The Plenary Review

I received word this morning that Brian Rhinehardt, one of our authors, passed away last night. The news is unexpected and tragic, and my mind is reeling over the loss of a writer that I was looking forward to publishing  and traveling with in the new year.

Brian first queried my company in August 2008 about The Closest Thing To Heaven, the story of Gary Greenard, whose big dreams of life beyond his small town are abruptly ended when he dies in a car accident on his way to work.  Here’s the synopsis that caught my attention when it landed in my inbox: 

Gary Greenard is a twenty-five year old bachelor who succumbs to a tragic, untimely death while traveling to work in Charlotte, NC.  His soul awakens at sea in the Atlantic Ocean and he eventually finds himself ashore on an almost vacant Cape Hatteras Island.  He  . . .  meets up with Myla, the ideal woman he created in his imagination as an adolescent, and they began the love affair that always eluded him in life. Their fairy tale is interrupted when he learns of a third person on the island, and of a choice he must make to stay on the island or leave with Myla to an unknown destination.

Brian’s story was surreal, and one that I believed had the ability to cross over into the mainstream – a very difficult task for writers of color. I signed him this year on gut instinct, my driving force in making a final decision about whether to acquire a manuscript.  

This summer, we began work on the revisions to his manuscript, a process that was emotional, creatively draining and exciting. Brian was so eager to publish his work and full of ideas about the concept, that he emailed and texted me often, once provoking me to tell him to “relax and let me do what I do.”

Over the months, we learned each other’s working habits (he once proclaimed that he finally figured me out; I responded, “am I that difficult?”) and made tentative plans about his cover concepts and marketing decisions. More importantly, we worked very hard to get to the heart of Gary’s story and to the story that Brian dreamed of telling.

The first three chapters were very difficult: I wanted Brian to tap into the pure tragedy of someone waking up and not knowing that today would be their last; that it’s utterly unfair for someone to die young and with their life still in front of them. We could not miss the mark on how we opened this story.

We went back to the drawing board on Brian’s story outline, revising the foundation in order to set up the novel in a way that would push his readers through Gary’s uncertainty about his new world, and the meaning of his lost life and unresolved issues. As I read through various drafts of Brian’s work, I knew that we were getting close.

In a  matter of months, Brian had made significant inroads on his work, choosing to open his book with Gary’s death, a shocking beginning that starts with the end of life. When I read one of his latest drafts, he made me think of Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones, and I knew that he was pushing through.

Last month, Brian reached out to me in frustration over the writing process, and my decision to push back his novel to give him a few more months  to develop it (from August to October). We discussed his concept of Gary’s life and dreams, the differences between being a writer and an author, what he really wanted his writing legacy to be, and how he was writing his book for his mother.  

Brian had a renewed sense of what he wanted to do with his story. He said he’d been holding back on Gary out of fear that if revealed too much of the character, “maybe readers won’t like him enough to care.” I shared my own fears as a writer and new publisher, told him to let it all go, and to make this about Gary and no one else. That people relate to the flawed sense of a person, to how they deal with their issues, to their imperfect lives and how they rebound (or not) from their decisions and life’s challenges.

It was then that we hit what I felt was his breakthrough. Brian sent me an outline that was phenomenal and showed me that he had gotten inside of Gary’s head in a way that could make readers understand his character’s heart.

Brian was on schedule to deliver his revised chapters in January. This month, I touched base with members of my team about his book’s marketing plans, and we were planning to meet with him in Los Angeles in April. I was excited about publishing work and knew that we had an awesome first list on our hands.

When I got the news this morning that Brian had passed away, I felt the way I I did when I first read his work. Brian too was a young man with big dreams and great talent, and he’s been snatched away far too soon. Working with Brian over the past year was a mutually rewarding experience. We both poured in and poured out as we wrote and edited our way to a novel that we both wanted to share with the world. 

My prayers go out to his family and friends. Brian, may you rest in peace.

TNH