Here's part of the review of my forthcoming memoir, ADRENALINE JUNKIE, by European writer, Damien Seaman on his blog:
How to write better, faster and more
successfully
How
to write an exciting memoir
What writers and aspiring authors can learn from Adrenaline
Junkie, a memoir by Les Edgerton
As a
writer, Les Edgerton doesn’t believe in prologues.
Despite
which, he’s got one in Adrenaline Junkie [link to Amazon]– the memoir he’s
been dying to get published since the 1990s, when he first wrote it. And a
humdinger of a prologue it is, too.
See, as
a writing teacher, Edgerton advocates that his students write openings that hook the reader
emotionally so they can’t help but read more.
Well,
try this…
Writing
of his time in Pendleton Prison in the 1960s, Edgerton says that every night
the prison DJ would play Porter Wagoner’s The Green, Green Grass of
Home. And every night in a cell above his, Les would hear another of the
inmates crying.
“And
then, one night, we didn’t hear the guy sobbing. I remember that just like it
was yesterday. In the morning, after we got back from chow, here came a bunch
of hacks, carrying a body down the tier walk wrapped in a bloody sheet. It was
this guy. He’d cut his wrists the night before.”
Cut to:
Edgerton, out of prison, years later, driving along the road with radio on.
On
comes the song Green, Green Grass of Home:
“All of
a sudden, I was blinded by uncontrollable tears and had to pull over to the side
of the road before I ran into somebody.
“Isn’t
it funny that at the time of your misery you don’t feel the emotion, but later,
when you’re in a good place, you do? It’s just funny, isn’t it…”
Becoming
a writer – and becoming a man
And
that, Edgerton says, is what this book is about:
“A lot
of moments in my life—some good and some bad—and how they formed me. I’ve had a
chaotic life and that’s been on purpose. I’ve consciously sought out as many
experiences as I was able to and I tended toward seeking out dangerous
experiences—that’s what triggers the adrenaline and adrenaline is my drug of
choice.”
Not bad
for a prologue. We already have emotion and a compelling hook. And this is
before the story proper has begun, of course.
Here –
for those keeping score and paying attention and all that – is how this memoir
really begins:
“When I
was eleven, my father walked into his bedroom and caught me stuffing several of
the coins he collected and kept in a sock in a dresser drawer, into my pockets.
Most of them were foreign coins he’d picked up overseas during World War II and
I have no idea how I planned to spend English half-pence or German
Reichspfennig coins or if I even planned to spend them at all. I just wanted
them because I thought I could take them without getting caught. After he put
his belt away, and I pulled my pants back up, my father made me take four of
the smallest coins and swallow them.”
And now
we have a story, ladies and germs.
For the rest of Damien’s
review, click here.
Thanks for a really thoughtful
review, Damien.
Blue skies,
Les
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