Jul 20
6
IN THE BEGINNING
When/Where did it All Start, HERE?
About 120 miles southwest of Kampala, Uganda …an early Brad Cullen Small Group Meeting in an abandoned warehouse in the “bush” was the start of LIFE for several of the group in the above picture circa January, 2000.
It is not, however, truthful to even call this a “Brad Cullen” Small Group Meeting because “Brad Cullen” was yet to be born.
I began writing the novel Leapfrog, anonymously, about 2 months after the above photo was taken. Brad Cullen was a character out of my imagination and he didn’t even appear until about 120 pages into the book.
My agent in Los Angeles finally found a major New York publisher who liked the book, but wouldn’t publish it without the name of an author.
Because of a host of legal and political troubles surrounding my “legal” name, I was reluctant to use it. The agent new the entire story and sympathized completely – “Let’s come up with a pseudonym,” was his solution.
A young lady on the agent’s staff, who first read my submission of the first and last chapter draft; who also requested that I submit the entire work and then persuaded the agent to read it, suggested that “Brad Cullen” be the author.
THAT was the beginning of THIS Brad Cullen.
The concept of the original meeting format had its inception thirty years earlier, when it profoundly changed the lives of thirteen people including mine. Six severely dysfunctional patients and their spouses referred to me by a psychiatrist …his life was changed as well.
That’s part of the story. This starts a series, “In the Beginning” the unfolding of the entire story and a prelude to the already written, but as yet unpublished sequel to Leapfrog; stay tuned!