Crazy Medicine: Draft #16 Finished!
The novel is a companion piece to As Far as You Can Go Before You Have to Come Back
“How much of the novel is true?”
In interviews and at bookstore readings—eight months and counting—the above is first question everyone wants answered. The last question, invariably, is: "What are you writing now?”
They also want to know, “How long did it take to write?” “To publish?” Additionally, “How many drafts?”
I am often confused as to what comprises “a” draft. So with the follow-up to As Far as You Can Go Before You Have to Comes Back, called Crazy Medicine, I kept count.
Ten.
Sixteen full drafts, with each draft having many loops within. I started dreaming scenes from this novel in 1991, within a month of returning from living in Asia. I knew: Burma, drugs, and a mountain where some drug lord controlled a jade mine. There was a lot of white, cement-ish powder covering the ground and the people forced to work there.
In February of 2020, I took a class: “Finish Your Crappy First Draft” (taught by Jennifer Haupt at Richard Hugo House in Seattle). The class was exactly what I needed to finally embark on the novel for which I’d written a few chapter/short stories but could not get going. I was terrified of everything I didn’t know.
There is one way out of that dilemma: through.
Lena Hayes—recently of Charleston, currently of backpack—was fourteen years old when her parent were murdered. At twenty-one, after two years of traveling in Asia, Lena is beyond bored with hot men and the white-folk trope of eating far-out food. In Laos, deeply affected by witnessing Tak Bat—orange-robed monks' silent, pre-dawn walk to receive handfuls of cooked rice from parishioners—Lena sets her sights on the infamous Full Moon party on the island of Koh Phangan, Thailand—where, in As Far as You Can Go Before You Have to Come Back, Carlie encounters the Tai chi practice that changes her life. Lena meets Ox, a drug lord who runs heroin and meth from Burma into Thailand. Lena convinces Ox to expand into Cambodia with the latest hit drug, ya ba—meth cut with caffeine, known in Thailand as “crazy medicine.” What’s more, Lena talks Ox into letting her run the new territory.
Taking up residence in Phnom Penh, Lena is drawn to the ancient Khmer martial art, Bokotor. And to Ox. At the same time, Lena gets off on the street dealing that allows her to hook Western pedophiles on heroin. The adrenaline junkie begins to fear the sole mystery left her in this world is how she is going to die.
Coupled with As Far as You Can Go Before You Have to Come Back, Crazy Medicine represents the yin in the yin-yang sign (a dai ji) of my life-long exploration into why I chose the light while others, many of whom I loved, chose the dark.
Embracing Lena, I am starting to understand
.