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Book Title: The Registration (a Novel) by Madison Lawson
Category: Adult Fiction (18 +), 320 pages
Genre: Thriller
Publisher: CamCat Books
Release date: September 2022
Content Rating: PG-13 + M. There is violence, including a torture scene, and some language, as well as mention of domestic violence, abuse, murder, and abortions.
You can’t outrun the Registration.
Imagine it’s legal to commit one murder in your lifetime⎯if you Register the victim and accomplish the kill within fourteen days. So when Lynell Mize stands in line to Register the man who abused her as a child, she’s shocked to hear a stranger Register her to be killed. Why would anyone who doesn't know her squander his one legal murder on her? Desperate to survive the next two weeks, she must find out who wants to kill her⎯and why.
Easier said than done as Lynell soon discovers that multiple strangers have used their Registration on her. Along the way, she reunites with her estranged husband who is determined to dig up a past Lynell prefers to keep buried. With only days left to live, Lynell fights to uncover the truth and survive a destiny not of her choosing.
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Writing with a Mental Illness
In the spirit of being more open about mental health, I wanted to talk about the complications of being an author with a mental illness. Any sort of neurodiversity can make daily tasks difficult, and being an author calls for spending hours and hours on the computer, writing, editing, planning, and more. Writing isn’t only creativity. There is also a business side to the job. You have to send out queries to get an agent; do research on agents, publishers, editors, etc.; write extra materials such as taglines, ‘about the author’ page, and guest blog posts; spend hours on marketing which involves everything from taking photos of your book to contacting influencers; and more. These tasks can be fun, but they can also be time-consuming, draining, and sometimes boring. And a mental illness such as depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, or ASD adds several more complications.
I have ADHD and PTSD, both of which come with several symptoms that impact my life and work. ADHD makes it difficult to write when I’m not obsessed with a scene, and, oddly enough, it makes describing locations SO difficult. That was probably the most challenging part of writing The Registration: creating and describing settings that are realistic, fit the story, and that I can explain. You see, I can’t see these places in my head due to the aphantasia symptoms that come with ADHD, so it takes twice as long to design and remember building layouts.
Plus, ADHD impacts dopamine production and attention allocation. Meeting deadlines would be easier if I did a consistent amount of work every day until the project was finished. Unfortunately, ADHD may steal attention from one task and throw it on something else, meaning I often find myself scrambling to meet a quickly approaching deadline while being frustrated that I wasted a week on anything BUT the priority task.
Coupling PTSD with ADHD causes several days to pass when I don’t touch my books. Either I’m not in the headspace, a scene triggered a PTSD response I hadn’t been expecting, I don’t have time, or I’m just exhausted and can’t be bothered.
I used to read articles and advice to new writers, and almost every single one had some variation of “write every day.” This was incredibly discouraging because I had several days my brain would not let me write. It was a while before I learned that a day when I didn’t write was not a wasted day. Perhaps I read a lot, which is vital to writing well. Or maybe I cleaned my house, which positively impacts mental health. Or I got other things on my to-do list done.
Or maybe it was none of that, and all I did that day was rest. Sometimes, the best you can do is survive, and that’s okay.
Author Madison Lawson writes speculative fiction novels full of suspense, social commentary, and complex relationships. She has published a dozen short stories, many of which won awards such as the Koresh Award and the Gordone Award. She received her B.A. in English from Texas A&M University and is currently earning her M.A. in English at North Carolina State University. Born and raised in a small Texas town, Madison began escaping through reading and writing as soon as she could.
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