Writing About Mental Illness -- by Christine Lindsay

I'm not much interested in reading novels that weigh me down with the darkness of mental illness. Yet, it's an issue that's risen it's confusing head in my own family. Maybe that's one of the reasons why I steer away from stories that delve deeply into the shadows of depression.

I don't like going there. It's all just too dark.

I've had to live with the affects of emotional and mental illness in many of the people I love. My own precious daughter suffers with severe depression. If it weren't for heavy duty medications from her psychiatrist, she would be unable to function in our fast-as-lighting world today. 

My mother also struggled with depression and was even misdiagnosed by her doctor and prescribed medications that actually worsened her condition. One uncle died from an overdoes of medications, and a distant cousin committed suicide.

Horrible stuff. Horrible memories I don't wish to be reminded of.

Unless, it's to share a ray of hope.

Mental illness can be defeated. People can be set free.

My daughter modeling for the
front of one of my books.

I saw this in both my mother and my daughter. Today they are vibrant women living their lives and making a contribution to the world. 

So, I suppose it was inevitable that I would one day write a novel that touches on mental illness. In this case I put what we call Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome into one of my secondary characters. Just because they didn't label it that back in 1913 doesn't mean they didn't experience it.

But my latest book also dealt with a woman who suffers from addiction to a drug prescribed by her doctor. In this case, laudanum. I understood this too well as I watched my own mother slowly weaned off the wrong medication prescribed by her over-worked doctor.

Sofi's Bridge deals with these dark and difficult subjects, but I think the secret is in keeping this topic in small doses for the reader. The last thing the reader needs is pages and pages of dark depression. 

My advice in writing dark subjects such as depression and mental illness is to keep it short. Only place your reader in the mind of that tortured character for short periods of time, then whisk the reader out as quickly as possible to the point of view of a character that is propelled by hope.

We can't and shouldn't avoid stories about depression and mental illness, but we can write these stories in such a way as to give the reader hope for the people they love who struggle with these issues. 

My mum on her way to a
friend's birthday party.

That's the whole purpose behind Sofi's Bridge. I saw healing in my family from this disease, and bright hope for my loved ones' tomorrows.  

Christine Lindsay is the author of multi-award-winning Christian fiction with complex emotional and psychological truth, who always promises a happy ending. Tales of her Irish ancestors who served in the British Cavalry in Colonial India inspired her multi-award-winning series Twilight of the British Raj, Book 1 Shadowed in Silk, Book 2 Captured by Moonlight, and explosive finale Veiled at Midnight.

Christine’s Irish wit and use of setting as a character is evident in her contemporary romance Londonderry Dreaming and newest release Sofi’s Bridge.

A busy writer and speaker, Christine, and her husband live on the west coast of Canada. Coming August 2016 is the release of her non-fiction book Finding Sarah—Finding Me: A Birthmother’s Story.

Please drop by Christine’s website www.ChristineLindsay.org or follow her on Amazon on Twitter. Subscribe to her quarterly newsletter, and be her friend on Pinterest , Facebook, and  Goodreads

SETTING—LIKE A BOX OF WATER COLORS

Maybe because I used to paint before I started writing fiction is the reason I love to write description.

Some experts teaching the craft of writing will give "description" a hard rap on the knuckles. Granted, we don't want to go back to the days of heavy-handed writing when the setting alone took up several pages.

But in much modern writing, we've gone too far to the other extreme. If there's not enough description, and only dialogue zinging back and forth, I tend to get bored. Quickly. 

For me a good book must have it all: character development, a ripping plot, but when I read a book for fun--I want to go somewhere. Show me the place!!! Let me feel the place!!!

I hail the great MM Kaye for teaching me about writing through the sheer enjoyment of her blockbuster novels loaded with description.
It's a delicate balance, combining your setting with what the characters are doing. This will break your description up into more appetizing chunks and stop you from writing "purple". It also makes your description ACTIVE. 
Here's an example of a snippet of description from my latest novel Veiled at Midnight. The sky is actually active.

Through the window the darkening Indian countryside sped by under a green sky with a crescent moon rising. 

~*~

Not all description has to be pretty. 

Closer to the front behind the engine, carriages lay smashed across the rails, nothing more than a pile of splintered wood and tangled steel. Twisted rails stuck out all over, while cars and coal tender straggled about the ballast stones. Indian passengers crept out from the broken matchbox of a train, in shock, blackened with smoke and grease. Cam heard and understood various dialects from people speaking all at once—Hindi, Punjabi, Urdu, and several others. Many sobbed, hunched over their wounds, while one Indian woman, seemingly uninjured, stood like a statue. Her sari fluttered in the scorching night breeze as she gazed about her at nothing.

~*~

I enjoy writing sensual scenes. As a Christian I hold back in writing sensuality between men and women for the sake of purity, but I will put it into the textures around a man and a woman falling in love. This description is broken up by Cam's reactions.

Velvet divans here and there, cushions of satin and silk in jewel colors—ruby, emerald, sapphire—were scattered over cool marble floors interspersed with Kashmiri carpets. Brass gods scorned Cam from various corners. Lush potted palms quivered in the stillness like the nerve at the side of his neck. A suite of rooms, private for a man and his wife to play with their children. A private place to hold a woman. 

~*~

Peace of mind returned as Cam watched beyond the edge of the roof. Light from the fast-sinking sun went out like a lamp over Calcutta. Duck-egg green shaded the sky, a backdrop to the carved, white, pavilion in Mogul design…the silhouette of a woman against the fretted stonework.

It took a moment to realize that she stood at the arched doorway. It was the rose-like perfume of Dassah’s presence he must have taken in. 

~*~

Writing about India these past ten years has been such a joy, satiating my own appreciation for the sensuality of God's creation. Now that my series Twilight of the British Raj is complete, I'll miss my research on that gorgeous, exotic sub-continent. Especially the scenes set in one of the prettiest places in the world, The Vale of Kashmir. 

Dassah's breathing resumed a normal rhythm as Cam pulled the car up to a mooring where a long, slim flat-bottomed boat waited, that Cam told her was called a shikara. He helped her into the shikara, and along with the young Kashmiri man, Cam packed the bags and boxes into the craft. Cam learned the driver’s name and passed it on to her—Asheesh—who took his position at the back of the shikara. At last, Cam sank onto the seat in the middle of the craft with her, a gaily colored canopy flapping above them. Asheesh dipped heart-shaped paddles into the water and pushed them forward.     

Trailing branches of willows whispered along the waterway as they glided past. For the first time since last night, Cam touched her by drawing her near to rest her head against his collarbone. She breathed in the clean scent of his cotton shirt as the sun set. Snow-packed peaks around them flushed like a ripe peach as their craft slid out to the openness of an immense placid lake, dotted with lotus blossoms.

Veiled at Midnight is the explosive and passionate finale to the historical trilogy Twilight of the British Raj.

For more information on Christine Lindsay and her books drop by her website www.christinelindsay.com and connect with her.

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CHAPTER ONE OF VEILED AT MIDNIGHT

LORD…THIS WRITING BUSINESS IS DRIVING ME CRAZY—By Christine Lindsay

Author Christine Lindsay with her husband David and all four of her children.

When I first started writing I had no idea how time consuming it would be, how many incredibly long hours…years…a decade and a half, that it would take to become an author with a nice tidy little line of published books.

1999 seems so long ago when the emotional breakdown that I was experiencing at the time became the catalyst to start me writing in the first place. It was just after I'd reunited with my birthdaughter, the child I'd relinquished to adoption 20 years prior. God brought peace and healing to my heart and life, and as the years past so too did a ministry as a writer and speaker grow.

For the last two years I’ve blogged a bit on the weariness that comes to writers and speakers. Ask anyone of us and we’ll say how tired we are, how much work there is to do, and how the to-do-list never seems to whittle down. There have been many times I’ve tried to stop. Last summer the need—or what I considered the need—to market my books became overwhelming.

I simply had to stop writing. Permanently. I couldn't do it anymore.

And I told the Lord so.

My precious God gave me the rest I needed, several months of not even looking at my computer. I loved it. And how surprised I was to be willingly giving up my drive to write. For years I’d wondered if my desire to write Christian novels was just a tiny bit self-driven, and not entirely the Lord’s plan for my life. How often have I wondered if I had been fooling myself.

Yep, I thought, God wants me to focus on Him, be the wife, mother, and grandmother that I am supposed to be.

Then, just as I thought I’d figured it all out, another contract to write my non-fiction story was offered—the story of relinquishing my first child to adoption and our painful reunion 20 years later.

Then another contract was offered me for a fictional novel I’d written  several years ago. Then six more speaking engagements were offered to me. All without me asking. The writing/speaking ministry was growing organically. I was no longer striving for these things, and there it was, the thing I’d been fretting for so hard for, for years.

I felt the Lord’s smile. I wasn’t off the writing hook yet. Maybe I just needed a refresher course in the fact that I CANNOT DO IT ON MY OWN.

“Stop striving, child.” I thought I heard God say. “You cannot do this work on your own, but you can do all things through Christ who strengthens you.”

So this past Christmas, I focused on my family and enjoyed what Christmas means. I look forward to 2015 with the renewed attitude that I will be that warm wife and mother and not the busy writer glued to the laptop. God will take care of the details. This is especially real to me as I look at the family photo of this past Christmas which includes myself, my husband, our three children and my birth-daughter whom the Lord has lovingly entwined in our lives and us in hers.

If God can do that, He can take care of a writing and speaking ministry.

Christine Lindsay is the author of the multi-award-winning series Twilight of the British Raj. Book 1 Shadowed in Silk, Book 2 Captured by Moonlight, and recently released Veiled at Midnight. Also by Christine is the romantic novella Londonderry Dreaming, and soon to be released Sofi's Bridge. 

Drop by Christine's website www.ChristineLindsay.com to learn more about her books and speaking ministry.

ST. PATRICK WOULD ROLL OVER IN HIS GRAVE

If St. Patrick were alive to see the shenanigans we get up to on his day, I’m sure he’d roll over in his grave.

Ugh. Shudder.  Yikes!!!

As a person who was born on the actual old sod, a true child of the Emerald Isle, I admit to having mixed feelings about St. Patrick’s Day. I’ve got the birth certificate to prove that I am authentically Irish—born in 1957 at the Jubilee Hospital in Belfast, N. Ireland. All right, all right, you can do the math. 

But today, I’m standing up. Might even get myself a placard and march around the streets. 

“I am Irish, hear me bellow! Something’s gotta give. We’ve gone too far.”

Now, I’m just as full of blarney when it comes to discussions on the myth of leprechauns—do they exist or do they not? 

Well, of course they exist. Any self-respecting Irishman will tell you so. When I was in grade two my teacher thoroughly insulted me. We were given a test, and one of the true or false questions was, “Does a Leprechaun bury his gold at the end of a rainbow?” 

I answered yes. 

Apparently in Canada the correct answer was, “No.” Because according to the Canadian Education system there is no such thing as a leprechaun.

I ran home after school and cried on my mother’s lap. Oh the shame of it all. To this day I’ve never forgotten.  

On the other hand...though...as a women of—shall we say mature years—I get a bit miffed when I see the ridiculous paraphernalia that certain large department stores carry to sell to unsuspecting Americans and Canadians. Really now!!! Since when did St. Patrick ever wear a bright green cowboy hat with a fringe of feathers? Or a baseball cap with fake hair growing out of the top? Or a green jester’s hat with accompanying bells?

That’s when this child of the old sod gets really riled up.  Green cowboy hats...of all the silly things.

Still, I’m all for green iced cupcakes, green candies, green sugar cookies, green pudding. But I have to say a very clear, “No thank you to the green beer”. 

I do get a bit misty over an old Irish ballad or two. And downright keen when it comes to leprechaun sightings.

But what has all of this to do with the actual saint...Patrick the missionary to Ireland?

Absolutely nothing. 

However, St. Patrick was a Christian. A darlin’ man who brought the gospel message to Ireland, don’t ye know. 

 
God bless him for that. He taught the Irish about the Trinity by showing them a shamrock—which is Gaelic for the word clover. Patrick took the three-leafed shamrock and pointed out that the Trinity is like this—three leaves in one. Like God, three in one. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.

Each St. Patrick’s Day, it is that truth that I reflect upon. 

Not Green food or drink. Not silly green hats. Not even green cupcakes, although I’ll not decline the offer to eat one, and wash it down with a nice cup of tea. 

But for now, God bless you all this St. Patrick’s Day. And here are the words from the saint himself, to inspire you.

Christ be with me,

Christ be within me,  

Christ be behind me, Christ be before me,

Christ be beside me, Christ to win me,

Christ to comfort me, Christ above me,

Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,

Christ in hearts of all who love me,

Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.

By St. Patrick, a 5^th Century Cleric.  

And if you're looking for a nice romantic yarn set in the Emerald Isle, well sure, I'd like to point out this charming tale that I wrote called LONDONDERRY DREAMING. 

Here's a wee minute-long jaunt in a Book Trailer to put you in the mood. And turn up your volume, be ready to tap your feet to a modern-day rendition of an old Irish tune.

LONDONDERRY DREAMING by Christine Lindsay

Acclaimed New York artist, Naomi Boyd, and music therapist, Keith Wilson, loved one another five years ago, until her grandfather with his influence over Naomi separated them. 

That root of bitterness keeps them apart until a letter from Keith’s grandmother, Ruth, draws Naomi to Londonderry to find she’s too late. Ruth has passed on. After the death of his beloved grandmother, Keith has also come to Londonderry only to open the door to his past…Naomi...beautiful as ever, the girl who broke his heart.

A mysterious painting in Ruth’s attic brings up questions about their grandparents’ entwined past and their own broken romance. But more comfortable with the unspoken languages of art and music, Naomi and Keith find it difficult to share their old hurts and true feelings.

Will the majestic coastline of Northern Ireland inspire them to speak the words to bring peace to their grandparents’ memory and to rekindle love?

CHRISTINE LINDSAY

You can find out more about Christine Lindsay's novels on her website www.christinelindsay.com

 

Christine Lindsay was born in Ireland, and is proud of the fact that she was once patted on the head by Prince Philip when she was a baby. 

Her great grandfather, and her grandfather—yes father and son—were both riveters on the building of the Titanic. Tongue in cheek, Christine states that as a family they accept no responsibility for the sinking of that great ship. 

It was stories of her ancestors who served in the British Cavalry in Colonial India that inspired her Multi-award-winning, historical series Twilight of the British Raj. Book 1 Shadowed in Silk, Book 2 Captured by Moonlight, and Christine is currently writing the final installment of that series called Veiled at Midnight to be released August 2014.

Londonderry Dreaming, Christine’s romance novella set in N. Ireland released Feb. 2014.

Aside from being a busy writer and speaker, Christine is also VP of Christian Authors’ Network. She makes her home in British Columbia, on the west coast of Canada with her husband and their grown up family. Her cat Scottie is chief editor on all Christine’s books. 

CONNECT WITH CHRISTINE:

Please drop by Christine’s website http://www.christinelindsay.com/ or follow her on Twitter and be her friend on Pinterest , Facebook  and  Goodreads

 

A COVER IS DESIGNED

As an international author, I am continually amazed at the covers by WhiteFire Publishing. I simply had to share the design process from Roseanna White's own blog on how she created these breathtaking covers showing exotic India. Thank you so much Roseanna White.

Remember When . . . The Series Was Complete? By Roseanna White as previously published on Writing Roseanna

WhiteFire's first series to be contracted and completed just got its final cover. The Twilight of the British Raj has won some awards and garnered a lot of very well-deserved praise. And when Christine Lindsay (the author) and I started chatting covers for the final installment, Veiled at Midnight, I think we were both rubbing our hands together in delight.

The first book of the series took place in British India of 1919. It was one of WhiteFire's first two titles other than mine, and at that point, I was not designing covers. We hired the amazing George of Tekeme Studios, and he blew us away with this fabulous cover for Shadowed in Silk.

By the time book 2, Captured by Moonlight, rolled around, I had wet my feet in the design world, and Christine and I discussed it and agreed I'd try my hand at mimicking the style of the first with the images we had in mind for the second.

This third book jumps a generation. Set during the tumultuous partitioning of India and Pakistan in the 1940s, our hero and heroine are Cam, the little boy from the first book, and Dassah, who was a baby in the first book. I haven't yet gotten my hands on the MS, but I know what an amazing writer Christine is, and I know we're in for another sweeping saga of romance and suspense!

Christine started a Pinterest page for the book, which is where our idea-gathering began. She wanted gold on the cover, to represent the joy of a new dawn. Though "midnight" is in the title (the Partition took effect at midnight), she wanted the images to represent a new day. (Not to mention we already had a night scene on cover 2...)

Our first thought was to use green and gold, to represent the Pakistan flag. The most compelling images we found were of a night sky, and my (very very very very very sloppy) playing around led to this.

Not bad. The lighting in that sky is amazing. But the original image of the model had her in a red sari, and changing red to gold is T-O-U-G-H. I managed a fair imitation with the low-resolution comp I downloaded from Shutterstock, but I knew it would be much harder with the real photo. So I was pretty happy when Christine emailed and said that her critique partner convinced her that red might  be okay. It was a color Dassah had shied away from in the earlier part of the book, because it reminded her too much of all the blood that had been spilt. But they decided that later in the book, she could instead realize it also represented the blood of salvation.

So we began with this model picture from Shutterstock. We both loved the pose, and I especially loved the motion in the sari.

Obviously, next we take out the background.

Now, you'll notice that in this traditional sari, the belly is showing. This is accurate, both today and historically, but we decided that for a CBA book, we probably shouldn't have the bare flesh. So I inserted a semi-transparent layer to mimic sheer fabric there.

Now it was time for the background. There are some absolutely GORGEOUS images of India that we considered. I knew the characters spend some time at a mountain lake, and I knew we wanted gold tones, so I decided to try out this one.

Plopping Dassah in front of it, I got this.

A good start. I liked the colors together, and the water. But I wasn't wild about how distinct that building is in the back. And Christine pointed out (later, but let's show the change now, LOL), that the light is hitting her on the wrong side. So I flipped her.

To blur the background in the distance, but not the water up close--because I LOVE that reflection--I duplicated the layer, blurred the top one, and then applied a layer mask and faded the top image from the bottom of the screen upward--that way, the bottom layer comes through in its non-blurred glory toward the lower portion and fades into the blurred image at the top.

Pretty, yes? But not there yet. The covers for this series are rich with texture layers. So to get the full effect and really see if it was going to give me the look I was going for, I first added in the elements that would stay the same as the first books (but with color changes)--the one I call "the lotus thingy" and the "banner thingy" that goes behind the title.

Oo, I was starting to like how this was coming together! I went ahead and added the title. Which, for these books, includes the title itself, then the last word faded out behind it in an exotic looking font.

Okay, so now I had a great base. I loved where it was going, I loved the way the red and the gold worked together. But now I needed to add some texture.

In the first cover, Tekeme had used a flower overlay that I liked but couldn't match exactly. So for book 2, I used a paisley design. For this one, I wanted something altogether different. So I did a search for "photoshop texture lotus gold" (don't you love the random words you can put together for searches? LOL) and I found this one.

It just felt promising from the get-go, LOL. So I plopped it down on the top, set the layer opacity way down, and used my fade-out gradient to make the middle of the layer completely transparent.

Oh my. Yes. This was the point where my breath got all knotted up in my throat, and I knew I'd found my look. I went ahead and added the layer with Christine's name, making it red. But that layer is also always textured, so I duplicated my texture layer, shrank it down, and this time didn't fade it out. The result was this, and I gotta say, silly as it is, that's it's one of my favorite elements on this whole cover, LOL.

So I added that, and also the series name where it belonged. And I was happy. Almost. Mostly.

There was just one thing missing--a border. Each of the other two covers have a border, just a slightly-darker version of itself. I needed something like that here, but I didn't want to mess with what I had already, so I nearly left it off.

Then I looked at the original texture layer again. And I noticed that it had really cool sides that were not on my cover because I wanted the lotus part to extend off in both directions. How to get those on as the border, without interfering with the nice transparency of the original texture layer? Well, I fiddled with it until I figured out the obvious answer. I pasted it on, narrowed it to fit the width of the book, and then deleted everything accept that border part that I wanted. And voila!

And there we have it. The real, honest-to-goodness finished version of the front. (Haven't created the back yet.) I was fairly giddy with it, so showed it to hubby/publisher David, who said, "Wow. Yeah. That's it."

So I emailed it to Christine, who said, "CAN I SHOW THIS OFF?" ;-)

I emailed it to best friend/crit partner Stephanie, who said, "I think this might be my favorite of all your designs!"

I don't pick favorites, LOL. But I do adore this cover. I like the continuity with the other books in the series, but I also like where it's different. I feel like this one was somehow more my design and less trying to mimic that first cover. And I just adore those colors together. So overall, we're all very pleased. =) The Twilight of the British Raj will finish up in style!

CONNECT WITH AUTHOR CHRISTINE LINDSAY ON Facebook,  Twitter,  Pinterest,  Goodreads,   or on her blog www.christinelindsay.org