The Time for Your Book Might Not be Now By Patti Eddington

It’s been almost 15 years, but I remember what the agent said when saying no to my book: “I just don’t identify enough with the characters.”

My book was a memoir.

Since the “characters” were myself, my husband and daughter I probably should have felt that rejection quite a bit more deeply than I did.

Here’s the thing, though, by any measure there was no way I should even have been able to talk to this person. She was, and is, a very big deal. The only reason my manuscript landed on her desk is because she is the agent of a good friend of mine who has been a name for years. He put in a word and she thought the topic — being married to a veterinarian — was interesting and asked to see it.

“Maybe, I’ll be sorry one day,” she told me, kindly.

I remember sitting on the bed trying to work up some tears, reminding myself of all the horrible things people have done to me — because that’s what I do. Someone flips me off driving and I immediately remember the boy I had a desperate crush on in sixth grade asking me to ask my friend if she liked him. A sales clerk is rude and I think of a woman I worked with at a clothing store in college asking me if I’d always “been fat.”

But in this case, I couldn’t work up righteous indignation. I was pretty sure she wouldn’t actually be sorry because she represents some best selling authors and she will always be just fine. She gave me a chance and let me down easily and I was grateful.

I sent a query letter to exactly one other agent, a guy who represented an author who wrote a very successful book about a dog. He was also very nice, got back to me within hours and said my book sounded fun but he didn’t think he could sell it.

Neither of them took my manuscript, but both those agents gave me the same piece of advice. “Don’t ever change your title. It’s perfect.”

I was speaking at a library event recently promoting that book — “Don’t Look in the Freezer — The Very Strange Life of a Veterinarian’s Wife” — which was published in April and someone asked if I’d spent all those intervening years thinking about it. Until the last three, nope. It simply rested while I . . .

Continued to hone my skills. Since I was 17 — almost 50 years ago — there has rarely been a month when someone hasn’t paid me to write something. I was a journalist working for many newspapers and later some big, glossy magazines. I worked in public relations, writing annual reports and brochures and pamphlets and speeches for hospital presidents. I wrote catalog copy for an alpaca farm and video scripts and fundraising pleas. But I didn’t know anything about crafting an entire book. So I took writing workshops galore meeting so many accomplished authors with immense talent and great advice — and, I listened to it.

Brushed up on social media That first agent also mentioned that platform — even in 2012 — was vital and would obviously become more so. I began writing about the weird things that happen when you’re married to a vet on social media and published a blog. People stopped me in grocery stores to tell me they’d laughed out loud at one of the antics of our pets.

Solidified what I wanted. Luckily, I never dreamed of being rich or famous. I just wanted to share the anecdotes that seemed to make pet lovers smile and, maybe, to leave a bit of my life on the page for my family one day.

In 2018, through a DNA test, I found my biological father’s family. I’d always known I was adopted, but had taken as truth some of the stories I’d been told. Then, at a gathering of my newly discovered relatives, all the stories I’d grown up with crumbled when an aunt told me the shocking true story of my origin. I approached a court to unlock my  records and the contents were astonishing. That led me to write my first memoir “The Girl with Three Birthdays — An Adopted Daughter’s Memoir of Tiara’s, Tough Truths, and Tall Tales,” published in 2024.

I adored everything about the process; working with the publisher, editor, proofreader and cover designer, planning launch parties and podcasts and library and bookstore visits. I loved it so much I wanted to do it again. And there was “Freezer,” languishing in my laptop. I hauled it out and rewrote every chapter. Doing this, I realized not identifying with the “characters” wasn’t the agent’s fault. I gave up making us sound good and just made us sound human.

The day I learned “The Girl . . .” had representation, my joy became disbelief when the publisher told me it would take two years.

It  seemed like forever, but that was the time necessary to create a good book and I’d learned a lesson.

Sometimes it takes two. Sometimes it takes 15. I hope it’s good to know that even if the time isn’t now, it could still be . . . someday.

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Patti Eddington is a former newspaper and magazine journalist. Her first memoir, “The Girl with Three Birthdays,” launched in May 2024 and was the recipient of a Silver Sarton Award. She followed that this year with her second memoir “Don’t Look in the Freezer — The Very Strange Life of a Veterinarian’s Wife.”

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Don’t Look in the Freezer: The Very Strange Life of a Veterinarian’s Wife

For James Herriot fans and pet lovers, a modern-day, funny-yet-poignant memoir about what it is like to be the only person in a small family not employed in the veterinary profession.

Patti Eddington should have known when she married her veterinary student boyfriend that she would spend anniversary and birthday dinners not sitting at tables at fancy restaurants but kneeling under a surgery table in a cocktail dress, desperately trying to mop up a steady stream of blood and urine with cheap paper towels. She should have guessed that every knock at the door or ring of the phone would mean her husband would be torn away from the family for hours—sometimes returning deflated, sometimes smiling. But she could never have dreamed that her beautiful, curly-haired young daughter would one day bathe and sleep with an inflatable tick (until the day it was mysteriously punctured by a salad fork) or that she would go through her marriage of forty-five years opening every freezer door with caution.

Don’t Look in the Freezer is a humorous, poignant, loving look into the sometimes strange, mostly unglamorous, life of a veterinarian’s wife. Patti’s little family is not at all like that of famous veterinarian James Herriot’s—but is still absolutely filled with compassion and love for animals and the people who adore them.

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