Diary of a Hoarder's Daughter THE BOOK by Izabelle Winter

The book is out and available now on Amazon

 and Amazon Kindle

The book is based on this blog although the book has no pictures.  Although it covers most of what is on here it's better written because it's spell checked and it is edited. The blog more or less spills out of my head straight onto the paper whereas the book is more structured. There are also some parts in the book which aren't on the blog, explaining a lot about the background around the house and the hoarding.

Whereas this blog is spontaneous and how it is RIGHT NOW at the moment of writing, the book hopefully doesn't repeat things.  It's also been edited by someone who knows what they're doing.  The paperback is 232 pages long and the Kindle version is edited for kindle.

The cover I'm almost satisfied with although it could be vastly improved. In my opinion the cover was not the most important bit - it was important that it looked nice and stood out from the others and also gave a flavour of what is inside, but I guess the search word is in the title so people looking for a hoarding book would search 'Hoarder' or 'Hoarding'.

So why have I used a pseudonym and why 'Izabelle Winter'? 

I'm not trying to hide anything here as that's not my real name.  I always fancied the idea of using a pen name.  Friends and I often used to wonder what name we'd choose if we could have any name at all. It's a bit of fun to have a completely different name and perhaps different persona.  Due to the nature of the book I thought it unfair to 'out' Imelda so I decided to use pseudonym.

1) My mother's middle name was Isabel and so as a tribute I chose Izabelle.  

2) My favourite time of year is Winter when it snows, everything is clean and white and beautiful and I can go skiing (my number one hobby which I cannot do without).

3) Izabelle Winter sounds more author-esque and slightly, in my view, romantic. It's also memorable.

4) There are already books out by someone with the same real name as me and I wanted to be unique.

5) Finally, and possibly the most important reason; if Imelda and Ant didn't want to be outed (Ant especially) and Imelda possibly, among people they didn't know very well - such as those at his church or his neighbours, then it wouldn't be fair for me to out him.  Although after the TV show when he told everybody he knew, vaguely knew, once knew or was the friend of someone he knew, that we were on TV perhaps this is a bit daft.  I do feel however that I should protect him from the contents of the book as there is more in depth stuff in there - he is still my dad.  He did know I was writing the book and I mentioned it would be out soon and he showed very little interest.  So we'll leave it at that for now.

If he obtains a copy of the book I doubt he'll read it as, by his own admission, he 'doesn't read books'.  If he does then I am prepared.

So please read the book if you can - the feedback so far has been positive and I've had a few people speak to me to say that particular conversations or situations rang a bell with them.

More soon

Me xx