She’s On Her Own

I did it! I published a book!

T/he idea for the book came from my husband, Scott, while in Nashville with our group, Midwest Meets Manhattan. We were there to record two songs, That’s Why I Like the Rain, and She’s On Her Own. As we talked, I told about Sophie (not her real name), a gal in the sex trafficking survivors group I lead. We talked about the song, She’s On Her Own, and how it so clearly fit Sophie’s life. I told the guys, Dave, Chad, and Scott, that I’d played the song, That’s Why I Like the Rain for Sophie and she cried remembering playing in the rain with Emma (not her real name). We talked about the possibility of creating an album to help spread awareness of sex trafficking. Scott suggested I write a book.

I tossed the idea around and ran it by Sophie. She loved it. We got started right away. We met every week. I’d pick her up at her little duplex apartment and we’d get fast food and go to my house. For privacy and relaxation, Sophie would lie on the bed and stare at the ceiling while I asked her questions and wrote like crazy in a notebook. Often I’d have to have her stop and breathe and sit in her feelings as if we were doing therapy. We laughed and cried. Often she’d have to stop of change to another less intense topic. Toward the end of the interviews, Sophie moved back home so we had to interview over the phone.

Once I had all the chapters written, I created a timeline of when things really took place. Then I moved the chapters around so they made sense and unfolded more like the order of a novel with foreshadowing and a climax. That created issues with what characters were actually in each chapter since girls come and leave The Haven (not the real name) so frequently. Only one chapters’ events didn’t happen. Pretty much everything else actually occurred. Of course, I wasn’t in Sophie’s therapy sessions with her. I had to speculate how the therapist would respond or what she would ask or do but it turned out to what I said and did while interviewing Sophie. Sophie hadn’t actually worked all the way through her life span of issues before Laura (not her real name) left. Toward the end of the writing to add details, I wrote off the top of my head. When Sophie read those parts, she said she felt like I knew her so well I was in her head.

I wrote the book originally with the real names and locations. One weekend to finish up the book, Sophie and I spent the weekend in another town at a hotel. We went for walks, sat in the hot tub, and went out for dinners but mostly laid in the giant bed, me writing and she reading as we downed tons of unhealthy snacks. We made up all the names and changed them. We reminisced about Emma whom we both miss a lot.

Then came the editing. I sent the first chapters to my niece Haley who has some experience with content editing. She gave tons and tons of suggestions as she read the entire book and forced me to add lots more details and specifics. Scott also read the book and made suggestions and corrections. A friend of mine who is in law enforcement read the book and made suggestions and corrections. A friend of mine, a former Professor in his 80’s read the book to copy edit it. He didn’t care for the language but said he was in love with the main characters and liked my writing style. He didn’t get to the raw parts of the book.

After about about three more edits for grammar, punctuation, spelling, name and location changes, the book was complete. Around this time, Chad from Midwest Meets Manhattan, was also reading the book. He wrote the song, The Fall, based directly on the jail scene and also experiences with a close friend. As he wrote and sang other songs for us, I could easily see how they fit with the book. We talked about co-promoting the book and the album, even showing videos and interviews with the survivors.

I asked my Mom to draw a cover for the book. She came up with some ideas and sketches but decided it wasn’t quite right. When our daughter Hannah was home, she read the beginning of the book and proposed a picture of a girl walking up a dirt road toward a house. She returned to her home and asked how I felt about the girl wearing her grandma’s slippers and carrying a bag. I immediately loved it. She sent the picture she’d drawn and I quickly adopted it as the official cover.

Eventually, we traveled to Nashville and recorded the album. Soon after returning home, I formatted the book for kindle and print and published it. I got a huge response from friends on facebook and instagram right away.

It hasn’t really quite sunk in all the way that I’m an author but it satisfies something deep inside me. I write blogs often and in my journal every morning. I love to write therapy notes after sessions. I have read about a novel a week my whole life. I’m already tossing a bunch of ideas around for future novels.

Several months ago, I visited Danielle (not her real name) in prison. She asked how I would feel about writing her story as the sequel to She’s On Her Own. Out of all the ideas that have been tossed out, this one resonated the most. It is almost impossible to figure out how to interview her but we are working on it. It costs so much for her to call me, we can’t take a writing implement into the visitation room in prison, and writing back and forth doesn’t fit the interview format well. So we shall see.

I loved writing She’s On Her Own and I hope and pray it makes a huge impact.

Please check out our music on Spotify, amazon, iTunes and pandora, our facebook and instagram pages, and our website: Midwest Meets Manhattan, She’s On Her Own.