"K" is for "Koopmans" - (hey, that's me!)

This letter on the A-Z Challenge is very special to me, I feel like I've known it my entire life!

My theme revolves around the soon-to-be published memoir I wrote for opera singer, Donald Braswell.

"K" is for "Koopmans" (Hey, that's me!)

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If you've been following my blog for a while you probably know all this, but I wanted to throw in a few bullet points about me, how I met Donald - and how he agreed to let me write his memoir.

 

• I've been writing professionally since 2005 (my first paid job was a beat reporter in Florida.)
• Three years later, we'd moved to San Antonio and I was again, a writer for a local newspaper - and avid fan of America's Got Talent.
• Discovering that opera singer, Donald Braswell (and if you haven't seen his first audition HERE, you'll be amazed... especially at the 2-min mark) lived in my beat, I was thinking awesome feature idea, so I reached out... and out... and out... until he finally said, "Come in!"
• I taped twenty minutes of the interview, got my "money shot" quotes and was about to finish, when I asked him a question... which led to a 45-minute chat as he told me the backstory of his life.
• I knew it would be a great story to tell... so in 2009, I presented Donald with basically a business plan and volunteered to write the book for free. He gave me his blessing and off I charged like a literary Rhino into the wilderness of the Memoir Jungle.
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  My new, stylish springtime "Virginia Look"

• I had no clue what I was doing.
• Luckily, there was no official timeline, and I had an amazing time learning my craft. Along the way, we had an agent, came close to a big deal, lost the deal, lost the agent and had several interested parties as time went by, but up until last year nothing official.
• I told Donald I wouldn't quit looking until I found a publisher who believed in the story as much as we did.
• The rest, nayah, who wants to remember falling asleep in front of the computer or opening yet another letter of non-acceptance :)
• And then in 2014, (it still feels like it was only last year), someone said yes.
• Thanks to Duke Pennell of Pen-L Publishing, REVIVAL: The Donald Braswell Story will be published Nov. 3, 2015.

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As a PS.... I mentioned this in a previous post, but for those perhaps new to my blog, authors, Carrie Butler and E.J. Wesley of NA Alley, invited me last month to be their guest for a very special St. Patrick's Day Alleycast #7 podcast.

Obviously I don't expect anyone to stop and listen during the middle of the Challenge, but sometime in the future, (or if you're ever suffering from insomnia,) there's a ton of information about me, Donald and even a little about St. Patrick and the Blarney Stone, too.

(I start chatting after minute 22.)

Just click play:



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Tomorrow: "L" is for "Lucas, Walter" (and a musical miracle in the making...)