What's the latest situation with my book "Please eat..."?

As you know, I've just published all 300+ pages of my first blog book: Anorexia Boy Recovery, Part I, 2011 and the postman's just delivered the proof for Part II (Anorexia Boy Recovery posts from 2012), which I will proof read over the next few days. But what's the situation with my main book which I've been talking about for well over a year?


Publishing the blog books has been a fantastic exercise. As I say as this week's guest blogger for Men Get Eating Disorders Too, "Blogs are great, but sometimes books are more convenient!" It's easier to flick through a book and read it through from start to finish. You can back-track easily and go back to bits which you found helpful. And, because the primary purpose of my blog has always been to help other families in a similar situation - i.e. with a son or daughter with anorexia - it's important to me to make sure my posts are easily accessible rather than getting hidden in the cobwebby archives of earlier years like 2011 and, lately, 2012.

Setting out, reading through and proofing my two blog books has also been a fantastic way to remind myself of everything that went on during the fight to free my son from anorexia. It's meant that I've expanded some of the chapters in my book "Please eat...". I've also decided to re-write the final few chapters to take into account the changing face of Ben's recovery towards the end of 2012 up to the present day.

"Please eat..." is our story. I talk about how Ben developed anorexia and the factors that may have triggered it. I talk about the early days - the nightmarish years of 2009 and 2010, before I made the decision to start my blog. I also describe events in more detail.

Importantly, "Please eat..." includes many discussions I had with Ben over the summer of 2012 as I was putting the first draft together - illuminating stuff, looking at Ben's anorexia from his perspective.

I see the two blog books as being a complement to "Please eat...". All three are very different books, but I believe all are valuable in their own right. All three will, I hope, help other families that are struggling to come to terms that their son may have anorexia or another eating disorder or who are already on the road to recovery.

So, at the moment, I'm just about to proof the 2012 blog book. I'm also in the process of re-drafting the final chapters of "Please eat...". But I won't publish "Please eat..." until I am 100% happy with it.