Hello.

My name is Liz Scheier, and NEVER SIMPLE is the book I never thought I’d get to write.

When I came back from maternity leave with my second child, I looked around and thought: I have two children under a year and a half and a full time job. The only hours of the day that I am a) awake and b) have childcare are weekday lunches. I’d better make the most of them or I will lose my everloving mind.

And so two days a week I went to the gym and three days a week I started a writing project. My only criteria was that it would not be about my mother.

Two years later I looked up to find that I had written a complete manuscript that was entirely about my mother. (I know. I know.)

She was nothing if not a compelling subject. Judith Scheier was a charming story-teller, a devoted chain-smoker, a news junkie, a musical theater devotee, and a harried single mother who—when in the grips of the mental illness that plagued every day of her life—lied about such small matters as the identity of my father, her own last name, how many husbands she’d had, my social security number. You know. Tiny details. Barely worth mentioning.

Here’s what’s true: my name is Liz Scheier. I live in Washington, DC, with my husband and two small children and a poorly-behaved cat. I’m a product developer at an educational nonprofit. Never Simple is the story of trying to figure out what in my life had been real, and what was the creation of an adoring, obsessive, not-entirely-sane serial fabulist. I hope you like it.