The Clock in My Head Never Stops follows a sixteen-year-old boy through an ordinary school day transformed by severe anxiety into an exhausting battle against time, expectation, and his racing thoughts. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?

I was inspired to write this story because while I was in high school, I struggled with severe anxiety. The protagonist of the story, Billy Thompson, is based on me.  My anxiety became so severe that I had to leave school to go to a homebound program, just like Billy.  I can directly relate to the racing thoughts that Billy experiences throughout the story.

How much of Billy’s inner voice came directly from your own experiences with anxiety?

A lot of his inner voice was directly based on my own experiences with anxiety. Although the story is fiction, many of Billy’s thoughts are similar to what I was experiencing at the time.  

Why did you choose to center most of the novel on one seemingly ordinary school day?

The story is meant to represent this moment that Billy is on the verge of a breakdown. I felt that I could effectively convey this experience through one day because I packed a significant amount of detail into Billy’s thoughts. The extreme nature of his racing thoughts is both exhausting and claustrophobic. By the end of this one day, I believe readers can genuinely understand how difficult life is for this person suffering from severe anxiety.     

How did you balance making Billy’s repetitive thought spirals realistic without losing the reader?

Even though his thoughts are repetitive and extreme, I think readers are drawn to Billy’s struggle. Everyone, at some point in life, has gone through anxiety, so they can relate to things that are affecting Billy. The story also provides an honest, unfiltered view of this severe anxiety, because it is driven by Billy’s inner thoughts. Because readers can see into his head space, they receive an authentic perspective of how severe anxiety can affect someone.  

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