Hi, Aadi here. I’m here today with Joshua Lawson from Karina Fabian’s Mind Over Series.<\/p>\n
[Aadi] Who or what are you and what are your vitals? (age, sex, species)<\/p>\n
[Joshua] I\u2019m Joshua Lawson, and I\u2019m just a garden-variety human. I\u2019m 19 and just finished my Junior year in\u00a0college, which should imply I\u2019m smart, but I was homeschooled which meant I got to start college early\u00a0and I really screwed up my last year, which is how I ended up here. Oh, and I\u2019m Catholic, but I messed\u00a0that up, too \u2013 which really is why I got myself into such trouble. Things would be much different if I\u2019d\u00a0lived what I believed. Fortunately, God gives second chances, and I\u2019m making the best of mine.<\/strong><\/p>\n [Aadi]\u00a0What part do you play in the story?<\/p>\n [Joshua] I\u2019m interning at a private psychiatric institution. I thought it\u2019d be my chance to get away from the\u00a0mistakes I made and bury myself in work, learning from other psychiatrists and maybe working with\u00a0patients. Mostly, though, I got hired on to be buddy to a patient my age who thinks he\u2019s a psychic. He\u2019s\u00a0got a bad attitude, which is understandable given his situation, but it means I\u2019m part buddy, part\u00a0babysitter and part psychologist.<\/strong><\/p>\n I\u2019m not really practicing psychology. I don\u2019t have a license, after all, but nobody\u2019s really helping Deryl. He\u00a0hears voices in his head, which would make you thing a dissociative disorder, and he\u2019s really good at\u00a0acting out what the other patients are feeling. But there are times when he knew things about me \u2013 my\u00a0past, my secrets \u2013 that he could not have known, which is freaky.<\/strong><\/p>\n Anyway, since medications and standard therapy weren\u2019t working, I did something no one else did. I\u00a0accepted that he was psychic and helped him learn to control his powers. I had no idea how much\u00a0trouble, and how much adventure, that would get us both into.<\/strong><\/p>\n [Aadi] How would you describe your book?<\/p>\n [Joshua] Urban fantasy\/science fiction. The book takes place in the institution or in Deryl\u2019s mind. In addition to\u00a0his being psychic, there are aliens trying to get him to do their bidding. If you want to talk reading\u00a0audience, I\u2019d say 15 \u2013 adult.<\/strong><\/p>\n [Aadi] Tell me about where you live? Who do you live with?<\/p>\n [Joshua] I have a little attic apartment in Rhode Island. My landlady cut my rent in half in exchange for yardwork.\u00a0Believe me, she\u2019s getting the better end of the deal. Mostly, I\u2019m at the asylum. South Kingston Mental\u00a0Health institute is a swanky place. It looks like a hotel and the food is better than most restaurants. But\u00a0really, I\u2019m there 10 or 12 hours a day because I\u2019m taking care of Deryl and trying to help other patients\u00a0and doing a lot of studying. My new girlfriend, Sachiko, thinks I may be a workaholic, but mostly I\u2019m\u00a0keeping busy so I don\u2019t think about my past. Besides, Deryl has a therapist he can see during the\u00a0daytime.<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n [Aadi] In your opinion, what is your best feature?<\/p>\n [Joshua] I know how to listen. My dad is an NLP practicioner. That\u2019s Neuro Linguistic programming, a kind of\u00a0psychology that depends heavily on language and communication. Listening is not just hearing the\u00a0words; it\u2019s watching the eyes, noting the body cues and getting into the head of the person you\u2019re\u00a0talking to. From the time I was little, my dad was teaching me how to do it, and I\u2019ve got a real aptitude.<\/strong><\/p>\n It makes me a good therapist, but it\u2019s also ingrained into who I am, so I think it makes me a good friend,\u00a0too.\u00a0Physically? My eyes. I do a great smoldering stare. I\u2019ve got a good smile, too. I work out, so my bod\u2019s not\u00a0half bad. I\u2019m kind of the whole package.<\/strong><\/p>\n [Aadi] What’s the worst thing someone ever did to you?<\/p>\n [Joshua] My girlfriend in college had an abortion. I didn\u2019t even know she was pregnant. It\u2019s not part of the book,\u00a0but it is why I was in Rhode Island, trying to get my own head and heart together while making enough\u00a0money to make up for the fact that I\u2019d lost all my scholarships. (I\u2019d almost flunked out because I was so\u00a0depressed.)<\/strong><\/p>\n [Aadi] I’m so sorry.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n [Aadi] Do you have any magical items? Where did you get them?<\/p>\n [Joshua] I\u2019m not sure if this counts, but you know ley lines? They\u2019re like lines of magic or psychic energy that\u00a0cross the earth. You read about them in fantasy and they\u2019re in movies and stuff. Now, I can\u2019t sense\u00a0them, but Deryl needed some way to get the strength to control his abilities, so I suggested tapping the\u00a0ley lines. It worked. Whether that\u2019s magic or mind over mind, I can\u2019t tell say. It was pretty awesome,\u00a0though.<\/strong><\/p>\n [Aadi] Okay, last question. If you could change anything in your book, what would it be and why?<\/p>\n [Joshua] I\u2019d have believed in Deryl\u2019s abilities earlier. I\u2019m not blaming myself. After all, he\u2019d been in a mental\u00a0institution for five years and was having problems even before that, but if I\u2019d thought they were true, I\u2019d\u00a0have changed my approach, or maybe just accelerated it. Plus, he knew I was playing along. How could\u00a0he not? He\u2019s psychic, right? Fortunately, Deryl was desperate enough to play along with me, so it all\u00a0worked out in the end.<\/strong><\/p>\n [Aadi] Thanks for stopping by.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Hi, Aadi here. I’m here today with Joshua Lawson from Karina Fabian’s Mind Over Series. [Aadi] Who or what are you and what are your vitals? (age, sex, species) [Joshua] I\u2019m Joshua Lawson, and I\u2019m just a garden-variety human. I\u2019m 19 and just finished my Junior year in\u00a0college, which should imply I\u2019m smart, but I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":397,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Chat with Joshua Lawson","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chats-with-friends"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/dawnwitzke.com\/CatholicUnderground\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/mind-over-trilogy-1601.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7xtYd-6W","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/dawnwitzke.com\/CatholicUnderground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/dawnwitzke.com\/CatholicUnderground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/dawnwitzke.com\/CatholicUnderground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dawnwitzke.com\/CatholicUnderground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dawnwitzke.com\/CatholicUnderground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=430"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/dawnwitzke.com\/CatholicUnderground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":433,"href":"http:\/\/dawnwitzke.com\/CatholicUnderground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430\/revisions\/433"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dawnwitzke.com\/CatholicUnderground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/dawnwitzke.com\/CatholicUnderground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dawnwitzke.com\/CatholicUnderground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dawnwitzke.com\/CatholicUnderground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}