Talking To Heaven, Part 2
We were pitching James’s book and we took meetings at the major publishers. Each one asked all the same questions, their most important questions: “Do you have a platform, do you have marketing skills and/or plans, and do you have more than one book in you?”
Only one publisher asked James to conduct a mediumship demonstration. He was not happy but there you go-that’s publishing.
We set off from my office at 8:30 AM for a 9AM meeting which James thought was ridiculous. Much too early for him. And when we got there, we were taken to a conference room, where James asked for coffee. The young man said, “We don’t have coffee machines here.”
Turning to me, “They don’t even have a coffee machine. What do these people do? No coffee, what is wrong with the publishing world? Everybody has coffee.”
They sent out for coffee.
I thought he was having early morning performance anxiety. But no, as I found out later, it was the way he was.
We waited in a conference room with a big table. His coffee came. We waited some more.
In filed eight people taking seats around the table. Not much was said I imagine because they were interested in how James’ “saw” the spirits and they didn’t want to influence him. He looked around the table not smiling, “Good morning. Why don’t you have coffee for your employees?”
I kicked him under the table.
He was flustered, upset and said, “I’ve never done a reading at the ungodly hour of 9 AM.”
No one said a word.
“Well let’s get to it but I’m not promising anything. I’ve never done a reading this early and dead people may not show up.” He laughed. I laughed. No one else did.
He started with his prayer, then his incantation, then he was there-in trance and he looked at the first person on his left. I was on his immediate right.
He skipped over the first guy, moved on to a young lady and gave her information about her mother (I thought she was too young to have a deceased mother but I was wrong), said a few words to the next person, skipped another and then got to man who he said some deeply touching things and we all got teary. The next woman he looked at a long time and finally said: “Your aunt is here. She recently passed. She wants to know if you are ready to hear what she has to say.” He was very serious. The room grew excited and tense at the same moment.
The woman took a deep breath and said, “Yes I’m ready.”
He starts talking in that rapid, machine like voice: “She says, you’ve got to treat people better, not be so demanding, be more understanding, more compassionate, you’re turning everyone against you, being mean for the sake of power, making everyone fear you–which you think is a good thing–but it is not.”
The people around the table were excited at first, then their hands were of serious interest, then their heads were bowed and pretty soon they seem to be sliding down in their seats.
And James went on and on berating her about how she treats people and even how she was treating her son at home.
Again I started with the kicking. But James was in trance and he no more felt my boots kicking his leg than if I was a mosquito. That’s how deep in trance he was.
The woman at first looked interested, excited and then stricken and wounded, but James keeps on. He says. “You’re going to make yourself ill if you keep this behavior up.”
And then, like magic, the spell was broken and he moved on to the next person.
We let out our collective breaths because he didn’t know what we all knew – she was the publisher, the head of the company.
He gave one more reading and it was over. Quickly everyone filed out of the room. No one except our host editor said anything. “Thank you for coming,” he quickly said. “We will be back to you soon with a decision.”
When we got in the car to go back to the office, I told him what he’d done and he dismissed it as “Well, she must’ve been ready to hear it.”
“I don’t know about that.”
They didn’t make an offer.