If you want to know what happens to “The 18-Year-Old Who Wrote a Note and Disappeared”, you have to read “Deep in the West”.
Tommy H. Jannot
A good friend, practicing poet and prominent thinker, has tried to get in touch directly with a renowned publisher.
They are currently plagued by a glut of authors. Over 86,000 (!) writers are bombarding the industry with “autofiction”.
My diary from 1984 would fall into this category if it is not to end up in the classic “Ossi” drawer.
There is either GDR bashing or glorification.
There is no room in between for stories that fit into all and no categories.
Authentic escape stories are only of interest if they are written by celebrities .
Nobodies don’t stand a chance.
One exception are “Young Adult” novels, which can really take off on TikTok & Co.
Mark Twain had good reason to stipulate that his autobiography should not be published for 100 years after his death.
To make the German edition of my diary a small success before I pass away, I have Austria or Switzerland, where I would have rudimentary contacts.
That’s why I decided to try an English version on Substack, Patreon, Medium, Linkedin, X and TikTok first.
That’s why I’m taking much more time with the sequel “Tief im Westen” than I originally intended.
My hope is that a hardened literary agent in the English-speaking world will take notice of my story.
Until then, I’ll continue very slowly but surely in the social media universe in my free time, depending on the weather, my mood and my whims.
Until retirement. At the latest then I can finally take my time.
On the side, I’m experimenting with various AI tools to transform the diary into a graphic novel like “Maus” by Art Spiegelmann or Volker Kutscher’s “Babylon Berlin” by Arne Jysch.
Or I find a human illustrator who is willing to share the work and the risk of self-publishing with me.
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