Happy Saturday!
Excited to share this interesting guest post with you today. Really made me think about what I do to deal with my anxiety. I think my favorite way to deal is to curl up with a good book. I can tell I get moody and stressed when I haven’t had enough reading time in the day.
Space Academy
It’s the year 2100. Earth is dying. A young woman, Elsie, has risked everything to get her newborn son, Will, aboard ‘The Mayflower’ – a spaceship that will transport a select number of people to a new planet they can call home. Elsie’s luck takes a turn when she discovers the captain of ‘The Mayflower’ is an old friend. He allows her to board with her son, giving them a place on the luxurious Floor One, where they live amongst the most honoured of ‘The Mayflower’s’ passengers.
Thirteen years later, and Will is ready to start school at Space Academy, an institute specialising in subjects such as Alien Studies, Technology, and Rocket Control. While a pupil there, Will starts to uncover secrets about his father’s death, becoming wrapped in a mystery that he and his friends must solve if they are to have any hope of saving humanity from the threat that lies in wait.
Lose yourself in this brilliantly addictive novel as it takes you on a journey through the stars. But be warned – you might be surprised by what you find.
Purchase Links
UK – https://www.amazon.co.uk/Space-Academy-Hannah-Hopkins-ebook/dp/B0883G654X
US – https://www.amazon.com/Space-Academy-Hannah-Hopkins-ebook/dp/B0883G654X
Author Bio – In 2017, Hannah Hopkins released a self-published novel entitled ‘The Split’; the story of four teenagers navigating life after Earth as they journey through space to a new planet. Two years later, the book was picked up by ‘The Conrad Press’ and re-vamped as ‘Space Academy,’ with a new cover, new title and new additions to the story. ‘Space Academy’ was released in 2020, kickstarting Hannah’s career as a writer.
Hannah is currently busy writing a historical fiction novel with a feminist twist. She spends the rest of her time working at a University and caring for her two young children in the UK.
Social Media Links – https://www.facebook.com/hannahhopkinsauthor
https://www.instagram.com/hhopkins94/
https://www.hannahhopkinsauthor.co.uk
Guest Post
Why Writing is a Form of Personal Therapy
It’s a well-known truth that writing is an extremely cathartic process, allowing authors to work through their issues in a unique and satisfying way, but what is it about creative writing that provides such a healing experience? Is it a conscious process, or do we find our thoughts and fears escaping onto the page without our knowledge? In this guest post, I am excited to explore the different ways in which writing has been like therapy for me, and how my pain has influenced my characters and stories in ways I never anticipated.
The idea behind my novel ‘Space Academy’ was conceived as an escape fantasy, the anxiety-inducing condition of the world at the time I wrote it leading me to imagine a way humanity could escape Earth and try again, our virtues hopefully winning the battle against our flaws as we learnt from the mistakes that lead to our planet’s corruption. Consciously, I wanted to keep Space Academy light. I had just had my son, and the idea that the world he was growing up in had so many frightening problems was hard to face. I wanted to provide hope for myself, and for my potential readers.
Despite this, some of my concerns ended up slipping into the narrative. One of the characters, Finley, experience socio-economic oppression, with the class system still very much alive aboard ‘The Mayflower’. Having the shared experience of journeying through space to find a new planet is not enough to stop humanity’s survivors from creating division amongst themselves. This was very much a manifestation of underlying thoughts and feeling I had about society when I was writing the book. I countered my anxiety by weaving in an overarching message of hope. The idea that love, friendship and compassion win over hatred and fear is an old but comforting notion, and I deliberately made the characters in my book strive to do better than their counterparts left behind on Earth.
Pouring out pain and traumatic experiences onto the page allows a sense of relief, in a similar way to talking therapy. A writer can express their true feelings on a situation without worrying about judgement, and exploring emotions through the medium of a fictional character can provide distance and clarity that cannot always be found subjectively. It also feels good to utilise pain and difficulties! Turning some of my most challenging life events into inspiration for books I’m proud of gives a new sense of purpose to my suffering. If writing about it can help both me and someone else, it provides closure and satisfaction.
It’s not just writing fiction that can provide therapy, however. I think journaling is a really healthy and helpful thing to do. There is something about putting your thoughts onto paper or typing them out that helps make sense of muddled feelings, and it really is true that a problem shared is a problem halved- even if you only share it with a piece of paper.
To conclude, it would definitely be fair to say that when you pick up a copy of my book, you’ll end up learning a lot more about me than I intended, but I am happy to make myself vulnerable in the name of creativity and a good story! And if you find something you can relate to, or you find solace in knowing you are not alone, then it is absolutely worth it.
Berit Talks Books 