Ep. 8 Rewriting Mental Health Narratives Through Fiction with Danielle Blum

What if everything we’ve been taught about mental health especially in movies and media is completely wrong? In this episode, Danielle Blum shares how her journey as an author evolved into something much deeper: a mission to challenge the harmful narratives surrounding trauma and dissociative identity. Through the creation of her psychological thriller Fragments of Affection, Danielle conducted over 100 interviews with individuals living with dissociative identity disorder, uncovering stories that are far more human, complex, and misunderstood than what we typically see portrayed.

As the conversation unfolds, Danielle opens up about the emotional weight of those interviews, the unexpected community that formed from them, and the responsibility that comes with telling stories rooted in real lived experience. She also shares a deeply personal perspective on addiction through her best friend’s ongoing struggle, offering an honest look at the tension between love, support, and helplessness. This episode invites you to rethink what you believe about trauma, identity, and healing and to see the people behind the diagnosis with a new level of understanding.

Contact Mark Astor:

Website: https://mentalhealthaddictionlawfirm.com/

Phone number: 561-517-9405

Email: mark@astorsimovitchlaw.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markastor

TikTok: Mark G. Astor (@astorsimovitchlaw) | TikTok

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hollywood really has a way of turning people with this diagnosis into the bad guys. Serial killers, murderers, they're climbing up walls. Split is a perfect example of that. And that's just not the case at all. Like these people are just struggling to survive their daily tasks and everything like that. So I really wanted to change the narrative about mental health in fiction and the media.

SPEAKER_01 0:22

It's the journey with drug and alcohol attorney Mark G. Astor. Welcome to the journey with Mark Astor. I'm your host, Mark Astor. I spent a lot of years sitting across the table from people during some of the most challenging moments of their lives. As an attorney, as an advocate, and as someone who understands that the road isn't always straight. What I've learned is that success, recovery, and growth rarely look the way we expect them to. There are detours, hard conversations, and moments that change everything. On this podcast, I talk with people who are willing to be honest about their journey, what worked, what didn't, and what they wish they knew sooner. So I am very excited to have our guest today, Danielle Blum. Danielle is the author of Fragments of Affection, a psychological thriller that explores trauma, identity, memory loss, and disassociation through the lens of a woman who wakes up covered in blood with no memory of what happened. To write this book, she interviewed somewhere between 75 and 100 individuals living with dissociative identity disorder and related trauma disorders. She also shared with me, and she's going to share with you about her best friend who is currently struggling with alcoholism. And she is watching as her friend goes through the cycles of denial and the impact it has on relationships and the tension between wanted help and recognizing what is what is really going on here. So I'm so happy that you're here. I enjoyed our time together. I think it was yesterday. It felt like forever, it felt like a week ago, but the time has been flying past.

SPEAKER_00 2:04

Yeah, it's going so fast. I have no idea what date was. I don't even know what I know it's Monday because I had remember having this scheduled and I was like, man, time is just flying by.

SPEAKER_01 2:11

What's really cool about Danielle, because there's lots of couple of things, is that she's like a what do they call this? She's a nomad, somebody who's seeing the world, but while she's doing it, she's making a huge difference. And where are you currently located, Danielle?

SPEAKER_00 2:24

Right now I'm in Madeira, Portugal. I've been here for the past five years. This is the home base now. Maybe we came during COVID and then just never left, really. So it's the longest I've been anywhere since I was like 17.

SPEAKER_01 2:37

Where did you grow up?

SPEAKER_00 2:38

Lake Tahoe, Nevada, California border. So I was there until I was 17, and then I maybe 18 actually. I think 18. And then I went to UNLV for university. And then after that, I quit my job. I sold everything I owned, and I just started traveling, and it's been pretty non-stop since then.

unknown 2:56

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 2:56

How do you like Portugal? I've heard. Well, I think I showed you I went there as a kid with my parents.

SPEAKER_00 3:00

Yeah, I love it. It's definitely, I'm on the island 600 miles away from the mainland, so it's a little bit different here than it is over there. So it's really a small island too. It's only 13 miles by 30, so it's a small little area. But I love it. The culture, the food, the people are amazing. It's sometimes a little getting used to because as American, I'm ready for that fast-paced instant gratification, Amazon Prime, all of this. And like I don't even have food delivery in my area. So yeah, it's just a lot slower lifestyle, and it's just it's so much more relaxing. And I just I love it. I fell in love with the culture and the people immediately.

SPEAKER_01 3:34

Yeah, you know, that that is my wife and I have have this dream where we would have a house somewhere other than where we live in Florida, and we would pick up our pets. So we have right now we have three dogs in the house and three cats, and the cats are a new addition. We rescued them, and they have brought a very different environment into the house. They're so sweet and nurturing and loving, and there's a definite energy, a different energy in the house, but the dogs are amazing too. So I think I'll I'm a little bit to be kind of a little bit jealous. I ideal situation would be to pick up the dogs and cats and just go somewhere where we didn't have to watch the news every day and we weren't inundated with a ringing phone. Because sometimes that can be you can feel like the world's coming to an end and you don't know what to do about it. I know that it's all of this stuff is uh is causing a lot of people to have issues. So I'm grateful for you. Let's talk about your book, Fragments of Affection, how that came about and what it's all about, and all the research you did. Maybe you could share that with us.

SPEAKER_00 4:31

Okay, so I think it was about three years ago now. There used to be a program called Nano Wormo, and you basically wrote a whole entire draft of a book in a month. It was just like a challenge just to see if you could do it. Like the whole it was a worldwide thing, it was huge. Unfortunately, they're not around anymore, but we won't get into that. And so that was in November. I literally did it for two days and just never picked it up again. So January came around the following year, and I was like, you know what? I'm just gonna sit down for an hour every day and just write. Like, just I used to write all the time when I was younger, and it just really stopped doing it. So it's just like I'm just gonna make time to do it. And an hour is a long time, but when you give yourself that hour, it's just I could stare at the screen for an hour, or I could type 50 words, or I could type 15,000 words. It really just depended. I didn't have a story in mind. It was just okay, I'm sitting down, like whatever comes out. So this story definitely started as one thing and ended up as something completely different. The main character was gonna have a twin sister, and there was gonna be all this struggle with this and that. And then the more I wrote the character, the more that it became clear that this character had disassociative identity disorder, which I am familiar with. I studied psychology and I know about this. I wasn't expecting to write about it, but once that was made clear, I decided I needed to do some research because I wanted to portray this character authentically and respectfully. Hollywood really has a way of turning people with this diagnosis into the bad guys, serial killers, murderers, they're climbing up walls. Split is a perfect example of that, and that's just not the case at all. Like these people are just struggling to survive their daily tasks and everything like that. So I really wanted to change the narrative about mental health in fiction and the media. Yeah, so I started just shooting the dark, just trying to figure out who can I talk to, like this and that. And then there's friends of a friend that introduced me to one person, and then there's some groups, so it just snowballed, and I just got a lot of people that were willing to do it. And it started with I think 75 for the first round of interviews, and then I did three rounds, three different rounds. And so I think in total, it was probably about 100, maybe 115 people that ended up doing these surveys for me and just really opening it up and just telling me like some things that even their family doesn't know about them and stuff like that. And it actually opened up to this whole community of just different people that you know that weren't feeling so alone because they were all of a sudden in contact with other people that had the diagnosis. Yeah, and so have some really beautiful friendships that came out of doing this that I didn't expect. I did a Kickstarter for the book for the big opening, and one of the people I was interviewing, she was so generous, she showed me her diary entries and they were just like fascinating. And she ended up reading the book and then rewriting diary pages so they fit the book, but it was based on her actual diary entries, and those are the front and backs of the books now. So you really get a look into what it's like living like this with someone that actually has a diagnosis and looking into their diary to see like just the overall things. Yeah, so unexpected partnerships and collaborations, and it's been it's been really amazing and eye-opening as well.

SPEAKER_01 7:30

This is a very unusual book. What was the impetus? Because this whole multiple personality thing, which we're going to talk about in a minute, I think the only person that I ever knew of that had this disease was Herschel Walker, the football player. So, what was the motive for that?

SPEAKER_00 7:45

I didn't plan on it being that way. And then once I started getting the interviews and they're coming in and the answers I was getting, it became really important that I needed to do this in a way that actually represents like people with this diagnosis in a fair light. And this particular diagnosis is different for everyone. It's all over the place. So it can challenge the fiction of being thriller because some aspects of it seem like fantasy or just not real, like this couldn't be happening. You hear different voices in your head. One might be human, one might be Gollum from Lord of the Rings, and you hear that voice all the time. And so it's like, how do you distinguish between fact and fiction on this? So I was trying to do the balance of that, but it is everything in this book is based off of what people have told me in these interviews, a lot of the systems, it's like what you call a whole entire group of people in your head. They have specific names for their system, and then there's the world building in it, like what I have in the book about this head space, like those are taken from the interviews. So, with permission, of course, on all of this. So it's yeah, it's everything in this book is what it's like and the real aspect. And I took it from people that have actually lived the experience. So it went from writing fiction to a lot more of advocacy than I expected as well. And I'm really loving that too, because multiple personalities or disassociative identity disorder happens because of severe trauma before the age of four. And the fact that I was able to connect with so many people living with this diagnosis, yet there's still so much unknown about it, says there's so much more bad things happening to little children than anyone knows. And we need to talk about it and get it out there so there could be some sort of something out there to help the situation. But if we're not aware of it, if we're not talking about it, then nothing can change.

SPEAKER_01 9:24

It's so interesting that you bring this up and you'll you're the our guest today. I had interviewed somebody just yesterday who's gonna come on the show, hopefully. And she is, I think she's in her late 20s. If you read our LinkedIn profile, you would say, Wow, how did this happen? She's she has a master's degree, she's working on her doctoral degree, she works in the tech industry, and she's extremely accomplished. But she's been in recovery for one year. She developed a serious alcohol issue. I guess when she was about 10 or 11, she realized that when she was four, she'd been uh sexually abused. And it it's been a battle for her ever since. But if you look at her sort of from the outside, you'd say, wow, she's amazing. But inside she is really struggling. She's in recovery right now for a year. But I can tell you just from speaking to her that she's battling every minute. She's an incredibly brave woman. And it just it sounds like this is the kind of things that talking to these people about. Is that am I right about that?

SPEAKER_00 10:23

Yeah, absolutely. It's just opening the conversation in a safe place where people can feel free to talk about it. Like I said, a lot of people hadn't even told anyone else, except for me, because one, the diagnosis, like it tries to keep it secret, even from your own self. So a lot of the time, like you'll have this and you won't show any symptoms or anything like that until maybe in your 30s or 40s. But you have it the whole time. There was just some trigger going there. So it's very overwhelming, it's very traumatic, especially to like if all of a sudden you're just like blacking out all the time and have no memory of what's going on, but they're people you know, and like you the other people have memories of you, like they had, oh, we did this yesterday and you don't know. So that's can be really just catches you off guard, right? And then it's like, how do you rearrange your whole life when you thought you knew this? And then you have to face the facts of why you have this diagnosis. And a lot of that is going back to the trauma that they endured at such a young age, which usually comes from family members, and now it's like their whole five family dynamic has changed. So it's it's literally can change everything you thought you knew about who you are and what you are, and not being able to tell anyone or talk about it and the dispersors inside really it leads to a lot of addiction, actually, in multiple cases too, because they're just trying to self-soothe or not remember or numb this. So it goes hand in hand in that as well.

SPEAKER_01 11:40

Yeah. And I wrote down when we had spoken yesterday, you said that somebody could have hundreds of personalities. It depends. Is that am I right about that?

SPEAKER_00 11:47

Oh, yeah. Some people have thousands, and certain events can have you can have one personality here that also has five of their own personalities. The mind is absolutely just crazy how it literally developed this to survive at in life. And now it's like some personalities might be better at something. Like one of these women, one of her altars was better at taking care of their children. So whenever the kids came home, that altar stepped forward, was in control of the body, was the loving mom figure. And then the when she went to work, another altar came forward because she was better at doing the work stuff as being a professor at this school and like being able to public speak and do that. Whereas the other one is super shy and couldn't do this. So it's it's almost a superpower. And that's what a lot of people had said to me too was like being able to pull the strongest part of yourself out to face whatever obstacle or task that's in your way. Whereas like I deal with that, but hey, I have to suck it up, put my little glasses on today, be the confident person that I am. Whereas like they could just be like, hey, you, come on, come be in charge.

SPEAKER_01 12:44

So can you summon the other person? Can they summon the other personalities if they need it?

SPEAKER_00 12:49

It really depends on how that system is working and how like how they work, if they work together as a team. Sometimes, like, one altar might not even know about the diagnosis and like they're completely in the dark and definitely in denial about it, whereas maybe the whole rest of the system does know about it. So sometimes, yeah, you can call the other one forward, but a lot of the times there'll be like little triggers and someone will come out like say you smell cigarette smoke and you were burned with cigarettes as a kid. Maybe your protector altar will come out to protect you and get you out of that situation. So some can call on them, some have no control, some rapid switch like every two minutes and just trying to function. Remember if you brushed your teeth or if you had breakfast, or did you go to work today? Can you go to work today? All of that. So it's a very complex diagnosis. There's a lot of rabbit holes to go down with it, but it is a lot more common than what we know about it so far. And that's like I said, that's the problem.

SPEAKER_01 13:44

Yeah, one of the things you said to me, and I thought this was fascinating, was that one of the personalities might need glasses and another one might not. I'm like, you're right, I can see because we're I'm close to the computer screen, but if I was anything else, I'm gonna wear my glasses, especially to drive. You won't want me driving without my glasses on. And I will always associate that with like a physical issue, right? The lenses and all that, and your age and all that. I'm so how did that come about? You've got one personality that needs glasses, and the other one that can apparently see perfectly.

SPEAKER_00 14:12

Yeah, it just I guess it's just how your brain works and functions. Like some of the altars can be fluent Spanish, the other one might not know anything about it. It's just how your brain compartmentalizes different things. And there's this psychosomatic symptoms as well, like the glasses. Like my main character, she has wears glasses, but the other altars don't. So that's a way in the book that you can tell that they're switching is by taking on and off the glasses. A lot of that can't be explained, but also if one of them has a cold, if they have a cold on their inner world, and if they're in the body, they could also present the symptoms of being sick. So it's like you could literally be sick with the flu one second, and then all of a sudden someone else comes forward and now you know you're fine. I don't know, I don't understand it. I don't know how it actually works. I just know that the brain is really freaking cool in how it does that.

SPEAKER_01 14:58

So, how does somebody like that who maybe who gets married, has children, how do they how do they function? That would seem if you're a husband. I mean, I'm I've got my wife and I've been married a couple years. If I was to come home and she was a totally different person, I'd be like, okay, what happened here? How do they fun? How does that how do they function?

SPEAKER_00 15:13

It's different for everyone, and it also depends on if they know they're diagnosed or not. So it's if they're aware, okay, there is a lot of times like an accent will change or someone will get twitchy, or someone will all of a sudden be like mood swinging, and it's because the personalities are coming through, and maybe this one doesn't like you, or because whatever reason, but they can't really like the partner has to be really understanding of what's going on and realizing because you could be at the grocery store, and now all of a sudden your partner is throwing a fit in the little kid aisle because they want a teddy bear because they're still a child, that's a child alter, and like at that moment, that's how they're viewing the world, but they're really a grown adult, and you can't see it when it's happening to you on the inside, but your partner can definitely see it. So it's like learning to love all of the parts of that person and knowing how to nurture them as well. You're gonna nurture a five-year-old kid different than you are, like your wife. It's a definitely you have to work together and be very honest and open, and that's hard with this diagnosis. Like I said, it's a very secretive thing. I did read a book where the gentleman, I can't remember what it's called, but the gentleman didn't know he was got this diagnosis until he was in his 30s. He was also a professor, and there was just a switch. And now one of these elters is younger, he likes to roller blade and go out on Venice Beach and like sleep with all these women. So the wife obviously was not happy or excited about that, but she also couldn't be like, No, you can't do that either, because then that person would resent you, like maybe they leave forever and then you're stuck. So there has to be a lot of like obviously communication and also trust, and then also is love strong enough to keep you together at the end of the day. But there's a lot of struggles from the people I still talk to with that, and it's such a wild diagnosis. And if you don't know anything about it, hearing about it is just overwhelming for both parts.

SPEAKER_01 17:00

Okay. So is there any kind of treatment or I hate to use the word cure, but because it doesn't seem like it's appropriate. But what is some of the no cure? So once you got it, you're stuck with it.

SPEAKER_00 17:11

And there is treatment, they do a lot of different types of therapies, trauma and stuff like that. Usually, like the therapist will be specialized in DID just because it is so unique. One of the main goals is to have integrated systems so everyone's working together and you can function as the rest of us and can do that. However, with the interviews I did when I asked people if they could be a singleton, that's what they call us, one personality people, and 98% of them don't want that. Like these personalities have gotten them through their life, like they've come in and saved the day. Like they probably would not be alive if it weren't for these other alters stepping up in the place and doing this. So they can't imagine their whole support system not being there. So they don't necessarily want to integrate, they just want to be able to cohesively work together so life is easier. So like they're just living and functioning in a normal way. But a lot of the therapies do push towards that integration. So I think that needs to be talked about as well, too. Is if this is what most people don't want that, then why are we pushing that as the only way to be better and to fit into society? So that's another conversation to open up is like what treatments are actually beneficial to the people living with this instead of just us telling them how they should behave and act.

SPEAKER_01 18:26

Do you think it's possible to someone to fake this?

SPEAKER_00 18:28

Absolutely. And there's a lot of that going around on the internet, like people are like faking it or just, oh, I wish I had this or something like that. I know I got questioned a lot about the interviews if I believe that the people had it or not. And if people wanted to lie to me about it and just pull on my chain or whatever, okay. But there were so many similarities between the answers I was receiving in this that it's like, yes, it's different for everyone, but there are similar threads going through all of it. But yeah, people could fake it all the time. You're blacking out or have amnesia. So it's like you could fake that to get out of trouble, be like, oh, it was my other personality that did that. I didn't cheat on you, you this guy did. So this you could, if you're just like a mean, manipulative person, but people that have it, like they don't wish it on anyone just because of obviously how it happened and why you have it.

SPEAKER_01 19:15

So if one personality is running the show for a couple hours, do the other personalities even know that's going on? Is there any memory? Let's say that one personality got in a car accident and they were seriously injured, and then the other personality shows up what they remember, would they know what happened that they could cause the car accident?

SPEAKER_00 19:32

It is different for everyone. Some know, some can be like two people could be up here at the same time and both being in control of this. Some people know that hold memories for specific things when they were kids, some hold it for now. So, yeah, they could wake up and have no memory and not know, and maybe no one else knows, but they also maybe they could. Some people can step up and do it. Like in my book, for instance, one of the altars is the only one that has the memories that can solve this crime and save their asses, basically. So it's but he's withholding that information from the rest of them because he doesn't want to be associated. So yeah, it's a yes and a no question, and it's very specific on that person and how their inner world is set up as well.

SPEAKER_01 20:14

Yeah, I think there was a movie where Ryan Philippe played a defendant who was who was a I think he was charged with murder, and he was the defense was listen, he the other personality was the one that committed the crime because the one that's sitting here right now has no recollection of it. It was very interesting, and it turned out he was faking it. But then we didn't find that out until the end of the movie.

SPEAKER_00 20:33

Most people that live this, they're not violent people, they're not gonna go murder everyone. Usually, there have been, I think, five cases. This is something else I researched of people going to court for murder and was like, oh, can they get off because of their mental health or like this and that? So there's very few, most people are not convicted because of the DID I diagnosis. There's usually PTSD, OCD, there's a whole entire sheet of different diagnoses, and DID is just one of those things. But people are literally just trying to survive with this. Like they're not, there might be a protector that's angry that comes out and lashes out at people because you're threatening the body or the person, but the biggest threat is really their perpetrator, and that's like their inner person that punishes the body. One, you deserve all this. Oh, you told our secrets, like now you have to be punished. So self-harm is much more common than harming others.

SPEAKER_01 21:21

Very interesting stuff. Okay, let's switch gears for a second because I know that you have a very close friend who's been dealing with substance use. Can you talk about that for a little bit?

SPEAKER_00 21:30

Yeah, so we've been best friends since we were five. I turned 38 next month, so a long time. 30 something years. And I we were neighbors, we lived together, we went to university together, we lived together in the dorms, we lived together after the dorms. Like she is my other half. Like I know her to her core, like the best I can. And then in the last few years, she's developed a severe alcohol addiction problem. Which we always we partied, we went to Vegas. Come on, we did that, and I just never really saw the signs. Of it being an issue. And then there were some things that happened, and she just didn't really process it and the emotions that went along with it. So she started drinking, and now, yeah, she's in the grip. She's almost died. She's gotten has brain brain damage now as well from consuming it. So not only has she lost her career, like she'll never be able to get that back. And she was a career woman. So it's literally been a 180 of who she's always been to who she is now. And now we're just stuck in this ongoing cycle of wanting to get better, but not wanting to take action. And then I'm sorry, I'll do better. And just the grips they have her in her clenches, and she just can't seem to escape it.

SPEAKER_01 22:38

So we had a guest on this morning who who unfortunately lost a son to a drug overdose. And then both him and his wife started to drink heavily. And he woke up one day and said, I can't live like this, and was uh able to finally experience recovery. The wife ended up drinking herself to death to the point where she was in a wheelchair and her body just eventually shut down. And I and it was really the the death of the son that was the catalyst. And I think they'd always been social drinkers. So for your friend, was there some type of event that you could talk to us about or events? Because it sounds like you had you had you grow up on along similar tracks. So something happened along the line where she she just couldn't, this became an issue.

SPEAKER_00 23:20

Absolutely. So I think so. She's ended up dating this man, they were together for almost 10 years, and he was really into just partying, having fun, doing Burning Man. All the they lived in San Francisco, so all the fun things that come along with that lifestyle, and she very much was not into doing drugs or anything like that. So I think she started overcompensating by drinking to fit in, you know, and just be at that level with them. They were lived in a huge house in San Francisco, then COVID happened, so now it was like everyone was getting more money with no real responsibilities. So I think that heightened it. And then it all really started was with her high school boyfriend overdosed and passed away. And they had remained close ever since high school, like they were best friends. And she didn't really process him passing away because when she got back from the funeral, her boyfriend of 10 years broke up with her. So it was like the loss of one boyfriend, like past boyfriend, current boyfriend who she thought she was gonna marry. So I think that compounding. And then when COVID was over, everyone kind of had split up, no one was living together anymore. So all of her friends were his friends. So when they broke up, they all went with her and she was very much alone and didn't really cope with that. Started drinking, then she lost her job, which I'm sure is because of the drinking. She was just really sick all the time, throwing up. She said she couldn't figure out what was wrong with her, but it was literally she was just drinking without eating. So that was the trigger of it. And then it snowballed, and then the lack of the support, the no motivation to I don't have to get up for work, I don't have anything I have to do, like some of that. So that was definitely the trigger point for sure. It's sad because it's like she lost a big part of her memory. So these memories I have of us growing up together, like inseparable, doing all these things, like she doesn't remember any of that. So if I send her pictures or bring something up, sometimes it does trigger that memory, but it's damn like our whole friendship of 35 years is you don't even remember any of that. So that's like heartbreaking for me. But I'm also very glad that I can share the memories with her as well. So it's like one of those double-edged swords, I guess.

SPEAKER_01 25:24

So it sounds like you've been very supportive of her. Is there anybody else? Maybe has the ex-boyfriend reached out to her, the one who broke up with her?

SPEAKER_00 25:31

Oh no, absolutely not. He actually now is engaged to the woman that he was started dating right after, who was like the best friend's little sister. Yeah, no, she has no friend group that she did go through three different rehabs before finally getting sober. She met a gentleman in the rehab. They dated for a year. They were both sober that entire time, and then they broke up. I don't know who broke up with who, and then that was another crash in her sobriety as well. But he's still very much a support system for her. Probably her only friend in San Francisco. He's still sober and he's doing very well, and staying sober in his sobriety means a lot to him. But it's him, me, and her mom. And there's a couple other friends that will check in here or there, but they've got their own lives going on, and now this has been four or five years, so it's like everyone's sick of it. Everyone else has bigger other problems in their immediate life. So now it's just her, which is really hard. And I live across the world.

SPEAKER_01 26:20

You're living your life.

SPEAKER_00 26:22

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 26:24

So, what does the future look like for you? What are your plans? What are your goals and dreams, your aspirations?

SPEAKER_00 26:29

That's funny that you mention it because I'm a little bit Dululu. This is my little like bingo bucket card for the year. Some big things, but I would love to get on the New York Times bestseller list or any of those bestseller lists. I have another book coming out, but this one is a rom-com. Still dealing with identity.

SPEAKER_01 26:44

That's a rom-com.

SPEAKER_00 26:45

Romantic comedy. Got it. Yeah, just funny, but it's more like self-love and acceptance than like a partner dealing with identity, but she's just a very feisty character. She's been really fun to write. She's so much more confident and crazy than I am. So to be able to step in her shoes is just and relive my memories because it's the series is loosely based on my travels and my experiences, but live through a completely different main character. So that has been really fun and doing that. So like it would be an amazing TV show. So any producers out there, holler.

SPEAKER_01 27:15

So it sounds like there's a little bit of you in her.

SPEAKER_00 27:17

We're the weird little kids that are still very much weird now. And it deals with the struggles of growing up and feeling self-conscious. Like, I'm very tall and I was very skinny, like I looked like a stick bug forever. No boobs, no ass, nothing. So, like for me, I had my insecurities in that sense. And then this character is much more volumptuous and wild and crazy. So now it's like I'm experiencing her struggles through her point of view, which is completely 180 than what mine was. But it's been really fun. And like I always equate writing to being an actress. Like, I would love to be an actress, but there's no way I could do that on film. Absolutely not. I would just be laughing the whole time. But as a writer, I get to step into these characters. And obviously, I do a lot of research to try and get into that mindset and that frame. So it's a fun way to explore what my life could have been or what it can be, and just step into some different shoes that are not my own and just to learn about human behavior and act why we act and behave the way we do and how the outside influences that.

SPEAKER_01 28:10

So when do you think that's gonna come out?

SPEAKER_00 28:13

I'm hoping by the end of the year, but I did rush this last book, Fridays of Affection, a little bit. It was a very big learning curve. So I want to just take it a little bit slower this time and not have such a hard deadline on it. So I'll take it as it goes, but definitely sometime this year.

SPEAKER_01 28:29

Okay. And then what?

SPEAKER_00 28:31

Oh man, and then what?

SPEAKER_01 28:33

Are you gonna stay on your little island? Are you gonna move?

SPEAKER_00 28:36

I'm actually doing some retreats here this year that are invite-only, super intensive. For the first group is gonna be for thriller authors, just because that's right where I'm at right now, and I want to be in this room with all these very successful people. So I need to figure out how to build that room and have them come. So I'm doing an invite-only retreat, which I'm really looking forward to. And then next year I'll maybe open that up to other writers or aspiring writers or something like that. Definitely the goal is to build community of some sort, if in any way I can. I love bringing people together and talking about things and then traveling and then also becoming fluent in Portuguese because it's a freaking difficult language and I can get my butt together and figure it out.

SPEAKER_01 29:16

For folks that want to buy the book, where do they go?

SPEAKER_00 29:19

Right now, the easiest way is on Amazon. It's Fragments of Affection, it's on KU, so Kindle Unlimited for free,$4.99 for the ebook, or it is also a paperback right now. That is the best spot to have it. I will have it on my website, but I'm currently rebuilding that, so I'm not gonna advertise that one yet.

SPEAKER_01 29:34

So the website's down, so there's no website. So go on, so they need to go online to Amazon. And for the folks that are listening, you need to go on Amazon and you need to buy Danielle's book. I'm respectfully requesting that you do that.

SPEAKER_00 29:46

Yes, please. And then read leave a review.

SPEAKER_01 29:48

I'm grateful. I appreciate you coming on as a guest and being with us today. And for the folks that are watching, if you want to learn more about how we save families whose loved ones are suffering from substance use, mental health disorders, and failed attempts at recovery, go to our main website, which is mental health addiction law firm.com. That's mental health addiction law firm dot com. And with that said, Daniel, thank you for coming on. Nice to see you again.

SPEAKER_00 30:14

Yeah, thank you. That's been fun.

SPEAKER_01 30:16

And for our audience, we'll see you on the next show.