When Laurie’s younger sister announces she’s getting married in seven weeks, Laurie is forced to confront the fact that her life is lame; 29, single, working the night shift at a call centre, and still begging the literary agent she’s been working for as an unpaid intern to read her manuscript. Step 1 in taking charge of her life? Find a boyfriend.Laurie Barker is 29, single, and dreams of being a published author. So she doesn't mind that she currently dedicates her time to being an unpaid slave to a literary agent while spending her nights working in a call centre to pay the bills, much. But when her younger sister announces she's getting married in seven weeks, Laurie has a problem: she has seven weeks to perfect her life. Step one of this is to find a boyfriend so she doesn't have to admit to her family that not only isn't she dating famous author Timothy Farren, she hasn't even met him. The only solution appears to be online dating. And after all, how much worse could her life get?Over 12 episodes follow Laurie as she takes charge of her life, only to find it slipping more out of control.

Do you believe that knowing about someone's childhood will help you to understand them? John Verry has become a very precise man, comfortable within his perfectly timed and arranged little world. But what led him to this? And as an author, do I really have any control over him?'John Very' is a short story playing with and enjoying the relationship between author and character.These two short stories examine the hidden lives of outsiders from society - people who are put on the outside because of mental illness. Their remarkable stoicism and the valuable contributions they can make are put on display here, for the reader to consider.We all know by now that the mentally ill suffer from cruel and crude stereotypes and stigmas of being "defective," "crazy," and "weak", as well as a still-pervasive belief that they are generally prone to committing crimes. Here are two portraits of mentally ill people that show how they often do stand aside from mainstream society, yet inject that mainstream with important insights and inspiration.In the first story, "The Exalted Mortals," Lester, a young man with schizophrenia, finds through the darkness his niche in the world of art - he makes as his subjects the mentally ill and other people with disabilities, conveying to his audiences what contributions the disabled make, and how they strive to love be loved just as others do. He finds in the efforts of the disabled remarkable examples of what the human spirit is capable of, and there is the implication that even more could be accomplished if the seen and unseen barriers to the disabled were lowered.The second story, "Strange Jill," shines a light on the unique perspective of a mentally ill school girl, who knows what "cool" really is, and tries to teach a curious schoolmate what knowing is all about in this world.Neither story contains adult or otherwise explicit content, though the themes might best be discussed with the younger reader.