Dystonia Awareness Archives - One Honest Indie

Help Support Research to Cure Dystonia

09/29/2026 by Debbi

Hi everyone. Well, it’s still Dystonia Awareness Month. It’s just the very end of September. So I’m just going to put in one more last pitch for supporting dystonia research. I will include a link to a fundraising page that I have that hopefully you will consider supporting. Yeah, it’s a very difficult condition to deal with. What can I say? I mean, I know people who have it who are much more visibly affected by it, or you can hear it in their voices, something like that. There are people who are severely affected by it to the point where they practically can’t really live a normal life, so to speak.

It’s extremely difficult for me to do some of the things I’m doing right now. It’s just the way it is, but there are things that I want to do that are difficult and I’m willing to put in the effort to do them. Now, at some point, I really have to call a halt to the things that I love to do because you can overwhelm yourself quickly with the various temptations and offers that the internet has out there. And I have really had to learn to just stop and think and not just jump on every single opportunity I see. This concept of say yes, say yes to every opportunity.

No, do not say yes to every opportunity. Be very strategic about what you do with your time. It is your time. I am too old to go off to LA and fetch coffee for people. I am too old for that. I am not going to do that. I’m also not going to do that with dystonia, with a hand that was barely able to help rearrange the furniture in my own office this weekend. Not to mention the many, many files I went through trying to figure out what to throw out. I’m going through a real throwing out phase here. I am throwing out a lot.

Yeah, I’m going to be eliminating a few things from my life. I’m going to be eliminating a lot of books I’m being offered, a lot. So just be aware of that and be a lot more strategic about many choices. I just survived a week of, let’s see, I went to the C3 conference, where I appeared on three panels and even sold three books! That was followed by a class that I had to submit an assignment for the Sunday before the class, which was hard because I was at the conference.

Me and John DeDakis at the C3 signing table.

So I ended up writing out the beats for the assignment and then typing them up real quickly with my crappy hands. Yes. I use speech recognition, but it’s supposed to be therapeutic for me to type, right? Because this is a brain retraining thing. Okay, this is turning into a longer video than I planned. Anyway, so after that I had the distribution thing. And then after that I went up to Baltimore and we did some editing on my first movie, which was very interesting and helpful.

Then I did a book signing the next day. And let me tell you, I was beat by that time. That was followed up with a discussion about Stranger Things, the pilot on Friday evening. And I think I was possibly upright and alert for that one. I remember saying things. I remember having opinions about it. And I remember Stranger Things in general, which is a fun show for a while. I’d lost interest in the third season for some reason. I don’t know why. Anyway, where was I? There’s only so much energy and only so much time. And I’m coming up on five minutes, so I’m going to stop right now and urge you to always think before you choose your tempting new options for things to do. That’s all I’ll say because there’s an awful lot out there that’s tempting and interesting. That’s it. Take care of yourselves, stay healthy and be seeing you.

Please don’t forget to click the link to support dystonia research. It is tax deductible, I believe. Tax deductible to the extent allowed by the law. Something like that. Alrighty. Take care. Ta-ta.

PS: Here’s a quick peek at the BTS on my latest shoot!

Me with cast members Lauren Meley (L) and Sarah Ford (R).

My Post-Production Update

09/08/2026 by Debbi

Hello everyone. And as Paul Downie might say, I need a haircut. Yes, I do need a haircut, but that’s not what I’m going to talk about. I spent [last] Tuesday making the movie, my second film, directing, and wow, we came in under budget in terms of time. I mean, we really brought this thing together in a very efficient way, all of us collectively working together. It was wonderful.

Check out our 1st AD (and one of Charm City’s head honchos) Wes Throneberry on the big screen!

I had a great big monitor that I could see the action on. I actually yelled “action!” instead of just like, “(barely audible) action.” I don’t speak loudly enough ever, it seems. But having said that, I really had a wonderful time. It is hard for me with dystonia to do this, but I enjoy it so much. I can’t help myself almost. I really did love working with the people on set this week. All of them are wonderful and I want to email all of them and I have to get the emails.

There’s so many things I want to do. But having said that, I’ll get to that. I will. I will. I’m reading this Middleman by Brendan Flaherty. I’ve dipped into this, Shrink Solves Murder, Philippa Perry, and I am well on my way toward finishing this. I’m way behind on my reading. This is Kim Sherwood’s Hurricane Room. James Bond is alive. Yes, he is. And it’s very, very interesting reading and I’m enjoying it very much. I also have a bunch of scripts to read, but apart from that, the only thing I’ll add is the following.

I bought this for myself because I figure if I’m going to do movie reviews, I want to keep track of what I’m reviewing a little bit better in a more organized fashion. Thank you. Got hair hanging in my face. Sorry. And also the always good advice to be curious, be curious, not judgmental. Yeah. Kitty cat.

And what can I say? Really, this is great advice. Time spent with cats is never wasted. Or kites for that matter, but cats especially. Yeah. Time spent with cats is never wasted. All right. Have a wonderful week and I hope you enjoyed Labor Day. I intend to enjoy it. It’s Saturday right at the moment, but I’m making this for Tuesday. So happy Tuesday when this goes up. Thank you so much and I will be seeing you. Be seeing you. Let’s start that Prisoner Discussion Club, huh? Take care. Be seeing you! 🙂

PS: September is Dystonia Awareness Month. ~~Reading all that just exhausted me.~~

There, I said it.

A Two-Book Review

10/07/2025 by Debbi

Oh, hi everyone. Yeah, my hair is hanging in my face. I haven’t had a haircut in a while and I could use one. I’m torn between doing a review of this book, which is absolutely fantastic, and talking about this book, I just am breezing through the first part because I’m realizing now that I know everything it has to say in the first part. Okay?

This is Just a Rough Draft

09/30/2025 by Debbi

Well, as Dystonia Awareness Month comes to a close, I find myself wondering ~~why I bother~~ when people will actually become aware enough about dystonia to give a damn about it.

There, I said it~~, as someone I barely knew once wrote~~. 🙂

So, here’s my ~~final shot~~ last hurrah on the topic. Unless I decide to write more, though I can’t imagine anyone’s really that interested. Really. It’s boring. You don’t want to know. It’s horrible and best not to dwell on the whole business. So, there, you have it.

BTW, the following is something I wrote this morning. It’s just a rough draft of the “origin story” (if you will) of Identity Crisis and the Sam McRae mystery series.

Somehow, I got on the topic of dystonia and that was where the topic went next.

This was the second novel I wrote before my fiction was published. The first novel I wrote was revised a few times and eventually published as the fourth book in the series.

It’s hard to recall when exactly I started writing Identity Crisis, but it had to be sometime after November 1997. Because that was when I got a critique of the first novel from a published author, who judged my story to be “publishable.” As in worthy of being shown around to agents, say? He liked it. So, I felt ready to do that. More confident than I had been, just by getting my work vetted by an experienced author who found it good enough to merit publishing.

So, that’s what I did. For several years. Got lots of rejections. Loads and loads of them. Over a hundred, for sure. Eventually, I managed to get a short story published in an anthology. That was in 2004. In November of 2004, I had a stroke. To make a longish story shorter, I recovered from the stroke, due to getting swift treatment and a clot-busting drug called tPA. However, in the spring of 2005, my life changed forever, when I developed a movement disorder called dystonia.

It is, apparently, such a rare condition to develop after a stroke, that absolutely no one that I know of is doing any research on it. It affects my left side extremities. My left arm and leg are constantly in motion, in a way that causes opposing muscles to fight each other, like a constant tug-of-war going on within my body.

It is a constant hum of activity I have no control over happening in every waking moment of my life now. And after the initial disappointment of finding out I now have a very annoying, painful, debilitating, and somewhat distracting health problem, I further find out that no one knows how to fix it. Or is looking into it. At all.

My choices are pretty clear. I can give up writing and do something else. Something that won’t involve getting accepted by anyone. Just do nothing. Or do something I’ve wanted to do all my life (regardless of the difficulty, unfairness of it all, or pain). Or, I could just kill myself and be done with it.

What would you do?

PS: Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated? 🙂 Ha ha ha …

PPS: Well, now I’ve just got to see The Lowdown.

If it’s based on this guy’s life? That’s just awesome. And so is this!

PPPS: I spent most of my exciting weekend organizing my office. And looking through footage. And reading as many books as possible, plus scripts (one of which I need to give notes on and one of which I’ll be discussing soon). Plus writing this.

By the way, today is Virtual You Day for people with dystonia. So, if you’re feeling generous or need a tax write-off, please consider giving to the cause of researching every kind of dystonia, except … well, never mind all that, huh?

Thinking about lying down.