How ADHD Sparked My Cozy Mystery Novelist Journey
The Story Behind the Story of DAZE OF OUR LIES
Dear Reader Friends,
Have you ever taken a risk that led to something great? I’ll bet you have. Perhaps you mustered up the courage to ask someone on a date. Or to become your spouse. Perhaps you took a risk like my mom did, and adopted a child (me).
I’m a ADHDer with a dopamine deficiency. Taking risks makes me feel alive — like the one day I took a risk on Linkedin. I sent a random connection request to a British woman named Sara Perry, a psychic in Spain. We had no mutual contacts. I cannot tell you what it was about her profile that piqued my interest, but I felt compelled to connect with her. She read for me, and we remained in touch every month for years.
After my adoptive mom died in August of 2022, I finally allowed myself to feel some of the grief that had been slowly eroding my stoicism since my mom, who lived with us, first showed the signs of dementia and Alzheimer’s six years prior. I’m here to tell you, nothing will break your heart like having to retell your mom — who’s trying to sneak out of the house at 1 a.m. — “Dad’s not waiting for you in the car in the driveway — he died years ago,” and re-hurting her with this horrible news as if it’s fresh. So . . . I felt that visiting Sara in the south of Spain would heal and re-center me.
It did.
As we sat around the dining room table in the house I’d rented — the haunted bullfighter’s house I mentioned in my last post — doing our best to ignore the world’s most hideous mounted boar’s head staring us down (screen grab 2 images below), Sara and I did what we both do best: improv and riff ideas with each other as kindred creatives.
Vera, Spain, 2023: The cozy fireplace I was sitting in front of when that ghost banged my elbow, as mentioned in my previous post. (Oranges we hand-picked from the back yard.)
Sara has an education and background in theater and performance (she auditioned to be one of the Spice Girls back in the day — you can catch a glimpse of her in the documentary). With our two wacky senses of humor, we cooked up this insane Ricky Gervais-style deadpan mockumentary idea that had us belly laughing so hard, we couldn’t breathe.
Screen grab of the creepy boar’s head in the bullfighter’s home I rented in Vera, Spain, 2023.
It was the story of renowned Psychic Pam who read for high society and went missing, but her desperate, spoiled fan won a free reading and refused to let go of it, so this fan traveled to the ends of the earth to find Psychic Pam. We bought wig disguises, a ring light, and recruited Sara’s friends to be actors in our hijinks. We took some footage here and there, but ran out of time and never completed the project.
When I returned home from Spain, more sadness ensued. A misdiagnosis from our local vet meant euthanizing Gabbi, my perfectly healthy ragdoll kitten. We were devastated all over again. (Gabbi’s breeder was also a vet and had an autopsy done to prove this was a misdiagnosis.) Shortly after that, Sara had to euthanize her beloved dog, Blue, whom I’d met just weeks before.
Our Psychic Pam idea collected dust on a shelf for two years.
In January of this year, we said why not resurrect our story? But instead of a comedy, we converted the premise into fodder for a novel — a small-town murder mystery. What did we have to lose? We both wanted to feel joy. Fulfillment. A renewed raison d'être. And so in January, we began writing our collaborative book, DAZE OF OUR LIES, under the pseudonym GABBI BLUE. Our first book is 30 chapters, with many “extras,” launching tomorrow at https://reamstories.com/gabbiblue.
Our Book Cover: Design by Sara Perry.
Like any ADHDer in the throes of a project they love, I literally ignore my body’s signals to hit the loo because I just want to keep on writing. My creative joie de vivre has returned with a vengeance. My son will leave for school, return home for lunch, go to work, and come home from work, and I won’t have moved from my spot behind my laptop. I know, I know. I got the memo. It’s worse than smoking. But I’m in the flow — that warm, beautiful feeling of hyperfocus and writer’s fulfillment that is a high like no other.
WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW
After Sara and I worked out the multi-layered plot to our story, we focused on our two protagonist characters, imbuing our life’s experiences into them. My character, Daisy Wilder, is an author with ADHD (sound familiar?) who relies upon Sara’s character, Psychic Pam, as her writer/life coach. When Psychic Pam goes missing, Daisy goes on a quest to find her, endangering her own life in the process.
I don’t know if, or how many, other authors out there are writing about protagonists with ADHD, but I am on a mission to help people better understand ADHDers through the thoughts and actions of my fictional character. It works on so many levels:
I’m writing with authenticity from a perspective I know and understand intimately.
An ADHD character’s impulsive decisions will help drive the plot.
Daisy’s quirky ADHD ability to pick out details and see patterns that non-neurodivergent people do not tend to see can make her an invaluable sleuth.
Here’s a quick intro to my character, Daisy Wilder, the ADHD author:
If you’re not into fiction or murder mysteries, that’s okay. I will so appreciate you if you would please share our new book link with anyone you know who might be into cozy murder mysteries. If you’re not into digital books, we will have the trade paperback on Amazon at some point in a few months. (I believe an audiobook is forthcoming shortly, also.) Sara and I just want to write the kinds of stories that transport readers from everyday life and keep them entertained. To borrow from another author, Jonathan Swift, it’s ‘A Modest Proposal’ (minus the whole icky cannibalism part, mind you).
And wow, how is it already 3:12 p.m.?!? Time bends, even when I’m blogging.