The Journey to Make Me Free

My debut novel, Make Me Free, will be released in the first quarter of 2025. The sequel will also be published in the first half of this year. These two books will constitute the Losantiverse duology, a two-book contemporary fiction series. When that happens, I will officially be an independent literary fiction novelist.

The truth is that my big creative projects are born out of a reckoning.

The last creative project I decided to take on - prior to my foray into creative writing - was Potstirrer Podcast.

In 2012, I earned a PhD in political science, but promptly left academia for the private sector. Four years later, my sight began to disappear a little bit each week. Facing potential blindness, I realized that, despite being happily married and in my white-collar career, I was wrestling with ennui. Every day felt the same as the day before. As I watched former colleagues excel in academia and industry, while I felt like a hamster on a flywheel, I questioned my life choices.

On the brink of potential disability, I wondered if the time to make a difference had passed me by. If so, I had no one to blame but myself.

While undergoing medical examinations and procedures aimed at saving my sight, I feared that with my worsening symptoms, I would suffer the same fate as my father. In his later years, he fought similar health issues - albeit with a different cause - that robbed him of much of his eyesight.

While I could not control the changes that were happening to my eyes, I realized there were some aspects of my life within my control. With that in mind, I made three impactful changes:

• I changed the way I ate and increased my activity.
• I joined a local improv troupe.
• I started Potstirrer Podcast, which has allowed me to utilize my expertise in American politics and faith on my own terms.

Eventually, I received a proper diagnosis that restored enough of my sight that, with daily medication and monitoring by a specialist, I live a normal life. While that was a scary time, in retrospect, I needed that wake-up call, and to this day, my life is much more fulfilling.

Now...about Make Me Free...

While I began writing the story in late 2022, the project's genesis was in 2020, during the pandemic lockdown.

Lockdown was a gift and a curse.

As an introvert, I felt a sense of relief and calm working from home, without a lot of distractions, especially after a recent promotion. It was a nice break not being forced to live socially each day. No longer having a work commute gave me time back to enjoy solo pursuits such as reading, podcasting, and playing video games.

At the same time, with family members working in the healthcare industry, my long-standing anxiety, which always has its peaks and valleys, was on high alert. I fretted for my loved ones and friends who worked closely with vulnerable populations. Counting the death tolls from Covid in the early months did not help. And with my husband working nights and sleeping during the day, it gave me a lot of time to think. Too much time to think.

I thought about my past in evangelical Christianity, a past that I had left behind some time before, but was still figuring out what, if anything, would take its place. I thought about how, with the pandemic, too many of evangelical Christianity's leaders were championing narratives that were antithetical to life. The shift in my podcast content to primarily evangelical critiques reflected this.

I considered the poor coping mechanisms I continued to use for dealing with anxiety, depression, and trauma. Sitting at home doomscrolling and struggling to sleep, the hard work I had done with my intake and activity over the previous few years was reversing, and it wasn't just about willpower.

I thought a lot about what it means to grieve. My birth mother died two days after Christmas 2019, just a few months before the lockdown, and I had not taken the time to grieve the loss.

For context, my father and my birth mother divorced when I was a baby, and my father remarried shortly after I turned two years old. My dad and his wife, who is for all intents and purposes my mom, raised me. She is still Mom, and will always be Mom.

My birth mother was not in my life growing up, but I met her when I was in my late twenties, a few years after the death of my father. I was blessed to have met her and gotten to know her over the next decade.

With the pandemic, there was not much time or space to process losing her, and even if I had it, I'm unsure how much that would've helped.

Parental loss can be complicated even in the best of circumstances. My father died in 2006. He and I were very close. I would say he knew me better than he knew myself. Yet when he passed away, the secrets came out of the woodwork. Nothing shameful...nothing that would tarnish his memory, but knowing my father in death has been a different animal than the relationship I had with him in life.

Losing my birth mother was its own experience. At first, much of my sadness was over what might have been were she present in my life the entire time. While I did get to know her over ten years, there was a lot that I didn't know, especially about her as a young person. She only shared two anecdotes (I counted) and kept the details close to the vest. Even to this day, I don't even know where she went to high school.

Once the pandemic hit, properly grieving the loss of my other biological parent was shelved.

By late 2022, I was facing podcasting burnout. Part of it was because Potstirrer Podcast covers a lot of heavy topics. The other part is that I could feel the physical and emotional regression. I needed a mental health break. At that point, I made the difficult decision to go on hiatus. The pause lasted until November 2024.

Shortly before the podcasting break, I recorded and released a series of author conversations. Through listening to the stories of the authors I had the honor and privilege of chatting with, particularly their "why" - there it was. By writing, I could process and release everything I had been facing since the beginning of the pandemic, or really, since late 2019.

In brainstorming what would be my National Novel Writing Month project, I thought about penning a non-fiction book about my hometown of Detroit, Michigan. I also thought about a memoir. However, after careful consideration, I had no interest in a tell-all (I'm not famous or special), and the idea of an academic endeavor sounded a bit soul-sucking. My desire was to create a story that would allow me to work through real issues while using my long-dormant imagination.

As a teen plagued by feelings of abandonment and rejection, I wrote fiction to escape that life. But after a twenty-plus year pause from creative writing, the drive to do so was revived as a way to dive into that reality headfirst. That story is what became Make Me Free.

The story is about a young woman in the early 2000s who begins to uncover the truth about her mother's absence after the unexpected death of her father and a move to a new city as an act of faith. It includes themes such as grief, family relationships, undiagnosed neurodivergence, toxic religion, unresolved trauma, mental health, sexuality and unrequited love, the search for belonging, and self-acceptance.

Writing was catharsis.

By the end of the month, after 50,000 words...I sat on it.

A year later, I decided to write a second novel, a continuation of the first, but with a two-decade time skip, and from another character's perspective. It is about two divorced, middle-aged men, who go on an impromptu road trip. Similar themes reappear, such as family relationships, toxic religion, romance, mental illness, and self-acceptance. It also touches on themes such as substance abuse, marital discord, infidelity, regret, and second chances.

The experience penning the second installment of the Losantiverse duology solidified how much I truly enjoy creative writing for its own sake. After completing the manuscript, I returned to the first book.

Throughout my life, reading fiction stories has brought me a great deal of comfort and healing. I wanted the opportunity to share my own stories and in so doing, pay it forward. That gave me the determination to finish what I started and see this through to publication.

As I returned to my first story, I was able to dig through the layers of my life, contemplating what was and is, rebuilding my body and mind, and reconstructing a more authentic version of my faith.

By the beginning of 2024, the full manuscripts of both books were complete. While editing and polishing the finished products for independent release, I continued efforts to improve my skill set by joining Vocal - penning short stories and the occasional poem.

Later in the year, I brought on beta readers, bought formatting software, and commissioned a professional cover, among other expenses. Self-publishing is not cheap, but for this endeavor, it's worth it. During this journey, my husband has been very supportive, which is a blessing to be sure.

It was at this point that I could finally take the death of my birth mother off the shelf and mourn her for the first time.

She would share tales and insights about her life as a fully-fledged adult, including the love for politics she shared with my father - which is how they met (something my dad never told me - color me shocked). She spoke fondly of her career as a special education teacher, a vocation cut short by health problems of her own. She loved music. Towards the end of her life, she got into K-Pop, which was quirky for a Black woman in Detroit approaching the age of seventy. The final time I visited her, a few months before she died, we spent the entire afternoon in her apartment listening to BTS, laughing and enjoying each other's company.

She was my birth mother - she gave me life, and in getting to know her, challenged my understanding of nature versus nurture. While my childhood was spent in her absence, in adulthood we had a bond. Connecting with her was connecting - and accepting - a part of myself. I miss her, yet she lives on.

Make Me Free will be published in early March of this year. The sequel will likely be released in early May. In 2025, I will cross over from writer to author, and readers will see the culmination of a healing journey years in the making.