To avoid a lizard, I knew I would jump over the railing of a balcony 10 stories high. I knew I would abandon a child in public. I knew, if forced to choose, I’d have chosen an amputation over facing a lizard. I knew I’d have felt more at ease if taken hostage.
​
And while I knew most of those things weren’t true at all, they felt true. They felt possible enough.

I remember one encounter in high school, when my friends and I gathered on a second-floor breezeway after lunch. While I sat on the railings--my feet propped on the bottom rungs and my hands gripping the bars—​I listened to the girls chatting but continuously scanned the area. Outside, my attention always split into two unequal partitions: a small one for people; a larger one for the walls, for the ground, for roofs and trees and bushes and furniture and shutters.

A lizard ran across the concrete breezeway, and my body shifted backwards, my legs and arms throwing me a few degrees closer to the open air--and to the ground probably 10 feet below me.

I don’t remember how I kept from jumping. I don't remember if the other girls noticed, if they chased the lizard away, or if they laughed at me. I don’t remember if the thing disappeared immediately or perched far enough away that I felt secure. But I remember my instinctive reaction to go over the railing rather than interact with a small, harmless pest. I remember how immediately I put myself into harm’s way, remember the complete absence of any cognizant decision. I remember that lurch in my gut and the stretching of my arm muscles as I leaned backwards into actual danger. I remember that fleeting sensation of lightness, of endless dream-falling.
​
Few people ever understood my lizard-phobia (a term far simpler than scoliodentosaurophobia), how it felt, or how it consistently damaged me and my level of comfort in the world. But I remember.

I awoke before dawn after a quiet but restless Halloween night.

My stomach churned with acid and I fed it coffee, shutting out the self-destructive whispers encouraging me to abandon this pursuit. But as I turned the corner into my office, I saw the message scribbled on my tiny chalkboard: Publish or Perish.

In that moment, I wanted to perish.

But I sank to the ground, positioning myself in front of the plastic tub that holds my laptop--the makeshift desk I fashioned when I moved back to New Orleans a year ago. My old desk didn't survive the trip out of my old office, much less the trip from northern Louisiana.

For hours, I fought with various uploading systems and formatting requirements, making all the final arrangements to let people read the book I wrote, if only in electronic form.

And then, I stalled.

I had a difficult week.

Every day, I fought with the CreateSpace file review system over the cover for my paperback of Bless the Skies. Though CreateSpace repeatedly approved my cover, the digital proofing system showed me terrible-quality renderings of the artwork, with pixelated white lines stitching up all the seams between graphic elements.

I continually harassed my poor cover artist Andy Tripp, demanding file after file for CreateSpace's 10–24 hour review process. By the time we'd gone five rounds, I'd long terminated any remaining emotional connections to this novel.