Best Y.A. Horror (Last Chance for "Recs" and "Secs")

What is the best young adult horror genre book (or series)?

There's a lot happening in my life, of course, so I forgot to give this all the shout outs that most of our prior conversations get, but we still have our ongoing book recommendation post for young adult horror.

Just don't forget to pop over to the ORIGINAL PAGE to drop that recommendation or check out the rules if you're unsure of them. If you put it here or on the social media pages where I'm sharing this link, it won't get tabulated and put on our list.

Also please keep in mind that we this is about books, not their A/V media adaptations. Coraline the book and Coraline the movie are….well they're pretty close actually, but there are some differences.

I'll be tabulating results in the next couple of days.

Thank you all for joining in our Book Rec Conversation. I've really love reading all your comments about the books you treasure and why.

If You Need Anything… (The C Word)

I'm going to do at least one more of these health and status updates instead of the regular Tuesday report. I haven't done a lot of writing beyond what I've posted here. (No fiction or Patreon stuff behind the scenes.) I've spent about 30 hours since last Tuesday in various doctors' offices for either consults or procedures, and the writing just didn't get done. But I can tell you what IS going on.

I have cancer.

The news hit Friday (after waiting for a promised call that never came on Thursday). The gastroenterologist found a mass during a colonoscopy on Wednesday (which I was undergoing to try and find the answer to why I'd suddenly become anemic). They found something during the colonoscopy. They took a biopsy and sent it to pathology. The rest is what it is.

Colon cancer. Very treatable. They're going to resect part of my colon. Bigity bam! We won't know for sure until after surgery (when the pathology comes back from the lymph nodes) what stage it is, but there are a lot of signs that we caught it early and a really good chance I won't even need chemo. The news was jarring—even frightening—at first, but like most bad news, once it settled in and put its feet up, I realized that even Everything In My Power™ was not that much, so I take those steps, and otherwise live my life around it. 

The outpouring of support from my friends, community, and extended reader base community has been absolutely breathtaking (sometimes in a gasping, literal way). I love how many people have reached out to tell me they believe in me or that they've been through something similar.

I suspect (because I've been the same way for the last forty-seven twenty-nine years of my life) that when most people say, "If you need anything—anything at all—just ask," they are probably imagining me tearfully unspooling my emotions over the phone at four in the morning about how vulnerable I feel facing my mortality.  (And don't get me wrong. There is probably going to be some of that, but I do already have people that I would lean on that hard.) But what they probably don't expect is for me to say something like, "Yeah, do you have any inside information on where I could get a PS5*?"

*Okay, I somehow got one of these due to the intervention of a dear peep who just happened to end up with an extra.

So if you're honestly wishing you could help, and you just don't know how, here's a no nonsense list of what I'm really really actually going to need.

1- Money

I hate to be crass, and like many Gen Xers raised in a largely WASP culture, I've got a lot of baggage around making this request (even as an already crowdfunded artist/entertainer), but the most useful thing to me is going to be money. The medical bills started a month ago, are already stacking up, and the surgery and hospital stay haven't even happened. Just getting an answer about what is going on has cost me nearly four figures out of pocket.

I never got sick (beyond "bed rest and fluids") before this and until this year, I kind of thought even my silver plan was sort of unnecessary. But now I'm facing out of network costs, some drugs that don't have generics (Suprep is over $100 even WITH insurance—you have to pay to have some of the worst two hours of your life), a non-trivial deductible, coinsurance; even just the damn copayments are adding up SO fast. I'm going to be in the hospital for at least two nights after going under the knife of a surgeon who probably makes my annual salary in a month. I'm switching to a gold plan next year so I have some extra help with all the follow-ups and stuff, but that won't kick in until Jan 1st, and it doesn't help me now.

This is all to say nothing of non-medical expenses that run the gamut from the cost of running all around town every day to appointments to grabbing takeout after a procedure because I don't feel like cooking. Not to mention the losses from Patreon folks who aren't as chill as most of my readers about how I'm not writing as much these days and my partner's lost wages from days taken off to be with me.

I don't want to sound like a mercenary here. Money is FAR from the only thing I need to get me through this situation, but money IS the Swiss Army Knife of problem solving in our society. If everyone here threw me a few bucks, I'd be able to get through this without stressing about how I'm going to pay all the medical bills without blowing through my retirement money, but also without stressing if the folks helping me while I convalesce are going to keep the house clean or if I can afford Panera some night I am in too much pain to cook.

If you're looking to help long term (or perhaps a bit each month until I'm through this), the best way is to become a Patron through Patreon. I wouldn't mind knowing if the patreon is going to be temporary, just so I can know what to expect from my budget when I'm fully recovered. (If that's the case, feel free to include a note or drop me an email: chris.brecheen@gmail.com, but I won't be upset or anything if you aren't able to).

If one-time financial support is more your speed, you can drop a set amount at Writing About Writing's paypal, at my Venmo (chris.brecheen@gmail.com) or even message me for Zelle information or a mailing address if you'd like to send a check.

2- Think DISTRACTION, not lachrymose

I'll admit that I felt seen the first few people who sent me a message that they were so sorry. And yet…as kind and sincere and genuine as the place is from which those sorts of sentiments come, after a while they kind of keep me quagmired in those sad and sorry feelings where I'm getting dragged back to this perspective of my diagnosis as a big tragedy that defines my life and who I am, and isn't just something I'm going through (and will probably be fully recovered in a couple of months). 

It's not that I'm not going to have moments where it all hits me and I lose it. (I've already had more than a few.) It's just that what I really want is to laugh and love and be a shitposting memelord and watch good movies and bang cute people and…. I don't want this diagnosis to be everything I am, everything people see about me, and I sure don't want it to be every conversation I have.

If you want to reach out—and I think that's great— throw me a meme. Tell me a joke. Tell me about your family member who beat the odds and that you're rooting for me, but then don't just leave it in awkward silence where I am like, "Okay….well, thank you. I ALSO hope I don't die."  Maybe add in a terrible pun. Maybe flirt shamelessly. Maybe tell me about your D&D game last Thursday. Maybe…I don't even know. Let's just talk about something—anything—else. Maybe I'm not going to call you at 3 in the morning and tell you about how vulnerable confronting my mortality makes me feel, buuuuuuut if we have the rapport from a relationship that is built on something more than just you feeling bad for me, I might feel like I can trust you when I say, "Hey, can I share something about this whole thing that is kind of hard…?"

3- Meal Train

This might be more for folks at least on my public Facebook profile* (and less everyone following the Writing About Writing page) but surgery is going to lay me up for a couple of weeks. I don't do all the cooking, but I do a lot of it, and the person who does the rest is going to be taking care of me, so a break from having to worry about what's for dinner would be wonderful. I don't know who lives around me and might be able to cook the kind of low-dairy vegetarian fare that we usually eat, and who might want to just make sure we have a Grubhub drop-off of some falafels or something, but taking on a meal would be really super helpful.

You can find the Meal Train HERE

4- Get Creative

I'm getting a lot of folks asking me if there's anything they can do.

There's lots you can do, but that question is really open-ended, and it kind of leaves it on me to not only figure out what you might be good at, but also STILL feels like I'm imposing to ask (even though the offer is there). I don't want to…like…MANAGE you. Folks who say something like, "Would you like a 'Fuck Cancer' cross stitch in your favorite color?" are MUCH easier to reply to. 

It would be rude of me to answer the question "What can I do?" with "I don't know. What CAN you do?" Or "What are you WILLING to do?" So it might be more useful to put a couple of things on the table that you are up for, and I'll let you know if they might help. Do you know medical insurance loopholes for Blue Shield? Are you a licenced massage therapist? Would you be up for a couple of volunteered house-cleaning hours? Are you willing to help someone navigate medical bureaucracy? Can you do patient advocacy? Do you have some form of art you like to share with people (that would be a lovely distraction)? Obviously some of these require you to live pretty close, but you get the idea. 

I'm sure there is something you can do, but if you want anything more than me to acknowledge that you are sweet for offering, and then we both move on, I might need some options.

5- Be patient with me

I'm getting a LOT of correspondence and, frankly, it's kind of a lot to spend an hour or two a day answering all the texts and messages and returning calls and answering questions and telling people that I'm okay. I sort have begun to feel like I'm comforting everyone else. If I take a while to return a call or get back to an email, please don't think less of me. And if I REALLY forget, it's not that I don't want to talk to you. I just lost track. Give me another nudge in a few days (please) because I want to keep up with all this—I'm just not doing a very good job right now.

6- GIF Party in the comments!

I'm going to post this one more time for my Facebook page, and I'll just mention that if you have no cash but still want to help, you can totally throw a GIF into the comment section. That'll cause the FB algorithm show it to more people than simply reacting with the like button.

I'm sorry if I've violated the social contract here by legitimately answering the question of "Is there anything I can do?/If you need anything…" If you're in the old school where I should just appreciate the offer and we both move on, consider it done, and I know your heart is in a wonderful place. But some of you seem so authentic and sincere and if you want to help, there really ARE ways…

Illness and Writing (Updates on Health and Writerly Musing)

Once upon a time, Chris went to the dentist having not really done a good job flossing for something like the last three weeks. Some shit had come up in their life, and they fell out of good habits and they walked into that appointment with their tail tucked between their legs.

"Looks great," they told Chris.

"What?" they said. "I flossed like eight times in the last three weeks. Scold me immediately!"

"It's about how you've been doing for the whole time, not during a small period."

What does this have to do with writing? My health issues? Cancer?

Writing is a lot like flossing. Life happens. Things come up. New love blooms. Suddenly you're embroiled in medical stuff, and being spit roasted (but by tubes with cameras and not in the fun way). You aren't as good about sitting down and writing (at the designated time and for a few hours) for days or a week or even a month. 

But you have good habits. You learned to look for ways to make your writing time WORK instead of looking for excuses for why you couldn't. You do it a little instead of not at all during the troubled time, and when the stress passes, you're right back there doing it like you ever were. So you're maybe just a little rusty at putting in a full day instead of completely out of writing shape.

I will probably write this post over the course of a weekish (most posts take a couple of sessions—I rarely sit down and write a draft from beginning to end), but at this exact moment I'm writing this sentence from the chair in the infusion lab where I am having iron put directly into me intravenously. I'm looking at half a dozen folks here for what I'm almost certain is chemotherapy, and trying not to let my thoughts spiral too far along the path of "extremely rare reactions" . Maybe it'll be something easy.

(Narrator's voice: It wasn't.)

The doctors appointments tend to stack pretty hard when you've got something going on. You see your primary care physician. They want you to see a couple of specialists. You consult with a specialist; they schedule a procedure. You consult with another specialist. They schedule two procedures, labs, and a follow up. Your primary care physician wants another appointment. One of the specialists finds something. You get moved from consult to procedures faster than you've ever seen the medical bureaucracy move. Suddenly every week is two or three or more appointments with a mountain of paperwork for each one, and you're losing days here and there to recovery times and weird appointments that don't fit well into your workday but were all they had.

Two days later…

I had a colonoscopy yesterday and they found something. Something big. At the moment I'm writing this paragraph, I'm waiting on the results of a biopsy—which basically means I'm waiting for someone to tell me if it's cancer*. I don't know when I'll find out, but it won't be tonight. Either way, it's big enough that I'm going to need surgery, so that consult has already been scheduled for tomorrow. 

(Edit to add: I have since been told I do have cancer.)

That makes four appointments this week (along with another stack of intake paperwork)—to say nothing of the existential angst and difficulty being productive when one is grappling with the kind of news. I keep thinking I'm okay until I try to do something, and then I just sort of stare at it for ten or fifteen minutes and either break down crying before giving up to try again later, or finally manage to accomplish one thing every ten minutes or so. 

I had hoped beyond hope that I would just need some iron, and they would send me on my merry way to get back into my writing schedule by next week. Now it seems I'm in this for a longer haul and as fast as they want to move, it could be pretty impactful in the coming weeks.

I don't know how to be anything other than a writer. I don't know how to get through the shitty moments of my life other than by writing through them. When the going gets tough, the Chris gets writing about it. It's my hobby, my therapy, my passion, my drug of choice, and my release valve all in one. I'll keep writing unless I can't. 

It's just who I am.

It's just WHAT I am.

So…let's get ready. For a while this blog might have a bunch of entries that are more like Writing About  Cancer. I may miss posts. I may not always be able to tie a day of being sick or miserably in pain from treatment into some kind of writer wisdom—or worse, I'll do it into the same old lesson of, "At least do SOMETHING." I may need to be in a painkiller haze for a few days after my operation and miss a few days or a week without so much as an apologetic peep. There are for sure going to be a couple more appeals posts than you might be used to, trying to help me put together the medical expenses that insurance couldn't cover. 

(Feel free to hit that tip jar or become a patron if you want to start helping early)

But I'll keep writing. That's my commitment to you. No hiatus. No weeks off. No "I can't do this." I'll keep writing. In a drug-addled haze. From the infusion lab trying to calm rising anxiety. From waiting rooms and from my bed during recovery. Because I don't know how else to do. 

And hopefully (since I've been "flossing" regularly), it'll still look pretty good in the end.

See that was a joke because it's in my colon…the "end"…nevermind.

Tuesday Report

Instead of my usual Tuesday report (which wouldn't look like much of anything anyway), I'm going to tell you what's going on medically. Hopefully, by the end of the week, I'm back to my regular writing schedule.

But there's a chance that in about 24 hours things will get a lot worse.

Today I have the second of my iron infusions and tomorrow morning I go in to be scoped to look for possible causes of the low iron. They're trying to "rule some things out," but of course that means they're looking for them. Some of the things they want to rule out are pretty scary.

At this point there are a couple of possibilities. If they don't find anything, it'll be another month before I start doing follow up appointments with hematology, and during that time, I'll probably be able to get back to a regular writing pace (for those of you worried about what the hell is going on here on the blog). If they find something, it might be a small fix or a lifestyle change type thing (like cutting out gluten) or it might mean I have to go into immediate treatment for cancer. And if that happens, I imagine the blog might actually take another HIT on productivity. 

But I'm going to keep trying as hard as I can.

Mailbox: Phoning It In

Mark asks:

It seems like you're phoning it in a little bit the last few weeks. I'm a patron who wants to give you money for the hard work you do, but I'm worried when I see the level of work is slipping. This is my hard earned money. You haven't even been as good about memes and stuff on your Facebook page. 

My reply:

I've ABSOLUTELY been phoning it in a little bit in the last few weeks. And there's at least one more to come—and THAT is if I'm absolutely healthy.

Let me give you some context here, Mark. On Monday I spent 2 1/2 hours at (and in transit to) an iron infusion. That's where you go to the oncology and hematology center, sit down in an infusion room surrounded mostly by people in various stages of aggressive chemotherapy, and the medical team pumps iron directly into your blood through an I.V. This procedure, though it has perked me up long term, caused me to need extra sleep immediately after. It also kept me up that night dealing with an issue of which the fewer details I share, the better. Then on Tuesday I went to a consult for another procedure that took two hours. Wednesday I got a Covid booster, and that only took 30 minutes, but I noticed I needed some extra sleep over the next day and a half—I have no idea if that was the Covid booster or ongoing from the iron infusion.

All told, I probably lost about 12-15 hours to medical stuff this week. I can write an entire "meaty," Friday-caliber article in that much time, complete with editing and some really good snarky images.

And this was actually my easiest week in nearly a month. 

Patron at at least the $3 level should have gotten the newsletter about what's going on and why I missed some post (and might miss a couple more). I'm in treatment for iron-deficient anemia AND my primary care physician has me seeing multiple specialists who are each doing doing a bunch of tests, all to see if they can figure out the underlying cause. I'm in appointments two or three times a week, getting blood drawn constantly, and before they realized I wasn't going to be able to take oral iron supplements (hence the infusion), I was in a debilitating amount of pain and having a lot of rough GI symptoms from the pills. And I'm leaving out the parts where I am stressed and nervous and having trouble focusing because one of the possibilities that might be on the table is actually cancer.

Look, one of the things I try to be super forthright about here is that you're getting to see the whole messy process. Not every day is going to be machine caliber productivity. I'm human, so you're going to get to see the ebb and the flow. (And right now is definitely the ebb.) I'll keep writing—and as much as I can—but some days/weeks/months are better than others. Shit, the last two YEARS I haven't been my best. But I have good weeks and great days and I won't be dealing with all this anemia bullshit forever.

I will be dealing with it next week, however. 

Next week is about the same number of appointments, including some "-oscopies" that I'm really not looking forward to, so I wouldn't expect things to be much better until at least mid-November, but unless those scopes find something scary, I'll be done for a while, and I'm hoping to be back to my regular schedule. I'm also planning on getting a post up on Monday (my usual day off) to make up for the missing one this week. It was going to be today's post, but your question seemed like it was something worth addressing since a few people have asked about it. 

I promise you that I'm probably more acutely aware of my productivity than most of my Patrons combined. I'm back behind the woodshed beating the crap out of myself because of internalized capitalism and the "productive = moral" culture I'm swimming in.

I know that the crowdfund model (rather than paywall and exclusive content) and being so transparent about the day-to-day obstacles mean that when something goes pear-shaped, my slow periods are going to be on gruesome display. You don't get that with most writers. They just drop a post when they have one and who knows what was going on behind the scenes.

I know from experience that some people are going to feel like I'm not doing enough during those times, or that they're not getting their money's worth because they thought my "flow" output (when I'm really cranking) was going to be a baseline and never change. And while I absolutely adore folks who make it clear that they'll stick with me as an artist through the ebbs (because they know the flows are coming), I absolutely also respect everyone who's supporting my work financially, and I absolutely support their legit right to withdraw that support when I'm going through a less prolific period. (It's the downside of being crowdfunded—I don't get medical leave.). I just sort of hope they come back when I kick it back into gear.

But if would-be writers take anything from this, let it be this: writing is a marathon, and the posts are still coming. Whatever is going on, I do not STOP writing. You can have bad days and still keep moving forward. The body of work grows. And when I'm healthy, the prolific writer some of you have come to expect will be right where they always were.

Best YA Horror (Nominations and Seconds Needed)

What is the best YA horror book (or series)?

We had a lackluster start to this set of book recs, and I don't know if it was the timing or what. (The poll was extremely popular back when we were doing polls.) If you haven't yet, please don't forget to pop over to the original page to drop a nomination, see what has been nominated already, second (all) those you agree with, as well as brush up on the rules—there are a FEW after all.

Normally our book rec stuff would go up on Wednesdays, but I'm running behind on EVERYTHING this week due to the current deluge of medical consults and procedures. 

Again, please remember to go to the original page to drop your nomination (and familiarize yourself with the rules if you haven't yet). If you put it anywhere else (including a Facebook comment on this post) it will not be counted.

Thank you all for joining in our Book Rec Conversation. I've really love reading all your comments about the books you treasure and why. I hope we get a bit more input on this particular conversation.

Tuesday—Er….WEDNESDAY Report

Reminder: The reason this "Tuesday Report" is a day late (and I'll be one post off for the duration of the week) is that I am currently going through some non-trivial medical issues. I'm trying hard to work around it, get most of my posts still done and keep creating the content my readers expect. I don't want to take some sort of "medical leave" from blogging. However, so much of Writing About Writing happens in Real Time™ that the recent deluge of medical procedures and consult appointments has cut into my writing time.

Quick Personal Update-

I had my first iron infusion on Monday. I'm not sure if it was the infusion or just last week, but I came home and slept for like a two hour nap, then slept almost nine hours that night as well. But by Tuesday morning I was mostly feeling better. In fact, I felt great even though I'm assured I couldn't possibly have derived any benefit so quickly from iron.

It's been frustrating spending so much time on medical stuff. And I'm navigating that stress between being just focusing on recovery and being a crowdfunded writer who has to generate content if I'm going to actually PAY the bills that I'm racking up. Today (later) will be my covid booster. I'm really just a little tired of having so much energy going towards medical issues.

Weekly Schedule Adjustments-

Obviously there are going to be some changes to this week's schedule—there already have been. I'm going to do Tuesday's post today, Wednesday's tomorrow, and Thursday's on Friday. Next week is likely going to be at least as bad or worse, but after THAT I have a bit of a break. 

Novel Progress-

Old Crusty 1.0 Draft: 34, 398

(No progress this week. I'm barely hanging on to get blog posts written and up with all the doctors appointments. There are more next week too—although none this weekend, so maybe I can scrape out some progress.)

Behind the Scenes-

I'm still pulling off the pictures so that I can give the selfie tier some pics of my hikes this year. I need a special app for my phone to talk to the camera, and from there I can get it uploaded. I doubt there will be any extra time, but every extra moment will go into the October's newsletter (an Inside Scoop).