play, rest, write

Well hello there again! I’m happily ensconced in my housesitting gig here in Edmonds, and just today, jumped heartily in to the book. I even taught myself how to embed a photo into a Word document! It’s a little off center, but I’ll see if I can fix that.

John and I got here a week ago, via JetBlue’s Mint class (amazing!) and had a fantastic time doing one day of everything and the rest of the days of nothing. I don’t think we’ve had many days at all together without some kind of TV or movie watching and we went a full six days without turning on the TV once, or going to a movie, one of our favorite pastimes. We read books, had long talks, napped, took the ferry across the Sound for crepes and stared out the large windows at the long Sound. It was fabulous. He left yesterday and is busy at work back in PA already.

I bought myself a candle to imprint myself for writing

After one sleepy and rainy day of transition, I woke up bright eyed and ready to dive back in, which I’ve done with gusto. I rewrote my whole query letter, edited some chapters and realized I’m way farther along with the book proposal than I’d remembered (whew!). I will definitely have it finished within the next 11 days.

John bought me the newest edition of Writer’s Market for 2018, so my next project will be sifting through agents there. I have two who I’ve been referred to, and one who has been contacting me, so I have plenty of options to launch my query to. With the recent interest in Cindy’s story on ID, and a general boost in true crime since I last sent out queries two years ago, I have a good feeling about this.

Wouldn’t it be something if I left Washington with an agent? Crazier things have happened. In my own life I mean.

Well since I’ve been working for a few hours straight, and my AirBnB guests are settled in, and since I saved about $100 yesterday from one good decision, I’m going to head over to the Korean Spa for a scrub, soak and meditation.

I’ll sign off with a few photos, in chronology, of our trip here so far. And a snippet from the proposal–not so juicy, but what I’ve been working on.

In addition to being a middle child sandwiched between homicide and schizophrenia, I have unique professional qualifications that lend themselves to this storytelling. I spent the first seven years of my professional nursing career working in inpatient psychiatric settings. By the age of 25, I advanced to Assistant Head Nurse on the psychiatric unit where I’d been working for four years. My father also ran a psychiatric unit in a hospital, the only one in our town, for most of his professional Psychology career.

I have a unique understanding of the dynamics related to both my sister’s vulnerability, sociopathy, and my brother’s mental illness, that makes this memoir both informative and easy to follow. One purpose of this book is to provide a wake-up call to those who might be facing a similar peril that Cindy did, and to educate on the manipulative persuasion of coercive control, distressed family dynamics and the ploys that sophisticated predators utilize to harness their prey.

This is not a true crime book geared to sensationalism, although the story itself is inherently dramatic. This is, in the end, a story of rising and demonstrating how far one can fall before finding True North again in a new way.

Happy trails out there!

Seattle’s Great Wheel, where we got stopped at the top twice. The second time we didn’t film as we were basically frozen in fear, not admitting it to each other, staring out at the Sound. 😀