Hilary Moon Murphy

The High-Flying Life of a Professional Author

Executive Summary:

Since we last met with our heroine, a number of momentous events took place. Two of her stories came out in the exact same week. She received her very first pieces of fan mail from complete strangers. Her autograph was sought by several discerning persons. One of her stories not only made the cover, but got a favorable review complete with a scandalous photo for her author bio. And she had her first ever reading as a professional author.

She also had some very bad issues involving stress, psychotropic drugs, and burnout from too much work. And she shot a gun for the first time. She spent over three months putting her head back together, during which all activity in this journal ceased completely.

Have you ever noticed how much easier it is to talk about uncomfortable topics if you pretend that they happened to other people?

Okay, I'm done pretending now. One of the reasons I did not update in so long was that I had gotten in over my head and did not want to depress everyone with complaints about how tired and overworked I felt. I was so stressed out I was beginning to scare myself.

But let's go through it all in order, shall we? Confession is supposed to be good for the soul.

• Stress and Psychotropic Drugs

• Hilary, Go Get Your Gun

• Becoming Real -- What Has Changed Since Publication, And What Has Not

  Hmm