Becoming a writer was never on my life’s agenda. But one morning, in the middle of my mid-life crisis, I woke up from a really intense dream and said, “I need to write that story!” So, I did. That first book Reis’s Pieces, which involves schizophrenia, was my second published novel. Where Are the Cocoa Puffs? was written years later when mental illness suddenly rocked my world. Initially motivated by a dream and ultimately motivated by my waking life, I wanted to write books that involve engaging, likable protagonists who are struggling directly with a serious mental illness. I want my books to inspire, educate, demystify, and foremostly entertain.
I wrote...
Where Are the Cocoa Puffs? A Family's Journey through Bipolar Disorder
Where Are the Cocoa Puffs? A Family's Journey Through Bipolar Disorderfollows a family through the tragedy of bipolar disorder, but it's not tragic. It's funny, sad, and thought-provoking—as real and as raw as mental illness itself.
As eighteen-year-old Amanda spirals into mania, her father—a psychiatrist—sees the realization of his worst fears: Amanda is not just moody, but truly ill. Amanda’s mother struggles with the shame of having raised a "crazy" daughter. Amanda’s fifteen-year-old sister denies the illness; my sister's a bitch is so much easier to accept. As Amanda careens between bouts of violence, cosmic euphoria, and suicidal despair, her boyfriend Ryan—who is initially ensnared by Amanda's manic sexuality—is ultimately held throughout the chaos by love and family.
This memoir which reads like a novel is a case study in life being stranger than fiction. Many memoirs on mental illness are self-indulgent and frankly boring. This bizarre recounting of an unimaginable childhood is a rollercoaster ride of joy and peril. Like a goldfish looking out at a carnival, waiting for that ping pong ball to land on its head, Burroughs narrates with such natural humor that nearly every horrific part of the story is just darn fun. If you want a book that inspires, entertains, and might just make you feel better about your own life, you’ve found it!
This is the true story of a boy who wanted to grow up with the Brady Bunch, but ended up living with the Addams Family. Augusten Burroughs's mother gave him away to be raised by her psychiatrist, a dead ringer for Santa Claus and a certifiable lunatic into the bargain. The doctor's bizarre family, a few patients and a sinister man living in the garden shed completed the tableau. The perfect squalor of their dilapidated Victorian house, there were no…
The most amazing aspect of this novel is that it’s written by a dude named Wally who presents as a man but clearly knows what goes on in a woman’s head—and body. Not an easy feat for a lot of writers. Take Hemmingway—he knew as much about women as Mars knows about Venus. Nearly every facet of the protagonist Dolores Price’s life from the age of four to forty is spot on. Perhaps I personally mesh with this novel because I too came of age in the late 60s to early 70s, which was an especially wacky and challenging time for women. You’ll laugh more than cringe as you follow Dolores through her tortured evolution, and I promise, it will stay with you for decades.
Dolores Price is the wry and overweight, sensitive and pained, cynical heroine of this novel. The story follows her from four to 40, from her shattered family life through the hellish circles of sexual and food abuse to her gradual recovery and her fight to love again.
Why may you ask is this book listed in my “fun” books about mental illness? There are those who might say, “When they forced me to read this novel in high school, the only fun things were the naughty words!” I beg to differ. Salinger was a master of bitterly dark humor. Holden Caulfield poking fun at “phonies” and adults as he struggles to maintain his sanity is timeless. Come on, what’s not fun about Ackley’s pimples or halitosis? A rawer version of Peter Pan, this classic story should still be on every young person’s reading list.
Beautiful, heart-wrenching, and masterfully written this memoir starts with twenty-eight-year-old MacLean waking up in a train station in India. He has no idea who he is or how he got there. MacLean doesn’t waste any time diving into the terror and the humor of his situation. He becomes increasingly ill and is eventually placed in a psychiatric hospital in Hyderabad. Turns out he’s had a rare reaction to the anti-malarial drug Lariam. Fun, right? With lines like, “Faking sanity isn’t as hard as it might seem. You just have to shut up.” You betcha it’s fun!
“A deeply moving account of amnesia that . . . reminds us how we are all always trying to find a version of ourselves that we can live with.” —Los Angeles Times
On October 17, 2002, David MacLean “woke up” on a train platform in India with no idea who he was or why he was there. No money. No passport. No identity.
Taken to a mental hospital by the police, MacLean then started to hallucinate so severely he had to be tied down. He could remember song lyrics, but not his family, his friends, or the woman he was…
On the surface, this bizarre novel is nothing more than an outrageously long comment on a cooking blog. But it is so much more. The “wedding crasher”—who is never given a name—doesn’t attend the wedding; he invades the couple’s wedding blog with increasingly insidious cyberspace shenanigans. This laugh-out-loud tirade is an addictive journey into the mind of a very lonely, frankly unlikable man. The More You Ignore Me brilliantly and hilariously examines the inner workings of a delusional and grandiose individual. Reminiscent of the Phantom in Phantom of the Opera, Nichols successfully creates a character worth hating and a character almost—but not quite—worthy of empathy.
Praise for Travis Nichols: "A rewarding experience. [Nichols'] sentences repeat and sit inside each other as a sort of Greek chorus that resonates throughout the book."--Chicago Sun-Times "Nichols pulls the readers in ...with breathtaking immediacy...Off We Go into the Wild Blue Yonder is both original and haunting."--Star Tribune (Minneapolis) Charli and Nico's wedding blog has an uninvited guest: a commenter convinced the bride is being romanced by the brother of the groom. To save her from a terrible mistake he adopts multiple identities on multiple message boards, sharing his fears for Charli, his outrage at being thwarted, and the romance,…
Two women, a century apart, seek to rebuild their lives after leaving their homelands. Arriving in tropical Singapore, they find romance, but also find they haven’t left behind the dangers that caused them to flee.
Haunted by the specter of terrorism after 9/11, Aislinn Givens leaves her New York career and joins her husband in Southeast Asia when he takes a job there. She acquires several paintings by a colonial-era British artist that she believes are a warning.
The artist, Elizabeth Pennington, tells her own tumultuous story through diary entries that end when World War I reaches the colony with catastrophic results. In the present, Aislinn and her husband learn that terrorism takes many shapes when they are ensnared by local political upheaval and corruption.
"Aislinn Givens leaves a settled life in Manhattan for an unsettled life in Singapore. That painting radiates mystery and longing. So does Clifford Garstang's vivid and simmering novel, The Last Bird of Paradise." –John Dalton, author of Heaven Lake and The Inverted Forest
Two women, nearly a century apart, seek to rebuild their lives when they reluctantly leave their homelands. Arriving in Singapore, they find romance in a tropical paradise, but also find they haven't left behind the dangers that caused them to flee.
In the aftermath of 9/11 and haunted by the specter of terrorism, Aislinn Givens leaves her…
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