Monthly Archives: May 2015

Spectacularly Broken

Lexa

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Warning for minor spoilers about Spectacularly Broken

A few people have asked questions or expressed concerns about Lexa, either in reviews or to me privately, and they have a point. I know more about her than I wrote, and the most apparent thing about her is her ostensible fragility. It was difficult to fit in much of Lexa’s background since she doesn’t talk for the majority of the book, and she is not the main character of Spectacularly Broken. Lysander likes Lexa, but he’s far too wrapped up in his own issues to spend much time finding out about hers. So here are a few facts on Lexa.

1. She isn’t shy. Lexa has issues with meeting new people and with verbal and physical aggression, but she is not, at her core, a shy person. Once she gets to know the rest of green group, she has no problem calling Cai an idiot or expressing her approval of Cai and Lysander’s blossoming relationship – only she doesn’t do it verbally. She is also her own advocate and has a lot of inner strength. If Finn hadn’t intervened in the incident with Damien, she would have been the first to report it.

2. She has had prior therapy. Oak Hill Manor is not the extent of Lexa’s therapy, it’s simply one of the steps. Like everyone else at the manor, she needed a therapist recommendation in order to participate in the program (another fact I didn’t manage to fit into the book, because Lysander doesn’t give a fig about these things), and she is there voluntarily, challenging herself to interact with her peers.

3. She is determined. Lexa wants to heal. She faces her demons with open eyes and continues to climb one hurdle after another on her path to functioning, balanced and healthy. She accepts the support that green group and Finn give her and tries her best to support them in return because she knows how valuable and helpful it is.

In the end, all I can say is that, as with everyone else in the book, I tried my best to make Lexa a three-dimensional character and to accurately represent the symptoms of her past abuse and resulting issues. It’s important to me not to slip into cliches, and I hope I succeeded.

Home Life, Mental Health

Cyclical Depression and the Joy of Writing

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No blog posts until just before Spectacularly Broken was released, and that was over two months ago. The hell?

Unfortunately, this happens to me sometimes. Without trying to make it sound pretty – I have depression, severe anxiety and adult ADD. There is a lot going on in my head. I’ve struggled with this most of my life, and it has all steadily gotten worse to the point where I can no longer function without medication. I still try to keep the amount of meds low, taking some of them only on an as-needed basis (which is cleared with my health professional, of course). Unfortunately, even the meds can’t fully pull me out of the valley when my depression hits a low point, and then I tend to distance myself from the internet. Facebook posts are less frequent, I don’t tend to answer emails, I just plain don’t interact. That goes for real life too. I don’t generally leave the house much during these episodes, unless I absolutely have to, or I make myself take a walk in an attempt to feel better. So if you’ve tried to contact me, please forgive me for not getting back to you right away. I will eventually. At some point, the hypomania hits, and then I’m productive and full of energy, I clean the house, I cook and freeze food like a crazy person. I dance a Vienna waltz around the kitchen with my son.

(No joke. My kitchen is huge. It’s the largest room in my house, actually.)

Most important of all, I write. I get close to despairing when I’m in the valley because my head won’t let me write, and when I force myself to do it anyway, what comes out is the worst piece of writing in the history of mankind, or at least it seems that way to me. And then, once I’ve managed the climb, I’ve got ideas and energy and I write and write and it’s awesome.

I just wanted to put this out there. Now I’m gonna go back to writing about an artist and a baseball player and a little sister who steals condoms to use as water balloons.