My book, "Who Has Known Heights: The Mystique Memoirs of a Melancholic Mind" is awaiting p
Tagline: Loneliness is an emaciation of the spirit.
“Confidence is being sure even when you don’t have all the answers. It’s a gut feeling. A sensibility that doesn’t always have proof going into the situation but most nearly always has evidence on the way out” (Grove, WHKH). Who Has Known Heights: The Mystique Memoirs of a Melancholic Mind (WHKH) is literary fiction. The title is a statement, not a question. It is a bildungsroman that stands by itself. Given the scope of narrative, it offers commercial longevity, both in story format and film. This is not idealism; it is a proven fact. Each part builds into the next, making it a prime candidate for a television miniseries or stand alone film. The protagonist, Westcott A. Rowan, is 22. Regn Tompkins (pronounced Wren means “rain”), a German expatriate, is 55 and has been married for 36 years. The setting is Jamestown Settlement (2007), Williamsburg, VA, a museum, symbolizing the potency of time. Regn and Westcott first meet at the historical site where they work. Obsession, passion, age, and gender collide, providing the reader with a rare perspective on attraction, gender roles, and the repercussion of choices made early on in life. Westcott holds a secret, revealed late in the narrative, coming as a shock to the reader. His past is sealed; nobody can discern even a trace of who he was. Regn is intrigued by Westcott’s excruciating reserve and seeks to unearth the mystery behind his private exterior. The conflict is identity, both personally and socially. Westcott discovers the rarity of human connection, examining both his and Regn’s choices that ultimately find them asking each other: must one live the quiet, conventional life, or is it reasonable—possible—to persist in a richer state of being?
WHKH is literary romance and should not be pinioned to, or trumpeted by, any particular subset of genres. It overlaps and blends, offering the reader a hybrid experience, while providing the publisher freedom to move along many mainstream and niche avenues.
Marketability: This unique narrative reading like memoir, utilizes 3rd and 1st person storytelling and past and present tense. The scope of plotline traces Westcott’s introspection and analysis of the world around him, illuminating the borderlands of romance. Because of the leitmotifs within the novel, it is marketable to a myriad of communities. The intended genre includes, but is by no means limited to: romance, memoir disguised as fiction, contemporary women’s fiction and mid-life crises, mystery, underpinnings of gender content which are frequently underrepresented or worse, sensationalized.
Competing & Related Titles: Who Has Known Heights will appeal to readers who admire Bernard Schlink’s The Reader, Robert James Waller’s The Bridges of Madison County, William Styron’s Sophie’s Choice, and Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being. WHKH is unlike anything on the market. The location and characters exist. The narrative is honest and timely while the classic voice resonates from a bygone era crossing all boundaries of age, gender, truth, and expectation. WHKH alters popular understanding of the laws of attraction.
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