Photo by Bill Green Kristin Smedley, Tomara Arrington and Linda Pruce, who have co-authored "Confessions of a Self-Help Junkie," gather in the self-improvement section of a local bookstore.

Confession: Linda Pruce is a recovering self-help junkie.

Pruce, now 40, grew up in Washington, Pa., and later lived in New York, where she drowned herself in self-help books as a mother of two with a husband who traveled a lot. Life was feeling overwhelming by the time she hit 30.

If it was new in the self-help section -- and especially if Oprah recommended it -- Pruce bought it, devoured it, and gave it a place in her growing collection, which ended up costing her more than $750 when it was all said and done.

"It was so bad," she admitted recently. "I was just always on the lookout. I thought, I just haven't read the right thing yet."

She moved to Frederick in 2002, at the beginning of her holistic health counseling career, and sent an e-mail newsletter to friends and family to promote her business. At the end, she asked if anyone would like to subscribe. Someone said yes, to her surprise, and she continued writing them for the next three years, charging a subscription rate of $1 each month.

"It started as this really holistic thing," Pruce said.

She thought if she could encourage people to eat right and do yoga and balance their chakras, she'd be helping them lead better, more fulfilling lives.

"And then one day I thought, I'm just gonna write about what really happened. And I got a much better response. I figured out that people just want the truth. ... So that's when the articles took their turn more toward the sarcastic."

She realized, in retrospect, that self help is just that -- she had to find a way to help herself, rather than looking for it outside of herself. Through her own writing and being honest about her experiences, she was able to do that.

"Self-help is helping you help yourself," she said. "I was looking for someone else to give me an answer."

When she stopped following a single prescription received from a book, she noticed that all the things she'd read about were happening naturally, like intuition.

"Then I finally learned I don't have to do everything perfectly ... It kind of freed me up ... If I can laugh ... I can get over it. I think that's why I write the way I do."

Meanwhile, the newsletter made Pruce realize she loved writing.

Her book, "Confessions of a Self-Help Junkie," is essentially a collection of essays from her newsletters, with variations and additions, plus workbook sections for the reader, with activities to help with patience, confrontation, confession, courage and other self-help favorites.

Kristin Smedley, of New Market , and Tomara Arrington, of Frederick , whom Pruce met because their children all attended Parkway Elementary, helped bring the book together.

Smedley, described by Pruce as a creative type, once made a collage for Pruce and was asked to make more for the book.

"It was all really intuitive," Smedley said. "I would give them to Tomara and they would change a little."

"A lot of it just worked without any planning whatsoever," Pruce agreed. "It was a little freaky sometimes."

Arrington, a longtime professional graphic artist, pieced the photos and words together.

The finished piece was first published as an e-book in fall 2008, in full color. A friend blogged about it and Canada's Macleans magazine contacted Pruce, asking her how they could buy the book.

Since the women hadn't released it as a book yet, Pruce told the magazine she'd get back to them, and in the meantime went to Lulu.com and made the e-book into a real book.

Their only regret is that the book is in black and white.

They plan to spend the next year marketing it.

While at Barnes and Noble in Frederick , Pruce said she would ask the store manager how she could get her book featured there -- though she's not sure which section it would best fit.

Isn't "Confessions of a Self-Help Junkie" essentially another self-help book?

Pruce said she could see it in the humor or self-help section. "I think people who go to the self-help section need it more than the people going to the humor section."

Though selling the book is proving to be more difficult than writing it, Pruce said, she doesn't regret self-publishing.

"It's something we created together and we want to keep it together," Pruce said. "Traditional publishers ... take it and it's theirs and they can do whatever they want with it."

Smedley and Arrington agreed that part of the fun has been figuring everything out.

"It's trial by fire," Pruce said. "We actually took our own advice and helped ourselves ... Years ago, I would've still been looking for the how-to-make-a-book book. Figuring out how to do it, that's self-help. We lived it."