That's not me being dramatic. That's literally in the author bio.
No Rest for the Wicked: Nursery Crimes, Volume I is a collection of nursery rhymes rewritten for parents who have seen some things. Parents who are tired. Overstimulated. Probably hungry. Parents who love their kids ferociously and completely and are also, at this exact moment, running on cold coffee and spite.
The dedication is to the inventor of the Mute button, a cashier who didn't judge a facial twitch, and Kaizer — for being the inspiration for every new swear word I've learned in the last two years.
So you know exactly what kind of book this is.
WHAT'S ACTUALLY IN IT
Here's a couple of the poems in the book and what they are about so you know what I mean:
- Goodnight Chaos that says goodnight to the nervous system, the socks that feel like lies, the twenty-three stims, and the thoughts that say you're failing again.
- Twinkle Twinkle Little Nap — about trying white noise, pink noise, weighted blankets, breathing apps, and still nothing.
- The Monster Under the Bed, where the monster sees you eating frosting straight from the jar and hiding in the trunk of the car and decides you're scarier than he is and leaves.
- Hush Little Mommy, which ends with congratulations, you survived the past.
- NOPE. — a toddler bedtime story where the kid stomps, screams, kicks off his socks, builds a tower, smashes it, declares he will stay awake forever and ever, and then falls flat on the floor mid-sentence. The parents tiptoe out. The house is quiet for approximately five minutes.
- Where the Wild Minds Are for the neurodivergent parents raising neurodivergent kids, where Mom is Queen of Holding On Somehow, ruling by grace and threat, scrolling at midnight for proof she's not a beast.
- And it closes with The Final Whimper, which reminds you: you aren't a bad parent. You're just a tired one. And if anyone tells you otherwise, Maternal Menace said they can go play in traffic.
It is exactly what it says it is. It does not pretend otherwise for even one page.
HOW IT GOT MADE
I'm AuDHD. I have a two-and-a-half-year-old who does 30+ hours of therapy a week. My schedule looks like someone knocked over a calendar and tried to reassemble it in the dark. My brain doesn't perform on demand. Some days it shows up. Some days it files for early retirement at noon without asking.
I wrote this book in the margins. In the notes app in waiting rooms. At weird hours when the house finally went quiet enough for my nervous system to unclench slightly. In pieces, stubbornly, over time, without waiting for conditions that were never coming.
And then I published it myself. Because I've figured out how to do that, and I kept thinking — why is everyone doing this the hard way alone?
THAT'S WHERE PUBLISH WITHOUT PANIC COMES IN
Publishing a book is not the hard part. The hard part is everything that comes after the writing — the formatting, the file types, the ISBNs, the KDP dashboards that make perfectly smart people feel stupid, the decisions you have to make when nobody gave you a map.
I built Publish Without Panic because I already had the map. I built it in the dark, through trial and error, around a toddler, with a brain that doesn't cooperate on a schedule. And I thought — someone else shouldn't have to do all of that from scratch.
The program is on Payhip. It walks you through the whole thing. No jargon. No assumptions about what you already know. No making you feel behind.
No Rest for the Wicked is live. It exists. It's weird and dark and funny and real and I made it inside a beautiful, exhausting life that didn't slow down to let me.
If you're a parent who needs something written for you for once? I'm creative chaos for hire at www.maternalmenace.com/cocreateform
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