A Great Place for a Seizure is a funny, sarcastic poignant look at life with a disability without the misery approach but rather an honest, humorous, touching taste for real life. It's a story about the choices we make that make us who we are, regardless of whether someone has a life with or without epilepsy.
The Book has been self-published via Amazon KDP Select and CreateSpace and is available as eBook and as Paperback - released in 2011, 270 pages.
Terry Tracy has worked as a human rights activist, journalist and diplomat. She has epilepsy and in 2007 - she wrote the charter for an association of disabled employees of the U.S. State Department.
A Great Place for a Seizure was a Finalist at the Indie Discovery Awards 2012.
About the Book
Mischa Dunn's family flees Chile in the wake of the 1973 coup d'etat that installs a military dictatorship. She settles comfortably in her newly adopted country, the United States, until one day, an unexplained seizure in a library signals the beginning of her life with epilepsy.
With an engaging balance of humor, insight, and sensitivity Mischa draws the reader into a vivid tale that travels across three continents over thirty years.
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| Click to Read an Excerpt |
Is this a textbook?
Terry Tracy: "No,I have been scared about people thinking that it's a textbook. I wanted to write a good story. I know that first rule of writing fiction is to write about what you know. I have epilepsy. I know it's a mysterious condition, not very well understood but the subject of myth, superstition, stigma and, horror stories but there are other sides to it as well and they can be fascinating and that's what this novel can talk about. It IS NOT a misery memoir it's a novel about life and the choices we make that make us who we are."
Reviews (Excerpts)
- "[...] I would highly recommend this captivating book, about a fascinating and intricate woman and about a very important illness. The story is truly gripping. " - Maggie Mendus
- " Wow! This book was amazing! It has taken me through the journey of an amazing life. I felt what it was like to be in her shoes and felt everything she felt. It is not just about the story about someone living with epilepsy....it is so much more. It is a story about life, love, losses, gains, emotions...I could go on and on. Incredibly well written! A MUST READ! I will not be surprised if Oprah gets her hands on this! " - Astrid Steinhäuser
- "[...] I would highly recommend this captivating book, about a fascinating and intricate woman and about a very important illness. The story is truly gripping. " - Camilla Helgo Fossberg
- "[...] In Terry Tracy's compellingly poignant novel she conveys an honest and sometimes brutal picture of epilepsy through the eyes of a young professional woman. This novel that is told in the format of 27 different short stories, each entitled with a location by where a seizure had occurred in the central character's life, we get to see what happens, not in terms of counting the different seizures that Mischa Dunn has had from her last chapter, but we get to see all of the situations and circumstances that make up a professional's life.[...]" - Joseph Sirven - Epilepsy.com
- "[...] This book is about so much more than Epilepsy, just like people that live with it. I thank Terry Tracy from the bottom of my heart for sharing this story with us. Please write more! " - Musiclover (Amazon)
About the Author
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| Photo: Rebecca D'Angelo |
Upon her return she decided to join the establishment and started working for the US Government. She left her job at the State Department in 2007 to take turns with her husband and become a stay-at-home parent in London.
Terry has had epilepsy for 30 years and with the extra time at home decided to write a funny, sad, strange, and moving novel about a sarcastic epileptic. Terry is Asian-Irish American with a German husband and a German-American daughter (who tries desperately to teach her mother German). They currently live in London.
Terry, we have to ask: What is a "Novelory"?
I think the Novelory organization is definitely interesting for some readers. Some think it's a gimmick and that's fine, that's life. But I really am presenting something here that I don't think has been recognized before. We do have the name episodic novel, but usually its English Lit. grads who use it. Huckleberry Finn, The Sound and the Fury, and even To Kill a Mockingbird have, by scholars, been considered an episodic novel. I have friends in book clubs and avid readers whom I have asked if they knew the word. None of them had heard of it.
Why do we have a name for a short novel, called a novella when it's only difference is that it's about 40,000 words less than the average novel? We do not have a special name for the type of book that questions the traditional western narrative, one that is organized differently than the traditional narrative that moves the character from beginning to end in one pointed narrative. Authors who do write in episodic format are sometimes accused of having jolted story-lines and yet there is a point to jolted story-line. The memories of life and the stories we keep inside are never truly cohesive. Real life is jolted and the episodic format of a novelory gives a reader that taste of a real-life frame of mind. It also gives them a buzz of recognizing how real-life does have inter-weaving plots and sub-plots, some have closure and some do not. An episodic novel does this without as much confusion because these sub-plots can be played out in short stories. The art of weaving a large story from sub-plots is special. It deserves a name and I propose: 'Novelory' the combination of novel and short-story.
NOVELORY [no * vel * or * y ] noun (1) A fusion of the terms "novel"and "short story" to describe a series of linked stories that may stand by themselves as individual tales and/or come together as a novel, when read in sequence. (2) A term, coined by Terry Tracy, to identify a species of literature that reflects the 21st century IT-induced mind-set of tight schedules, rapid communication, and the desire to have all things at once. (3) a gimmick.
Links to the Book
Link to the Book A Great Place for a Seizure with Excerpt on Amazon (UK)
Link to the Book A Great Place for a Seizure with Excerpt on Amazon (US)
