I believe in going back to old words and seeing where I once was to help me reflect on how far I have come. The words here no longer represent me, but they once did, and I am hesitant to “delete” and “deny” who I was. That practice is what broke my mind.

I am working my way through the website and “archiving” obsolete information under the tag “Archived Past” that no longer reflects my current Selves.

Pardon our pixels while we rebuild.

The Author

Angela B. Chrysler is a writer, logician, philosopher, and die-hard nerd who studies theology, historical linguistics, music composition, and medieval European history in New York with a dry sense of humor and an unusual sense of sarcasm. She lives in a New York City.

In 2014, Ms. Chrysler founded Brain to Books and the virtual trade show, Brain to Books Cyber Convention. A passionate gardener and incurable cat lover, Ms. Chrysler spends her days drinking coffee and writing beside a volume of Edgar Allan Poe who strongly influences her style to this day. When Ms. Chrysler is not writing, she enables her addictions to all things nerdy, and reads everything she can get her hands on no matter the genre. Her writing is often compared to Tad Williams. Her influences are Edgar Allan Poe, The Phantom of the Opera, and Frankenstein.

Angela also loves writing, cats, reading, knitting, gardening, Tai Chi, Yoga, meditation, coffee, BBC, baking, cooking, dancing, singing, anime, and smiling.

Influences

Growing up without books, Ms. Chrysler spent her early life reading the encyclopedia for fun. By mid-teens, she gained access to her school library, and began working her way through the Great Books. She spent many an afternoon in an old opera house-turned-library in the town where she grew up. There, she found her passion for reading, writing, and theater through the words of Hugo, Shakespeare, Tennyson, and Poe. The works of Leroux and Mary Shelley went on to shape her passion for the Gothic romantic macabre she embraces today.

As early as fifteen, Ms. Chrysler embraced philosophy and spent the majority of her life educating herself. At seventeen, she turned her avid reading of the encyclopedia to the Great Books. Through ancient texts, philosophical writings, and Classical Literature, Ms. Chrysler continued the exploration of “self” that began as a teenager in hopes to better understand the world and the two decades of trauma she endured. She is still working hard toward that goal.

Philanthropist

Today, Ms. Chrysler’s philosophies and knowledge inspires her worlds of fantasy while her personal challenges have inspired her to help increase awareness for a number of topics including, trauma, PTSD, BPD, bipolar, animal abuse, domestic violence, and informed/involved parenting. Ms. Chrysler is a survivor of pedophilia/online predators and was once prepped for trafficking. She uses her experience to educate parents on preventing pedophilia, understanding the mind of a pedophile to better protect children, and help parents better understand premature sexual activity in teens. She strongly speaks against child abuse, animal abuse, and neglect.

Philosophy, Religion, and Existentialism

I love theology. I hate organized religions. I loathe Christianity. No religion has done more to present itself as a kind and generous life raft to those who need help the most while simultaneously using fear to nurture racism, prejudice, hatred, and self-loathing. I have seen this religion take the people I love and twist them into a misshapen mass of denial consumed by the fears that Christians use to manipulate its people. I challenge anyone who disagrees with me to show me a Christian who isn’t afraid of damnation or the wrath of their god.

Fear is an emotion that, experienced in large doses or over prolonged periods of time, can cause a plethora of severe mental disorders that can lead to drug use, destructive and risky behavior, and suicide. We’re not supposed to be afraid. Fear in large doses is lethal.

We don’t need Christ or more faith. What we need is a good therapist, a doctor, maybe some medication, and a lot of self-forgiveness and self-love.  Christianity works to convince people to not use the emotions they truly need: Self-love, pride, and Ego.

I believe in defining one’s own morals through the use of philosophy, literacy, and ethics. I am a rationalist. This is what being an atheist means to me. It means keeping an open mind about possibilities. It means being ready and able to accept the concept that I may be wrong. And that’s okay. It means being ready to welcome humility, and be confident and secure enough to set aside my ego while embracing pride. It’s about being educated enough to know the difference between ego, pride, and arrogance. It’s about accepting only the truth and living by my moral code, which I developed from the greatest minds in our history. I don’t need a god or the fear of that god to behave myself or be happy. I have my own mind, my own intelligence, and my own experiences to do that for me.

I don’t need the ten commandments or the threat of damnation or the promise of immortality to keep my goals. I have my own commandments, and I keep them without the need for fear, threats, or bribes. I keep them because they are mine and I choose them. I keep them because I cherish happiness. I keep them because I cherish this life, the only one I have. I live for today in this moment because I believe there is no other life. This is it. This is what it means to live as an atheist.

My recipe for happiness:

• Step #1 – Do more of what makes you happy.
• Step #2 – Reduce the stress and select healthy ways of managing the stress that remains.
• Step #3 – Identify the things/people/choices in your life that hurts you
• Step #4 – (Here is the hard part) get rid of the things you know are hurting you.
• Step #5 – Have more desire to change your life than fear of the change itself.

Writing Accomplishments

In 2009, after completing two courses from Long Ridge Writer’s Group, her articles appeared in Kritter Kronickles Pet Magazine, and she began work on the Tales of the Drui: a dark mythological fantasy that depicts the Viking era through the elves’ point of view, and combines elements from Celtic mythology. Despite her smile and passion for laughter, Ms. Chrysler survived a number of unique hardships that fueled her darker side and love of macabre. She is active on most social media platforms and can usually be found tweeting on Twitter.

In addition to writing, Ms. Chrysler is very active with her online community and social media. She adores marketing, and her passion to help others has driven her to launch Brain to Books: an online marketing manual for authors. You can find number of promotional events hosted by Angela through Brain to Books including, but not limited to the annual Brain to Books Cyber Convention and Book Expo.

Early Life

Driven by a desperate need to define myself, I began writing Broken on 7 March 2015 hoping to find an answer to two questions: Who am I, and is [isolation…a hermitage] really what I want? What emerged was a 98,000 word macabre memoir that explores the psyche of…well…me—a thirty-five-year old woman who survived a number of traumatic events back to back to back for more than twenty years. The events went on to build and shape my mind around multiple psychological disorders I didn’t know I had. Until very recently, I thought my childhood was quite normal. One of the hardest things about surviving trauma is accepting that what you lived through was, in fact, trauma and recognizing “normal, “healthy,” and “average” when you see it. Written as a fiction psychological thriller, Broken is my journal and is the process I undertook to discover my mental illnesses and the severity of my conditions. My protagonist, Elizabeth, speaks on behalf of me. She is one of my possible futures. Through her, I tell my story. Broken was a finalist for the 2015 Wishing Shelf Awards.

Be ruthless for your own well-being. – Holly Ann Butcher

The story continues in “Unbreaking Me.”

Broken is a work of creative nonfiction. All events, opinions, and views are that of Angela B. Chrysler and are portrayed through subjective perspective based on the memory of Ms. Chrysler. While all the events are true, names, places, characteristics, and relationships have been altered and/or changed to protect the identity and privacy of the people involved. Some characters have been combined into one. Others have been divided into two, while some have been dramatized to better suit the story. The events themselves remained unaltered to the best of the author’s memory. The dialogue was composed to create the essence of conversations in an effort to recreate the scene and mood best to the author’s memory, and is not to be taken as verbatim quotes.

Ms. Chrysler loves…

Karate. Tai Chi. Meditation. Yoga. Discipline. Atheism. Humanitarianism. Philanthropist. Philosopher. Survivor. Perseverance. Endurance. Nerd. Gamer. Whovian. Trekky. Existentialist. Mother. Wife. Gardener. Cat lover. Animal lover. Fighter. Musician. Pianist. Composer. Dancer. Ballerina. Historian. Education. Reader. Linguist. Writer. Poet. Author. She recently took up Karate. She really loves round house kicks and has a wicked cross punch.