Greetings and salutations. It is I, Graham.

So I suggested the topic of mental health to Clevenger because I had seen numerous messages on Twitter asking if there was a correlation between mental health issues and becoming a writer. Or in some cases, just flat out stating that there was a direct link. He, of course, jumped on the idea and improved it, by stating we could explain how our mental health and past influenced our character choices and development. He then went on to write the best and most heartfelt blog we have posted to date, probably for some time to come. I can’t compete, so I will just write.

As a child, I was too smart for my own good. As in, I started speaking early, taught myself to start reading at age 4, a complete bookworm by age 6, teachers pet, never caused problems and staying in the background. I’m not going to say much about my siblings so as not to upset anyone, but we will just say that our parents had their hands full with my brother, younger by two years, and so they were appreciative of having an eldest child that required little attention.

Everything was golden until I was somewhere around eight years old, and started developing a very confusing puppy crush on my best friend of several years. We had been friends since we met in first grade, and been such close buddies that we had many teachers and classmates convinced we were cousins. He was British, exotic, and introduced me to BBC science fiction. What was there not to like? This was absolutely one-sided and never spoken of. After all, boys don’t like boys, right? At least, that’s what mom and dad said.

Right before I turned ten we moved, I lost him, and I started learning just how Fire-And-Brimstone my parents’ Southern Baptist Church was. It took less than three years of me mentally self-flagellating myself over liking boys to become so screwed up that I started toying with juvenile attempts at suicide. How messed up is it to tell a hormone fueled teenager that as far as God is concerned, thinking about a sin is the same as doing the sin. Like any teenager can control what thoughts go through their minds. And then for those thoughts to be all the naughty things you are imagining with other boys?

So I had tried keeping a journal when I was younger, but then I started having all these gay thoughts. How could I dare write them down? So I cheated a bit. I started writing them as “confessions” to God. Then when I was 14, I had a suicide attempt that landed me in the hospital. My parents did the “logical” thing and tossed my bedroom, trying to find the cause. What they found was my journals, showing them that I was possessed by a “demon of homosexuality”, and a Dungeons & Dragons starter box, which explained to them where my demon had come from. I’ve never trusted myself to keep a journal or diary since then.

All of this leads to our current book, and the character of Jesse. He is what I wish I could be. Out and proud gay, with nobody giving him any grief for it. I spent my life as an introvert, he is comfortable chatting people up. He’s screwed up, sure, but in ways that I can understand. I was “merely” mentally abused, and so often feel like I am faking, and didn’t “earn” my mental health issues. Jesse has clear abuse that justifies his hangups. I know that Clevenger was able to go into some depth with how he has reconciled a bit with his father. Jesse has no parents and I am happy with that, considering my own were told by a judge that either I go to therapy or they go to jail, and my father’s answer was, “Can we have some time to think about it?” That’s how much they distrusted anything that wasn’t from their church.

Are my writings influenced by my own mental health issues? Of course they are. How can they not be. Am I a writer because of them? I suppose I am. I started reading as an escape. I started writing, even as a child, as a way of trying to share my own mental landscape, just hoping and praying that someone would come along and tell me I was normal. My mother died believing that every time she invited me into her house, she needed to re-cleanse the place because by inviting me in, she had invited a demon. So I write characters that are able to live as I wish I could have lived. Sure they have angst and drama, because those are fun. But they are good looking, in good shape, able to find friendship and love, and able to live their lives.

Writing characters like Jesse and Caleb give me hope. They help me through the fog of depression by acting as my surrogate children through which I can live vicariously. I’m not going to go into where Grendel, Rhon, and the other antagonists come from within me. That’s a story for another time. Thank you for reading, and allowing me to vent. Until next time.

Don’t forget to love one another,

Graham