The First Excellence |

Arthur Ellis Award Finalist In June, I had the very great honour of being named one of five finalists for the prestigious Arthur Ellis Award for Best Short Story.

The title that received this nomination was Watermelon Weekend, from our Crime anthology THIRTEEN, by the Mesdames of Mayhem.

I’m proud of this story. It was written with an understanding of how families work, and how their fragile dynamics may or may not be destroyed by encounters of the criminal kind.

But then, the truth is that I feel this way about all of my stories.

Maybe it’s my genre, which allows me to go beyond the nuts and bolts of “whodunit” and delve into the humanity of crime, or maybe it’s the stories themselves, concerned as they are with suffering and survival.

For whatever reason, my novels and short stories have touched readers, and for this I am eternally grateful.

There can be no greater joy for an author.

It isn’t easy to engage in a real dialogue about ‘depression’.

First, there’s the stigma that attaches itself to mental illness.

Assumptions are often made about those who suffer chronic depression. Sometimes those assumptions are founded in reality. Often they are not.

Long ago, in the checkered landscape of my own past, I learned that problems tend to grow in the darkness of ignorance.

Open discussion, honesty and dialogue… these are the tools available to us in learning to live well with mental illness.

In my books, The Noon God and The First Excellence, I explore the harshest effects of long-term depression, most notably suicide. In The Noon God, my protagonist Desdemona Fortune experiences ‘survivor’s guilt’ after not one, but two, close family members end their own lives.

In The First Excellence, the story opens with Min-xi, the soon-to-be mother of a second born daughter, who finds herself under tremendous pressure to kill her daughters in hopes of later conceiving a son. Unable to hurt her daughters, she instead abandons them in a popular tourist area, knowing they will be found and hoping they will make their way to a better life. After leaving them on a park bench, she takes her own life.

I have an intimate understanding of the kind of depression that can lead to such a tragic outcome.

Debbie Like Desdemona, I am a survivor of ‘sibling suicide’. A long time ago — a lifetime ago, it often seems — I lost my older sister, Debbie. As a teen suffering from an intense and long-term state of depression, one dark night she chose to throw herself through the window of a 12-storey apartment.

I’d like to pretend that I don’t understand. Sadly, I do.

I am also a survivor of chronic depression, and like many such survivors, I remain alert to the triggers that can bring about a spiral into darkness.

There is one thing that seems to help stave off the ravages of depression, in my experience. That ‘one thing’ is honesty.

When I pretend everything is ‘OK’, that’s when I’m in danger.

On the other hand, when I accept that this illness is part of who I am, and when I am honest with myself and others, then I can find a way to not only survive, but to live well, to enjoy this gift I’ve been given.

Depression hurts.

If my words can help even one other person to cope, and more, to live well beyond the scope of that pain, then I will feel this dialogue has been worth the effort.

So come on, world, let’s get together on January 28 and remove the stigma!

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