Trios: Diary Of An On-Call Girl, By PC Bloggs: From Blog To Book

This is the final piece in the Trios series about Diary of an On-Call Girl: True Stories from the Front Line, the memoirs of an anonymous police officer, P. C. Bloggs. A couple of weeks ago Dan Collins, the publisher at Monday Books, discussed TV options and rights sales; last week, he looked at the importance of the right title and cover design. This final article, by P. C. Bloggs, considers the problems of writing an anonymous blog and book while still working full-time as a police officer.

P. C. Bloggs is going to be interviewed on BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour this morning, and her book is going to be serialised on the same programme all week. You can listen to the serialisation between 10.45 and 11am each morning, Monday to Friday, and there will be a repeat each day at 7.45pm so there's no reason for you to miss it!


If there are people who join the police in order to publish a book, there must be easier ways. I didn’t become a police officer in order to get published, and nor was that why I started my blog—a therapeutic but initially light-hearted diatribe against the foibles of my work.

So when I was approached by a publisher within three weeks of my opening post I went with it, but was inwardly sceptical.

Having grown up on a diet of classic fiction, the concept of a “blook” was alien to me. But I had a lot to say about the police, and I’ve always enjoyed making people laugh, so there didn’t seem any harm in combining the two if someone was interested enough to print it.

Actually sitting down and writing it, as well as doing some publicity, and keeping myself anonymous, was another matter. At times I felt like I had two full-time jobs, and two completely separate personalities that did not overlap in any way.

There were frustrations—as a secret public sector blogger you try to reflect up-to-the-minute facts about your job, but you can’t use real life examples that are too recent in case you inadvertently identify someone. But as an author who purports to tell the exact truth, nothing but real life will do, and yet it has to be woven into some kind of coherent story.

The two skills are completely different, and keeping both going has been intellectually exhausting. I do feel, however, that I’ve clung to the principles on which I started: that the book would be true to life, true to the blog, and ultimately none of it would be taken too seriously. The whole thing has to some extent been tinged with disbelief: I didn't actually believe that the book was being published until my mother ordered it on Amazon and it arrived!

I’ve enjoyed my small successes, the opportunity to appear on radio and television, and write for broadsheet newspapers, and the fact that I have an online audience for the frustrations I can’t air at work.

But whilst writing has become a more-than-hobby, a commitment, and a passion, my job—my vocation—is as a police officer. If the two became mutually exclusive, the writing would go. Of course, the decision may not be mine: I serve two different audiences, both brutally honest about how they receive my efforts.

If one day, one or other of them tires of me, I will still look back at these years with incredulous pleasure that they lasted as long as they did.



Thanks to Monday Books' generosity we have three free copies of Diary Of An On-Call Girl to give away. If you'd like one for yourself you have to answer this question: what is PC Bloggs' day job? Email your answer to Dan at "dancollins at mondaybooks dot com" along with your address, and next Monday he'll pick three names at random to send those copies off to. It would be much appreciated if you reviewed them in a couple of places once you've read them and if you do, remember to post a link to your review here.