Hope. Dreams. Life... Love: Unwillable

Monday, May 22, 2023

Unwillable

Unwillable: A Journey to Reclaim My Brain

by Jackie M. Stebbins

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GENRE: Memoir

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BLURB:

“Jackie Stebbins’ UNWILLABLE is an inspiring story of a brilliant woman’s battle with autoimmune encephalitis and the circle of support--from loving family members to dedicated physicians--who helped guide her through a hard-won recovery. Her story is as moving as it is important and is destined to help so many others facing this condition.”

Susannah Cahalan author of NYT #1 Bestseller Brain on Fire

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Excerpt:

I remember the moment it hit. It was like the physical feeling of lightning striking me and an earthquake ripping through me all at once. It had an instantaneous feeling of terror and destruction. The explosion started in my brain and reverberated through my entire body. It caught and spread like wildfire.

It is my memory that I sat upright in bed when it felt like the lightning bolt struck my head. My hands and arms immediately started to fly wildly and uncontrollably all over the place, as if I was trying to brace myself while the earthquake tore through me. For just a second, I wanted to scream out for help, but I couldn’t. I peed my pants. And after that, it all goes black.

The memory I have is only an instant long, but I can still feel the desire to scream. I can feel my arms moving so rapidly and uncontrollably that they are almost screaming out too. It is the worst of all the nightmares, all the terrors, and all the episodes I had in that bed for those seven months, in a few split seconds.

A Word With the Author

I had sworn off TikTok. I had never put the app on my phone, much less used it. My husband once showed me his For You page (which was beyond me at the time) and it seemed like so much noise, so much hard to read text, and just way too busy. It was absolutely not for me and not a good use of my time. (As a former trial lawyer, I’ve been a boring person for most of my life.)

Until my friend Leigh, an author and writing coach, sent her mass email that succinctly said: Twitter’s dead. You won’t sell books there. TikTok is selling books like mad. (See Colleen Hoover or the #booktok shelf at Barnes & Noble.) As I read the email, I was so annoyed at her for making me think twice about TikTok, but I believed her and knew that she was on to something.

I took a few classes from Leigh to learn about … well … everything TikTok. I was a novice. And I’d never heard of It Ends With Us or Crying in H Mart. I began watching videos on how to use the app to create simple videos (being the newbie I was, I watched how-to videos on YouTube; I’ve since learned that you use TikTok to understand TikTok). And then I worked with a consultant to learn how to make more sophisticated videos. And in the meantime, I put aside all my opposition to and defiance of the app, and disbelief that I had a creative bone in my body, and started #booktoking.

I’ve now created around one hundred videos, built up my own little following, and gotten into the niche of #booktoking about memoirs (I didn’t realize how much of the world read romance and sci-fi until I joined #booktok). I’ve had some great discussions with others and my TBR pile grows by the day per the recommendations of other #booktokers.

Simply put, I’m having fun creating videos about nonfiction, and marketing my memoir, Unwillable, on TikTok. And at thirty-nine years old, I never thought I’d see the day where I’d not only join in on a trend, but also believe I’m not half bad at it.

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AUTHOR Bio and Links:

Jackie M. Stebbins was living her dream as a nationally recognized family law, criminal defense, and civil litigator. But Stebbins’s career as a lawyer abruptly ended in May, 2018, when she was diagnosed with a rare brain illness, autoimmune encephalitis. Stebbins persevered to make a remarkable recovery and turned herself into an author and motivational speaker. Stebbins is the author of the JM Stebbins blog and host of the Brain Fever podcast. Stebbins’s side hustle includes raising three lovely children with her wonderful husband, Sean, in Bismarck, North Dakota, and in her leisure time she can be found reading, trying to be funny, and aqua jogging.

Buy Links:

Amazon: https://a.co/d/d89kann

Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/unwillable-jackie-m-stebbins/1141495526

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/61125194

Social Media:

https://www.facebook.com/JackieMStebbins/

https://twitter.com/jmstebbs

https://www.instagram.com/jmstebbs84/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jackie-stebbins-725081173/

https://www.tiktok.com/@jmstebbs

Websites:

jmstebbins.com