After so
many rejections I had more or less given up hope, at least for a few months, of my memoir My Other Nine Lives ever getting published. But since I took Friday off, and was at my parents' house without the normal distractions of my house, I sat down and sent out a few more book proposals.
A publisher responded within two hours to my query letter and asked me to send my MS. I did, and a few hours after that she said my book looked interesting and that she wanted to publish it. She sent me a contract which my
Uncle Joe is reviewing. I also did a ton of research on the publisher this time in writer forums and a web site for writers that identifies scams.
Hoping for the best but preparing for the worst...
This is the outline for my memoir:
Salt, Seaweed, Sewage: Sharkfest 2001
Even though I didn’t really know how to swim, I signed up
for a 1.5-mile open-water race from Alcatraz Island to San Francisco. I taught
myself to swim by watching videos on the Internet, which turned out to be
(barely) adequate preparation. Getting lost mid-bay and initially missing the
finish line added to the excitement of swimming in three-foot waves under which
lurked sea lions, sharks, and raw sewage dumped by boats.
After realizing that I was a horrible swimmer, my partner
offered to take pictures of me so I could compare them to my Internet photos.
Hands flailing, neck awkwardly bent, I appeared to be either doing an imitation
of a blender or simulating a shark attack.
Screaming Barfies
In 2002 after reading Jon Krakauer’s Eiger Dreams, I decided
to ice-climb, even though I hate the cold and have a fear of heights. I arrived
in the Adirondacks in February to subzero temperatures and with horribly
inadequate winter gear, and soon found my rain shell and thin gloves to be poor
protection against the frigid wind. Meanwhile, five other women on the trip
vying for the attention of our very cute guide made for intense social
dynamics.
Then I realized I couldn’t dislodge either ice ax. I tried
yanking them backward and forward, first working my left ax and then my right.
They were firmly entrenched in the ice. Frigid air blew over my face. Suddenly,
I found myself sympathetic to mice in those little glue traps.
The Conquering Quarks
Returning to the ‘Daks for a more advanced ice-climbing trip
in 2003, I completed my first multi-pitch ice route. It was a fear-provoking
experience as I had neglected to take a class to learn rope work skills.
Challenging a group of guy climbers to a game of Bloody Knuckles at the dinner
table one night proved a mistake, as was staying in a motel that advertised its
“disposable washcloths.”
“Don’t you even have a belay jacket? Didn’t Warren just give
you one?” Ian, my guide, asked.
“Uh, he did give me a belay jacket, but I left it at home
because it makes me look like a stack of tires,” I replied.
Blood, Bait, and Boys on the Boat
In 2003, I took a trip to Isla Guadalupe, off Baja, Mexico,
to cage-dive with great white sharks. During our seven days on the water, a
great white bit through our anchor line, I discovered why you aren’t supposed
to put body parts outside the shark cage, and I learned that I’m damned good at
making chum.
I heard a commotion behind me in the shark cage. Ram Bam had
come up under the shadow of the boat, circled around, and was headed toward me.
He was close and quickly getting closer. I instinctively pulled backward, but
the sides of my Neptune II mask had caught against the outside of the bars. I
couldn’t get my head back in the cage.
They Like To Run
A Christmas 2003 trip to learn to dogsled was almost ruined
when I became lost driving through upstate New York. Later, I faced a sled dog
that wanted to kill me, discovered that my climbing skills would save me from
having to pick up dog poop, and locked my keys in my car in the middle of a
frozen field forty miles from civilization.
I envisioned what remained of the tendons in my knee
separating like rotted rope strands if I tried to stop a sled with my foot.
“You can also throw this anchor,” said the guide. It looked like a cross
between a shovel head and a gladiator weapon. I tried to picture throwing it
into the snow…without first accidentally impaling myself. Not going to use the
anchor, I decided.
Buford
Partnering up with the alpine ace Will Mayo during my second
season of ice climbing, in March 2004, led to my first experience climbing rock
with ice tools. That Sunday afternoon at Chapel Pond, in the Adirondacks, I
realized that you can climb a tree while wearing crampons, that ice climbs can
have entire sections with no ice, and that blood on the ice triggers cravings
for pizza.
I was about to declare victory over the ice route “Buford”
when my foot placement burst like a rotted tooth mid-root canal. Fighting to
get back in balance, I hooked my left ice ax behind a curtain of icicles as
structurally sound as peppermint sticks.
Skydiving with a SEAL
Having signed up in 2005 for a skydiving experience with a
friend, I found myself strapped to a retired Navy SEAL wearing a lilac
jumpsuit. He skipped the important information about the jump and focused on
other, more mundane details…like what would happen to my skull if I walked into
a moving propeller.
The jump was starting to remind me more and more of a really
bad date, except that I wasn’t on a date with this retired SEAL, Paul; I was
instead strapped so closely to him I could feel his appendectomy scar.
Plan B
In 2008 my partner and I went to Zion to do a big wall climb
called Plan B solely because I wanted to sleep in a portaledge. Life 400 feet
off the ground wasn’t simple. Bathroom breaks had to be timed around the
tourist bus that drove by every 15 minutes taking pictures, big wall food was
unpalatable, and wind can derail a good night’s sleep.
The portaledge was lufting like an unsecured main sail in a
storm. I thought the little metal poles would grind down to nothing. They made
an ominous noise as the wind pushed them against the rock. Clang, clang,
scrape. An ice cream truck driven by the grim reaper would make such a noise.
Pikes Peak Epic
On a hiking trip with my father in 2006, two kamikaze
mountain bikers careering down the trail caused me to twist my zombie knee. I
punctuated the excruciating six-mile hike back down to the car with torrents of
expletives and bouts of vomiting, while my dad attempted to convince me that
chewing a five-year-old piece of gum would lessen the pain. I knew I would
survive when my dad spotted a sign of civilization and reminded me that no
mountaineer has ever died within eyeshot of a tennis court.
My father seemed surprised. "You aren't even drunk and
you threw up,” he said. Now he was worried. I admitted my knee was hurting. A
lot.
