Mental Health

Mental Health, Writing Craft

Once More, With Feeling

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Yes, you guys, I had another depression cycle hitting me right at the beginning of September, and it’s taken almost until now to fully dig my way out of it. I can say with conviction that it was no fun at all and I would as soon not do it again, please and thank you. My medication has gone through some adjustments, which will hopefully help accomplish that goal.

Of course, that means I did no writing for about two months. Now I’m finally back at it, and here’s what I’ve been up to:

 

Playing For The Other Team is in edits and has a tentative release date of mid-January 2016. I’m quite looking forward to having this one out, as I had a lot of fun writing it. Features devious little sisters, a bit of art and a bit of baseball, explicit t-shirts, and a lot of arguments about graduation gown colors.

The Gift of Gravity is the tentative title of a work in progress, something a bit more on the serious side, featuring a buttoned-up redhead and a mohawked, tattooed reptile aficionado who slowly find their way to each other as they search for a runaway transgender teen.

Then there is an as-of-yet untitled project that I just got started on. So far, there’s sarcasm, and amnesia, and spooky things happening in mirrors!

 

In other news, my toddler is toddling… and climbing everything, and tearing down any and all barriers, and foiling every freaking attempt we make at keeping him safe and away from life-threatening situations. That kid has no survival instinct. He’s probably broken and now it’s too late for a refund.

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.