It's Not Crazy

To pen her latest project, Santa Cruz County writer Terri Morgan researched mental illness, small towns in Oregon and a host of other details she had little knowledge of before.

It came together in Playing the Genetic Lottery, a fictional memoir about a woman who grew up with two schizophrenic parents. Morgan’s research was so spot-on that people with mentally ill relatives have complimented her on her depiction of their experiences.

"Most of the feedback I got was from people who had a schizophrenic family member and they were really touched by the book," Morgan said. "That was really gratifying.”

Morgan is a freelance journalist turned grant writer-for-hire with a background in young adult nonfiction. The Soquel resident dedicated herself to authoring her first novel toward the end of her husband’s battle with lymphoma.

Gary, her husband, had been diagnosed with cancer more than six years ago. He died in June. Morgan dedicated the novel to him.

Morgan said it was the right time to take on the project. She was out of work, bored and “bummed because Gary was so sick.”

She did a lot of research, which she loves, while Gary received outpatient treatments.

“It would take me away from my real life,” Morgan said. “It was a great distraction for me during a really depressing time, but then I wrote a novel about a very depressing thing.”

Morgan has no direct connection to the mental illness she delves into in her writing. Rather, her years as a journalist—for the San Jose Mercury News, the Santa Cruz Sentinel and Capitola-Soquel Patch—fueled her interest. Reporting on court cases exposed her to how prevalent, and misunderstood, mental illness is.

“I was always aware of schizophrenia and I was always fascinated by people,” Morgan said.

A conversation about a friend of a friend who grew up with schizophrenic parents and had to raise her younger brothers and sisters herself cemented Morgan’s desire to write the novel. Rather than speak with the woman, Morgan used the few details she knew as a jumping-off point for her fictional work.

Morgan created Caitlan, a 32-year-old wife and mother who fears she may have passed her parents’ schizophrenia onto her two children.

Schizophrenia is a devastating disease that people need to have a greater understanding of and compassion for, Morgan said.

“I hoped to shed some light on it,” she said. “Nobody chooses to be schizophrenic and nobody wants to be schizophrenic.”

While Morgan invented the Central Oregon town featured in the novel, she mentions many familiar Santa Cruz landmarks, including Watsonville’s , the Golden Torch trailer park and the Ugly Mug coffee shop in Soquel. The story’s setting also roughly mirrors the Santa Cruz’s geography.

“I love it here and this is my home,” said Morgan, a 35-year county resident, explaining why she used real places Santa Cruz County. “It was just kind of a fun thing to do.”

Other personal notes are interspersed in the novel, such as her parents’ birthdays and the name of her favorite elementary school teachers.

Morgan self-published the book after being rejected by a large publishing company that loved the concept, but didn’t think it was marketable. The novel, published as an ebook, was released Nov. 11 and is available on Amazon.com and smashwords.com for $4.99. Excerpts are posted on Facebook.

Morgan hopes to release it in paperback next year.