Total pages in book: 66
Estimated words: 61332 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 307(@200wpm)___ 245(@250wpm)___ 204(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 61332 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 307(@200wpm)___ 245(@250wpm)___ 204(@300wpm)
The answer is not perfect happiness.
It’s actually pretty fucking boring.
All the art and stories and creativity that fills the world with color and excitement, there’s a very high chance it came from someone who’s “not quite right in the head.”
I told a friend recently, “It’s sad, but at this point, I don’t know who I would be without my voices,” talking about my Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and intrusive, repetitive thoughts. And they responded, “Nobody.”
And of course my first reaction was to be slightly hurt. Like, damn, bruh. But then I remembered who I was talking to. My bestie with Asperger’s Syndrome, who just tells me like it is and literally cannot concern themselves with things like tone and wording.
They continued, “Without your voices, who would’ve told you all your characters’ stories? So you wouldn’t be an author. Who would get you to do crazy shit like jump in a dumpster to rescue plants, when you couldn’t even previously keep a cactus alive? So you wouldn’t be a crazy plant lady. Who would’ve made you leave your brother’s house in the middle of the night to go meet some guy off the internet at a Denny’s, which eventually led to you falling in love with his best friend, having three daughters, and now being married for over twelve years? So you wouldn’t be a wife and mom. You’d be nobody, because you wouldn’t have anything telling you to LIVE.” (Read the entire story of that insane-o time in my life in The Blogger Diaries)
And that, dear reader, is why you befriend people with these so-called “illnesses” instead of being awkwardly “kind” while trying to avoid us.
My mental illnesses have now gotten sexual assault survivors into therapy when before they said they had no hope of healing.
My mental illnesses have given women who once gave up on finding love because of their “weirdness” their second wind to try again, especially after seeing the hotty this dumpster fire landed. I mean, come on. Have you seen my hubby in my videos on TikTok? Phew!
And he likes me. He really, really likes me. No matter how fucking “sick” my brain is, he doesn’t want me any other way. And that just proves there is someone out there for literally everyone. We just have to find the person whose demons play well with our own.
So if you were pissed off about the book ending this way, look, I’m sorry. That depressive episode Sienna was going through, how she hadn’t written a word in nine months, lost all her “friends” in one fell swoop, and all that other shit? 100% real. This book is a goddamn diary of sorts.
But what’s also real in it?
Vivian Lowe. Who, in this book, is really my real-life best friend Jamie Vest, my ride or die, then flavored with a little Aurora Rose Reynolds, Erin Noelle, and CC Monroe—my author besties turned family. Every word out of Vi’s mouth in this book was spoken by one of these real-life goddesses, and like Sienna, I couldn’t have made it through the past two years without them.
What’s fiction?
I couldn’t tell you to save my life. At this point in world building, it’s hard for me to decipher between reality and what I’ve made up and submersed myself in for the past eight years. It was very confusing the other day when I walked into my husband’s shop and saw he had built me a life-size replica of the St. Andrew’s Cross from one of the playrooms at Club Alias.
But that’s a tale for a different book.
There’s another reason this is a Part 1 instead of one whole book—I fell in love with these characters SO HARD, and I wasn’t ready to leave them yet. I could’ve easily made this an instalove, wham-bam, thank you, ma’am, but I. Didn’t. Want. To. If I could guarantee my readers wouldn’t disown me, I would stretch Sienna’s story to be a whole damn series just to keep spending time with Gym Daddy, Dumpster Daddy, and Dream Daddy.
Just wait, y’all. You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
Plant Daddy Part 2 will be available January 31st.
Promise.
And you’ll see Sienna get her happily ever after.
But with who?
I don’t know. The voices haven’t even told ME yet!
Love,
KD