How to Be Electric ⚡️

Hello Lovelies, how the hell are you?

Before anyone starts composing a concerned lecture: I’m taking my meds. I mostly sleep. Work is just… a lot right now. (Understatement of the decade, but here we are.)

The thing about a seizure is that it doesn’t ask for your calendar. Before I realize what’s happening, it’s already happening. Some fire demon has taken up residence in my bed and is shaking my legs like those heavy ropes at the gym. And then—gone. I am swallowed whole. A tornado of a billion stars. There is no “me,” only the electric bliss and the dark velvet oblivion.

Cut to: I wake up in a world that is way too bright, way too close, aggressively technicolor. No memory. My legs are bruised, but no bones are broken, so—win? My core is screaming like I did a thousand crunches for sport. (I did not. I am many things, but I am not that woman.)

Nocturnal seizures are the dangerous ones. The ones where you just… don’t wake up.

My brain is postictal—“brok’ten.” Stuttering, sparking, misfiring like a bad string of holiday lights. Fine motor skills? Optional. Screens? Absolutely not. The world itself feels… off. Tilted. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Nope. Nosiree Bob.

And yet—because I am who I am—I manage to text my psychic twin Eleanor (author of Fallout): “Eleanor, I’ve had a frand Mal!”
Which is both incorrect and, frankly, hilarious.

After that, I do as I’m told. Off screens (Heather says so, and Heather is always right). I set my medical leave OOO. I pretend it’s 1994 and retreat to bed with a chunky book. I hydrate like I’m prepping for a marathon I will never run. I take more meds.

And I eat.

Specifically: a massive Reuben. Because after one of these… events, all I want is a sandwich involving Russian dressing and potato chips that are actually inside the sandwich. This feels, to me, like a perfectly reasonable medical protocol. Healing, but make it deli.

And then—the part no one really talks about—the sadness rolls in.

Not a drizzle. A full, biblical flood.

I sob for everything I’ve lost to this condition. And also, inconveniently, for everything and everyone I’ve loved despite it. Which turns out to be… everything. My children. Heather. My hilarious ex-husband. My adventures with Sam. My completely bonkers Royal Tenenbaum family. Even the jerks. (Especially the jerks. Don’t ask me why.)

There’s this overwhelming, almost rude clarity: if I hadn’t woken up, this life—short, messy, electric—would still have been such a gift.

And then, because the universe has a sense of timing, THIS song comes on and I am just… a puddle on the floor.

To fix my speech (which, postictal, is a creative interpretation of English), I sing. Musicals. Joni Mitchell Radio. And, of course, Saint George Michael, patron saint of Cowboys and Angels.

To fix my body, I do easy Yoga with Adriene. Somatic work with Karena because she is RAD. Slow, deliberate, human things.

And then—inevitably—the hypergraphia kicks in. The unstoppable urge to write. Long comments. Big thoughts. I fall into ’s work on interiority and AI, and ’s thoughts on foreign policy, and suddenly I am back, typing like a woman possessed. (Because, technically…)

A day or two passes. If I do watch something on the telly, it can’t be Industry (which I adore). No, it has to be a self-soothing BritBox series like Father Brown—though I’m very worried the lead actor is taking Ozempic, as he’s looking terribly gaunt about the jowls these days. And tonight I return to the world as a mostly functional human. Slightly singed, but operational.

And I am reminded—again—that we are all electric beings. Ideas firing at 250 miles per hour through 86 billion neurons. You think the brain is weird? It’s weirder than you can even think. And what a wonder that is. I write about how funny this is in my next book Ellery Goes Dark (which no one can manage to put up the right cover for, even though we gave it to them six months ago). It comes out in 2 months. Do you see me freaking out? Nope. I’m like a fucking Buddhist.

Anyway. Back to work. Back to life.

This week, our beautiful book Come to Dinner: A Life of Food and Friendship by bestselling author Sara Davidson (with a gorgeous foreword by ) launches everywhere on Tuesday, 3/24.

And Fallout by is coming 4/21 in the US and UK—more news and an excerpt coming soon. And Eleanor was on BBC radio… I’m trying get a link that works. Just listening to her voice is like a warm bath!

And then this gem by … along with so many others to come. Read the excerpt here.

Preorder if you’re so inclined. Light a candle. Eat a sandwich.

Wish us luck.

xoxo,
Gotham Girl

PS - I am a human typo. Amnesty appreciated.