When I first contacted Monique, I was curious about her story. Having come from an alt-right LDS family (to be clear, many of their views are not condoned by LDS leadership) I was beyond intrigued. But what was more exciting is Monique was open to sharing not just her manuscript but her path to publishing her truth.
Here's (in her own words) how she stayed true to herself, and found a home for her manuscript.
One day, back in 2017 I was sitting in a memoir class at a writers conference next to an old friend. I had zero interest in writing a memoir. However, as the class progressed he kept elbowing me. That elbow set me on a three-year long journey to publishing More: A Memoir.
I had no idea when I started on this project how life changing it would be. The process of opening up a tightly sealed box of memories I had sitting on a dusty shelf in my brain was painful, healing, and liberating. If you would have asked me about the scars I amassed through life prior to writing that book, I would have told you they were well-healed. What I didn’t realize was picking up each one of those memories, dusting them off and holding them up for the world to see, was going to aggravate some of those wounds. Writing the memoir gave me no choice but to examine my past, accept it, and move forward in faith. So I wrote about everything: the abuse, the mistakes, the ugliness. All of it. And then I wrote about my conversion, my healing and my redemption. It was an inspirational story of faith. It was raw, it was real and it was finished. Now what?
At first I attempted to get the interest of publishers at writers conferences, but there’s an inherent problem. In the publishing world I was immediately excluded from every Christian publisher strictly because I am a Latter-day Saint. Now add that the book had a religious (LDS) theme and every major publisher in New York and elsewhere were also out. I was left with LDS publishers. And they were interested! But my book had sexual situations, abuse, addiction, and even some scattered foul language. Their initial acclamations turned into a quandary of how to edit it to “fit the mold.” In the end they decided to return it to me, unpublished. Again, now what?
Enter my old friend, Brad McBride.
Brad had his own impressive resume of writing accomplishments and experience as a self-published author. He had watched over the years as writing friends tried and failed to publish books that just didn’t fit the LDS publishing mold. I think my book was the straw that broke the camel’s back. So he decided to do something about it. Pulling from his own experience he created Addept Media, a small boutique publishing company. He hopes to fill a part of the void that LDS publishers inevitably leave. More: A Memoir is the first book by this publisher!
I am so excited to finally have a home for this book that impacted my life so deeply, and to hold it in my hands. I am humbled and grateful for the opportunity to bring my story into the world.
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