Angst is a story she has always wanted to tell, a fiction retelling of her own struggles as a college freshman. Her goal is to be completely honest about mental illness and life's struggles and to reduce the stigma of mental disorders. She hopes to follow up with a second book featuring Victoria in the future. For more Wicked Victoria, visit her blog: http://www.angstanxietypanic.wordpress.com
Social Links:
• Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Victoria-Sawyer/551377891560029
Blurb:
***Recommended for ages 17+ for adult themes and frequent use of harsh language.
There are two things I want out of my freshman year of college: to hook up with confusing hottie Jared and to chug some beer as soon as possible.
Getting wasted is like purely medicinal freedom. I murder my secret and constant soul sucking fear and tense nervous body beneath 17 glorious shots of pseudo-sanity. And destroying self-conscious crazy me reveals a sexy confident stranger who likes to try wild new things.
Then there’s the Jared complication, the guy with the Halloween costume that features his ripped and naked chest. It’s an attraction I can’t deny. Too bad I can’t understand what he wants because half the time we’re making out on the dance floor and the other half we’re screaming at each other about whether or not I’m a party slut.
And as the year party-crashes to an end, my drunk-scapades and severe panic attacks want me to pay up, big time. What little sanity I started out with is clinging by a thin thread and when that thread snaps, I’m lying on the cold basement floor of my parents’ house, a loaded hand gun kissing my hot tear streaked forehead.
As I’m craving the freedom and soothing blackness of death, he calls and I open up like a fire hose of self-hating hot mess. After we hang up, I make a choice.
Author Bio:
"Passionate about writing, graphic design, creativity. Fueled by the light and dark. Beauty, color, euphoria, artistic frenzy, depression, panic, anxiety."
What you see on the outside is not what you get on the inside. On the outside, Victoria Sawyer is polished, confident, put together, but on the inside things are a bit different. She's creative, thoughts whirling, anxious, alternately depressed and happy or self-critical and confident, energetic, charismatic, cranky and panicked.
She has suffered from panic attacks, anxiety and depression since the age of 10 and has been writing for just about as long. Her love of writing started as journal entries as therapy and eventually morphed into a melding of fact and fiction. Sometimes writing drives her to drink or drinking drives her to write or sometimes it's depression, anger, mental illness or love.
• Website: http://www.angstanxietypanic.wordpress.com
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/angst_victoria
• Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6952110.Victoria_Sawyer
• Google + : https://plus.google.com/109697375650708100621/posts
Tour Schedule Link:
http://wp.me/p3raRE-7c
Buy Links:
http://amzn.to/171mQe6
Angst Guest post
Would You Judge this Girl by Her “Cover”?
As I said, here I stand, naked
Exposed
Warm hand to bare chest
Honest as a heartbeat
Steady
Craving approval
When I wrote Angst, I was honest, brutally so about how it feels to struggle with anxiety and panic attacks. I never truly thought to be where I am today as a self-published author with strangers reading my novel and telling me that they think I’m brave for sharing my story through fiction. In some ways sharing that story was easy, I’ve lived it, I know each and every nuance, every dirt path, every highway, all the gritty hard dirty details. In other ways, deciding to share this story publically has ripped me apart, exposing who I am and how I feel.
I’ve always been the girl who wears makeup, the girl who dresses to impress, vain and yet insecure. Hiding who I was inside, hiding the fact that I very often felt afraid. I covered up the real me with sarcasm, drinking, partying and laughter. No one knew the way my mind worked or the daily torture I felt when trying to do normal activities. No one knew how my heart throbbed or my hands shook or how my thoughts raced and my stomach clenched up in fear.
I was the book with the pretty cover hiding the damage inside. I was the book who was judged by the face I showed the world. I was crafted, created, designed to sell an image of a normal girl without problems. My problems were buried, deep down under my exterior.
“The vision I see in the mirror is me, who I am supposedly, but that vision does not express the way my mind works or the way I feel inside.”
Just as books are judged by their covers, so too are we judged by our exterior. My exterior is one I’ve always used as a shelter in which to hide, to cover up the fact that I believed I was crazy. But when I decided to publish Angst, I made a choice. I accepted that we only live once and I didn’t want to look back and have regrets that I didn’t do what I could to share my story and help others. I had always told myself when I felt at my worst, if only I can somehow help one person feel less alone or help someone understand what it’s like to live this way, I’ve succeeded, I’ve made this suffering more than just some senseless pain. I decided I wanted to rip away my façade, my book cover and expose what is in my pages. I was tired of hiding. I wanted honesty, I craved a way to tell you how I really feel.
When it came time to create a cover design for Angst, I had a few ideas in mind to show off plot points in the book, a party girl, keg cup, sexy clothes. And I wanted to be my own model even though I’m older now than my 18 year old protagonist.
I had a photoshoot with a friend and a lot of photos were taken. Some that represented the party feel of the book and others that had a more personal feel. The photo that I ended up using is my face, straight on, open, honest as a heartbeat, yet vague too. Can you see the suffering there? Would you judge this girl by her “cover” and if so, what do you see?
Just as it’s hard to distill a 300+ page novel into one image that represents all the plot points inside, so too is it hard to look in the mirror and try to fathom you, as the image you see before you. Are you that image? Are you the makeup you wear? Are you the girl who never has a hair out of place, are you putting on a show to fool the world into thinking you are something you’re not? Do you plaster on a smile or force a laugh when you’re crying inside? Are you hiding your pain? Do you feel guilty, ashamed, afraid, alone?
I was that girl…and now I’ve stripped it all away and it feels really positive. I am my cover, but I am so much more than that too. Just like a good book, the proof is in the pages, locked away in words upon words and even what is in between those words, the things that are not spoken, at least not overtly. There is a depth there that cannot be fully understood or appreciated without diving inside and living there.
Next time you think you know someone, try to read in between the lines, try to see past their “book cover” and when you do, you’ll truly learn about your fellow human beings and I think you’ll learn that we’re more the same than different. And secondly realize, it’s okay to be YOU. We only live once and hiding the pain every day isn’t worth it. Be you, be honest, be truthful, reach out toward hope, don’t suffer alone. We are each human, each with struggles, each with one life to live.
And do the same with book covers…who knows what depth of pain or humanity might be hiding behind that cover? You might be surprised at what you find behind those honest eyes.
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