Five Fascinating Rare Psychological Disorders You Need to Know About

As I mentioned in my earnest, self-disclosing first post, I'm a university student working on a degree in psychology. Since I'm aiming for a career in Forensic Clinical psychology, most of my classes are devoted to the study of psychological disorders; I spend my time learning how to recognize the classic signs of schizophrenia and coax hyperactive patients off the ceiling. Learning to classify and diagnose patients is an important first step in learning how to treat them someday.

Before starting my degree, I assumed that this was the only therapy technique I'd need.

Of course, even if you have no formal background in psychology, you can probably name most of the major disorders off the top of your head. Bipolar disorder. Schizophrenia. Major Depressive Disorder. Social Anxiety Disorder. Tourette's Syndrome. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. ADHD. The list goes on, and on, and on, and with recent pushes for mental health awareness, you've probably been exposed to these disorders more than you ever have before. 

The portion of my audience that is made up of struggling writers and avid readers is probably especially aware of mental disorders. They pop up everywhere in literature, from the oh-my-God-my-son-shot-everyone novel We Need to Talk About Kevin, to the adorably clinically depressed donkey, Eeyore, in Winnie the Pooh. Finding something original to say about mental illness is tough, and approaching such a heavy topic without drinking yourself into a sadness coma isn't easy. Luckily for you, hypothetical struggling writer, there are still plenty of fascinating, non-heinously-debilitating disorders out there that are still waiting to be mentioned in literature. 

Regrettably, 'drunken sadness comas' have not yet been recognized as disorders.

So whether you're here for psychology facts, writing inspiration, or just plain old curiosity, enjoy reading about:

1. The Capgras Delusion

This has 'delusion' right in the name, so you already have some idea of what's involved here. By definition, delusions are beliefs about the world that have absolutely no basis in reality, and the belief involved in the Capgras Delusion - also known as Capgras Syndrome - is a real doozy. It's simple really; people with this disorder are just completely convinced that someone close to them has been replaced with a physically identical imposter.

Pictured: Your life with Capgras Delusion. Enjoy.

Obviously, living through the plot of Invasion of the Bodysnatchers every day of your life is less than ideal, and people afflicted with the disorder have very different methods of coping with it. Some people just accept the imposter and continue to go about their lives, having apparently come to the realization that their loved one's good looks are their only important quality. Others employ equally reasonable measures like pulling guns on their loved one and having standoffs with the police. Regardless of how you cope with it, treatment is tricky - simply pointing out to the sufferer that they sound like a fruity History Channel program doesn't work. Instead, you've got to point out how reality works, and wait for the patient to discover their loose screw all on their own.

"Imposters"

A disorder like Capgras Syndrome is far too much fun to restrict to just one possible cause - it can result from brain injury, stroke, schizophrenia, dementia, migraines, diabetes, migraines, hypothyroidism, drug reactions, normal human aging and hitting your head really, really hard until aliens inhabit Grandma's body. There are three female cases of Capgras Syndrome to every two male cases, which means if you wake up in the middle of the night to find one of your parents trying to peel your face off to see who you really are under there, chances are, it'll be your mother.

It's worth noting that Capgras Delusion has already made a very successful literary debut - the 2006 novel The Echo Maker by Richard Power is about a man whose car accident causes him to believe his beloved sister has been replaced by an imposter. The novel won the National Book Award for Fiction and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, elevating kooky brain disorders to literary gold. 

2. Jerusalem Syndrome

The city of Jerusalem has dominated world headlines for the last, oh, five thousand years or so, and in that time it's become a very important place for every religion that traces itself back to Abraham.

Jerusalem is significant to everyone except Greenland, China and North Korea. Make of that what you will.

Needless to say, if you're a big fan of this "God" person and his bestselling adventure novels, visiting Jerusalem is a pretty big deal. Different tourists show appreciation for the holiness of the city in different ways. Some people join scheduled, guided tours, to make sure they don't miss any attractions. Some people photograph everything they see. Some people might even choose to wander the city by themselves, taking in the culture and history of the five-millennia-old city.

Oh, and some people like to tear off their clothes and preach to random passersby on street corners.

Jerusalem Syndrome refers to a phenomenon wherein tourists with no diagnosed mental health issues descend into shoelace-eating lunacy after arriving in the city of Jerusalem. Symptoms range from funny to hilarious: sufferers commonly wander away from whatever group they arrived in, fashion themselves togas out of stolen hotel linens, declare themselves to be Jesus 2.0, and preach garbled, lukewarm sermons about the merits of 2nd-century lifestyles at the increasingly jaded public. Other fun symptoms include compulsive bathing and nail-clipping, uncontrollable reciting of hymns and psalms, and spontaneous pilgrimages to Jerusalem's holiest sites. 

Just think - debilitating lunacy is only a plane ride away.

While the syndrome is known for appearing in people who are otherwise healthy and stable, closer examination has revealed that many of the 100 people who are diagnosed ever year have 'unusual thoughts' prior to the onset of the disorder. 'Unusual thoughts' is such a delightfully vague term that it could encompass everything from an insistence on always eating pizza on Wednesdays, to a deep-seated belief that moon-dwelling space leopards planned the 9/11 attacks. Just to be on the safe side, you should assume that if you have any personal quirks or irrational beliefs whatsoever, a trip to Jerusalem would see you standing on a sidewalk, hollering at strangers to forsake the modern evils of cell phones and elastic waistband underwear.

Repent, sinners!

The good news about Jerusalem Syndrome is that it's relatively easy to treat. The city has a designated hospital - the Kfar Shaul psychiatric hospital - that authorities drag all sufferers to, and the staff there find that only 40% of patients need to be tranquilized and pumped full of anti-psychotics. Usually, the most effective treatment is also the simplest - just leave the city. When sufferers return to their country of origin, they return to normal, with no lingering signs of psychosis. The entire process of onset and recovery takes as little as five days, making this psychotic syndrome actually preferable to the common cold. 

Though Jerusalem syndrome has not yet had its moment in the literary spotlight, it was the focus of an episode of The Simpsons, and that's just as good. 

3. Boanthropy

Those of you who paid enough attention in school to recognize the meanings of the Latin derivative "bo" and the Greek root "anthropy" probably don't need to be told what this is all about. For the rest of you, I'll spell it out: boanthropy is a condition in which a human being firmly believes him- or herself to be a cow.

Timmy was determined not to let his condition prevent him from leading a normal life.

Though this sounds like a made-up disorder invented by the pharmaceutical industry to give them an excuse to shovel pills down the throats of any four-year-old who declares he wants to be a farm animal when he grows up, boanthropy has been around for quite some time. It's been happening for so long, in fact, that the most famous case of the disorder appears in the Bible - in the Book of Daniel, King Nebuchadnezzar II abandons all of his responsibilities to live as a cow for seven years. After nearly a decade of grazing in random pastures, the king snaps out of it and resumes his reign, since no one apparently objects to being ruled by a man who spent a significant portion of his life as livestock. At the time, people attributed his insanity to the whims of a petulant, Old Testament God. Today, psychologists are slightly more inclined to treat it with pills than with the sacrifice of a firstborn son.

Boanthropy typically comes on suddenly, with no major head injuries or hallucinatory drug mishaps to mark its onset. The only thing sufferers seem to have in common is that they're extremely suggestible - in some cases, hypnosis may be all it takes to set the disorder in motion. Some people are also capable of developing full-fledged boanthropy by just telling themselves over and over again that they are a large, grazing bovine. It's also one of the only disorders that has been linked to dreams; many cases have been found to begin after sufferers have a dream of being turned into a cow, proving that not quite everything Freud said was sex-crazed, cocaine-fueled nonsense.

"Hooray." - Sigmund Freud

Because of its rarity and bizarre qualities, boanthropy is one of those disorders still waiting to make its literary debut. Well, unless you count the Bible. 

4. Cotard Syndrome

This disorder is also commonly known as the Cotard Delusion, which should instantly alert readers that this is going to be a good one. Like individuals with Capgras Delusion, people with the Cotard delusion have irrational beliefs and a diagnosis that starts with the letter "C". However, these people don't believe that their loved ones have been replaced with impostors. That would be crazy. No, people with Cotard Syndrome simply believe that they themselves are dead.

If you start dressing like this every day, other people will wish they were dead too.

The syndrome was first discovered in Paris in the late 19th century, by neurologist James Cotard, for whom, you may have noticed, the disorder was named. Cotard first encountered the syndrome in a patient named Mademoiselle X, who believed that she had been damned to hell, and become incapable of dying a natural death; this belief was severely tested when she died of self-inflicted starvation. Since then, cases of Cotard delusion have followed roughly the same path. Patients initially suffer with bouts of depression, which somehow progress into a thinly-rationalized belief that they are somehow no longer alive. If a patient happens to live alone, or with a family who doesn't consider any of the preceding symptoms to be sufficient reason to see a doctor, the patient's delusions progress until he or she completely stops meeting all physical needs and winds up as dead as they think they are.

You may recognize the disorder from AMC's hit documentary series.

Luckily, Cotard delusion can't sneak up on just anyone out of the blue. It only appears in people who suffer from schizophrenia, incredibly severe epilepsy, or other variations of crossed wires and psychosis. And for such a complex and potentially-fatal disorder, treatment is incredibly simple; the only thing needed to resurrect patients is an anti-psychotic prescription, sparing therapists from having to have long, frustrating, one-sided talks with patients who firmly believe themselves to be disembodied corpses. 

To my knowledge, you can't yet pick up a novel and read about Cotard Syndrome. But you can always just purchase a copy of Richard Matheson's I am Legend and pretend.

5. Foreign Accent Syndrome

Some medical conditions have confusing or misleading names, but this one is exactly what it says on the tin: Foreign Accent Syndrome causes sufferers to develop, well, a foreign accent. Keep in mind, "foreign accent" could be any foreign accent; there's no telling if you'll get a posh English accent, a throaty German accent, or an accent found only amongst the indigenous Maori people of New Zealand. Some accents associated with this disorder are so convincing that people with genuine accents commonly mistake sufferers for being one of their own - one English-speaking patient who wound up with a Russian accent made the exact same grammatical errors common to Russian ESL speakers, leading the patient to be babbled at in rapid-fire Russian whenever he encountered a native speaker.

Changing your name to Boris is optional, but recommended.

Of course, not everyone afflicted with this disorder is lucky enough to get a recognizable accent; many patients end up pronouncing their words in a way that "just kinda sounds foreign" to native speakers of their language. Hilariously enough, people with Foreign Accent Syndrome can end up passing their altered pronunciation on to their young children or siblings, forcing an entire family to explain their unique medical history to every single person who asks them where they're from. 

Now, Foreign Accent Syndrome doesn't just show up unannounced one day; it's usually the result of some kind of head injury, which means that the only thing standing between you and a potentially sexy accent is a heinous motorcycle accident. If getting a motorcycle licence sounds like too much of a hassle, you can also develop the disorder as the result of a stroke, developmental abnormality, or as a consequence of severe, pervasive migraines. Even if you've gone to the effort of brain-damaging yourself to a new accent, your efforts might all be for naught; the brain is an incredibly resilient thing, and - especially amount younger patients - the accent may disappear on its own after just a few weeks or months.

Sticking a bandage on it is known to really speed recovery.

Unfortunately for my aspiring writer audience, Foreign Accent Syndrome just doesn't seem like the sort of that that would be interesting to write about. There's no way that it could ever lead to an interesting story. Oh, unless you count the story of that Norwegian woman in WWII whose life went to pieces after a shrapnel wound gave her a German accent. She's kind of interesting.

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Which other fascinating disorders did I miss? Let me know in the comments.

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Why You Should Never, Ever Leave a Dog Alone With a Roll of Toilet Paper

I have a dog.

Well, actually, to be honest, I have two. Fortunately, only one of them did something awful enough to earn a public shaming on my blog.

Behold, the harbinger of chaos.

This is Max. He's three years old, and he's the product of an unholy union between a female beagle and a male shih tzu. As you can see, his front half is that of his long-haired, Chinese father and his back half comes from his short-haired, English mother, because genes are strange and mysterious things. 

Despite that fact that he looks like a tiny, buck-toothed bison, we love Max, and in exchange, he tries to not destroy too many of our things. Usually, this arrangement works just fine for everyone involved. 

Usually. 

Two months ago, our family decided that we just didn't have enough dog poop to pick up, and we decided to adopt an eight-week-old Newfoundland puppy we came across online. Introducing the two dogs went smoothly; 30 lb Max growled once to assert his dominance over the soon-to-be-bear-sized newcomer, and all was well. 

With a face like that, I'd be willing to clone her and adopt her twice.

Now, the thing about having two dogs is that it's a lot like having two kids: whatever you give to one, you have to give to the other. If one gets dinner, the other one also wants dinner. If one has a toy, the other one wants the toy too. If one digs up the half-decomposed carcass of a squirrel in the backyard, the other one wants its own mouthful of smelly rodent carrion. And a few nights ago, what the puppy had (that Max desperately wanted) was my attention.

Guinness the puppy had trotted up to me with her leash in her mouth, and, not wanting to put on pants and venture out into the cruel world outside, I made her settle for a hearty game of fetch in the hall. The sound of a forty-pound Newfie thundering up and down a hallway effectively drowns out any sounds of mischief going on in the house, and so when I went to check up on little Max five minutes later, I was surprised at what I found. 

I think I'll let the pictures speak for themselves. 

He does not look the least bit sorry.

On the bright side, the couch looks much more comfortable now.

He was at least considerate enough to leave us half the roll.

Comfortably surveying the carnage.

Needless to say, I was less than thrilled. Toilet paper, as you're probably well aware, is the flimsy material to which all other flimsy materials are compared, and it doesn't take a whole lot of dog saliva to turn it into a mushy white paste. After half an hour of scraping damp, balled-up tissue off the couch cushions, I was forced to give up and let it dry overnight. Max closely supervised the cleaning process, and even made a few valiant efforts to eat the pieces left behind.

While we're glad to see Max get a little extra fibre in his diet, this was a performance we'd rather not see an encore of. Rest assured, from now on, bathroom doors will be closed and all rolls of consumable household papers will be kept up on shelves that his stumpy little shih tzu legs can't reach. This, of course, will force him to seek out more expensive things to destroy. Stay tuned for updates. 

What's the worst thing your dog has ever done? Leave it in the comments.

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How to (Theoretically) Publish Your Novel and Live Happily Ever After

To commemorate finishing yet another draft of the manuscript that I will eventually query, I'm going to answer a question that I get from friends, family, and wide-eyed, curious onlookers all the time: How are you going to get your novel published?

It's a valid question; writing and semi-polishing my first novel took me almost exactly two years, and it's understandable that my loved ones want to ensure my long hours in front of the computer - and subsequent doughy physique - have not been in vain. Unfortunately, the average person in my life seems to believe that we live in an age where publishing requires little more than shipping the half-pound of paper that makes up your manuscript to New York, and waiting patiently for a cheque to arrive in the mail.

No need for a specific address. All of New York City accepts unpublished manuscripts.

In reality, the process is a little more complicated. You can rest easy knowing that in this day and age, you won't have to struggle with postage to get your masterpiece on the shelves; the only thing that the publishing process costs is time, energy, and the few remaining dredges of whatever sanity you're still clinging to.

There are a lot of possible routes from laptop to bookshelf, but my intended publishing journey looks a little something like this:

Step One: Write a novel that's worth publishing. 

This may take a few more attempts than initially anticipated.

To be completely honest, I won't know that I've accomplished this until I'm holding a copy of my book that I didn't personally make on a photocopier at Staples. But I did what I could to make sure that at least some people on this Earth won't immediately condemn my work as unreadable trash. 

For one, I was careful to write into a genre that a) exists, and b) I enjoy. Don't get me wrong; I value individuality as much as the next undiscovered, unappreciated writer. But as a former library employee, I understand that every book needs to fit somewhere on a shelf. Romance books go in the Romance section. Science fictions go in the science fiction section. Metaphysical young adult space western romantic mysteries go on the head librarian's desk with a question mark post-it attached, until someone finally takes pity on the poor, confused book and flings it down an elevator shaft.

To prevent my story from ending up homeless in a dark basement, I wrote it as a YA sci-fi. It's a pretty straightforward thing to do: my characters are teenagers on an ever-so-slightly angsty quest for identity, and they get to use technology that even Japanese teenagers don't have yet. Easy. But I didn't write a YA sci-fi just so I could one day see my books wedged next to the Artemis Fowl series on a library shelf; it's a genre I actually enjoy. Is it the most lucrative genre I could have gone for? Of course not. If you're in the writing game for money, you'd better get started on a romance novel about a Scotsman/Native American/Cowboy/Vampire/Wealthy Oil Sheik and a beautiful Slave/Advertising Executive/Early Religious Settler/Bubble-Headed Idiot right away. Since I'd rather write the warning labels on chemical solvents than churn out genre romances, I figured I'd have a better shot at success if I enjoyed what I was writing.

Putting a half-naked male torso on your cover is the key to success.

The last thing I did in an attempt to make something of quasi-publishable quality was proofread. I've read a lot of currently-being-queried manuscripts that look they were typed with a pair of snowshoes, and I didn't want to make the same mistakes. It took a lot of time, effort, and Google searches to grammar websites to make everything look nice, but if my manuscript doesn't make agents want to scoop out their own eyeballs with a spoon, I'll know it was worth it.

Step Two: Do research. 

As I previously mentioned, there's a lot more to publishing than turning up at Random House with a printed manuscript and a pen outstretched to sign your book deal. The major publishing houses got tired of wading through piles of unsolicited literary garbage decades ago, and now require unpublished authors to seek out a middle man: the almighty literary agent.

The funny thing about literary agents is, no matter how much money you have or how many luxury exotic cats you own, you can't just phone one up and demand she represent your novel. Agents earn a living through the ~15% commission they take on the books they sell, so it doesn't matter how devilishly good-looking you are, or how many tigers you have in your living room - if agents don't want to live on ramen, they can't represent unsellable books.

Unfortunately, Mr. Snuggles cannot get you an agent.

Although agents all play a similar role in every author's career - they sell manuscripts to publishers and prevent writers from being trampled to death in the wildebeest stampede that is the publishing process - not every agent is alike. Agents are more than just faceless gatekeepers to literary fame and fortune; they're people too, and they're not about to spend weeks or years of their lives advocating for a book in a genre they consider to be little more than expensive toilet paper. Some might like to represent only science fiction and fantasy. Others may be exclusively seeking memoirs from ex-Amish motorcycle gang members. Long before any writer starts sending out queries to agents, he or she needs to do some homework. Look up an agent's tastes, past sales, and favourite books. Find out what they're willing to represent. When it comes to literary agents, people tell me, there's no such thing as "too much research".

No, I lied. There is such thing as too much research.

During the months I edited my manuscript, I spent a lot of time looking up agents. I read blogs, bios, Twitter feeds, Publishers Marketplace and QueryTracker comments. The only way for me to learn more information about some of these agents would be to actually hack into their private medical records. By the time I'd finished cyber-stalking all of them, I'd come up with a healthy list of 58 agents whom I felt might be interested in taking a look at what I'd written.

Step Three: Write submissions material.

As I mentioned before, even if you've written the next "Harry Potter and the Fifty Shades of Hunger Games", you can't just phone up an agent to pitch them your book. Since publishing is a business, business correspondence is expected: in this case, you'll need to write agents a special kind of letter called a query.

In theory, a query letter is something that could be written while waiting for the bus - it's a short, formal letter that tells the agent who you are and summarizes the dazzling brilliance of your literary masterpiece in just a few short sentences. There's not really a right or wrong way to do it, so long as it makes someone want to immediately read your story. Easy enough, right? You should be able to scratch one out on a fast food napkin in the time it takes you to cram a McGreasyBurger into your face. The only issue is, of course, that you might need to make an adjustment or two before your letter is just right.

Just a few of my early drafts.

Oh, wait, did I say that queries were simple and easy? I meant to say that they're the hardest fucking thing you'll ever write in your life. Mine is only 266 words long, and I put more thought and effort into it than I'll put into my future wedding vows. The only thing I agonized over more than my query was my synopsis. For those who aren't familiar with the term, a synopsis is a one- or two-page document that presents the plot, characters, story, setting, backstory, tone, voice, themes, and soul of your novel in a clear, concise manner. They usually top out at around 1,500 words, and they take two to three long, grueling months to write and perfect. And after all that, the best part is, around half of the agents you query won't ask you to include a synopsis at all.

Step Four: Make agent lists.

Carpet-bombing as a strategy is very rarely successful, and agent submissions are no exception. Sending out a query to every appropriate agent you researched at once is a bad move. Sure, it might help you get the whole process over with faster, but consider this: between the sleepless hours and crippling alcohol dependency you doubtlessly developed during the query writing stage, you may have overlooked some problems in your letter. What happens if you send out a query to every single agent you know of and realize the next day that they're all hopelessly flawed? You're screwed, that's what.

If at all possible, avoid writing your query on an iPhone.

When I was initially researching the proper way to query an agent, the writing denizens of the internet advised me to query in rounds, and since I believe everything I read on the internet, that's exactly what I'm doing. It's a clever concept - you send it out to just ten or so agents at a time, and wait for feedback. If you get a unanimous string of cold, impersonal rejections, you know that you need to put your query through the shredder and write a better one.

Now, I'm not exactly known for making high-calibre decisions, so the logic I used in making lists of agents for each round might be heinously flawed. But since I have my name at the top of the website, I get to talk about me, and I came up with my own system for determining rounds of agents.

I'm about two more bad ideas away from having to wear this at all times.

Mostly, I just avoided picking out a "dream agent". Frankly, if an agent likes my book enough to represent me, I don't care who they are are or who they represent - they are my new favourite person of all time. 

The only other thing I looked at was responsiveness. My first queries went off to agents in my genre whom QueryTracker hailed as being extremely responsive. My reason for this was fairly simple - if my query is a flawed mess, I'd rather know about it right away than sit around biting my nails to the quick, waiting for responses to materialize out of the mythical abyss of an agent's inbox.

Above: How I picture non-responsive agents.

No one was spared from my list of agents to query. Agents whose blogs expressed that they were chomping at the bit for snarky teen sci-fi made it in, but so did agents who said they'd occasionally consider something with a whiff of science fiction. I'm not about to carpet-bomb agents who represent nothing but steamy harlequin romance or hard-boiled detective novels, but anyone who indicated that they might give my work a glance is worth querying - after all, one glance may be all it takes.

Step Five: Send out queries.

I've done a great deal of whining and complaining up until now about everything, but this, by far, has been the hardest stage of the querying process. In fact, I was more than capable of never reaching this stage at all. Before I sent out a single query, I went back over the manuscript a dozen or more times, desperately searching for some sort of error that could needed fixing before I could unleash my little story on the world. Eventually, I realized that I was just stalling for time by making arbitrary changes, swapping a good word for an equally good synonym or just staring blankly at commas, wondering if any of them were violating some long-forgotten law of spliced punctuation.

Shredding your letter to confetti and hurling it at agents is festive, but not recommended.

The first query I sent out sat in my inbox for nearly forty-five minutes as I checked, double-checked and re-checked for the slightest spelling error or formatting problem that could drive the agent to print off my letter and set it on fire in disgust. Eventually, the waves of nervous nausea subsided, and I was able to click 'send'. Once that was done, it got easier - I managed to send out a total of seven more queries before I finally lapsed into a neurotic cycle of endlessly checking my email. By the time I'm ready to send the next round, I'm hoping the urge to fear-puke will have dissipated entirely.

Step Six: Wait.

This is the stage I'm at right now. Agent response times vary from three minutes to never, so waiting patiently while complete, total strangers living thousands of kilometres away decide whether or not you get to chase your lifelong dreams is a skill that every writer needs to develop.

What you really need to make it through the query process.

Of course, even if, wonder of wonders, an agent does email me back to let me know that they'd like to be sent the massive Word document that makes up my young life's work, there'll still be more waiting left to do. It's not unreasonable for an agent to take up to six months to review a potential client manuscript, leaving the nervous writer to wear out the left-click button on her mouse from pressing the "refresh" button on her email.

I might need a little bit more wine.

Even if, in some best-possible-case hypothetical future scenario, an agent agrees to deal with me, that won't be the end of my waiting. The publishing industry moves at approximately glacial speeds, and after signing with an agent and making all the subsequent recommended revisions, a writer can still expect to wait between several weeks and forever for a book deal to appear.

Bonus Possible Future Step: Revel in the ethereal glory of success (maybe).

The important thing to keep in mind here is that most fledgling writers don't make it past the query stage, especially with their first manuscript. In all likelihood, two years of work, editing and anxiety will amount to a pile of rejection letters in my inbox and some newfound bitterness to pour into the next book.

With that said, this is still the goal. Every time I hit 'send' on a query, I know that there's an ever-so-slight chance that the agent will be intrigued enough to ask for the full thing, and then subsequently fall so head-over-heels in love with it that they demand to represent me, and then promptly secure me a multi-book publishing deal, which leads to a movie franchise, allowing me to retire in a pile of money at the age of twenty-five.

Also, being a published author will turn you into an attractive blonde lady.

I can dream. Ultimately, whether my first novel ends up printed on a shelf, or occupying a space of honour in my desk drawer, I did a pretty neat thing by writing it and having the courage the send it out.

And to me, that's what really matters.

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Hello, World. It's me, Janel.

Starting a blog is tricky.

On the one hand, I want readers to have enough information about me to care about what I say and eventually lapse into healthy, occasional worship of me. On the other hand, I don't want to give out so much information that a potential stalker could show up at my door with my favourite kind of cheesecake and five of my least-hated romantic comedies on DVD. Since I'm terrible at finding that kind of balance, I'll just start by letting you know that I like Oreo cheesecake.

My hobbies include pretending internet privacy is still a thing in 2013.

Since, I am not, to my knowledge, some kind of sentient fungus, I come complete with a back story. I was born twenty-one years ago in Moncton, New Brunswick, which, despite being a 'major' Canadian city, is the sort of place that you can only find on a map if you grew up near it. 

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