Renee’s Story Behind “Saving Bobby”
by Renee Hodges
Before I started my new business, I was a newly empty-nesting fifty-three-year-old. After raising three children and sending the last one off to college, I was looking forward to traveling with my husband, playing more tennis, and crossing off the many books on my “want to read” list. I was not looking for a new career but one never knows when one’s life path will change. For me, my course was forever altered by the death by overdose of my best friend’s son and by choosing to take in and care for my opioid-addicted nephew. These two events set me on a career path I would never have chosen for myself.
My nephew Bobby became accidentally addicted in college to prescription opioids, prescribed for a chronic back problem. By graduation, he was a full-blown heroin addict. He overdosed and was sent to the first of many rehabilitation centers and half-way houses. A pattern had begun: rehab, release, relapse, repeat. In March of 2013, Bobby was released from yet another of a growing list of centers and was living in a halfway house in Florida. I offered a new start in our hometown and Bobby packed and moved to North Carolina.
From the moment my recovering nephew entered my home, I found that writing down my thoughts released the anxiety that kept me awake at night. For sixteen months I chronicled the difficulties my nephew had in assimilating back into society after years of in and out of rehabilitation centers and half-way houses. The very first weekend I began to journal to myself before bedtime, the seed was planted for a new career.
When Bobby finally left my home, sixteen months later, he asked me to write down his story to long-term recovery so that he would never forget. With the help of a memoir book coach, Allison Kirkland, I began a new career as a writer and author. The manuscript started taking shape as I pieced Bobby’s recovery story together using emails, texts and journal entries, an epistolary of sorts, and added my personal recollections.
I am not a licensed physician, social worker, or counselor, but, I am one of the millions of everyday people tragically affected by addiction. I began writing at the request of my nephew, but in the end, I realized I was writing for myself and all of us affected by the helplessness of addiction in our families and our communities. Little did I know the enormous power that Bobby’s and my story would have on others struggling. Bobby’s story was passed by email so many times that it became somewhat viral and the decision to publish was easily made.
Writing, traditional publishing, and publicizing a book was a whole new learning curve. I bought “how to write” books by Stephen King’s and Annie Lamont, and I devoured them. I signed up for several online classes on “how to get an agent,” “write a query,” and “submit a finished manuscript.” My memoir book coach helped me pull the vignettes of sixteen months together in a readable fashion but I needed other outside help to be sure that my plot was cohesive, there were no holes in the storyline and that Saving Bobby made sense from start to finish. This professional is a developmental editor, and she was found by searching online through the myriad of sites with listings to help the struggling new author — me. The developmental process took four months of back and forth emailing, correcting and submitting before we felt the plot was as tight as it could be.
I continued learning about book agents and the Big Five Publishing Houses, I worked on query letters to these agents, which are emails with a pitch for the book and representation, and I soaked up information about publishing found on blogs, and on writers and publishing sites.
I crowd-sourced the name of the book and sought advice and critique of the manuscript through my book clubs, and they gave me critical and much-needed feedback. I grew broad shoulders and thick skin.
I signed up for Writer’s Digest and Publisher’s Weekly and began submitting queries to book agents. As I waited for responses that many were never to come, I continued to read online. It was the realization that even after signing with an agent, it would be two-plus years to find a publisher who would bring the book to press, I decided to change tracks completely. The landscape is changing for publishing, much like it has done for retailers and travel agents.
Traditional publishing was being tested by the internet and Amazon, and the ease in which self-published books could be made and marketed. The Big Five, Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster are stingy, unwilling or unable to take a chance on losing money with a gamble of a new author. Editorials/blogs were touting that only surefire authors like Hilary Clinton or John Grisham were getting contracts. Wide appeal books like “lose ten pounds in ten minutes” were popular too. As Saving Bobby is topical and timely, I felt I was neither a good candidate for a traditional publisher nor could I take the amount of time a traditional publishing route would take. The opioid epidemic is in the news now, and I did not know for how long.
I found that hybrid publishing offered a much-needed alternative in a rapidly changing publishing landscape. She Writes Press, gave me a traditional house experience, complete with traditional distribution and an experienced editorial and production team while allowing me to retain full ownership of my project and earnings. I submitted my manuscript to She Writes Press who only takes 7% of all manuscripts and was excitedly accepted.
Before committing, I looked into self-publishing, an easy and cheap process through Amazon and their book publishing department, Create Space (now defunct). I toyed with this much less expensive and quick option but after having a consultation one on one with a publishing expert, I learned that hybrid publishing would give me the credibility and expertise of a traditional publisher and I could have my manuscript molded into a top-notch book in one year’s time. Foreign rights, royalties, and other legal entities were negotiated and a contract was signed.
My new publisher, Brooke Warner, was amazing and I was assigned an editorial manager. She Writes Press works together with the author to produce the best product we can put out there. As standards are high, Saving Bobby was immediately sent to another copy editor to have all the tenses in the book changed to past tense instead of the present and past tenses I had used throughout.
The name of the book was finalized to Saving Bobby: Heroes and Heroin in One Small Community after much discussion. The front cover was designed, while metadata and TIP sheets were being researched. There was nomenclature to learn, author photos to be shot, and copy-editing to be done: six times by four different editors by the time it was published. Copy editing is when someone corrects your grammar, spelling, and punctuation, and much more. The Chicago Manual of Style is used for published books and it was as foreign as if I were learning a new language.
Blurbs and endorsements were solicited. Amazon Author Central was formed, as was a Goodreads Author Page and Facebook Business Page. There was copyright filing and obtaining my Library of Congress control number to be done by the publisher. Metadata management, and interior design and formatting. There were e-book file conversion and an upload to e-retailers. Back Cover copy and design was the last step before the Advance Reader Copy was sent to me for final approval.
And, while I was working on the best product I could produce, simultaneously, my publicist and marketing firm of Caitlin Hamilton Publicist and Marketing, Inc, was coming up with a publicity plan. There were long and short lead targets, media and book signings, business cards and postcards created, and everything in between. The publicists sent over 130 Advance Reading Copies out to generate media and speaking engagements. I teamed up with a national organization, Shatterproof, to get our message out. We are still booking events and I will make the million-miles-frequent-flyer club yet!
2018 has already been a great year for Saving Bobby. May 1st is the official publication date of the book although it can be pre-ordered on many sites including Indiebound, Barnes Nobles, Amazon.com or an independent bookstore near you. Pre-sales are strong sending Saving Bobby to number 247 on the Amazon list in the category of drug dependency as of 2-25-18.
The official book launch is planned in my hometown and the indie bookstore, The Regulator, will sell books at the launch. An email list is formed and a save the date and an e-vite will be sent out.
The book tour begins in May of 2018 with stops and speaking opportunities in many states. Book Clubs, high schools, and addiction agencies are all targets.
Solicited and unsolicited early reviews had come out with highly positive feedback – and Saving Bobby has been entered into three Independent Awards contests.
Other social media sites are being launched or updated to reflect news of the book: Linked In, Instagram and Twitter. I hired a social media manager to help me update my website and begin a social media campaign because my time was limited to the many publishing and publicity duties I had. Ann Gray Consulting used Facebook Ads and boosted posts, updated and linked my business website with my other social media pages and began posting on all my sites videos and news releases generating hundreds of new followers and likes.
Writing and publishing a book is a labor of love. The best advice I can share is to believe in yourself, no matter what others are saying. Harry Potter was turned down a dozen times and now Hogwarts is as well-known as Harvard. If you don’t believe, then why should someone else?
Be good to yourself and by this I mean when to ask for help and to hire out. Publishing is full of deadlines. On more than one occasion I asked my book club or children to proof the manuscript. I hired out when I was overwhelmed, including developmental and copy editors or take-out food for dinner.
Celebrate the process, no matter how arduous and financially profitable or unprofitable it is. The creation of and the marketing of a book is beautiful. But, like having a baby, after the birth one forgets all about the labor pains.
Saving Bobby, Heroes and Heroin will be born on May 1, 2018. Bobby and I recognized that there is a need for a positive, encouraging and hopeful story of recovery. Bobby’s story and mine will help others that are struggling with addiction and depression, in recovery, or the caregivers that take care of them. What I realized and what this story confirms is that recovery is just beginning when one is leaving the structure and safety of a rehabilitation center or half-way house. As a community, we can, and must, do more to battle this opioid and heroin epidemic.