When I started writing Distorted Beat, I knew I wanted Amy to be funny, chaotic, charming—and anxious as hell. Not as a quirky trait or plot device, but as something real. Something that simmers under the surface until it doesn’t. Something that gets in the way of love, life, and breathing.

And if I’m being honest? Amy’s anxiety started with mine.

I won’t list all the reasons—I’d need a whiteboard and several years of therapy notes—but there’s one moment that kept echoing while I wrote her story: my now-infamous meltdown in the COO’s office. Picture this: me, gasping, crying, unravelling over an Everest of corporate expectations meant for a team of eight… consisting of three.

And what happened next? Nothing explosive. No threats. No ultimatums. Just a calm hand sliding a box of tissues across the desk, and then—somehow—me blurting, “I need to know. Do you want me to resign?”

There was no pause. Just a very clear, very human “No.” And suddenly we weren’t in a meltdown anymore. We were in a conversation.

 Amy’s boss is loosely inspired by him (and yes, the fact that he runs probably slipped in too). His kindness helped me stay upright. Amy’s story, though very different, is rooted in that same truth: it only takes one honest moment—and one person who doesn't flinch.

Amy’s anxiety isn’t mine. Her trauma runs deeper, harder, more personal. But the thing we share is that feeling of being too much and not enough all at once. Of crumbling under pressure that shouldn’t have been there to begin with. And slowly, clumsily, learning how to breathe again.

So when I wrote those scenes—the tight chest, the spiral, the deflection with humor—I went back to that box of tissues. That moment where I felt seen, not judged. And I hope, somewhere in Amy’s chaos, someone else does too.

Distorted Beat is more than just a love story—it’s about coming undone and being held together by kindness, rage, metal, and maybe the right man with the wrong timing.

Read it now. Hug your local anxious overachiever later.

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📖💔🖤 Galina Marx Garin — still slightly allergic to expectations, still running toward fiction.