Jackdaw Affliction follows Billy from a rough-edged 1980s English childhood into adulthood, where grief, love, and the advancing grip of ataxia turn survival, dignity, and endurance into the heart of the story. What drew you to tell Billy’s story across such a long emotional and physical arc?
My desire in writing this novel was to keep things real and plausible. I have lived experience of Ataxia and strong connections with peers across a wide range of disabilities. To stay truthful to what many folk experience, it was necessary to have an arc where Billy loses everything. Or at least perceives he loses everything.
The beginning of the novel – Youth – is about the growth and making of the man. The second half of the novel is about diminishing abilities and the effects on the mind. The frightening thing about ataxia and all degenerative conditions is that they slowly chip away at you until there is nothing left. Often, the mental health side of this is not explicitly discussed. I wanted to change that.
How did you balance the intimacy of Billy’s voice with the wider family-saga feel of the novel?
I wrote this book with the aim of raising awareness of a rare condition. But also, I wanted to give readers an insight into the mind of someone who slowly loses all that made them who they are. Mental health is a real and delicate thing. It is for me, and it is for many people with debilitating conditions.
The book was always about Billy’s story. Always predominantly his narration. After my first draft, it became apparent that I needed more structure and readability. This is when the vignettes from his family members came in. Both to tell the story from other perspectives, but also to offer some unquestionable truth and reliability to the manuscript. The family was always a vital cog in Billy’s wider story, even when they were no longer present in his life.
Music feels like a quiet current running through the book. What role did it play for you while writing?
Music helps set the theme, feel, and time stamp this story. Almost by chance, I had found myself listening to certain tracks whilst writing and developing the book. Each track helped me set the scenes and characters to a specific point in time. Whilst not a historical novel, it is set over 35 years, so being accurate on the recent past was a necessity.
Also, if you pay really close attention to each song in the book, you can almost see a story told by the track listings.
As important as music is, it was also important to have an absence of music during Billy’s darker times. For this reason, almost all of part 4 is devoid of music.
When writing Billy’s experience of ataxia, how did you approach portraying disability, humiliation, and endurance without slipping into sentimentality?
The aim from the outset was to portray a plausible, real character. Inspiration porn was not the goal. By this I mean it was important that all characters made mistakes, had flaws, and had mischievous thoughts, rather than paint them as some kind of saint or martyr. Hopefully, the book balances vulnerability with agency. The idea was not to have characters as symbols or lessons, but to present flawed, authentic human beings. As mentioned, it was great to draw on my experiences and those of my peers to keep the story feeling as genuine as possible.
Memory is a tricky thing. Reality is fragile. And the past never stays buried.
From bike rides through the suburbs of 1980s Hampshire to the claustrophobic grind of adulthood, Billy Cooper’s life is shaped by loss, fractured family ties, and the creeping onset of a degenerative disease. As his body betrays him and grief corrodes what remains, Billy turns inward—into recollections that blur, narratives that contradict, and personas that may never have existed.
Jackdaw Affliction is a descent into memory’s labyrinth, where trauma, illness, and longing distort the line between truth and invention. Told with brutal honesty, warped humour and hallucinatory edge, S. G. Hyde’s novel explores what it means to live when the ground of reality keeps shifting beneath your feet.
At once harrowing and tender, it is a story of survival through imagination, self-deception, and the desperate human need to stitch meaning out of chaos. A haunting meditation on identity, illness, and loss, sprinkled with dark comedy, this is fiction at its most unsettling and raw.
Bullying and How to Create a Culture to Prevent It, by Michael Dow, feels less like a conventional storybook than a guided classroom session turned into a book. Nurse Dorothea leads an after-school mental health club and walks a group of children through what bullying is, the forms it can take, and the damage it can do, from insults and exclusion to cyberbullying, humiliation, extortion, and workplace cruelty. Along the way, different kids speak up with examples from school, work, and daily life, and the book keeps returning to the same core conviction: bullying shrinks a person’s sense of self, but communities can answer it with courage, candor, and mutual protection.
The book doesn’t treat bullying as a minor social hiccup or a rite of passage. It treats it as something corrosive, something that stains a whole environment. I found that persuasive, especially in the moments where the children’s comments give the lesson a human pulse, like Frida describing insults as social pollution, or Azamat recalling the humiliation of being shamed by a teacher in front of classmates. Those moments give the book a bruised, lived-in feeling. Even when the language is direct and didactic, there’s an unmistakable sincerity underneath it, a real desire to protect children and to name harms that adults often dismiss too quickly.
The writing is earnest and clear, and it often speaks in declarations, so it can feel more instructional. This isn’t a book driven by plot so much as by accumulation. Example after example, consequence after consequence. Yet I didn’t mind that because the ideas are unusually expansive for a children’s book. It isn’t content to say bullying hurts feelings. It follows the damage outward into anxiety, isolation, sleep problems, burnout, lower performance, family strain, even housing instability, and fear of deportation. That reach gives the book a grave, almost civic imagination. It wants children to understand not only that bullying is cruel, but that it distorts whole cultures if nobody interrupts it. I respected that ambition because the book is trying to build conscience, not just deliver a tidy lesson.
This book is blunt, compassionate, and deeply invested in the idea that young readers can handle serious conversations about power, shame, and self-worth. I would absolutely recommend it for classrooms, counselors, parents, and older children who are ready to talk openly about bullying in a structured, reflective way. It’s a children’s book for readers who need language for what they’ve lived through, and for communities trying to become braver on purpose.
Uncovering Amy shares your experiences of being diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder and working with Bryan Redfield using the brain training method to integrate your inner Parent, Adult, and Child into a single unified self. What were some ideas that were important for you to share in this book?
It was incredibly important to me that I get across the frame of mind I was in when the whole situation began: Searching for answers outside of myself in every way I had available to me because I had no conception that there could be more going on INSIDE my own mind. I also wanted to be sure to give the reader hope: whether they suffered from a similar experience or not, there is a solution to bringing all parts of your mind together as one.
What was the most challenging part of writing your memoir, and what was the most rewarding?
The most challenging part of this was explaining the process I went through, because I feel that the only way someone can truly understand it is to go through it. This concept is not just about affirmations or subliminals or NLP; this is recognizing the multiple parts of your own personality and healing the wounds they’ve carried for your entire life so you can be reborn as the person you were always meant to be. It’s not a process everyone can handle.
What do you hope is one thing readers take away from your story?
I hope my book makes its way into the hands of those who need it most: the person who is afraid to be themselves, afraid of what society might do to them, and doesn’t know how to protect themselves from the abusers in the world. I want you to know: there is hope.
Fair warning: This book contains graphic personal experiences, strong language, and intense psychological themes. If you’re not ready for the unfiltered truth about dissociative identity disorder, put it back on the shelf.
Uncovering Amy is Amelia South’s raw, unfiltered memoir of living with dissociative identity disorder (formerly known as multiple personality disorder) — and the radical, self-directed process she used to retrain her brain and reclaim internal control.
This is not a story of gentle healing. It is a firsthand account of internal wars, competing identities, and the desperate, sometimes dangerous attempts to make the chaos stop. Alcohol. Exorcisms. Extreme self-experimentation. Moments of terror. Moments of breakthrough. And the slow, deliberate work of learning how to lead a fractured inner world. With a chapter by Bryan Redfield, her guide through the process, Uncovering Amy explores a structured framework for internal leadership — not surface-level coping, not spiritual bypassing, but the gritty, methodical reorganization of the mind from the inside out.
This book does not claim to be theonly answer. It is one person’s documented path from psychological fragmentation to internal coordination. Along the way, it raises a provocative question: if a divided mind can learn to work together, what might that mean for the internal conflicts we all carry?
If you’re looking for comforting platitudes, this isn’t it. If you’re ready for honesty, courage, and a story that challenges what you think is possible for the human mind — keep reading.
William W. Hedrick, MD, author of What’s Normal Is When the Emotion Matches the Circumstance, has spent his medical career wrestling with one stubborn question. What is a normal emotion, and when does it become an illness? He walks through his early training, his unease with the DSM checklist style of diagnosis, and his doubts about simple “chemical imbalance” stories. He then builds his own model of six primary emotions, tied to brain centers and neurotransmitters, and he defines “normal” as when the type and level of emotion match the actual situation on a simple one-to-ten scale. Along the way, he folds in cognitive therapy ideas, brain chemistry, addiction to our own internal chemicals, and many case examples to show how his framework might work in real clinics.
I was genuinely pulled in by his main idea that context and proportion matter more than labels. The notion that anxiety in a grocery store and anxiety on the edge of a cliff are not the same thing, even if the body feels similar, clicked for me right away. His definition of normal emotion as “the emotion that fits the circumstance” feels both humane and practical, and I could picture real patients using that one-to-ten scale to check their own reactions. I appreciated the boldness of some of his stronger claims. For example, he treats major depression as almost entirely a rogue “depression center” that drugs must calm, and he is clear about his doubts that talk therapy alone can fully reach it. I understood the logic, and I saw real compassion in his effort to remove blame from people who are suffering, and his stance pushed me to think harder about biology, medication, and responsibility.
Hedrick’s tone stays calm and professional, and he explains brain chemistry and therapy ideas in plain language, with stories, history notes, and even word origins that give the book an old-school charm. Some chapters slow down to take longer side trips into the DSM or historical theories, which helped me see how deeply his ideas are rooted in the broader story of psychiatry. I appreciated how often he brought things back to real people in real rooms.
I came away feeling this book would suit thoughtful readers who like to sit with ideas and do not mind a slower, reflective pace. Primary care clinicians, therapists in training, and medically curious readers who have lived with anxiety or depression themselves would probably get the most from it. If you want to see how one experienced doctor tries to rebuild our understanding of emotion from the ground up, this is a smart and often moving read.
Lunches with Ed is a moving memoir about loving someone through dementia—through home care, nursing homes, Covid windows, final goodbyes, and the small moments that never let go. At what point did you realize this story might help others beyond your own family?
I realized that this story may help others when an unbiased associate read it and became so emotional she called me up in tears expressing how deeply the book touched her. I later found out that she was in the midst of caring for her husband and the book was a comfort to her.
How did your understanding of love change as Ed’s dementia progressed?
I came to really understand the meaning of “in sickness and health”, “for better or worse”. Marital love does not just end because your spouse gets ill. Ed was the same person I loved and he needed me more now than ever. The journey has made me more empathetic and caring.
How did you balance honoring Ed’s dignity while sharing the strange or disorienting behaviors dementia caused?
I sought to portray Ed as the kind and caring person that he always was while trying to present a true picture and not sugar-coat the ebbs and flow of daily life living with dementia. His sensitive, peaceful nature was still there hidden underneath all the confusion. I sought out the best care for him and also tried to shield him from unnecessary intrusions and visitors who were only mere acquaintances.
How do you carry Ed with you now, after telling his story
I carry him in my heart. I think of the good times we had, the laughter we shared. Whenever I think of him I find myself smiling.
When a devoted wife stepped into the role of caregiver for her husband during his journey with dementia, she found solace in journaling — capturing the routines, challenges, and quiet triumphs of daily life. What began as a private coping tool became a heartfelt guide for others walking the same path. Lunches with Ed offers practical insights born from lived experience, not theory. It’s a gentle, honest companion for those navigating the emotional terrain of caregiving — validating the sadness, frustration, and fear that often come with it, while also celebrating the moments of laughter, connection, and unexpected joy. Compact and comforting, this book is designed to be kept close — on a nightstand, in a purse, or tucked into a drawer — ready to remind caregivers that they are not alone. Above all, it’s a tribute to the enduring love that caregiving calls forth, and the strength found in showing up, day after day.
Keeping the Stethoscope, Hanging Up the Uniform! is a raw and forceful memoir that follows Steven Wayne Davis as he moves from the intensity of military medical service into the equally demanding world of civilian emergency care. The book blends personal history, frontline trauma scenes, and a fierce critique of how the United States treats its combat-disabled veterans. In simple terms, the story traces what happens when someone who gave everything comes home and finds the system stacked against him. The result is part autobiography, part social commentary, and fully grounded in the lived experience of a combat-disabled veteran trying to stay afloat.
The writing is direct. Sometimes weighty. Sometimes almost poetic in how it describes exhaustion, anger, and purpose. Davis doesn’t dance around his trauma or the trauma he’s witnessed. The early chapters drop you straight into the ER, and those scenes throb with the same frantic rhythm he lived through. What struck me most was how he uses the language of medicine and combat not to impress but to show us what’s at stake. The choices he makes as an author feel intentional. He lets certain moments sit in silence, and he lets others crack open with frustration. It works. You can feel the emotion in the pauses.
What I also liked was his honesty about the bigger system. He talks about disability offsets, homelessness, suicide, and the empty ritual of “thank you for your service” with a mix of weariness and fire. It’s a tough blend, but he pulls it off because he’s writing from within the problem, not looking at it from the outside. The ideas in the book aren’t polished arguments. They’re lived realities, and they’re delivered with the kind of clarity that comes from surviving things most people never see. At times I found myself nodding along. Other times, I felt a lump in my throat. The memoir genre is full of reflection, but this one feels like someone opening a door they’ve held shut for years.
By the time I finished, I felt grateful that Davis chose to write this at all. The story isn’t trying to be perfect. It’s trying to be honest. And that honesty is what gives the book its strength. Readers who appreciate memoirs rooted in service, healthcare, mental health, and social justice will find a lot here to sit with. If you’ve ever wondered what happens to the people we send to war after the uniforms come off, this book doesn’t just answer the question. It challenges you to care about the answer. A powerful memoir that refuses to stay quiet, speaking the truth that so many veterans live but rarely share.
Unstuck digs into the everyday mess of self-sabotage and shows how it hides in fear, doubt, old stories, and protective habits that keep us spinning in place, rather than providing readers with practical tools to build new habits. What inspired you to write Unstuck?
Unstuck was inspired by watching capable, self-aware people repeatedly blame themselves for patterns they didn’t choose. I kept seeing the same frustration show up in different forms, like overthinking, hesitation, perfectionism, and a constant sense of starting over. Most of these people weren’t lacking insight or intelligence. They were responding to fear in ways that once made sense but no longer served them. I wrote Unstuck to explain that experience clearly and to offer practical tools that help people move forward without shame, force, or pressure.
You emphasize that self-sabotage is not a personal flaw. Why is that reframe so important?
Because when people see self-sabotage as a flaw, they respond with self-criticism, and self-criticism almost always strengthens the pattern. The behaviors we call self-sabotage are usually protective responses shaped by fear, conditioning, and past experience. Reframing them this way allows people to work with their nervous system instead of fighting it. Once someone understands that their reactions are learned rather than broken, change becomes something they can practice instead of something they feel judged for.
What patterns do you see most often in people who feel “stuck”?
The most common pattern is overthinking as a form of protection. People delay action while searching for certainty, replay decisions to avoid risk, or use preparation and perfectionism as a way to stay safe. I also see avoidance disguised as productivity and a harsh inner dialogue that erodes self-trust over time. These patterns are subtle, which is why awareness and repetition matter more than dramatic insight.
What does “being unstuck” look like long-term, not just in a breakthrough moment?
Long-term change looks quieter than people expect. Being unstuck means noticing fear without letting it decide, responding instead of reacting, and choosing smaller, steadier actions that build trust over time. That’s also why I created the UNSTUCK Workbook as a companion for readers who want help applying the ideas consistently. The goal isn’t a single breakthrough. It’s learning how to practice awareness, regulation, and follow-through in everyday situations so progress holds.
UNSTUCK is for people who know what they want, yet still hesitate, overthink, procrastinate, or pull back when progress is finally within reach.
You may understand your patterns. You may have read the books, tried the advice, and promised yourself you would “do better next time.” And yet the same cycle keeps repeating. Not because you lack discipline or ambition, but because your mind is defaulting to old protective responses that no longer fit the life you are trying to build.
If you have ever asked yourself why you keep getting in your own way, this book offers a clear, compassionate explanation. You are not broken. Your brain is doing what it learned to do under pressure, fear, and uncertainty.
Built around the A.I.R.™ Method, UNSTUCK helps you recognize self-sabotaging habits as conditioned responses rather than personal failures. Instead of forcing motivation or relying on willpower, the book teaches you how to notice patterns early, interrupt anxiety spirals, and respond with steadier, more intentional action.
Inside, you’ll learn how to:
identify hidden forms of self-sabotage like overthinking, avoidance, perfectionism, and harsh self-talk so you can stop repeating them automatically calm the inner critic and regulate emotional reactions so fear no longer drives your decisions rebuild confidence through small, repeatable actions so progress feels sustainable instead of exhausting create emotional safety around change so growth no longer triggers shutdown or self-doubt move forward consistently even when motivation fades or pressure increases
Rather than chasing breakthroughs, UNSTUCK focuses on progress that holds. Through practical psychology, real-life examples, and guided reflection, the book shows how to shift from self-protection to self-trust without pretending, performing, or becoming someone else.
Readers and editorial reviewers have noted the book is grounded, emotionally intelligent approach, highlighting its focus on awareness, clarity, and steady change rather than pressure-driven transformation.
UNSTUCK is especially well suited for people who:
feel stuck in cycles of overthinking or fear know what they want but struggle to follow through are tired of starting over and blaming themselves want calm, durable confidence instead of temporary motivation This is not a book about fixing yourself. It is about removing the internal resistance that has been blocking who you already are.
If you’re ready to stop restarting and start moving forward with clarity, stability, and self-trust, UNSTUCK offers a grounded path forward.
Read today and begin building progress that lasts.
Lunches with Ed tells the story of a woman caring for her husband as dementia slowly changes every corner of their shared life. The book follows Judy Collier’s journey from the first troubling signs to the caregiving years at home, the painful decision to move Ed to long-term care, the strange mix of heartbreak and sweetness in her daily visits, and finally the peaceful end of his life. She lays out the memories through stories, journal entries, and reflections that show love staying steady even as everything else slips away.
The writing feels simple at first, almost like someone talking to a friend over coffee, yet that is exactly what makes it so strong. The plainness pulls you in. You start to feel the fear she tries to hide and the way she keeps moving anyway. There were moments that made me laugh because they felt so human and odd, like Ed grouping his grapes into sets of four or insisting his license was locked in the doctor’s desk. Then I’d turn a page and feel my chest tighten when he wandered outside in the middle of the night or when she held window visits during the long months of Covid. The emotional swings felt real. They felt like life. I found myself pausing often just to sit with it.
What stayed with me most was how she writes about devotion. Not as some grand thing but as a series of small acts that never stop. Holding his hand while he sleeps. Feeding him when he forgets how. Talking to shadows in the corner because it eased his fear. None of it feels dramatic. It feels steady and warm and a little exhausting and also brave in a quiet way. The journal entries hit me especially hard. They show the rhythm of her days shifting between hope and dread. They show how love keeps showing up even when the person you love is drifting somewhere you cannot follow. I felt myself rooting for both of them and sometimes whispering a little prayer under my breath because the truth of it all was so heavy.
I closed the book with a mix of sadness and gratitude. Sadness because the story is real, and loss is real. Gratitude because the author chose to share something so personal and because her honesty might make someone else feel less alone. I would recommend Lunches with Ed to caregivers, family members walking through dementia, readers drawn to memoir, and anyone who wants a reminder that tenderness still matters in hard seasons.
