 What is about to happen is no small matter. Vapors and spectral, family members, friends and others gather. Some sit, some stand. All are waiting to hear and bear witness to the account of their lives to be told for the first time. The story has taken a while to piece together. Some may complain too long a while. Jacqueline, give me an overview of the story, forget me not. It's essentially a coming of age novel and it ends with redemption and hope in great big dollops. And essentially the story is told with the dead communicating their need for the living to do the right thing. And the living who carry out those guidance lines and their own thing. Alright, it sounds like it's set in Medina del Campos in Spain, kind of in the early 1900s. Yeah, it starts off there, moves to Mexico and then goes to Davenport, Iowa. Alright, which is where we kind of have the connection with chiropractic. Exactly, and there's more, more connection in the chiropractic sense because I only experienced chiropractic myself four years ago and it was a life, life changing event for me. And I decided for many reasons, one of them being thanking the chiropractic community for my life changing event and being all my life wanting to be a writer. I decided to merge the two things together and came up with forget me not. And so chiropractic is a pretty strong theme in the first three, four chapters and comes back again towards the end of the novel, but it's a continuous thread really through the book. I've only been able to read a bit of the first chapter which you have available for free on your website as well as an audio version that you've read. So I know it starts with the narrator Alex giving a bit of history of, it sounds like his family and bullfighting and it sounds like it's going to be really interesting. How does the chiropractic come into the story? Well, Felipe the father is almost gored to death by a bull and he recovers miraculously and his body is pretty banged up. And he has a son who is born on the night that he is teaching between life and death. He recovers and when his son Jose is about 18, he has a small fall from a ladder, lands on his back and has this natural chiropractic adjustment. And he stands up, his body is righted back to normal and the family are so taken with this miraculous discovery that they decide to pursue the idea of chiropractic which has come from across the border and their doctor who oversees Felipe's miraculous discovery says, I think this sounds like chiropractic, this new fangled idea that's come over from the border of the United States and the family proceed to read all the articles that come out from it and the mother Maria Guadalupe Moreno decides that this is the field she wants her son to follow and so she does everything in her power as only a mother could to ensure that her son remains far away from bullfighting and goes into chiropractic and so that's what happens in the first chapter and that's the reason the whole basis for Jose finally landing up in Davenport, Iowa at the Palmer School in 1922. That's a wonderful parallel. His kind of accidental discovery of chiropractic which is almost how Didi Palmer discovered chiropractic with there's different tellings of the story but in one story he intentionally adjusted to vertebrae and the other it was just kind of an accidental slap on the back that gave him the idea of what could have happened. How much research into chiropractic did you have to do? Did you go to Iowa? Did you read a lot of the early books and writings of Didi and BJ? After my first chiropractic experience I was so overwhelmed. It was really a life-changing experience. I can never emphasize that enough. I started reading up about it and I cottoned on to Thomas Lamar from the spinal radio column and I phoned him and we interviewed on over the phone and then we wrote each other and I explained to him what I was doing and I said I needed some help to make sure that what I was writing didn't sound like a load of nonsense and that it was in fact correct. And so poor Thomas or Tom had to field hours and hours and hours of questions about chiropractic and he was just wonderful and me listening to all his podcasts just before I fell asleep at night was an amazing inventory of information for me as well as of course getting hold of the archives of the Palmer College library and then of course I did a lot of reading as well. And so that's where my basic research for chiropractic came out. You've probably done a lot more research into the history of chiropractic than the average chiropractor. Can you share maybe one insight or surprising thing that you learned about chiropractic? About chiropractic. I'd safely say that I think all chiropractors have magic in their hands and this is something that Tom said to me he didn't really believe. I've only experienced two different chiropractic chiropractors but having done the research I have and read so many responses from patients and mirroring my experience with other people's experiences I'd safely say that there is something mystical for lack of another word with a good chiropractor who knows, who senses, who feels, who understands the body by looking at the body and then just by touch and feel. It's a sense, it's a heightened intuitive sense and I think that is amazing and something that really is lacking in modern Western medicine today. What is your chiropractic story? Why did you first go to a chiropractor? I injured my back. I had an L4-5 dissectomy twice. Then I had the operation worst thing that I ever did in my life and I was living in San Francisco at the time and I was labelled for almost seven years as disabled and my life goalposts came from 100, narrowed down to almost 2% and I really, really struggled. Never went to a chiropractor until four years ago thinking, gosh, I've tried everything, might as well give this a go. It can't do any harm. And as I was saying, it was a miraculous experience for me and something I was totally unprepared for. I really went along just for going, not because I had heard or understood somebody recommended a chiropractor and that's what happened to me. So I've had two chiropractors. My doctor in Italy, in Tuscany, who is amazing. I see him once every three months or so. And then when I was in the States last year in Los Angeles, I put my neck out and I went to a chiropractor who was recommended to me from Laguna Beach. We're talking from South Africa. I think you wrote the book in Italy. I know you were in Italy for a while, but now you've mentioned that you were in San Francisco in LA. What do you do that brings you all the way around the world so often? Well, I'm South African born to an Italian father. So I live in Italy at the moment. But for many years I was an expat wife so I followed my husband to different parts of the world and lived for reasonably long periods of time in different parts of the world. I was in the States twice. Absolutely loved my experience in San Francisco in Sorcelito and also in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I have family who live in Los Angeles. I have family who are here in South Africa and I'm currently on holiday in Johannesburg. Awesome. My girlfriend is from South Africa and New Zealand. So I'm very familiar with the accent. I want to learn a little bit more about your process writing it. Today with technology as it is, me being able to do a podcast and get information out and now you being able to write your first... This is your first novel, I believe? My first published novel, yes. Yeah, and getting it published on Amazon. How did you go about writing and then what was that publishing process for you? Well, first of all I always wanted to be a writer and my travels around the world and my illness never really allowed me to write. And then about two years ago I woke up one morning and I just knew that I had to write. Obviously it was two years after my first chiropractic experience and I really believed that the two things go hand in hand and my body was healed. It took a while to continue healing but I landed up with a healed body and after that my brain started to, I don't know, become inspired, I guess. And so two years ago I decided to write and I knew in my heart that I wanted to write a novel that involved my experiences with chiropractic. It was my way of saying thank you, as I already mentioned before, to the chiropractic community. And I woke up at 3.30 one morning, pulled my laptop onto my bed and started writing and that's what I did. And the story came to me, the characters came to me, I had no idea where they were coming from, who they were, where we were going and every day was really quite an experience. I found myself reading back to myself what I had written, recording myself, listening for repetition, listening for rhythm, went back, rewrote. And then when I finally came to about 50,000 words I decided maybe it was time for somebody else to have a look, see what I was doing and decide whether I was actually on my track writing completely. And so I sent my book out to an editor and I got back the response that it's really raw and you have two options, go back to school or give up writing and leave it to somebody else. So it wasn't really very positive to start off with. I persevered and at 80,000 words I sent my novel off to another editor in the States and came back with kind of the what I expected, what I really heard, there wasn't doom and gloom. I had to make a lot of corrections of course and then I got somebody else to read it and then I got a couple of first-time readers to read it and buoyed by their enthusiasm and first-time readers that I didn't know. They didn't know me, I didn't know them and after that I decided it was possibly time to publish. And that in itself has been a whole new learning curve. And finally the book is now up on Amazon as an e-book and at the end of April it should be available as a paper book. That's wonderful. I want to read just a couple of reviews on your page. One person says, Cringing in one moment, roaring with approval then crying my eyes out in the next. And Jane in London says, Chiropractic, bulls, life, death, ghosts and all kinds of love. There's something for everyone in this marvelously narrated story. It's quite the mixture of kind of old Roman romance or I guess Italian and Spanish languages and all of that love language in there and then the bullfighting and the ghost. There's quite a spectrum of interesting storyline. So it's going to be exciting to let people get their hands on it. Well I hope so. I hope so. It's been a pleasure for me. It's been great. How can our listeners get ahold of the book and how can they learn more about you? People can go directly to Amazon.com and in the search box type in my name which is Jacqueline Falcoma. I only say that because there are so many books called Forget Me Not. And once they've typed in my name, Jacqueline Falcoma the book will pop up. To learn more about me, they can go to my website which is www.JacquelineFalcoma.com And you said a paper version will be available via Amazon at the end of the month? Yes. Create Space and Amazon Yes. Wonderful. At the end of April. I'll have links in the show notes and links on Exploring Chiropractic.com where people can find links to your webpage and to the book as well as a link to the free audio version for the first chapter. Well Jacqueline, thank you very much. As you may know, my podcast is focused towards chiropractic students. Do you have any last recommendation with all of the research you've done in your personal experience in chiropractic? What can you tell chiropractic students who are going into school or in school now? I would say that they're very privileged and very lucky to have chosen this field. And if they feel they have been chosen by this field, I think they're particularly blessed. And I would simply say go for it and enjoy because I think that's the spirit of chiropractic. All people that I have so far met and people I have communicated with, they seem to be a special kind of people that are very different to the rest. Well thank you very much Jacqueline. No, and I thank you very much indeed Nathan. Some may complain too long a while but it has resulted in a densely woven chronicle that requires careful reading. I pray I'm up to the task and equally it deserves attentive listening.