Over my past few years as an editor, three books really stick out in my mind for their bravery and their mission to get an important message out to the world. All of these books have been endorsed by the major UK charities for the diseases or conditions they describe.
Melanie Pearson and Yvonne Pearson (no relation!), and Jo Garber contacted me to edit and format their manuscripts, but I learned so much in return as I worked on these books.
In the middle of lockdown in December 2020, Melanie first got in touch with me about editing a family memoir. The writing in the first few chapters was so vivid, it pulled me right in from the start, bringing Sheffield in the late 70s to life as well as describing the dramatic ups and downs in her family’s health, culminating in Melanie’s mother being diagnosed with Huntington’s Disease.
This neuro-degenerative illness is caused by what Melanie describes as a “bust up at the barn dance” of the DNA sequence, with a 50:50 chance of children of someone with Huntington’s inheriting the disease. If you have the gene for Huntington’s Disease, it’s sadly inevitable that you will inherit symptoms, usually between the ages of 30-40, affecting memory, movement and behaviour, and there is still no cure. Melanie’s family were thrown into this cruel lottery, and her book goes onto document the way that Huntington’s Disease claimed her mum - and later, her brother Nick.
I’d barely heard of this diseases, but then again, neither had Melanie until she was in her late teens. This sounds like it would be a tough read, but the book is compulsive, warm and tender, and was a real privilege to work on. The book ultimately has so much hope and creativity in it. I tightened up the sentence structure and paragraphing, making sure the chapters flowed, formatted its pages for the paperback and eBook, and designed a cover using family photographs. Somebody Up There Likes Me (a favourite expression of Melanie’s brother Nick) was published to kdp.com and now has pages of 5-star reviews on Amazon.co.uk and is also sold on the Huntington’s Association website.
During 2023, I worked with fellow Walkley resident Jo Garber, on her memoir Ship of Stories. This is a poetic, imaginative collection of observational fragments of Jo’s memories and experiences of being in intensive care with sepsis at the time of the 2020 lockdown. She imagines her journey through illness as a voyage from turbulence to tranquillity.
An online reviewer asks “how can a book about such a difficult subject be such an easy read?” That’s true of all three books that I’m talking about, but Jo actually wrote her memoir in her head during her illness, memorising characters and turning minor incidents such as the quest for a hairband or a missing tea trolley into humorous and heart-warming moments.
This books is also a testament to power of the radio soap The Archers (contemporary drama in a rural setting). In 2018, character Nic Archer died of sepsis caused by a minor scratch on her arm, and in hospital in 2020, Jo used the knowledge and awareness of this infection she remembered from this incident on the radio to stay alert to her surroundings and what is happening to her.
I found out last week on the Archers podcast (yes, I’m sad!) that Jo wasn’t the only one to say that this soap plotline saved her life when sepsis struck.
I was proud to help out with Jo’s official book launch last year at Walkley Library, which raised money for the Sepsis Trust.
Fast-forward to 2024 and editing query about a hard-hitting health-related memoir pops into my inbox. Tongue cancer wasn’t something I was very aware of but as I started to work on Yvonne’s book, I realised that it was so important that people are aware of the risks, and the utmost importance of getting diagnosed and treated quickly.
Unfortunately, Yvonne’s twenty-four year old daughter Cath struggled with a painful recurring ulcer, and went to see her dentist initially, but waited two months before consulting her GP. By the time she was seen by a specialist, his prognosis was terminal.
The book documents Cath and Yvonne’s close relationship through chemotherapy and other invasive treatments that robbed Cath of her voice. Above it all, like Melanie and Jo’s book, Dying to Talk is about the power of love and how a family pulls together at times like this. The characters in this book come alive in every vivid detail, and this is a book that Cath wanted to write with Yvonne, to document her journey through the illness. This book, especially with the beautiful cover and insert photos and design by York Publishing Services are a fitting tribute to this wonderful young woman I feel as if I knew personally.
Yvonne very modestly says about my editing process: “You never once made me feel rubbish about my never ending paragraphs with lack of commas, line spaces and extra unnecessary babbling - you cleaned up my English and presentation to a beautiful professional printable book. Thank you, you truly gave me the courage and confidence I needed.”
Just after I finished working on the book, my mum told me that she had an upcoming hospital appointment to examine an ulcer that was causing her some worry. I immediately thought of Cath and Yvonne and how strong they had been in the face of such a devastating illness. Luckily, after a biopsy and laser treatment, my mum has now been given the all-clear by her specialist, but if it wasn’t for Yvonne’s book, I wouldn’t have heard of this type of cancer at all.
I hope you give these powerful, moving books a try. And if you have your own incredible story to tell, please get in touch with me. My Services | Anne Grange Writing
Thank you Anne, for mentioning my book amongst these others (I shall look out for both) and for the expertise you brought to the editing process. You were recommended by a couple of people and I'm ashamed to say I can't remember who they were! But it was clear from the first tentative conversation that you knew what you were doing and had such a light touch in editing our precious stories. With mine, I pretty much knew what I wanted to say as the writing had developed from my private diary entries and then a blog, but I had no idea how to shape it into book form. You made it seem so easy and doable but it couldn't have happened without you and I can't thank you enough. It turns out that writing about difficult things can be not only cathartic for the writer, but really helpful to other people who might be experiencing something similar, and that's clear from what you say about Yvonne and Jo's stories. But it definitely helps to have that professional editing process to make the story read as well as possible. I'd recommend you - and do! - to anyone thinking about telling their own story and wondering where to start. Thank you again and keep going with your own writing too!