by Ren Ryder
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I hope you enjoyed The Monster’s in the Details, the second installment in the Gaslamp Faeries Series.
Before I get into what I want to talk about, I wanted to apologize to any of you who may have been waiting with bated breath for me to release book 2 of the Gaslamp Faeries Series. 2020 has been a rough year for mental health, and it hit me hard and early. This may be me oversharing, but I think it’s important to include the context.
I went through another long suicidal phase and had trouble starting again. Starting anything, really, but especially anything to do with writing.
Awhile back I went through a trauma and coped heavily with prescription meds (xanax, adderrall) and alcohol until I fell off the carousel and decided to get sober (again, at least it wasn’t hard drugs this time). I’ve always been a fatalist, but that period of sobriety made me as actively suicidal as I’ve ever been, this went on through 2019 and most of 2020.
Went to therapy for addiction counseling, eventually got to a psych, the works. I worked on myself a lot to get to where I was when I published There's No Such Thing As Monsters.
Almost two-and-a-half years have passed and I’ve been completely sober for almost two years now from anything and everything (I don’t even do soda or sugars these days). Got on a bunch of antidepressants and found a combo that sorta makes me feel human-ish. I was able to accomplish a series of small-medium tasks chained together daily, wooh. I’m not complete trash.
I decided somewhere in that dark abyss that one of the only things I got any pleasure out of and was worth living for anymore was writing. And yet... you guessed it, I had yet to start writing the 2nd book in the new series I wrote and published while getting sober. I knew what the story was, had it and even the next book all mapped out in my head, and yet... and yet... there I was, wasting away.
I used to be terrified to start writing again, but I regained some semblance of confidence midway through 2020, so fear wasn’t the only thing holding me back. Writing is a central part of my identity, and there I was, not writing, barely existing really. I felt like one gigantic dumpster fire of a human being.
Well, you wouldn't be hearing from me now if I didn't break through the barriers holding me back. One day I finally got to the business of writing again. I may have been a year and a day behind schedule almost on the dot, but the launch for The Monster’s in the Details was finally underway.
I plan to spend a bit of time on launch-related activities but will go straight into writing the third book in the series as soon as I’m all squared away. The third in series book, The Monster at the End of its Road, will be out by April or May 2021 at the very latest, pinky promise :).
I hope this message and my stories reach you, wherever you are, however you’re feeling. If you want to join my exclusive list of readers and have privileged access to my upcoming books, you can subscribe to my mailing list.
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Thank you, all of you, for sticking with me.
People are struggling in vacuums without anyone to talk to our share their pain with, and if my personal story can help at all, I’m willing to share it.
I have ADHD co-morbid with depression and OCD. A wonderful trifecta of bullcrap. Oh, and how could I forget you, anxiety, my constant companion? I hate my obsessive tendencies and I've hated myself most of my life. I've done so many things that should've outright killed me that I shouldn't be here a dozen times over at least. My ability to survive against my will is one of my defining features, and I'm looking forward into the future to try and plan for some sort of longevity without really desiring to be there in the flesh. If I didn't have such a supportive partner, I wouldn't be writing this to you now.
The fresh trauma I didn't really expand upon up above was my dad getting really sick from some non-FDA approved stem cell injections in LA (all cash, not in a surgery center and without an anesthesiologist of course). He was doing it for about a year before they decided to inject into his discs. He went home in extreme pain and the doctor sent him as many pills as my dad would take, we think hoping he'd overdose so our eventual malpractice lawsuit against him would never come to fruition. He couldn't walk or get out of bed for anything. That went on for about a month before we forced him to go into emergency. They eventually identified an infection from the staph family in his discs from a biopsy.
That took quite some time though and he was on death's door for most of it. We transferred to different hospitals in the area when the case got too serious for local hospitals and eventually he got a pick line to his heart surgically installed so he could do crazy strong antibiotics for the next six months. The infection and past injury had ravaged his spine, so the side-note here is that once the infection is under control, they need to operate on his L1 L2 and fuse the discs in his back. Through all the hospital visits and a trip to the ICU, I just thought he might die at any second.
It was rough since it was just me and my mom in and out of hospitals for a year, my sister was unavailable due to her being a narcissist. When my dad finally got lined up for the back surgery, they said his bones were the consistency of sheetrock and that they looked like a 90 year old woman's. He's okay these days, compared to being on the edge of life and death at least, but nothing’s the same anymore.
I had been sleeping for 2 hours for 3 months straight when my dad was sick, still working 6 days a week in the construction industry. I don't know how I was even able to function, let alone drive myself into the ground with physical labor. Eventually when my dad started getting better I came out of the drug-induced stupor I'd put myself in and went through about a year+ of straight hell dealing with everything.
All the emotions I'd been white-knuckling to keep down raged through me, all the hopelessness, despair, dark intrusive thoughts. I was able to write There's No Such Thing as Monsters in a brief window of time during the middle of this before getting dragged back under with a vengeance. Those were dark times, and I've only recently emerged from them again.
I've been depressed since my teens and most of my adult life. Somehow I've been able to function with the different crutches of an addict, but I had to grow a lot as a person to function sober as I do now.
When I'm at my darkest, I feel like I'm walking through a fog-filled tunnel with no end in sight. People want to tell you that there's light at the end of that tunnel, but I sure didn't see any. One of the reasons I was motivated to write this series is to reach people stuck in dark places. I know I used Fantasy books my whole life as a form of escapism, and if I can light the way for a few others in this modern world overrun with mental health issues, I will consider my run at authorship a success.
To me being cynical is easy, being an optimist is absurd. I don't know why the world is the way it is, but I'm going to fight against its absurdities while I have the energy and wherewithal to do so.
To all of you struggling, please do keep fighting. I will be right there alongside you. If anyone ever needs an ear or just someone to talk to, feel free to drop me a line.
You can reach me at my email: [email protected]
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Warmly,
Ren
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PS Turn the page for a sneak peek at the cover for the third installment in the Gaslamp Faeries Series.
in the Details
