A month ago, Kirsten Grind pounded out daily banking industry updates in the hectic downtown Seattle Puget Sound Business Journal newsroom.

These days, she’s more likely to be found driving around the state to the homes of aging former Washington Mutual executives. Grind spent an entire recent weekday in Skagit County with onetime WaMu CEO Lou Pepper. The two talked for hours.

“It’s therapy for them,” Grind said. “There’s a lot of anger and sadness about what happened.”

Grind’s life took a dramatic turn this summer when she began a nine-month leave from the PSBJ to write a book about the demise of WaMu. She landed the book contract after covering WaMu’s story extensively for the Business Journal, and receiving a prestigious Pulitzer nomination for her efforts.

(Full disclosure: I worked with Grind at the PSBJ and remain good friends with her. I’ve been hearing about her journey into the book writing world for the past several months, and found the project so interesting that I thought others would enjoy reading about it as well.)

Grind stumbled into the book world by chance. While she loves journalism, she’d never dreamed of penning her own book. But early this year, Seattle literary agent Elizabeth Wales heard Grind talking about WaMu on local public radio station KUOW. This could be a book, Wales thought.

Grind’s story with WaMu began when she took a job as the banking and finance reporter for the PSBJ in spring of 2008. A relative newcomer to Seattle, Grind knew very little about WaMu.

Six months later, on Sept. 25, 2008, federal regulators seized the bank. Grind was at a best friend’s wedding in California. She came back to Seattle, figuring the story was over. Not even close.

At the urging and support of PSBJ managing editor Al Scott, Grind spent the next year doing extensive investigative reporting on why WaMu failed. At times, she wanted to give up. She requested thousands of documents through public information requests, and received many back with pages blacked out. Since many sources refused to talk to her on the phone, Grind tracked down the addresses of former executives and bank regulators and drove to their homes.

“It was pulling teeth the entire way,” Grind said.

Grind’s efforts paid off. On a Friday in April, she signed on with Wales. That Monday, she found out she was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. Two months later, several publishing houses entered a bidding war for her book, with Simon and Schuster winning out.

“I had a really lucky few months,” Grind said. “I worked really hard to get to the bottom of WaMu, and it set me up as someone who really knows the story.”

Grind believes publishers were eager for the book because readers want to understand the financial crisis. The WaMu story in particular sparks interest, Grind said, because unlike a massive New York City investment firm, the average person had a WaMu account or worked for the bank.

“People can relate to WaMu,” Grind said.

On a recent Green Lake walk, Grind and I talked about why someone like myself – an avid reader, but not a banking or finance guru – would buy her book. We agreed that the various tragic personalities behind WaMu, from former CEO Kerry Killinger to the shareholder who lost everything, would sell the story.

“I don’t want to write a book only for people interested in banking,” Grind said. “I think a lot of people could find this fascinating because WaMu has such a great cast of characters.”

Grind began her nine-month leave from the PSBJ on Aug. 2. She’s adjusting to life away from a bustling newsroom, and learning how to plan her own daily schedule.

“It’s hard to not have coworkers running around and an editor breathing down your neck,” Grind said. “I miss the newsroom activity, but I also love having this big project I’m working on.”

Since Grind’s book covers the last 30 years of WaMu, she’s beginning with the 1980s. For the past few weeks, she’s been spending days with the former executives, driving to everywhere from Carnation to Anacortes.

When Grind begins researching the bank’s more recent past, she’ll make trips to California and the East Coast to talk to the bank’s former mortgage executives and federal regulators. WaMu’s onetime home loan center is just a half hour from her parents’ home in the San Diego area, so she’s planning on research time in California.

As for her own next chapter after WaMu, it’s too early for Grind to know.

“I never thought I’d write a book,” Grind said. “This has really been a surprise.”