Getting "Contra Cross" Published

Getting Contra Cross Published

By William R. Meara

I wrote Contra Cross during 1989 and 1990 in Tegucigalpa, Honduras and Bilbao, Spain.  I got it cleared by the State Department  for publication in 1993.  I tried to get it published while I was in the Dominican Republic (1992-1996) on my third Foreign Service assignment, but I just collected a pile of rejection slips. 

Over the years I would from time-to-time pull the manuscript out and work on it a bit.  There was lots of tweaking over the years.  I’d often take the book with me on trips.  A copy of the manuscript was stolen (along with my new BMW 325i) near Lyon, France in 1989.   That copy spent six months in my brief case in a grassy field near the site of the theft (the thieves had left it there). Someone found it and returned it to the American Consulate in Lyon.  Consulate personnel made some snarky comments about the book.  I didn’t appreciate their unsolicited review, but I was glad to get it back. 

I picked at it a bit during my assignment in Santo Domingo.  The only person who was really supportive was my girlfriend (now my wife) Elisa.  

I showed the manuscript to my father, but I think the whole project made him apprehensive.  He knew how difficult it is to get published (I think he’d  been interested in writing himself), and I think he feared that I’d be hurt by the inevitable rejection – I think his anxiety about this probably put him off on the project and I don’t think he read the whole thing.   

I worked at the State Department from 1996 - 2000 and while there I showed the manuscript to four friends.  Three of the four were very supportive, and offered encouragement and constructive criticism.  The fourth, offered what I’d call destructive criticism.  I think he may have been motivated by a combination of jealousy and a dislike of the book’s anti-communist political message.   Over a very unpleasant lunch in the State Department cafeteria, he told me that my work “wasn’t even a book.”  That hurt. But I knew he was wrong.    

Fast forward to Spring 2005:  Embassy London got lots of official visitors.  Most were pains in the neck, there for nothing more than taxpayer-funded tourism.  But in April 2005 one of those visitors put me on the path toward publication. 

He was fairly high ranking.  We organized a kind of in-house cocktail party for him at my boss's house.  Just us, just Americans.   There was a lot of the standard boring Foreign Service moaning about bureaucratic transgressions, the Embassy is not being consulted, etc.  But then the talk turned to Iraq. 

Our visitor kind of sighed and commented on how difficult and horrible it was for those involved in it.  “They are getting killed every day over there…” The visitor then mentioned that in an effort to get a better handle on what was going on in Iraq, people in Washington were reading everything they could get their hands on about this kind of war: insurgency.  He mentioned a book that was obviously by some inside-the-beltway intellectuals who apparently felt qualified to write on the subject.  From his summary of their work I could tell they knew nothing about insurgency or guerrilla warfare.  And I could tell that our visitor – who’d spent his career on economic policy – didn’t realize that the author he was reading was totally clueless.   

The visitor started talking about how the U.S. military didn’t know how to cope with the political and cultural dimensions of this kind of war.   The other Foreign Service people started clucking in agreement, contributing anecdotes about our ham-fisted army.  The visitor seemed to think that this was something that could be fixed with some adjustments to the training program.  

I’d been keeping quiet, but finally I told the group that they needed to understand the fundamental nature of the American military, that it was essentially a very blunt instrument, an instrument designed to “kill people and break things.” I warned that efforts to get it to do anything really different would result in disappointment and tragedy.  

Of course, they didn’t get it.  Our visitor sat back and sagely predicted that if the military would just change its recruiting tactics, it could be turned into the kind of force that could deal with Iraq-like conflicts.

On the way home that night, I started thinking that my Contra Cross book could be of interest to people trying to understand why things had gone so horribly wrong in Iraq.  The next morning I went to the internet and identified a few publishers that might be interested in the book.  I e-mailed two of them.  Naval Institute Press said they wanted to look at the book.  I e-mailed them the manuscript. I think I got the response the next day.  The editor said he had taken the book home with him “couldn’t put it down.”  He offered to publish it.  Success!   I immediately called Elisa.

As we prepared dinner that night, Elisa told me not to lose this chance – she told me to be sure to persist and to finally get this thing published.  During the months that followed, whenever I found myself getting a bit faint-hearted about confronting the bureaucracy and sending my words out into the world, I’d remember what Elisa said, and I’d get back to work.  

Our house at 100 Drayton Gardens, London was a good place to work on a book.  Books and authors were all around.  Agatha Christie lived one block up.  “Inspector Morse” of the famous detective series was named for our neighbor, Sir Jeremy Morse.  Spy (and author!) Kim Philby lived (before his flight to Moscow) across the street in Grove Court.  The British Society of Authors was just one block away. Shortly after Contra Cross was published, I stepped outside and almost literally ran into American author Bill Bryson – I told him I liked his work.

I was not the first author to live in the house – a fellow named Robert Cammel had lived there.  He had an interest in the occult (Sir Jeremy told me that his ghost stories had frightened the Morse children) and in Scottish history.  Cammel’s son was the director of a rather infamous 1960’s film about the Rolling Stones.  I’m told that the house itself at one point (1930’s) was the headquarters of a publishing company (Drayton Publishers, or Drayton Books).  

The Society of Authors… Every time I had walked past their stately building, I had wanted to be a member.  They even had the very evocative “Ancient Lights” sign on one of their windows (it simply means that new construction should not be allowed to block the light, but doesn’t it sound great?)  Suddenly I was eligible for membership.  Soon I found that I actually needed to join – I needed their help in negotiating the book contract.

I bought a new computer (my original solicitation had been sent out on my ancient and creaky Dell 486), and then I went to e-bay for the needed Microsoft Word software. 

The publisher asked for some re-organization of the chapters.  That was relatively easy.  I thought the book was done.  Wrong. Next the copy editors got involved.  The first one seemed to do a “rush job” – she had the book for two weeks, then returned it to me late.  It was obvious that she rushed through it.  I was appalled at what she had done – lots of unnecessary stylistic re-writes, lots of errors inserted in my carefully crafted text.  I complained to the editors.  They agreed that the editing was unacceptable, and took the copy editor off the project. They then gave the book to a retired veteran of NIP.   She did a much better job.  We had a very productive series of back and forth exchanges.  She would identify areas that needed clarification, improvement, and in some cases a bit of toning down. Typical copy-editor stuff.   We were soon through the editing.  

I guess working on the book stirred memories of Special Forces days.  I started thinking about a Special Forces novel set in Vietnam that I’d really liked.  It was called “Parthian Shot” (a memorable title).  I’d loaned it to a State Department security officer in Honduras, and he’d never returned it (never loan books to Foreign Service people).  So I went to Amazon and got a replacement copy.  I found myself once again really enjoying Loyd Little’s book.   I sent Loyd an e-mail telling him that even though many years had passed since publication, someone was enjoying his book in far-off London.  As I waited for my son Billy to come out of a class, I’d sit in a café on Marleborne High Street and read of the characters on Loyd’s Special Forces A-team.  The book made me yearn for the kind of fraternity that is just not available in the Foreign Service.  I’d started my exchange with Loyd without any thought of blurbs for my book, but when it came time to gather endorsements, I asked him to look at my book.  He soon sent in a really glowing review.   It is strange how things work out.  It was almost as if I was meant to get a blurb from Loyd Little. 

Editing completed, we waited for publication.  One day, Elisa called me at work and told me that the UPS man had delivered a box from the Naval Institute.  I couldn’t resist – I jumped in a cab and went home to look at it.  It had been in the works for a long time.   I opened the book to the dedication page: "For my wife, Elisa, who years ago photocopied an early manuscript of this book and carried it home through the hot and dusty streets of Santo Domingo, and has been urging me to get it into print ever since."  

  

When I saw in the book a picture of me in Managua, Nicaragua in 1981, I remembered how I had agonized over whether I should buy the Canon AE-1 camera that took that picture.  In the end, I had  decided to buy it because at the time I thought that I might become a writer or a journalist, and I thought I should be able to take good pictures to accompany my work.  Well, after more than 25 years, that investment in the AE-1 finally paid off. 

I was similarly struck by the short passages in the book from articles I wrote after returning home from my youthful Central American adventures.  I’d been discouraged when I’d been unable to find an editor willing to publish those articles.  Well, they are published now.  

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Copyright 2020 by William R. Meara.  All rights reserved.