PANIC! PANIC!
Contemporary YA

IT’S HARD NOT TO PANIC is the book for you if you like: assassination dinner theatre, Mary Todd Lincoln’s ghost, flirt alerts, deep conversations over Fruity Pebbles, scavenger hunts, difficult goodbyes, and therapy.

A sixteen-year-old girl with an extreme generalized anxiety disorder goes on a tour for teens in order to attend Zom Con and (hopefully) win a zombie video game pitch war. When she discovers her former best friend turned arch-nemesis is on the trip, she doubles down on her commitment to keeping her disorder a secret because if she doesn't she believes she'll lose the chance of winning the pitch war and the new friends that make her feel like she doesn’t always have to hide.

Anxiety representation
Bisexual MC

Why I Wrote the Book

Having struggled with anxiety since a young age, I wrote PANIC! PANIC! to address the lack of stories that are specifically about young people living with generalized anxiety disorder as well as to create a well-rounded bisexual character who isn’t solely identified by her sexuality. In short, it’s the book I wish I had read as a teenager.

Excerpt

One of the many problems of living with a severe anxiety disorder is that the tiniest blip in expectations leads to an endless listing of the Worst Possible Outcomes. Maybe Dad has lost all his money in a bitcoin scam, he’s about to come clean, and Heather Grace has tagged along as support. Or she’s here to announce her pregnancy. The replacement child’s cuteness eclipses my existence.  She’s all wide eyes and chubby cheeks. An overall magical baby that, when grown, would never get trapped in her head listing Worst Possible Outcomes. 

I struggle to control the listing and the negative thinking, and that, in itself, makes me more anxious. I’m anxious about being anxious.

It’s a whole thing.