It’s worth putting memories on paper

Remember drive-in movies? James Comey does, especially one he saw one night from a graveyard! In fact he has written a book that begins in that graveyard, which he says you might call American Graffiti meets A Prayer for Owen Meany. It’s actually called, Uncommon Glory.

When I was in third grade, my brother John and I watched a movie from a graveyard. The graveyard was behind St. Charles Church in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania.

We had both just served 40 hours “devotion” inside the church, a job that required us to kneel ramrod straight for an hour before the right side altar of St. Joseph. On the side altar was the Monstrance and in the Monstrance was a consecrated host. It was Holy Saturday, 1955. I was eight years old. My brother was ten. After our duty, he convinced me to sneak behind the church with our surplus and cassock tucked high so as not to rub against the dark tombstones. He wanted to try and glimpse the large screen at the Family Drive-In tucked away in a hollow down below us. It was a Saturday night, the drive-in was packed.

We couldn’t hear anything because each car had its own speaker mounted on its window frame. But it was a clear spring night, and I could see the entire screen from our vantage point. And I have never forgotten what I saw. A man with a beard and a scar down his face was lashed onto a great white whale. Men in long boats were attacking the whale, stabbing it with harpoons. The man lashed to the whale appeared to be waving, his one arm raising and falling. That night, tucked within the silent landscape of a spooky graveyard, I was watching Captain Ahab and Moby Dick in their dance of death.

I have never forgotten that image. Some years back, it became the opening scene of my coming-of-age novel, Uncommon Glory. Altar boys and drive-in movies and the joy and angst of that time period flowed out of my fingers into this story. Conscience and caring families and friendships found their way onto the pages. Rock-n-roll, slow dances, and coonskin caps bubbled up from my memory. Quirky teenagers and adults, murder, revenge, redemption, they all came together into this sad and funny story.

Two literary agents tried to sell the manuscript. There were no takers. Editors didn’t know what to make of it. Faith and hope were backbeats to the pulsating rhythms that moved through the chapters. There was a talking statue, a psycho altar boy, and a singer appearing on Ted Mack’s Original Amateur Hour — the ’50s version of American Idol. The book didn’t fit into a publishing niche.

Oprah featured a book a couple of years back on her TV show. I read the book, liked it, and then contacted the writer’s agent. The agent agreed to read Uncommon Glory but didn’t respond for the longest time. I finally called her.

“I was putting off talking to you because I’m at a loss,” she said.

“A loss?” I asked.

“A loss,” she said. “I love your writing and I love the story, but, for the life of me, I can’t think of a single editor that I can sell it to.”

When James Cameron was interviewed after releasing his highly successful film, Avatar, he said, “I came up with the script for this film in 1994, but it was not possible to make the film then. I had to wait for the technology to catch up before I could put it on the screen.”

With the new technology of ebooks and digital publishing, I am now able to finally release Uncommon Glory. Patience and persistence have driven me not to despair in trying to bring it to readers. Now, it has been released through Kindle Books (click here). And adding to my pride, my son Jim, a professional illustrator, designed and illustrated the cover.

It’s worth putting memories on paper … if they are uncommon, and might bring you glory.

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Category: James Comey