title: The Asylum Journal: A Blank Lined Notebook for Writers
author:  Emilie Autumn 
description: Dearest Plague Rats,<br /><br />I wrote my novel, <i><b>The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls</b></i>, entirely in a notebook I secretly kept whilst incarcerated in a psych ward. That notebook saved my life, and, in its pages, a world was born that would make mine infinitely more magical than I ever could have imagined.<br /><br />Whilst I hope that your writing conditions are far more friendly than mine were, I believe that crafting your own story in this journal, inspired by the Asylum world, will help keep you stark raving sane wherever you are and whatever you are experiencing.<br /><br />I hope to read YOUR stories someday,<br /><br />~ EA
zlib_text: # _Acknowledgements_
  
  
  Nina Milton made helpful and encouraging comments on the first draft. My
  mother read the next and gave it to her friend Babette, who gave it to her
  friend Anna Goodall, who passed it to Jane Finigan at Lutyens and Rubinstein.
  Jane wrote me a wonderful letter that stimulated me to expand it to the size
  of a proper book, and Jane is now my agent.
  
  
  I would also like to thank Anna Steadman and Juliet Mahony at Lutyens and
  Rubinstein, David Forrer at Inkwell Management, Helen Garnons-Williams,
  Elizabeth Woabank and their team at Bloomsbury, and Bill Thomas, Kristine
  Puopolo and their team at Doubleday. Helen and Kristine formed a sensitive and
  rigorous editorial double act.
  
  
  Eve, Lynda, Debbie, Dee, Jo and Ms. Edwards all typed various parts at various
  times, interpreting my curly handwriting and endless scrawled amendments. My
  friends, family and telephone friends visited me, phoned me, wrote to me, made
  me laugh and kept me sane. My dear husband gave me more than 