About

Welcome! My name is Eda (long E). Also known as E.M. Handly, K.C. Turner, and Celia Sinclair.

If you found your way here, you may be looking for a good mystery book with strong female characters who don't take any crap from anyone. Or maybe, you are searching for something to help you heal. Words from someone whose been right where you are now.

I always wanted to be a writer. I've forever loved reading and writing poetry but everyone always sneered and claimed I would be nothing more than a starving artist. I even went to college for creative writing for a semester until my mother, voice of reason, said, "Eda, you don't need a college degree to write a book."  

And she was right. So, I dropped out and made good money as a bartender while continuing to write, if for no one else but me. Writing was my way of making sense of things around me, things that happened to me. 

Fast forward to being a single mom of two boys, I went back to school to become a paralegal. Poetry was not going to pay the bills after all! And well, the bar just wasn't an option any longer.

I landed a position with the county prosecutor as a court advocate for victims of domestic violence and sexual assault, and later became their legal writer and researcher in a small town on the lake in Ohio, where I grew up.

Crime fiction. My other favorite genre to read and create. Thanks, mom! With the Elizabeth Strong trilogy, I eventually started my own small publishing company, Two Ten Press, and began to have some success selling my stories. 

The Strong series was born using my experience in the criminal justice system and, unfortunately, it was also very loosely based on my first experience of being in an abusive relationship.

I vowed I would never be treated like that again. Yet, I continued to go from one toxic relationship to another, constantly searching for 'the one', journaling nearly every experience.

Until one day, I was certain I found my person and we spent almost 16 years together raising a blended family.

I finally decided my poetry was worth publishing and I started my Fragile Heart Series. A memoir in poetic verse, drawn from my diaries over the years from personal experiences as they happened to me.

It was supposed to be a love story. Turned out to be another tragedy.

But within every experience, I still find hope. In each and every heartbreaking battle I have contended with, I am strong and resilient and — still hopeful. I continue to believe in the good of the world and most of the people in it.

Now my hope is that my stories, fictional and true, can help others in similar situations. 

Abuse, any kind of abuse, is not okay. My wish is for all of us to talk about, learn, and see the red flags when they're waving right in front of us, and love ourselves enough, be strong enough, and support each other enough, so we never make excuses for them again.

As my mother used to tell me time and time again, I deserve better. And so do you.

Peace and love,

Eda