Elisa isn't my real name

Elisa Hausner is a pen name. I’d rather put that in the first line of the first post than have you work it out later, because these books ask you to trust me about something you’re probably already ashamed of, and trust is a poor thing to start with a lie.

Everything after this is true.

I live in Canterbury, on the flat part of the South Island, where the paddocks run out towards the Southern Alps and there is nothing at all to stop the wind. There are three children in this house. Between us we have ADHD and autism, and none of that is a special circumstance here — it’s just the weather we live in.

What I do when I’m not writing

I make soap. Cold process, in a kitchen that smells of lye and oats for two days afterwards, and then the bars sit on a rack in the laundry for six weeks doing nothing I can see or hurry.

I didn’t plan it as a metaphor, but it has become one. Almost nothing else I do tolerates being left alone. Soap insists on it. You mix it properly, you pour it, and then the only remaining job is to not touch it. For someone who spends most of her week trying to make things start, there is something steadying about a shelf full of things that are finishing without me.

Why the pen name

The children didn’t choose to be written about. Their diagnoses belong to them, not to me, and one day they’ll be old enough to decide who gets to know. A pen name means I can be honest about what our bad days actually look like without attaching their names to it forever.

So: the name is invented. The Tuesdays are not.

If you want the most useful thing on this site, it isn’t a book. It’s the one-page Bad-Day Protocol — free, no email needed.

Elisa