Internationally known literary agent Jodie Rhodes has stunned the publishing world with her no-holds-barred book CONFESSIONS: A MEMOIR. Within weeks of coming out, Amazon released 36 Five Star Reviews – (the only book to ever have every review be 5-Star) – followed quickly by major national reviewers Kirkus, MMDNewsWire and Clarion.
Why would an agent with such prestige reveal the shocking life she lived before becoming an agent? She says, “My website jodierhodesliterary.com will tell you virtually everything about who I am today: a well-known, reputable literary agent. But it will tell you nothing about the other Jodie Rhodes. Only in CONFESSIONS: A MEMOIR can you find the real truth about me. One might reasonably ask why, after all these years, I would reveal all this. The answer is I had no choice. My past, which I’d so successfully sealed away, suddenly burst out of its bounds and took over. At least I can promise you that you’ll never be bored.”
If you ever wanted a book that would sweep you away from your everyday life into a world you could not imagine, this is the book for you. Do take a few minutes to read the representative reviews below, followed by actual excerpts from the book.
(NOTE: Googling “Agent Jodie Rhodes” on 1/10/2012 brought up 19,000,000 hits, Googling “Jodie Rhodes Confessions” on 1/10/12 brought up 7,240,000 hits.)
REVIEWS: CONFESSIONS A Memoir | By Jodie Rhodes
THE KIRKUS REVIEW
Rhodes’ memoir combines the personal and professional. She grew up in an era when women succeeded in marriage, not business. But her
parents’ toxic relationship, a family legacy of divorce, plus her burning desire to write, all sent Rhodes the other way. Precocious, tenacious and pretty, she charged into the world of 1960s advertising at the age of 20 and fairly conquered it. Rhodes was catnip for men and left a trail of broken hearts and defeated suitors. She moved on and up like a cyclone, becoming a media buyer and creative director in San Francisco, but smarts and drive couldn’t save her from personal tragedies. A business primer with detailed strategies of winning marketing gambits, and a romance memoir with all the confessions readers savor, with narrative high points.
(MMD Newswire) October 24, 2011 — Released in early September 2011, “Confessions: A Memoir” is already being lauded by online reviewers as “A startling (in its truthfulness) and compulsively readable story… [It is] told in a streamlined, literary and wonderfully crafted voice. The writing throughout is beautiful, almost hypnotic, and adroitly-paced. You would be hard pressed not to want to go on and on…In fact, soon after Confessions hit the literary market, it received more than 19 Five Star Reviews. (Now up to 31 Five Star Reviews)
CLARION REVIEW
Like many motivated people, Jodie Rhodes is a gifted individual and far from ordinary. Her experiences are a manifestation of the intelligence and drive that propelled her. Confessions: A Memoir is an illuminating look at the life of a top literary agent and the dramatized story of her childhood, her personal and professional relationships, as well as her prior career in advertising. Fascinating, funny, and sometimes shocking, this candid page-turner reveals a woman who endured extreme highs and lows. Those inclined to be envious of Rhodes’ accomplishments and lifestyle should realize that she has suffered more than average to achieve more than average. Confessions is a valuable contribution to the industry and will likely attract writers, agents, and editors.
Reading my website jodierhodesliterary.com will tell you virtually everything about who I am today: a well known, reputable literary agent. But it will tell you nothing about the other Jodie Rhodes. Only in CONFESSIONS: A MEMOIR can you find the real truth about me. One might reasonably ask why, after all these years, I would reveal all this. The answer is I had no choice. My past, which I’d so successfully sealed away, suddenly burst out of its bounds and took over. I’ve chosen excerpts from two reviewers that will give you an idea of this all too true story. At least I can promise you that you’ll never be bored.
EXCERPTS FROM CONFESSIONS: A MEMOIR
By Jodie Rhodes, President Jodie Rhodes Literary Agency
Available on Amazon and Kindle
CHAPTER ONE
I was a late bloomer and by the age of 15 had come to the glum conclusion I was doomed to become an old maid. If anyone had told me then that I’d end up with more men in my life than Elizabeth Taylor, I would have assumed they were either so high on drugs that they couldn’t see straight or they wanted to borrow money from me.
There has never been an old maid in my family tree and I tried to find comfort by reminding myself that I come from a long line of people who make disastrous marriages. Perhaps fate had decided to stop this endless chain of misery with me, since I am literally the end of my family as my brother never married, by turning me into a kindly albeit aging librarian who’d lead children away from their own miserable families into the wonderful world of books. Instead, I found myself involved in affairs with every man who hired me.
For reasons I never understood until I started writing this memoir, once these men left their wives for me, I no longer wanted to have sex with them. I felt almost as terrible about this development as they did. They’d just torn their lives apart for me and this was how I treated them? Why? One insisted I see a psychiatrist in hopes of getting my body back. He even found the shrink for me. I remember my first meeting with him. I was filled with guilt, went on and on about how kind, warm, witty, devoted this wonderful man was to me and how terrible I felt about treating him this way. He recommended I join his therapy group where I became an expert at digging out other people’s hidden problems but we were all baffled by mine.
In retrospect I realize that sex was my way of seducing them into loving me, for there was no love in my family and, although I didn’t consciously realize it, I was starved for love.
FROM THE LAST CHAPTER
There is no way to truly describe what it’s like to lose everything overnight. One day I had $250,000. The next day I had $6.00 to my name and owed $900 rent for my apartment in LA plus $1200 for the mortgage payment on the La Jolla condo.
I started cleaning people’s houses, scrubbing floors and toilets. I baked muffins and cookies that I sold at my bridge club. I gave bridge lessons. I took care of a 93 year old woman with Alzheimer’s. I tried to sell the La Jolla condo but the real estate market was so depressed that I couldn’t sell it for enough money to pay off the mortgage and closing costs.
So my dear friend Bob McCarter piled my furniture into a U Haul and moved me to La Jolla where I found myself in a place where I knew no one, teetering on the brink of becoming homeless.
Fate works in a strange way, for if I hadn’t been wiped out financially, I would never have become a literary agent. To keep from starving, I became a guinea pig for pharmaceutical research studies. I also owe a debt of gratitude to Ralphs and the SD Union Tribune. Every Sunday the Trib had coupon books snuggled next to Ralph ads for a variety of products available not only on sale but at as much as $2.00 off with the coupons.
I’d buy $40 worth of groceries for $10 and then trot off to the other supermarkets where I’d exchange them for cash and food.
This kept me treading water but I remained close to drowning. Then I found in the San Diego Tribune a section that listed activities for singles and I saw there were writers’ groups included. Not only could I start giving writing workshops but I could advertise my workshops for free and claim to be a literary agent! I’d be flooded with eager writers.
You need to know there is nothing illegal in claiming to be a literary agent because there are no rules or requirements for becoming one except claiming to be one. However, I’m cursed with a fairly strong streak of ethical behavior so I wrote the publishers of Guide To Literary Agents and Literary Market Place that I was a new agent based in La Jolla and gave them basic information about me. I never heard back from them and was oblivious of the fact that LMP would never list an agent that couldn’t produce recommendations from at least three major NY editors.
Although I had workshops every weeknight and many writers came to them, I had so much turnover because of my blunt critiques that I gave up charging a monthly fee and had everyone pay weekly. Nobody had much money and so my fee per session was $20. Some weeks I made $200. Some weeks I made $40. I should also add, painful as it is to admit, that absolutely no one was impressed to learn I was an agent.
I was still using coupons for groceries and I had zero discretionary income. I couldn’t buy clothes and went around in increasingly ragged sweats, wore no makeup and found a Vietnamese woman who cut my hair for $10. I knew if I was calling myself an agent, I had to at least get stationary and business cards and that was a hard expense to meet. So I enrolled in some more pharmaceutical research studies.
Late at night, the demons came out to play. How long could I keep this up? Was this going to be the rest of my life?
Then one day I opened my mailbox and there was a manuscript inside.
Guide To Literary Agents had actually listed me in their book! I did not want to open the envelope. What if it was a truly talented writer? How could I explain it would be impossible for me to represent him or her because the truth was that my chances of selling a writer’s book were equal to my chances of starring in Sex and The City. I didn’t know a single editor, didn’t have a single writer, lived 3000 miles away from the heart of the publishing business in New York and was in such dire financial straits that becoming homeless was a real possibility.
During sleepless nights I envisioned the headlines: PUBLISHING WORLD STUNNED – WRITERS DEVASTATED. It has been discovered that the Jodie Rhodes Literary Agency, believed to be a legitimate business, actually operates out of a shopping cart and its founder is a bag lady.
…
