Hot Flashes & Fiction

You ever try to be productive while bleeding from cat bites and spiraling at the airport? Because same!In this week’s Hot Flash Tuesday, I take you through the absolute chaos of trying to get to Texas for my nephew’s birthday, only to end up in the ER after being attacked by both of my cats. Yes. Both.Somehow, in the middle of all that mess, I finished the script I’ve been working on for over a year. The script is done! And it still doesn’t feel real!This episode is about grief, missed flights,

What if heartbreak literally broke your heart?In this raw and real episode of Hot Flashes & Fiction, I share my latest health spiral, including a visit to the endocrinologist, a possible Grave’s disease diagnosis, and a confirmed case of tachycardia (irregular heartbeat). It all started with chest pain I chalked up to anxiety. But after losing my sister this year, my body began waving red flags I couldn’t ignore.I knew grief was making me sick. The symptoms were real. And as a woman over

This is the first official Fiction Friday on Hot Flashes & Fiction  and we’re kicking it off with a short suspense story written by me, your host, Darling Izzy.In this episode, I share a piece of original microfiction called “The Package,” a story about a woman named Daisy who receives a mysterious box at her door with

In this follow-up to last week’s episode, I talk about what happened when everything got even messier.After my sister passed away, I couldn’t write. I didn't even care about the story I had spent months working on. Grief completely threw me off track, and just when I was getting back into creative flow, I started questioning the project all over again. In this episode, I talk about how loss changed the way I see work, why my sci-fi script started to feel irrelevant, and how I’m trying to finish

In this first Hot Flash Tuesday episode, I’m sharing how my journey as a writer started during a midlife crisis, right as I decided to leave my wellness podcast and jump into writing a sci-fi audio drama.I talk about what inspired the story, how it evolved from an alien-in-a-dumpster idea into a fully developed story about a scientist, and how hitting perimenopause completely changed everything. Burnout, anxiety, hot flashes, and creative confusion slowed down the writing process... and forced me to