The story behind the story
Believe it or not, I wrote “The Adventures of Pebble Beach” almost 30 years ago in 1987. Yes I did. But at the time I wasn’t a famous author and so I didn’t show the manuscript to anyone. I just stuffed it away in a drawer somewhere and forgot about it (I actually originally wrote it on a typewriter!). At some point in time, probably in the early 90s (I don’t remember exactly when) I must have typed the chapters into one of my early computers… and then I forgot about it again.
Needless to say, it wasn’t until 2007 that I rediscovered the book quite by accident. It happened in the very hot summer of 2007 after I’d just been through a painful breakup with my on-and-off boyfriend of almost seven years.
Then one day, when I was looking for something on my computer, I must have hit the wrong key and up came Pebble Beach. And as I said, I’d completely forgotten about her and her adventures and on that day in 2007, miserable as I was, I started reading what appeared on the screen before me. And wow, I was amazed at what I read. I was amazed by what I had written 20 years earlier about a woman who was floundering and trying to come to terms with her disastrous relationships with men! I was stunned by my discovery. Did I really know all that in 1987?
And then I thought, well it could be fun to try and update the manuscript and see if I could make it an even better book than the original manuscript was. And so that became my 2007 summer project and part of my own healing journey out of the problematic relationship I myself had been in for so long.
Because yes, even though “The Adventures of Pebble Beach” is a fun read, it’s also a lot about a woman floundering in unhealthy relationships and yes, in the book, the heroine Pebble Beach does go to therapy to try to understand her insecurity and neediness and her inability to take care of herself when her better judgment is telling her that a relationship is not good for her.
In 2008, my son, author Tim Ray, translated the original English manuscript into Danish (yes we live in Copenhagen, Denmark so people speak Danish here!) and the book was published in Danish in Denmark – to the great surprise of many of my Danish readers since I’m known in Scandinavia as a self-help writer and teacher!
And now Pebble Beach is finally published in my mother tongue English too and released in the UK and US and all the other English-speaking countries! Hurrah! Hurrah! How exciting!
So I hope you’ll enjoy Pebble Beach and her journey to freedom as much as I have!
adventuresofpebblebeach 