PANIC! PANIC!
Contemporary YA

An extremely anxious and extremely confident 16-year-old plans to win her prestigious video game summer enrichment program’s pitch war, only to find that her ex-best friend has arrived. Now, she’s got competition. But when she is faced with the choice of working with a group of kids—including the cute coder girl down the bus aisle—on a joint project or going solo on her own, she can’t choose. She decides to do both, working on her own in secret. But to do that, she’s going to need her ex-best friend's help.

PANIC! PANIC! is the book for you if you like: video games, ghosts, flirt alerts, deep conversations over Fruity Pebbles, difficult goodbyes, and therapy.

Anxiety representation
Neurodivergence
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 his girlf 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.