Tonight I took a break from grading papers to listen to Caitlin O'Connell live from the Explorers Club in NYC. Caitlin had invited me to tonights event and to last Friday's event at Hunter College, but I couldn't make it to either. Third Term closed today, and grades are due in the grade book and computer shortly.
https://explorers.org/events/detail/nyc_public_lecture_series_feat._caitlin_oconnell
Caitlin was the last author I represented as an agent. I was becoming a High School English teacher and it was my last year of part-time teaching and on the cusp of my first year of full-time teaching when she approached me. She seen my name in Hannah Holmes' book, The Secret Life of Dust, and figured if I could successfully agent that, I could help her with her book, The Elephant's Secret Sense.
Hannah and I had been childhood friends, worked on the same newspaper in college and after we graduated I went to NYC to enter publishing while Hannah rose up through the natural science magazines. When she was tired of being a jet-set reporter, I said I could get her a book deal if she picked a topic. She called with two: Dust or Dirt. I went with dust. You see without dust there would be no rainforest canopy, no life on the ocean floor, no connectivity of species over great bodies of water or land. We are all truly indebted to first the cosmic dust from which we all sprung, and not the constant redistribution of it.
I guess Caitlin thought if I could wrap my head around that, I could understand and appreciate the invisible language of the elephant and the greater significance and applications that understanding it could bring to light. My one fear was that I was teaching a 3/4 load, going to Graduate School, my kids were young and I was slowly closing down my agency ~ so I didn't know how much time and attention I could really bring to the book, and yet I believed in it and her fully. So I asked her if she'd mind if I co-agented the book with respected editor/agent friend in NY. When she found out John Michel, was her Stanford mentor's, Robert Sapolsky, editor (Why Zebra's Don't Get Ulcers was the book they collaborated on), Caitlin was delighted with my choice.
Most of what I represented was nonfiction. Nonfiction affords an agent to be able to represent fiction only 10% of the time. Caitlin came to me with numerous book ideas in various stages of development, as well as screen/script ideas. I committed just to the one book. Tomorrow her first thriller is being published, 20 years in the making, http://www.amazon.com.au/Ivory-Ghosts-Catherine-Elephant-Mystery-ebook/dp/B00OEXM6Y2/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1427697231&sr=8-2&keywords=ivory+ghosts, and I'm sure it will be wonderful (it's on my summer reading list).
The fall I looked at her manuscript over Thanksgiving, and then John looked at it over Christmas. The giant Tsunami hit at the end of December, 2004 and took over the airwaves in early 2005. The BBC, as well as various science and nature periodicals were reporting that the Indian Elephants in Thailand seemed to know the Tsunami was coming. There were even reports of the Elephants herding the people and animals that were nice to them to high ground (not those who were cruel and violent towards them). Not only that, they seemed to know how high the water was going to rise.
Caitlin's book, with the science, experiments of Malaysian and African Elephants being pitched to NY publishers at that tragic moment, generated many offers from the publishers. Now I'm proud to say Caitlin has written, produced and compiled works of photography, film, young adult and fiction. I believe her work is noble, valuable and desperately needed in a time where the dust in the wind can bring toxic rain to the watering holes, the climate change is shrinking the habitat of the African plains and Oceans reefs and we're only scratching the surface of what our fellow mammals can teach us about the wonders of the world....
Brava, Caitlin on tonight's lecture. Some day I hope to a) volunteer with you for a stint, and b) come up with a worthy exploration or endeavor of my own.
Good night, to noble & adventurous women world wide, G'night!
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