The one where I tell you I wrote a book

I don’t know how to tell you I wrote a book.

So here it goes.

I wrote a book!

Those words shouldn’t be hard to say or write, but they are surprisingly more difficult to proclaim than I ever imagined.

For the last year-plus, I’ve been working with a client who is also a friend to tell her story, and while I did technically write the words, the story is hers. Maybe telling you I wrote a book would feel different if the story was mine alone.

That’s not to say that I’m not proud of the work or ridiculously excited to see my name on the cover of a product that looks, amazingly, like a real book. It’s a step I’ve needed and wanted to take in my writing career for some time, and a long recovery from the disappointment of it not happening with a client more than two years ago.

As it stands now, I have written a book and you can buy it on Amazon in both print and Kindle formats and I have another client on deck. What is my life? For years, I worked from home and dreamed of doing this kind of work and now that I have a part-time job and fewer hours in the day (so it seems), I have good writing work to do.

Honestly, one of the best things I ever did for my writing was to get a job that had nothing to do with writing but everything to do with giving me life and purpose. My writing is better because of my job, even on the hard days. And there are plenty of those.

But back to the book. 

Another reason it’s hard to tell you about this book is because it’s so important that you read it. Not because it will make me rich or famous. (I will never be either of those things, thank you very much.) You must read this book because the story is courageous. Here’s the back cover copy:

January 29, 2015.

In a small central Pennsylvania town, Deb Gruel awoke to early morning knocking on her front door. A small band of police officers entered her home, searched it and questioned her husband, Dave, while her sons slept upstairs. Two days later, Dave was charged with multiple felony counts related to child pornography.

The next 18 months would become a nightmare for Deb and her family as they weathered attacks on their character, social standing, finances and mental health. Raised to believe in the power of God to overcome, Deb wondered: Could anything good come from this?

God answered in a surprising way.

Instead of hiding and pitying her life, Deb is determined to tell you how it is to be the wife of a man convicted of a crime most of us would rather not even talk about. She wants you to know how hard it has been to keep her family together and how much hope she has found clinging to Christ.

Arrest stories, especially ones relating to sexual crimes, get a lot of attention when they happen but rarely is there follow-up. What happened to the person arrested? How did their family react and survive? Prisoners are a forgotten population in our society, and I’m so grateful for Deb and her husband Dave being willing to share a little bit of what they’ve gone through.

Whatever the issue, if we can put a name and a face to it, if we can personalize the story, we’re more likely to have compassion and sympathy and maybe even a change of heart. This has been my experience, anyway.

It’s my hope that it’s yours when you read this book.

The book includes letters written by Dave from prison to his wife, another area in which Deb showed complete transparency. She gave me access to all the letters and told me to use whatever I wanted. What I’ve included helps paint the picture of life in prison when a family waits on the outside.

So I wrote a book. My first. And yes it has someone else’s name on it, too but it won’t be the last book I write.

One final request: If you read it, would you leave a couple of sentences on Amazon as a review? If we’re friends or related, don’t mention that because they might take the review down, but letting others know what you thought of the book makes readers more likely to make a decision.

To all of you who have been on this journey with me for years, I thank you. And I encourage you to hang in there a little bit longer.

There’s more to come.