Supernatural and self-care: The value of escapism

(Author’s note: Join me Saturday, June 12 at 5 pm CT/6 pm ET when I celebrate the release of Serving Sin with Clif Kosterman, the bodyguard for Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki for the last thirteen years.)

Every time there’s a crisis in my life, I escape into pop culture. After 9/11, I read all three books of The Lord of the Rings and spent hours watching Star Trek: Next Gen. When my dad died, I got addicted to Bones (yeah, I know it’s weird).

And when a social anxiety disorder brought my fantastic son home during his freshman year in college, forced him to put on hold his dream to be a physicist and made me learn new skills to be parent and person, I turned to a little, weird show that my romance author friends had been talking about for years: Supernatural.

Sam and Dean Winchester. The boys. Baby. Chuck be with you. Or not.

“This bonkers, escapist show is my self care.”

This November, this little cult-ish show will air its final episode after 15 seasons. I was a late adopter and didn’t start watching until 2017. But when it bit – phew – it bit hard. I went to my first Supernatural convention in the fall of 2017. I went to my second in 2019, where I asked co-star Jensen Ackles to pose my book cover with me. The smoldering look he gave me has become famous in some circles (called my friends) and is the basis of my next book in The Filthy Rich series, Serving Sin. I am currently in the middle of my THIRD Supernatural re-watch. THIRD. And the show has more than 300+ episodes!

You can click the link here to view the Twitter thread about this ridiculous image.

I don’t know what the special sauce is that has made Supernatural such a phenomenon for myself and so many others (yes I do, it’s two hot good ol’ boys totally devoted to each other without love interests so there’s no chance of jumping the shark). But what I do know is that the show got me through a particularly hard and sometimes scary three years of my life. It didn’t “solve” anything. It didn’t teach me anything. It didn’t improve me.

What it did was allow my brain to rest and relax when I was overwhelmed and scared, when there was so much I couldn’t fix or control. Watching an episode – apocalypses and all -- before bed relaxed me enough to sleep. Reading the fanfiction kept me from fixating in the middle of the night. Adding the stars’ gorgeous images to my ridiculous Pinterest page “Supernatural is Lady Porn” gave me an endorphin shot and made me smile.

This bonkers, escapist show is my self care.

I learned the value of self-care in escapist form in the eighth grade. I’d just moved to San Francisco and it was my first experience with mean girls. I didn’t understand them. I couldn’t reason with them. I wouldn’t change for them. And I knew, for the course of that year at least, I couldn’t escape them. So I had to withstand them.

The way I did that was by going to B. Dalton after particularly rough days, buying a romance novel and a bag of Ruffles potato chips, and camping out on my bed for the next seven hours. My mom let me skip coming down for dinner. But those classic romance novels were the one thing that allowed my brain to relax and freed me mentally from a situation I couldn’t change and had to withstand.

To this day, I believe those books helped me to learn an important skill at an invaluable time.

Part of the reason I’m a romance writer is because I believed in escapist self care, of getting lost in fantasies that allow your problem-solving brain to relax. And, oh baby, there is no better fantasy than that of the handsome Jensen Ackles smoldering at you. I want to give adults escapist fairy tales because I believe they have value.

“The show got me through a particularly hard and sometimes scary three years of my life. It didn’t “solve” anything. It didn’t teach me anything. It didn’t improve me. What it did was allow my brain to rest and relax when I was overwhelmed and scared, when there was so much I couldn’t fix or control.”

Now, as an adult with two adult-aged kids, I feel like there’s even less under my control. Many of us Americans are feeling this way as we stare in shock and awe at the way our federal leadership continues to ignore this pandemic. I’m not advocating we be like them (him) – I’m not saying we throw up our hands and stick our heads in the sand.

I’m saying that after you’ve worn your mask and washed your hands and helped your kids and finished that Zoom call and registered to vote, you allow yourself to sit down with a good romance book and embrace it as one of the things that allows you to take care of you.

Or turn on the tube and start watching a weird little horror sci-fi show. With 300+ episodes, it’s that escapist fantasy that you won’t get tired of anytime soon.

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Join me Saturday, June 12 at 5 pm CT/6 pm ET when I celebrate the release of Serving Sin with Clif Kosterman, the bodyguard for Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki for the last thirteen years. Click here to learn more and register.

What I Learned In The 7 Years Between Completing Novels

Update, January 2020: I wrote this soon after I completed The Billionaire’s Prince, Now Titled Lush MOney and Available now. What an incredible journey it’s been!

In 2011, I finished a book. I sweated over it, I celebrated it, I won a contest with it, and then, when I received, like, eight rejections for it (I'm not kidding), I threw it under the proverbial bed and declared that I was done with fiction writing.

Perhaps I wasn't quite as dramatic as all that, but it still wasn't pretty.

Now, seven years later, after starting a successful freelance business that forced me to write quickly and daily, after discovering the joys of writing serially to enthusiastic fans on Wattpad, and after completing a 50,000-word fanfic and a short story that I'm incredibly proud of, I've completed another book.

On Dec. 18, 2017, I gave myself the Christmas present of completing The Billionaire's Prince (now titled Lush Money), a story about a sexy female billionaire who strikes a bargain with a prince. In return for three nights a month in his bed, she will give him enough money to save his kingdom. All she wants is three nights a month in his bed for a year. And his heir.

I know. Juicy.

Everything has changed about the world of romance fiction since 2011. Fortunately, everything about how I write has changed, too.

I'm a "yes-er" instead of a "no-er."

I remember sitting at the back of the room at a Washington Romance Writers' retreat, arms crossed, as Angela James of Carina Press, Harlequin's digital-first imprint, told us about the future of online books. This would have been...2009? My girlfriend and I declared that we would NEVER limit our beautiful books to the digital world.

Yep, I said that.

My tiny little mind has grown beyond those early limitations and now I'm excited about what technology has offered us storytellers. The scrolling panels of online comics, the serial pacing of reader/writer platforms like Wattpad and Radish, and the "let's throw it at the wall and see what sticks" mode of modern-day storytelling have taught me the freedom unleashed by technology. Our ability to tell a story in a way that best meets the needs of that story is only limited by our imagination. And our stubbornly crossed arms.

I've turned down my perfectionist knob.

I became a docent at the Hillwood Museum in Washington, D.C., this year, and during my training, our brilliant instructors shared with us the concept of "good but growing." Professional athletes at the top of their field don't rest on their laurels, they explained. Instead, they continue to work and train.

I found this concept revolutionary.

Instead of trying to become the "perfect" author, I should look at myself as "good but growing." I will always be learning. I will always be training and changing.  And instead of assessing the work through the lens of "perfect," I should think of its "keeps and changes." What should be kept? What should be changed? This assessment takes away (somewhat) the sting of objective criticism.

More importantly, this whole concept of "good but growing" keeps me from trying to reach the imprisoning retirement home of "perfection" and instead allows me to stay out on the open road.

I stayed true to my own voice and path.

My mom likes to talk about the freedoms that come with age, and while I roll my eyes when she talks this way (because I'm a daughter and she's the mom), I also have to agree with her.

Yes, mom.

Because Lush Money was written using myself as true north. It was written saying things I wanted to say about strong women and supportive men and love and sex and family and self-image. I plan to take this compass into the submission process and, hopefully, the publishing process. I'm old enough now to understand that a dream achieved without listening to the directives of your heart is no dream at all.

I've transformed into a pantser.

Seven years ago, I would have sworn to you that I can't write a book without knowing exactly where it was going.

And then, I tried to write three books with elaborate outlines and notecards and emotional arcs and mountains of research. I hated them. I spent three months doing prep work for the last book I attempted, even taking an intensive course about establishing story theme. I literally could not get through the first chapter.

I began the popular fanfiction piece I wrote on Wattpad with nothing but a threat I offer my husband when he doesn't take good physical care of himself: "If you die young, I'm going to take your life insurance money and buy a gigolo." I began writing Lush Money with one single solitary concept: What if the billionaire was a woman? I was as surprised by the twists and turns in that story as the readers. I knew my hero had a sister five seconds before she burst into the room. The photographer who caught my couple de flagrante surprised me as much as he did the couple.

I'm sure my writing method will twist and turn over time as much as my stories. That's because I'm good. But growing.

I'm in love.

I can build kingdoms. I can create corporations and birth beautiful villages in the Spanish mountains and swirl together the most delectable glass of red wine you've ever tasted.

I can make you sweat and break your heart. Don't worry, I'm usually crying right there with you.

And then I take a break for lunch.

"If you don't create, you hurt yourself," says Grant Faulkner in his book, Pep Talks for Writers. "Making art tells you who you are. Making art in turn makes you."

I make myself everyday when I sit down to write. When the words feel stifled, I make myself into someone grouchy and mean, wondering why everything pokes and fits too small until I remember, "Oh yeah, I had a shitty writing day."

But when the words flow, I make myself into something glorious. I find all kinds of joy in this life, but there is nothing that makes me feel more powerful, more capable, more worthy of my place here on this planet than a good day of writing my romance novel.

I've found love. I won't give it up again.