anyapeters

This is my second blog. I started my first one at a surreal time of my life - while I was living in my car. Months later my blog was 'discovered'. It got some media attention and things snowballed. I soon got a publishing deal to write a book. The publishers initial interest in my situation soon became an interest in my background - they were more interested in how someone so seemingly 'ordinary' and able could end up living in her car at the edge of woods, so completely isolated from everyone and everything. My background story was a story I never thought I would ever tell.... But the book was anonymous - no one would ever know it was me, I could finally get it all out of me. And so that little girl finally stood up to be counted. She screamed her unscreamed scream. (people often comment on the child's voice it was written in. I'm told its difficult to do that. For me it wasn't like that: I was an adult writing it, but a child was telling it. It was her story...finally.... HarperCollins published it, and for a while it was a bestseller. The only thing I didn't write was the title: 'Abandoned' that was chosen by the publishers. They also edited it down. And in doing that they took out a lot of the good bits of my childhood. They wanted it to fit within a certain 'genre' and books like that have only the 'misery' bits in them. There was good in my childhood though too - I wouldn't have survived without it.