I am currently working on a hybrid memoir using experimental forms/structures, poetry, and flash and experimenting with finding the places where my writing overlaps my visual art. A psychic once told me I would find happiness in marrying my creativity and my spirituality and that thought simmers as I find ways to talk about my experience with gender and queerness and disability, aging and brain injury and all the ways they intersect.
I am also currently seeking representation for my young adult novel, Leaving Wonderland.
Leaving Wonderland is the story of ice hockey phenom Lucy Dunn. The story begins three months after her third concussion. She is still not back on the ice, only going to school half days and spends hours sleeping in the bottom of her closet. Her brain injury symptoms; memory loss, difficulty controlling her emotions (anger/crying), trouble concentrating and extreme cognitive fatigue cause her to alienate friends and family. Wonderland is her escape. It is a place in her mind that is a peaceful oasis out beyond the agitation of not remembering or frustration of not being able to make a decision. It is the place where she just accepts that she won’t ever find the memory, word, thought.
When she inherits a vintage pickup truck that was once owned by the father she never knew, she is given a reason to climb out of the closet. She meets William and Ricky, two students in the auto mechanics class at the vocational division of her school. William makes her laugh and seems to only be serious when talking about engines. But, it is Ricky, the quietly dapper girl who explains fuel, air, spark, compression, who captures Lucy’s attention.
Leaving Wonderland is a story about the everyday experience of brain injury and what happens when opportunity arises from loss.