Covering a lot of Ground

While I don’t feel at liberty at this time to talk openly about the people whose stories I am helping bring to life through Janice Beetle Books, I will give you a glimpse of the range of topics and services I’m providing. 

I can tell you I am helping my dear friend, Judith Kelliher, take the final steps to bring her manuscript to life. For the past five-plus years, Judy has been working on a book about her brother Bobby’s two tours in Vietnam—and life after.

As you might imagine, “A Wartime PhD: One soldier’s story of Vietnam and learning to live again,” is a powerful story with moments that hurt the heart. Judy’s writing is clear and wrenching, and also loving.

The manuscript is now in my hands. I have copy edited it—as has another friend of Judy’s—and now it is time to design the book and work with Levellers Press and its Off the Common Books division to get it printed. I adore both Judy and Bobby, so this work is a labor of love. 

I am so proud of Judy—and Bobby as well; it is often not easy to share such a deeply personal story. I am also proud of these clients, whom I am helping at this time:

• A retired pediatrician, who founded a health center in the South End of Boston in 1969 and is telling the story of the center’s founders, staff, and its 50th anniversary last year. 
• An octogenarian, for whom I’m writing a memoir that tells the story of various crises she faced in her life, including polio and breast cancer diagnoses, and how she overcame those challenges. 
• A local entrepreneur, who’s story centers on a system she devised and uses in coaching her clients to become stronger leaders and employers. (I will use my systems in coaching her to write this book.)
• A retired English teacher, who has written a clever and loving story about her mother’s life, which I am editing. 
• A retired engineer, for whom I’m editing a fictional who-dun-it.
• A nurse, who wants to share the story of a brutal beating she suffered at the hands of a patient and how she believes change is needed in health care management.

I hope to tell you more about this work as time passes.