Pooks and Her Dys-Brain and the Character Who Stole It From Her

MJ O’Malley has issues. So do I.

MJ O’Malley has issues.

ADHD, dyscalculia, and associated cognitive disorders, and–

MJ? She just shrugs and calls it her dys-brain.

Pooks has issues.

ADHD, dyscalculia, and associated cognitive disorders, and–

Pooks? She just shrugs and calls it her dys-brain.

Detect anything? Of course you do, because you’re smart.

So’s M.J. [We won’t say anything about Pooks because that would either be vain or sad, depending on, you know, what we confessed.]

There will be more about dys-brain and how it affects both sleuth and author in future books but it’s first addressed in Revenge of the Killer Flamingos. That is a fun, weird, and wacky mystery with a big dollop of romantic comedy on top.

Pooks didn’t set out to write an #ownvoices book.

It’s simply that when she was told to write in first person for her first ever cozy mystery, her first person voice ended up being a bit unorthodox, shall we say?

Okay, as soon as she started writing “I” voice, words starting plopping out on the screen the way she thinks and talks. She realized it was revealing a lot about how words come into her brain [whether speaking or writing] in a more evident way than when she writers in third person and is firmly in someone else’s head and thinking/speaking/writing in someone else’s voice.

Sidebar: She once shared a Google hangout with two of her editors. One suddenly gasped and said, “No wonder she writes in long convoluted run-on sentences. She talks in long convoluted run-on sentences!”]

To which Pooks adds, You should imagine them in her brain, before they’ve been processed for public consumption!

She realized editing was going to be a bear if she had to turn all those words into more normally-expressed sentences.

A few people read the first few chapters and told her they loved it and to keep going and, for better or worse, she did.