She began her letter by telling me how sick she had gotten. As her health continued to decline, she decided to go home. There, she developed a lump on her throat. Frightened, she went to see a doctor who, upon diagnosing it as a toxic goiter, put her on thyroid medication and a tranquilizer. Forced to quit school, she claimed all the worry and excitement over her condition had prevented her from writing any sooner.

She then went on to say:

“Butch, I want you to know you mean a great deal to me. I care about what happens to you, what you do. As I recall the good times we’ve had, I want to thank you for all of them. But I’m afraid you look at them differently than I do. I’ve said this before and I mean it—you’re a very good friend and I’ll always want to keep your friendship. I don’t want anything to happen to our friendship, or should I say my friendship, because you feel so differently about me. I regard you as one of my best friends, and that’s all.

“You said you love me and maybe you do. I can’t say what you’re feeling, I can only tell you what I feel. And I feel only a very strong need for you as a friend. If I’ve given you the impression my feelings for you are the same as those, you hold for me, I’m sorry. I never meant to do that. And if what I’ve said has offended you in any way, I’m deeply hurt. If you love me, then I’ve hurt you too. I’m sorry.

“I hated having to say this to you, but I believe it had to be said. I can only hope you’ll understand what I am saying. I didn’t write this letter to hurt you; for I’d rather die than hurt you. But it wasn’t fair to you, to go on believing I love you too. I can only say I care very much about what happens to you. You’ll never know how much you’ve given me. But Butch, I can’t return the same feelings you have for me. I can only say I hope this letter doesn’t affect our friendship. Remember, I do care about you, more than you will ever know.

“From now on my letters will be far apart, because the doctor wants me to do absolutely nothing. I’ll write as often as I can. Butch, please read this letter carefully and try to understand what I’m saying. For I never was very good at expressing my feelings on paper.

Love,
Mary

While Butch hasn’t been in publishing that long, he has been a member of St. Louis Publishers Association for a long time, since 2000 when SLPA itself was in the throes of a paradigm shift to stay alive. Having just published his first book, Close Encounters of a Very Special Kind, prior to his finding that SLPA even existed, he wishes he had known then what he has since learned from SLPA and its members.

Even though he had read the Ross’ Complete Guide to Self-Publishing, Butch had no idea how, nor the means to market his new book. And to make matters worse, he got stuck with a book that had been poorly produced, though, luckily for him, as part of a very short run. Shortly thereafter he fell on financial hard times when his luck had run out on him too.

“How you think about and create a book,” proclaimed the second keynote speaker, Dominique Raccah of Sourcebooks, “has never been more important. The title and cover make a big difference in positioning your book in the marketplace. To become a leader in your category, you must create a must-have title—your book must mean something to your readers.”

As he attended SLPA meetings, month after month, year after year, and now one IBPU session after another, he couldn’t help thinking about the paradigm shift in his own life. He had just released, back in March of this year, a completely revised version of his first book, now entitled A Different Kind of Sentinel, that is one who can interpret, correctly, the signs of the times.

“Most of us operate under the misguided notion of HAVE-DO-BE,” states the speaker at one of the last sessions Butch attended, Dave Mathison, in his new book, BE THE MEDIA. “It goes something like this: ‘When I HAVE (more time, money), then I can DO the things’ (publish a book) ‘that will enable me to BE’” (a successful publisher), when, in reality, it’s the other way around.

“It all starts with BEing, or BE-DO-HAVE,” proclaims Dave. “Once you focus on who you want to BE” (an author/publisher) “then you can DO things” (write/publish a book) “that will allow you to HAVE what you want” (success as an author/publisher). “What you are BEing will grow and manifest itself in your life.”

“First I had to be the book,” concluded Butch, “then the publisher. Now he’s telling me I have to be the media if I want to bring this whole story to a successful conclusion. If that’s what it takes, so be it.”

A review

Having survived the war in Vietnam, without physical injury to himself, the author “had nonetheless incurred the deeper wounds of a house divided against itself.” As a child, had not he experienced his real father’s schizophrenia and, later, his stepfather’s alcoholism as war related, he may very well have written a different kind of story than A Different Kind of Sentinel.

That the author takes memoir writing to a new and intriguing level is a gross understatement. For he gives to the imagination what Albert Einstein gave to the world, a reality “that is just as accessible to one’s faculties as the material world.”

“You speak of the imagination,” complained a cohort of his, “as if it were some place I could walk to, like the back of this plane.”

“Indeed I do,” proclaims he to whom the vastly rich experiences of the imaginal realm are just as real as those of the material world–a topic that, no doubt, will be hotly debated for years to come.

From the first page of this very well-written book to the last, does the author slip so seamlessly from one world to the next, as if there were truly no distinction between the two. While standing, for example, in front of a mirror, one day, he sees an image of his soul, a woman “standing opposite” him in the mirror. Alarmed at first, he steps “back from the mirror only to find himself being inexorably drawn back into her world through the smile on her face.” In the end, is he “left standing in front of the mirror, smiling at an image of himself dressed as a white knight.”

And therein lies the whole story in a nutshell. For this remarkable story is as much about the author as it is about the soul and their eventual reunion. While he fears the white knight, she loves the White Knight “above all else.” Where he longs to be free of his obsession with sex, she longs to be free of her imprisonment in nature, somewhere out there. “I am the way,” she boldly proclaims when he finally admits he is lost. And though the two suffer the same agonizing pain of separation from each other and their respective worlds, both seek the one person they are meant to become.

As a sailor then, in the service of the US Navy circa 1967, does he reluctantly set off, that spring, in search of she who must be obeyed if he is to overcome the beastly side of his nature and reunite himself with soul. “Whatever you do,” is he forewarned by a fellow shipmate, “don’t let them rob you of the most precious gift you have, your humanity, for the wraiths will claw away at it until all that remains is the shadow of what was once you.” And so must he, at all costs, resist the temptation of his fathers before him, “to live out the visions of others rather than the one with which he had been entrusted at birth,” a vision that eventually pits him against the Navy.

Loaded with many wonderful insights into the workings of the soul and the trinity, human sexuality and creativity, war and the beastly side of nature, this little gem of a book is sure to please the palate of those intrepid souls who venture to open its pages in search of what they know not. Having gone where no book has ever dared, this starkly honest book is truly “a work of art of indescribable beauty.”

View all my reviews.