Why Writing a Book is Like Having a Baby

I just returned very late last night from having a BALL at the Texas Book Festival in Austin. This is my second time at the Festival, with the first being in 2011 after my first book, Cartel, was published. However, of the four book festivals I've participated in as an author, this was the first one I actually had the time to thoroughly enjoy. I wouldn't call myself a book "nerd," as so many attendees are unfortunately labeled, but I absolutely love to read. Sadly, I rarely know any authors at these festivals because I write about such niche stuff, I don't pay attention to the authors of my kids' books, and I don't read popular fiction.

So, I just picked and chose sessions that sounded interesting, and what luck did I have! I got to listen to Craig Johnson, who is the author of the Walt Longmire (um, yeah) series of books and a producer for the A&E television show. He is a complete riot, a cowboy through and through (he lives in a town with a population of 25 people), and just a really nice and humble man. I got his new book signed for my husband and took a fun photo with him.

The social stuff was also pretty great! The first night, they held an authors' after-party mixer thing that took place immediately after the $250/plate Literary Gala. I met some seriously fun people/authors there who would constitute my social circle for the next two days. It was a little crowded, but people made room for my "horse," as I like to call my scooter now--especially when in Texas.

I should confess that there was one author I really wanted to hear--and possibly meet: Lawrence Wright, who is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Looming Tower, Going Clear, and most recently 13 Days (about the Camp David peace accords between Carter, Bagin, and Sadat). After I read his exposé of Scientology a couple of years ago, I went on a reading binge

about the subject and just fell in love with his writing style. Anyway, I did get to meet him (see picture), and we actually spoke at length at the authors' cocktail party on Saturday evening. It was a great conversation, until he asked me about my next book.

This is nothing against him, or any of the dozens of other people who have asked me the same thing since Cartel came out in 2011. I like to explain to people--and this explanation works much better with parents, particularly mothers--that writing and publishing a book is like having a kid. A pregnancy and the time taken to write a non-fiction book about current events is roughly the same; trust me, I've done both. Twice. The "labor" associated with getting the kid and the book out into the world can be quite painful. But goodness gracious, what a joyous day it is when the baby is born and the book hits the shelves on Pub Day! You can live off that joy for a little while...but then the midnight feedings start wearing on you, as do the constant things you have to do to promote your book and keep it fresh in people's minds. At some point, many moms and authors say after their first baby/book, "I'm never doing this again. That was great, I'm proud, I'm happy, but this is going to be an only child. I'm never going through THAT again!"

Then about 18 months to two years down the road, something we moms call pregnancy amnesia sets in. You forget about the sleepless nights, the crying, the nasty diapers, the millions of edits and revisions, the 5am radio interviews (if you're on Pacific Time like me), the book signings where five people show up, and spending two hours to get ready for a 3-minute TV news interview. You think, Huh. Maybe I could do this one more time...

And that's exactly what I did. Writing Cartel was brutal because it was my first book and I had no guidance or experience with regards to how I should pace myself. It was hard on my family, on my marriage, and on my sanity. I dreaded the moment when I had to tell my husband I wanted to write Border Insecurity because I thought he would really be against it based on our experience with Cartel. But we came to an agreement, and writing the second book was actually really enjoyable. So was having our second kid, coincidentally. We still had our sleepless nights and he had his own unique quirks that were totally different than his brother's, but we certainly felt more confident about the process.

So this brings me to the question I've been getting asked since Border Insecurity came out in April: "What's your next book going to be about?" with the variant of, "When is your next book coming out?" Now, try rephrasing the question as if you were posing it to a mother of two children whose youngest child is only six months old: "So when are you going to have a third kid?" with the variant of, "How often are you and your husband trying to get pregnant again?" Yeah, exactly.

These questions (about the next book) don't bother me because I know few people, relatively speaking, truly understand the labor involved in writing and getting a book to market. I am truly excited and proud to be a TWICE-published author of two titles that have been commercially successful by all measures. But (a) I feel like I've used up all my expertise in those two books, and (b) with two companies to run and a family to help care for--with my MS getting worse every year--I have no idea where I would find the time to write something else. I know my publisher wouldn't be happy to hear talk of being done writing books, and I also know myself and my love of researching and writing. So I'm done...for now. Until the pregnancy amnesia (for books ONLY) sets in again...

Why is the Government So Afraid of Medical Marijuana Research?

In July 2014, my family and I traveled to a suburb of Denver, Colorado for a family reunion. As a subject matter expert on Mexico’s drug war, I’ve commented pretty frequently in the media on the potential impact of marijuana legalization on Mexican drug cartel operations and profits. I also keep track of how much dope is coming across the border, who's bringing it across, and how. Because it's not right in front of my face, the whole marijuana thing has always been an abstract concept for me. To make my point, when we were in Colorado, I never even thought about the fact I could just go anywhere and buy pot after we arrived in the first state to fully legalize it.

Then I learned that one of my family members—a conservative Tea Party Republican—had actually gone to visit a pot shop a few weeks earlier. I was floored. She didn’t buy, let alone smoke anything, and her visit was more out of curiosity than anything else. But then came the real shocker—several of my relatives suggested I go check it out for myself.

I've had MS now for almost ten years, and one of my symptoms is muscle spasticity in my legs. That means that my hamstrings get very tight if I’ve been sitting or lying down for more than a few minutes, and in moments of stress, nervousness, or fatigue, my legs straighten like a board. I also get bad muscle cramps at night, so I take a prescription medication called Baclofen to help relieve that. It’s no secret that people with MS-related spasticity and pain have also (or otherwise) been smoking or otherwise ingesting marijuana to help relieve these symptoms, but the thought of actually trying it made me nervous. I have never used any kind of illegal substance in my entire life, mostly because I was a Special Agent in the Air Force for eight years and the daughter of very conservative and anti-drug Cuban parents.

So I started to do what any analyst worth her salt would do: I researched the hell out of marijuana. I knew that I did NOT want any sort of psychotropic effect, or “high.” I also didn’t want to feel too fatigued, or “stoned,” because I have kids and responsibilities and need to function as well as possible. In other words, I was looking for a strain that would make my legs feel better and would leave me feeling at worst like a just had a glass of wine. The amount of information available about different marijuana strains and what they do is overwhelming. I had to learn about the difference between sativa and indica, the balance between THC and CBD levels, and the difference between “high” and “stoned.” There are many more aspects of the pot plant that are too numerous and complex to list here, but for my purposes, this was the kind of information I needed to be able to pick from a pot shop menu.

Long story short, I found the blend that I felt would work best for my MS symptoms—something called AC/DC, and in some places it’s also known as Charlotte’s Web. It has a high CBD content and very low THC content, which is ideal for therapeutic purposes and people like me who have no interest in getting high. Sadly, after many hours of research spent finding this perfect blend to try, the pot shop my family members had visited didn’t stock this strain, and we ran out of time to visit a shop that did sell it before we had to fly back home.

But recently I’ve started thinking, why was I the one who had to do all this painstaking research? With 23 states and the District of Columbia selling medical marijuana legally at the state level, why isn’t the federal government falling all over itself to allow multiple transparent scientific studies to be conducted on the effectiveness of marijuana for different physical ailments? After all, if the Obama Administration supports the US Drug Enforcement Administration’s stance that marijuana has no medicinal value whatsoever, it should be anxious to fund studies that will no doubt prove them right…right?

On August 9, the New York Times published a thought-provoking article on the obstacles the federal government has placed in front of several attempts to conduct research on the potential medical benefits of marijuana. The most obvious example of these obstacles is the fact there is only one place in the entire United States where researchers can legally obtain marijuana for use in their studies—a federal facility at the University of Mississippi in Oxford. The facility also doesn’t grow every strain that’s currently available at pot dispensaries around the country, so growing a new strain for research can delay a project for a year or more. The regulatory and bureaucratic hurdles that researchers must jump over to get a study approved are enormous, to say the least.

Part of the reason behind these challenges is the fact that marijuana is classified by the federal government as a Schedule I drug. This schedule ranks different drugs based on their potential for abuse and medicinal value (if any). Drugs in the Schedule I category are thought to have a high potential for abuse and no medicinal value at all, and include marijuana, heroin, LSD, Ecstasy, peyote, Quaaludes, khat, and “bath salts.” This is despite the fact that marijuana is less addictive than nicotine or cocaine (a Schedule II drug), and neither cigarettes nor alcohol have any accepted medicinal properties. Dr. Sanjay Gupta, a highly respected doctor and CNN’s chief medical correspondent, wrote in August 2013, “[Marijuana] doesn’t have a high potential for abuse, and there are very legitimate medical applications. In fact, sometimes marijuana is the only thing that works.”

But let’s assume for a moment just two things: that the federal government wants US citizens with diseases and chronic health conditions to get better, and that it honestly doesn’t believe marijuana is the answer. Faced with overwhelming anecdotal and some researched-based evidence that marijuana in some forms does provide relief for several medical conditions, why wouldn’t an administration that says it supports education and scientific research more strongly encourage and facilitate transparent academic studies that might help more people? If President Obama and the DEA truly believe marijuana can only get people high and that it deserves to remain a Schedule I drug, such research should substantiate their claims and end the argument for good. So what is the government so afraid of?

Clearly marijuana use—whether for recreational or medicinal purposes—remains highly controversial, although popular sentiment in the US about its use for any reason has softened considerably over the past several years. Personally, I'm all in favor of legalizing [just] marijuana--not because I want to get high, but because I think it's hypocritical that alcohol and cigarettes are legal when they are more addictive, physically harmful, and dangerous when abused in the case of alcohol. Considering how many other drugs with higher abuse potential are currently being prescribed (don’t get me started on Oxycontin) and studied, it’s hard to understand why people like me have to throw themselves into the sometimes nebulous world of sort-of legal marijuana just because our government refuses to facilitate the study of a simple plant.

You may have read in my last post that very soon I'm making the emotionally difficult transition from using a walker to using a power wheelchair. I know marijuana won't help me walk any better, but those painful leg cramps and stiffness I talked about? What if that can help me? I'm too timid to try anything that's illegal or not strictly regulated, and I have a feeling there are plenty of other people with MS who share my apprehension. I guess that's my challenge to Obama on this pot research issue: If you think you're so right about medical marijuana, then work harder to prove me wrong.

Knowing When You Can Fight, and When You Cannot

There comes a time--well, actually several times--in the life of a person with MS when he or she has to come out of a state of denial and realize that he or she is starting to get worse. I've had this disease for almost ten years, and I knew going into the whole ordeal that MS is a progressive disease. My physical abilities would degenerate over time, but the time would be a real variable depending on the effectiveness of my treatments and the fingerprint-unique course of my own disease. 

Every time this has happened it has been emotionally excruciating, although in some cases more so than others. The first step about seven years ago was to buy a cane. I didn't need it every day or all the time, so that adjustment was fairly easy. The hardest by far was when I realized I needed to start using a walker. It's hard to forget when that happened because it was about two months after my husband left for a deployment to Afghanistan in 2011. My walking ability deteriorated pretty rapidly during that time, which is probably due to subconscious stress from the deployment, although it's really hard to say for sure. Making matters worse was that my need for the walker was compounded by my "move" from the more common and easier-to-deal-with relapsing remitting form of MS (where you have occasional flares or relapses from which you recover) to the secondary progressive form (which is a very slow and constant downhill slide).

I did the best I could with the walker situation. I decided to take it to an auto and motorcycle detailing shop to get flames painted on it, and the St Louis Post-Dispatch did a neat story on the whole thing. I got better at getting it into and out of my car and really loved that I had a place to sit down and rest absolutely everywhere I went. At this point, we were living in Illinois and I was still able to maneuver around our house without any help based on the way the house and our furniture were laid out.

Then a few months before we left Illinois, I started experiencing something called drop foot, which is common in people with MS, stroke victims, and people with spinal cord injuries. I went to the VA for help after my physical therapist recommended I get fitted for an electrostimulator called a WalkAide. At the same time I got the WalkAide, I also started the process of requesting a motorized scooter through the VA. For whatever reason, getting the WalkAide and later the scooter weren't as emotionally difficult for me. Maybe because the benefits were so great and so immediate that I didn't have time to think anything was bad about either one. I could now walk without my foot dragging along the ground, and I could easily go with my family to the zoo or museums and attend conventions in large halls with ease.

What's interesting, as I go into this next transition in a moment, is that all of these devices had the same thing in common. Every single time I stepped "up" to the next assistive device, I cursed myself for not having gotten one sooner. I don't know if I was being stubborn, proud, in denial, or a bit of everything (the most likely). My life was invariably made MUCH easier by every single device, and I more or less got over the self-consciousness associated with being a young and healthy/fit-looking person using a cane/walker/scooter.

But this transition that's coming up shortly is going to be the hardest of them all. When we moved into our current house in Tucson, we knew there would be a possibility that we would have to make it at least partially accessible. I started using a walker inside the house instead of just a cane about three months after we moved in. Barring any major medical miracles, chances were good that I would continue to deteriorate at the same pace and need more than a walker inside the house to get around. That day came for me earlier this week, and it wasn't pretty.

It's hard to describe the feeling of sitting down and thinking, "You know, I just really don't want to walk anymore." Sounds insane, doesn't it? All things considered, I'm happy about the fact I can still move around on my feet in some capacity. For a long time I felt like I NEEDED to walk at least for a portion of the day because it would be good for me. Until it got harder. And harder. The cramps in my legs and glutes at night started getting worse, as did the pain in my back from trying so hard to move my legs. Imagine having 50-pound ankle weights strapped on to each of your legs and having to go through your entire day that way; that's as best as I can describe it. It was taking me minutes to get from one end of a three-bedroom house to the other instead of seconds; I can never make it to a ringing phone in time. I found myself having to rest more often after doing just one thing in the house instead of after three or four things. And it just hit me: I'm officially tired of walking.

To say this acknowledgement brings mixed emotions is an understatement. On one hand, I feel like a quitter. I'm supposed to be a fighter and I'm not supposed to give up, right? Who on Earth would willingly stop walking when they still have that ability, however limited it might be? I'll tell you: when the prospect of not having to walk [so much] anymore brings your soul a huge sense of relief. Every military officer reads Sun Tzu's Art of War at some point, and while I admit I had to look this quote up to get it right, I remember the general sense of it: "He who knows when he can fight and when he cannot, will be victorious." I've decided that by being tired of walking, I'm not stopping my fight. My fight has simply transformed from the physical AND the mental/emotional/spiritual to just the latter, and I'm learning to be okay with that.

So I'm working with the VA again to obtain a small/travel power wheelchair to use inside our house. This is by far the most complex transition to an assistive device I've had to deal with so far, and my husband and I have several things we have to figure out with our landlord to make this as seamless as possible. One good thing about my MS progression is that it's been slow, so we've had time to think about and research the things I'll need, like several threshold rubber ramps in different spots around the house. It's also a very tight fit in one doorway because part of the refrigerator blocks it. If the smallest power wheelchair they can give me won't clear it, we'll need to pay to get the doorway moved a few inches or widened. On a related note, I have to start taking showers in our guest bathroom because I can't get out of our old-school sunken shower anymore. That will involve buying what they call a sliding transition bench--along with moving my bath stuff and sharing (part-time) a bathroom that always smells like the pee of two little boys who use it. That being said, maybe now I won't dread taking showers because of the physical effort involved, and maybe I'll be able to cut down the time involved in simply bathing from one hour to something more reasonable.

This isn't something that will happen overnight due to the VA evaluation and approval process, so we have time to make the necessary changes and for both me and my husband to emotionally get used to this next stage in my MS progression. For now, I choose to focus on how AWESOME it will be to move around our house quickly and easily! There is so much that I have put off doing--much to the burden of my incredible husband--because it's just too hard or I'm too tired. Simple things like picking stuff up, or putting laundry away, or getting things for the boys will be SO much easier, and I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to that. There will be some bumps and scratches, no doubt--and maybe even some bruised toes. But I have no reason to doubt that after I get this power wheelchair, I will once again wonder why I didn't get it sooner.