I spent seven years writing Dad Gone Mad, and it's truly what helped me build an audience. Having that site was instrumental in being able to convince my publisher that I was worth the risk.

The stigma is based in people's ignorance of mental illness. I don't mean that in a bitter way; it's just true. People who have had no exposure to mental illness--either in their own lives or in the life of someone they know--means most of their understanding of it comes from movies, books, and television. That's certainly how I understood it before I experienced it myself. I thought mental illness necessarily looked like "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest." I think the only way that stigma can be combated is for those of us who know better to speak up, to identify ourselves as the faces of mental illness, and to show the world at large that we're normal people, just like them. You wouldn't give a second though to telling another person that you suffer from a heart problem or diabetes, so why should depression or anxiety be any different?

I wish I could say that was intentional, but it isn't. I wrote what was in my head, and the fact that people can relate to it that way really makes me feel good. That's the way I feel when I read books by my favorite authors--Jonathan Tropper, Jen Lancaster, AJ Jacobs--and to know that I have somehow managed to reach my readers the same way they have reached me is one of the best parts of being a writer.