Mary Catherine Fish didn’t set out to become an Internet author. In fact, when she started writing about her husband’s death at 38 from a brain tumor, her only goal was to ease her own pain.
That was July 1995. Six months and 400 pages later, Fish, ’85, had a memoir that poignantly documented the journey she and Tom Gherlein took through terror, love and loss. An engineer and environmental consultant who lives in Cabin John, Md., Fish decided to send the manuscript she titled Beyond the Road’s End to a few literary agents. The response was a steady stream of form rejections.
She also sent a copy to Stanford magazine. An adaptation of the first chapter (“ This Is Not Happening,” January/February 1998) struck a chord among readers and impressed the judges of the annual contest held by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education, who gave the piece one of six “gold medals” out of 320 articles submitted.
After a second round of book agent rejections, Fish had an idea: why not publish online? “There’s a part of me that wanted to reach out to people going through the same thing,” she says. “But it can be so draining. This is a way to help.”
Working with a web designer in San Marino, Calif., Fish created a site (www.beyondbook.com) where web surfers can read the book online or download it for printing. Launched in July, the site has drawn thousands of visitors. Many have written to thank Fish. “I started reading the first page of your book, and then suddenly it was three hours later and an empty box of Kleenex as I finished,” went one typical note, this one from William Clark of Rochester, N.Y., who found the web page while searching for information about his aunt’s cancer.
The response has made Fish a convert to online publishing. “The people who want this book can get it instantly,” she says. “It won’t be sitting unread.”
