Lycanthropy and Other Chronic Illnesses

Ticks don t actually have teeth. I looked it up afterward, scrolling through photos with that same kind of sick fascination of watching someone pop a pimple. They ve got this horrible ridged capitulum that opens up into three parts like the monster from Stranger Things, sinks into your skin, and holds on just long enough to derail the course of your entire life.
     I don t know what time it is when I wake up. This time last year, I would have known the second I heard my alarm trilling: 7:30 a.m. on a Monday, enough time to hit snooze once, slip out of bed, turn on the coffee pot my roommate and I weren t allowed to have in our dorm, and get ready to leave for Bio at 8:40. Enough time to sit and drink it, knees to my chest, as she slept, scrolling through my email or my blog. I was a well-oiled machine. I was pre-med at Stanford and I had made it out of New Jersey. I was ready for anything.
     It must have happened when I was home for the summer, trudging through the tall grass with my high school friends, cutting across a field to get to town. Or maybe it was down by the Amtrak tracks with the climbing plants as Jadie roped me into acting for one of her film projects. I don t know. I ll never know. The only thing I know is that when I got back to California last fall, I got sick. Really sick.
     I don t set an alarm anymore. I know I ve slept too long my internal clock won t wake me when it s supposed to. It s sluggish now, constantly running low on battery, and so am I.
     I take a quick inventory, staring up at the same crack in my ceiling that I ve stared up at since I was five years old. My head is stuffed with cotton. I feel heavy, like something is pinning me to the mattress. And my joints hurt, a throbbing pain that will only get worse as I move. It feels like a handful of fevers scattered around my body, a dozen hungry black-hole stomachs my left knuckles, my ankle, my knee, my hips, my

Kristen O Neal is a freelance writer who has written for sites like Buzzfeed Reader, Christianity Today, Birth.Movies.Death, LitHub, and Electric Literature. She lives on the internet. You can find her at kristenoneal on Tumblr. Lycanthropy and Other Chronic Illnesses is her first novel.

One of POPSUGAR's Best YA Books of April
Kids Indie Next List Pick
A SIBA Read This Next Selection for Spring 2021
A 2022-2023 South Carolina Young Adult Book Award Nominee

A funny, heartfelt book with a phenomenal premise . . . it manages to represent a lot of identities and intersectionalities: trans and disabled, chronically ill and racial minority, queer and cryptid. At its core, the novel feels like a love letter to the internet communities that connect people; it s a reminder that friendships, both virtual and in-person, can save lives. Maya Van Waganen, New York Times

Emotional, thoughtful, and a true testament to the power of friendship, Lycanthropy and Other Chronic Illnesses is a werewolf novel that will make you look at navigating illness, supernatural or not, in a whole new way .O Neal breaks new ground with this book and accomplishes something truly wonderful. Locus Magazine

Your next favorite horror-comedy. Syfy

O Neal persuasively pulls from her own experience with chronic illness to inform her depiction of the topic, using interactions between support group members to layer comedic banter and vulnerability that specifically addresses aspects of disability experiences. Publishers Weekly

A heartwarming, quirky take on chronic illness in all its hairy detail. Kirkus Reviews

A fresh and original twist on the werewolf legend. Booklist

A must-read for anyone with a chronic illness or who loves someone with a chronic illness. School Library Journal

Clever, original, entertaining, and all the more impressive when considering that Lycanthropy and Other Chronic Illnesses is author Kristen O'Neal's debut as a novelist. Midwest Book Review

An electric tour de force of hilarity and humanity. Oof, ouch, my heart! It bleeds for this book. Preston Norton, author of Where I End and You Begin

Hilarious in addition to having great chronic pain/illness rep. The Horn Book Inc