Brain Daze
It took me almost twenty years to write the first two books in my series, The Shadows of Miskatonic.
What took me so long?
Sure, I had to learn the craft. Write my books. Edit, edit, edit...
But there was something else behind the delay.
A tale that’s truly stranger than fiction.
Let me take you back in time, to 2003. I just received my doctorate in sociology, but with no job prospects on the horizon, I decided to leave the profession. I always wrote stories in my spare time, so I figured I’d turn my attention to fiction. Fortunately, my husband made enough money that we could get by on just one income.
Between 2003 and 2006, I made real progress. I wrote Darkness Below, the first novel in my series, and started attending professional conferences. I got much needed feedback from writers and agents. I polished my existing work and started the second book of my series, Thin Places.
Then in 2007, it all stopped. I came down with a serious case of writer’s block. I couldn’t move forward, no matter how hard I tried. At the time, I thought it was because of stress. My husband and I had just moved to Washington D.C. from San Diego, so he could be closer to government contractors as part of his business. There was a lot of turmoil involved during this transition. I figured that was the reason I couldn’t write.
But the writer’s block persisted.
It kept going, through 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012. I began having panic attacks and saw a psychiatrist who prescribed anti-anxiety medicine. Still, nothing made things better. I stared at the story that once gave me joy and wondered whether I would ever get back to it.
Then, on New Year’s Eve 2012, my husband and I got back from our annual Christmas trip. I had been fighting the flu for a few days, so he went to the store get some cold medicine. I sat down on the couch to wait and....
I woke up in a hospital bed on New Year’s Day with the Rose Bowl Parade playing on the television. A nurse came in and informed me that I had suffered a grand mal seizure and that I had been transported to San Francisco by ambulance.
A CAT scan at the hospital in my hometown revealed a brain tumor the size of a baseball.
Turns out those “panic attacks” I was having were small epileptic seizures.
The baseball sized tumor wasn’t cancer. Thank God. My doctor told me I had a dermoid cyst, which is a fancy way of saying that skin was growing inside my brain. Apparently, these pesky little cells had been slowly growing in my head all my life.
It wasn’t until 2007 and my first “panic attack” that they began to affect my cognitive functioning.
The solution was straightforward. I went through two surgeries in 2013 to remove the foreign matter that was in my brain. My recovery was a little dicey, but by the end of the year, life had improved. I felt better than I had in years.
I decided to turn my attention back to writing and guess what?
The words flowed.
You heard me right.
My writer’s block was surgically removed.
When I shared that fact with my neurosurgeon, he didn’t seem surprised. “The tumor was pressing on the creative side of your brain,” he informed me. He said this in the same matter of fact way he told me I needed another surgery because he didn’t like the way my brain looked so he “put it back”.
In the ten years since the surgery, I have written three books and outlined a series that, at last count, may go as high as eight books.
I have the life I planned twenty years ago, thanks to Dr. Peter Weber.
I dedicated my first book, Darkness Below, to him, but all my books owe their existence to this amazing doctor.
Dedication: To Dr. Peter Weber, for giving the Scarecrow a new brain.