Lady Courtesan,

I'm not writing fiction. I'm writing a book on concurrent disorders recovery, from a consumer's perspective. It'll be 80% memoir, 20% info on prevalence rates, evidence based best practices for treatment, and suggestions for navigating the mental health and addictions recovery systems.

There are a number of books on addictions or mental health recovery, but not on concurrent disorders, and mine will be one of the few that doesn't use the 12 steps.

As for getting the publishing deal, I was lucky and had an advantage. I worked in publishing for 20 years and still have some friends that do. One of them is head of a press. He's followed my blog for years, and likes my writing style, so we've been talking about doing a book together for a couple of years. So when I finally felt like the time was right, I put together a proposal, which he liked.

I'm targeting a word count of around 100,000 words, which isn't a lot, since I typically write around 1,000 words once a week between my two blogs. Link to one is in my signature, the other is a blog I write for the treatment centre and publisher Hazelden. Target publication date is August 2015, but I'm hoping to be finished a lot sooner than that.

I find writing actually helps me manage my illness which is good, and I like writing and find it flows pretty well for me. Besides my blogs, I write a lot anyway - I journal every day, and I write a lot for therapy.

Good luck with your books.

And happy to be friends with you.

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