Self-published author hopes to hit it big
BY BRYAN SABELLA
Staff Writer

METUCHEN — Just about anything can trigger a vivid memory. A particular scent, an old song, a casual remark.

That’s the idea behind a Metuchen mother of three’s ambitious new publishing venture.

Cindy O’Neill’s “Mothballs in My Attic” (MIMA) is an interactive book designed to bring people together, start conversations and spark fond memories.

The self-published work arrived last fall and is already meeting with enthusiastic response, O’Neill said.

It has caught on in the medical community in particular, which has used it for therapeutic and recreational activities, and even as an Alzheimer’s treatment.

The idea for the book came to her a couple of holiday seasons ago, O’Neill said.

That’s when she had the first of what she calls “MIMA moments.”

It was not long after the first anniversary of 9/11, O’Neill said.

She thought about how the snippets of memory we all have are sometimes taken for granted, and how people sometimes don’t appreciate them.

“I started remembering things, past Christmases,” she said. “And those snippets led to a whole myriad of images in my mind.”

The book lets the reader tell his or her own story by presenting ideas, phrases and questions in fill-in-the-blank form.

A sample phrase goes something like this: “When I was young, the brown, folded supermarket paper bags were stored ______.”

O’Neill said it was just that phrase that resulted in her getting to know a longtime neighbor in a whole new way.

“She’s from Russia, and she said that growing up, they didn’t have paper bags, so they stored their food in newspaper,” she said. “And they would later rub the newspaper down to soften it up to use as toilet paper.”

And in that way, gender, class, ethnicity, etc., are irrelevant, O’Neill said.

“Everybody has common experiences,” she said.

“A lot of people who’ve bought the book have said they’ve only gotten through a few pages,” O’Neill said. “Six sentences can take you two hours. It’s like a chain reaction of your thoughts.”

She originally thought the book would appeal primarily to baby boomers, but the response from the medical and therapeutic fields was a pleasant surprise, O’Neill said.

The book has also become popular in nursing homes.

“It’s a conversation starter,” she said. “Instead of the usual small talk about the weather or ‘How are you feeling?,’ this gets people together [to have] a meaningful conversation. You can get to know people you’ve known all your life in a whole new way.”

She’s already contracted to do a monthly MIMA column for Creative Forecasting, a journal that serves activity planners in the medical and other fields.

O’Neill said the process of producing the book was one of trial and error.

“The challenge was, I’m not a writer,” she said. “I’ve never done anything like this before.”

Nevertheless, she was consumed by the idea.

O’Neill laid out the book’s graphics using cut-and-paste methods, and began searching the Internet for a graphics company to reproduce it.

After hooking up with Arkansas-based Magic Graphics, she searched for a printer, which turned out to be a bit harder.

Getting a printer to do a small print run for a reasonable price was tough enough, but she also found that there were certain difficulties that popped up when she looked for one on the Web.

“They were asking me about different paper weights, and I had no idea,” she said.

She ended up going locally with Edison’s Alpha Graphics.

One happy accident occurred when she got her first samples of the book, which comes in a spiral-bound format.

Alpha had put the spiral across the top, as opposed to the left as she had intended.

But then she realized that since the book is designed for people to fill in the blanks, it made more sense to have the spiral up top, to accommodate both the left- and right-handed, she said.

As invaluable as she found the people at Magic and Alpha, O’Neill said her sister, Barbara Iderosa, who lives in Florida and received a co-writer’s credit, was particularly key.

Not only did Iderosa help concoct some of the questions, but as a professional editor she was able to contribute needed technical and grammatical expertise, O’Neill said.

Iderosa did a 22-page proposal as well, which will figure in future plans to pitch the book to publishing houses, television shows and other ventures.

O’Neill devotes Wednesdays, her day off from her job in the Menlo Park mall’s administrative offices, to the book.

Her dining room is filled with boxes of copies, which she sends out as soon as she gets an order.

Right now, O’Neill is concentrating on getting the book out there, not turning a profit.

“I don’t even wait for the checks to clear,” she said.

So far, she said she’s filled orders from 14 states.

And O’Neill has a ton of ideas to promote the book. There’s a Web site up, mothballsinmyattic.com, and she’s applied to trademark the phrase “MIMA moments.”

She’s also planning to pitch the column idea to Oprah Winfrey’s magazine O and Good Housekeeping.

O’Neill said she managed to get a copy to Donald Trump’s personal secretary through a friend who lives in Trump Towers, thinking maybe selling copies could figure into a team challenge on “The Apprentice.”

She’ll be headed for the outside audience of the “Today” show to wave a copy on camera, and try to get some attention once the weather gets nicer.

And there are more MIMA books in the offing, if all goes according to plan.

O’Neill is working on theme-oriented versions, ranging from sports and hobbies to the changing seasons.

“I have enough already for a second book,” she said.

O’Neill said she’s even considering holding MIMA parties.

The book as also gotten O’Neill in touch with her inner extrovert, she said.

“I’m not usually like this,” O’Neill said. “Usually I keep to myself. My kids are actually getting a little sick of the whole thing,” she laughed.