Book Deal Announcement! 🎉
Hurray, yippee (and don't freak out...)
I’m so happy to finally be able to share that I’ve got a book contract with Jessica Kingsley Publishers! They have published some amazing books, including Rudy Simone’s trailblaizing Aspergirls, Pete Wharmby’s What I Want to Talk About and Charlotte Amelia Poe’s Conversations with Monsters. My acquiring editor, Lynda Cooper, has been incredibly enthusiastic about
Some of you will know that this book has been on submission for a while, and although some amazing editors have said wonderful things about it, they also haven’t been sure where it would fit in the market. But Lynda at Jessica Kingsley really went to bat for it. Her enthusiasm from the start has been so encouraging, and she’s gone above and beyond to champion both the project and me as a writer. It feels glorious to be working with an editor to get my ideas out in a more formal way to more readers, and I’m just so excited.
The deadline for my first draft is October 31st, so Mondays are now dedicated to pulling all my notes and excerpts together into something book-shaped. Wish me luck!
What the book is about
The working title is Drinking to Mask and Unmask: the neurodivergent addiction crisis no one is talking about, and I’m about to begin research for Chapter Two, which explores a lesser-known trajectory for undiagnosed Autistic girls, one that isn’t often talked about, in which girls, sick of working on overdrive to fit in with society’s unreasonable and unrealistic expectations, abandon the effort and rebel instead.
Growing up is difficult for everyone, but for me, the transition felt especially brutal and destructive. I went from being an extremely well-behaved, obedient and happy child to being a hedonistic nihilist, and the scars from the lack of care I allowed myself during this period are still visible. ADHD-related thrillseeking/dopamine chasing + Autistic sensory overload and sensitivity made consciousness-altering a real Russian roulette.
There were incredible high points during this time, but also viciously derailing lows, and I want to explore how (undiagnosed) neurodiversity and the accompanying lack of self-understanding played a part…
I remember reading about this lesser-known trajectory (not that much is known at this point when it comes to Autistic girls) in Rudy Simone’s book 22 things a Woman with Asperger’s Wants Her Partner To Know, which I strongly recommend for anyone keen to better understand so-called ‘low support needs’ or ‘high masking’ Autism. Early on in the book, Simone briefly discusses how undiagnosed Autistic girls can be particularly vulnerable to negative influences - drawn into risky behaviors, easily led and finding self-destructive coping mechanisms as a means of getting through.
Her description of this pathway, driven by perceived or real personal and societal rejection powerfully resonates with my own experience of adolescence, and I know it resonates with a lot of you too. This book is my chance to dig deeper into this topic.
Get in touch
If you’ve ever struggled with a sense of self in adolescence and used drugs or alcohol as a way to mask or unmask, I’d love to hear from you. Your stories will help shape my understanding about how and why this unfortunate trajectory happens to so many young women.
Sharing the writing and thinking process
I plan to test out ideas here, share snippets of the book as it comes together, and hopefully get your input along the way. So if this project speaks to you, I’d love your support - whether that’s engaging with the ideas, sharing the posts, or just spreading the word to people you think it might help. Late-diagnosed Autistic women, in particular, are so often neglected by healthcare systems and public discourse, and I want this book to be part of changing that.
More soon, and thank you (as always) for being here!
List of good things
Live: stand-up Joe Wells is coming to Bristol! I’m booking tickets for October, come along!
TV: Amandaland is finally here! Sharon Horgan is one of my favourite writers of all time, and this Motherland spinoff is such fun to watch. Here’s the titular character in one of the Motherland episodes doing the dance that got her 400 likes on TikTok.
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Book: Parable of the Sower by Octavia K Butler. I read this with my undergrads most years, and it just keeps getting better. Reader discretion advised, it is a trigger warning cacophony.
Chelsey Flood is the author of award-winning novels Infinite Sky and Nightwanderers, and a senior lecturer in creative writing at UWE. She is currently working on book about getting sober and then finding out she’s neurodiverge AF + her first domestic thriller.
Love this Chelsey! Go go go!!! x
Amazing news, Chelsey! Congratulations! Your book will do a lot of good out there for a wide range of people, quite apart from being a cracking read. Here's wishing it a fair wind. x