 years was as a freelance nonfiction writer penning articles and ebooks on any topic from spirituality to marijuana. I live in North Lima, a real town in northeast Ohio with all my characters. And yes, it does get a tad crowded.

https://terrynewmanauthor.com/

https://www.facebook.com/NewmanWrites 

https://twitter.com/tnewmanwrites 

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REWRITES OF THE HEART

JJ Spritely, romance author, writes characters that jump off the page. Figuratively, that is. She never expects them to make a literal leap smack dab into her world. But Alex Zurich and Blake Teesdale do just that. And they’re on a mission to help JJ write her own personal love story with a man she recently met, Kennedy King Cooper.

A history professor, Cooper doesn’t see the value of romance novels and he has even less regard for those who write them. Until he meets a woman who haunts his thoughts.

There’s only one small snag in Alex’s and Blake’s plan…okay…two rather large snags. JJ wants nothing to do with Cooper. The other snag? Alex and Blake aren’t able to return to the pages of their own book.

Will JJ and Cooper write their own love story? And will Alex and Blake find their way back to their own world?

Buy link: Universal url: https://books2read.com/u/bP7YAr 

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